Dunaway's Athenian Column - Day Seven

Jim Dunaway who has attended every Olympic Games since Melbourne in 1956 brings his own weathered eye on what’s been happening in and around the Athletics events at the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad.

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You can make a good case that the 200 metres is, by and large,  a truer test of sprinting than the 100.

But for the finalists in tonight's 200, it was a test of character as well as speed.

When the runners lined up to be introduced , they were greeted with thunderous cheers from the 70,000 people in the arena for The Man Who Wasn't There, Konstadinos 'Kostas' Kenteris, the man because of whom they had bought their tickets months ago, hoping to see him repeat his Sydney Olympic 200 victory four years ago. They were saying,  'HEL-LAS!' but it sounded like 'Hey-lahss!'

It came in waves:  'Hey-lahss! Hey-lahss! Hey-lahss!' and 'Ken-ter-is! Ken-ter-is! Ken-ter-is!'  You kind of wondered if maybe they expected Kenteris to materialize and occupy the Lane 2 left vacant by Asafa Powell's withdrawal due to injury.

After the announcers bulled their way through the introductions, with especially loud whistling when the three Americans -- Justin Gatlin, Shawn Crawford and Bernard Williams -- the athletes got into their blocks, the noise level went up by a few hundred decibels, and the starter called them up.

Closeups on the giant stadium screen showed the three Americans either smiling (Bernard Williams) or looking poker-faced (Shawn Crawford and Justin Gatlin) as a barrage of whistles cascaded down on them.

The giant screen pleaded "Quiet for the Start" in Greek and English, and slowly, very slowly they got into the blocks again.

This time Stephane Buckland false started, and after the runners were ready to get into their blocks for the third time, one of the assistant starters showed the yellow card to all seven of the athletes. Someone behind me wisecracked, "They should show that yellow card to the stands, too!"

Amazingly they got off at the third try, (only 8 minutes late,  though it seemed longer)  and although Gatlin led for the first 80 meters,  Crawford shot out of the turn and won by more than two metres.

After the race the three Americans knelt together in a circle on the track, heads bowed as if they were praying. I wondered if they were praying to get out of the stadium safely.

But it all turned out just fine. When the three took their victory lap, the crowd was generous with applause, and I didn't hear any boos or whistles. I guess the Greek crowd had gotten the frustration out of their systems by then.

As far as the race itself goes, given his bronze in the 100 in 9.87 and his convincing 19.79 victory tonight, over Williams, Gatlin, and I'd say Crawford has to be considered the best sprinter in the world right now.
 
And he certainly knows how to keep his cool.

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Maybe jumpers should take a course in debating as part of their training.  At least that's the way it looks after a couple of jumpers disputed officials' foul calls and got the rulings reversed, without need for the jury of appeals.

In Wednesday night's women's long jump qualifying, when Germany's Bianca Keppler's third jump was red-flagged (with the toe of her shoe apparently past the foul line),  she came up to the officials at the take-off  board and insisted that they show her where she had marked the plasticine just past the foul line. The officials pointed to a spike mark on the board, but she kept pointing to the plasticine, where there was no mark.

After a huddle, the officials reversed their call and announced her mark 6.69,  good enough to put her in the final.

Same thing happened tonight in the men's long jump final.  After his first jump was called a foul, Bogdan Tarus of Romania went through the same routine. It was a different group of officials, but I suspect they had seen what happened the night before, because the discussion was a lot shorter tonight.  And Bogdan got the jump, his best of the evening at 8.21m. It gives you a pretty good idea of the quality of the field when you realize that he finished eighth!

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Note to gold-medal winners: I've noticed that quite a few of you are not singing when your national anthems are played when you're on the victory stand. 

This makes a very bad impression on the billions of people watching you all over the world. It gives people the idea that YOU DON'T KNOW THE WORDS.  

This, of course is terrible Public Relations for your country. When you return home from the Olympics, people are likely to give you a hard time,  and if you live in some countries,  you might even get put in jail, gold medal or not.

So I suggest that even if you don't know the words, or are tone deaf, or whatever, when they play your national anthem, MOVE YOUR LIPS.

Jim