Sergey Bubka competing in the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki (© Getty Images)
Helsinki, FinlandContinuing the IAAF website tradition at major championships we are pleased to welcome back James Dunaway as our daily columnist for the duration of the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics. Based upon a writing career stretching back to the 1956 Olympics Jim gives his unique insight into everything and nothing going on around Helsinki 2005…
“It’s exciting to be back in Helsinki, where the World Championships got started 22 years ago.
It’s where ‘Little Mary Decker’ came of age, winning the women’s 1500 and 3000m; Carl Lewis won three gold medals (100, Long Jump, 4x100); Jarmila Kratochvilova won an ‘impossible’ 400/800 double; and an unknown 19-year-old Ukrainian wearing red-and-white striped knee socks won the first of six consecutive Pole Vault World Championships, Sergey Bubka, of course.
Kratochvilova’s double really was impossible. Beginning on a Sunday, she ran seven races in four days - four rounds of the 400 and three of the 800. On Tuesday, she won her 400 semifinal in 51.08 and came back 30 minutes later to win the 800 championship in 1:54.68 (still the fourth fastest time ever). And next day she set a world record winning the 400 in 47.99 - which is still the second fastest ever!
Fast forward to now. Like all first days, most of the action was in qualifying rounds. But the stands were 80% full for the 4-1/2 hour morning session, and almost 100% full for the evening session, which did have three finals.
That’s pretty good considering that the prices range from 18-35 Euros (about $25-50) for the day sessions, and 59-209 Euros ($75-275) for the evening sessions.
And the mostly Finnish and Swedish crowd stayed right through, despite a cold evening which at times included a raw wind and an intermittent drizzle. I was sitting next to a couple of Chileans, who had come north expecting to get away from their winter. They were wearing shorts and shivering, they were distinctly chilly.
12 men competed in both sessions: the men’s Shot Put finalists. Their qualifying round, starting at 10 a.m., was the first event. The 12 qualifiers made the final, which began at 9:00 p.m. and lasted till nearly 10:00. Imagine, getting ‘up’ for the qualifying round, then having to do it again nine or ten hours later.
That’s probably why, despite training all year to throw well on this day, not one of the 27 in the competition achieved a season’s best performance - the winner Adam Nelson.
The first two rounds of the men’s 100 metres didn’t give anyone a clue as to how it will turn out in Sunday’s final. Of course it wasn’t really sprinting weather, but I was a bit surprised that nobody grabbed the event by what my Texan mother used to call the ‘scum of the neck’ and gave it a good shaking.
You’d have to figure that Justin Gatlin, Francis Obikwelu, and Shawn Crawford will be tough, after all, they finished 1, 2, 4 in Athens. Rising stars Leonard Scott and Ronald Pognon might also have a say, and the fastest 100 of the day (10.10) was turned in by 20-year-old Darrel Brown of Trinidad, who finished second to Kim Collins two years ago in Paris.
But nobody looked dominant, the way Maurice Greene did in 1997 in Athens, 1999 in Sevilla, 2000 in Sydney and 2001 in Edmonton.
There were a lot of exciting qualifying races today, and to me the semi-finals on Sunday will have almost as much racing quality as finals. For instance, in the women’s 800 they’ll be running three semis with the first two in each and the next two fastest finishers advancing to the final. That kind of semi requires not only speed and stamina but a high order of racing skill as well. And the smallest mistake can be a disaster.
I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
James Dunaway for the IAAF
