'Dunaway's Worlds'

Jim Dunaway reflects on yesterday's events in the Stade, in his usual unique manner.

The entertainment business

 A lot of people in sports, and especially in the business of sports management, will tell you, "Sports is part of the entertainment business," and that entertainment sideshows - music, dancing girls, fireworks, et cetera -- are not only good for sporting events, but necessary for their success.

I disagree.

What's necessary to the success of our sport, whether you call it "athletics" or "track and field," is good competition, well presented, with good information -- including programmes, scoreboards and announcing -- which keeps the paying customers aware of what they're seeing and informed about why it's relevant.

Sez who? Sez this Tuesday night in the Stade de France: one of the most exciting, most entertaining nights I've ever seen at an athletics event, entertainment provided by nothing be the performances of the athletes.

There were great athletes who forgot for a moment how unforgiving this sport is, and paid the price. Gail Devers, at 37 still the favorite to add to her three gold and two silver medals in the 100-metres hurdles, made one minor mistake and finished third in her semi-final and out of the final. Romain Mesnil, one of the hottest pole vaulters in the world right now, missed three times at his usual starting height of 5.70, to the immense disappointment of the crowd of his fellow French citoyens.

Others rose to the occasion. Jerome Young, in his fourth try, finally won the World Championships 400 metres with a perfectly judged race, while behind him Mark Raquil of France stood the crowd of 55,000 on its collective ear with a sprint finish that brought him from last to third in the homestretch and also broke his French national record with 44.79 seconds. And Maria Mutola showed that she could win a slow race just as decisively as she wins the fast ones.

3000m Steeplechase Spectacular

But what really made the evening was the 3000 metres steeplechase.

It began with Khamis Abdullah Saifeldin, and Saif Saaeed Shaheen of Qatar - the latter of whom was until a few weeks ago Stephen Cherono of Kenya - sprinting the first lap in about one minute and taking a huge lead over the rest of the field.

Closest to the Qataris were three Kenyans, including defending champion Reuben Kosgei,  Abraham Cherono  (Shaheen's  brother) and Ezekiel Kemboi, who had chased Shaheen to the line in Zurich ten days ago.

After two laps at world-record pace, Abraham Cherono sprinted up to join the two Qataris, and soon after that Saifeldin dropped back, leaving the two brothers together for a short while before Shaheen zoomed away and took an even bigger lead, 25 or 30 metres.

Somewhere in the second km, Kemboi went into his own catch-up sprint, and shortly after he joined Shaheen they slowed to a jog-trot for a while, and I thought they had run themselves into exhaustion, as the rest of the field crept closer.

But the rest of the field never quite caught up, and Shaheen and Kemboi pulled away again.

I cannot possibly describe the excitement of this race to you adequately - maybe Charles Dickens could have, but he wasn't around and I was too busy watching to make coherent notes - but it ended up with a mad dash for the finish line. Kemboi took the lead going into the homestretch and Shaheen passed him in the final 20 metres to win in 8:04.39, with Spain's Eliseo Martin winning another sprint duel with Bouabdullah Tahri of France for the bronze medal some 30 metres back.

Continuous uproar

For most of the race, the crowd was in a continuous uproar, screaming and cheering with each change of pace, and there was a sense that something rare and crazy was going on, which it indeed was. Nobody who saw it will forget it for a long time.

You can see from this erratic description how excited I was, and at the end of the race I broke my own rule and actually applauded in the press box (and I wasn't alone), because of the sheer entertainment of the race.

Which brings me back to my original subject: the only 'entertainment values' track and field really needs is what happens on the track.