IAAF World Championship Review :

No world records but Americans dominate ‘clean’ meet

Dinesh WEERAWANSA reporting from Japan

ATHLETICS: The 11th edition of the IAAF World Championships was concluded at the Nagai Stadium here last night with the USA underlining its supremacy with a rich haul of medals. They bagged a total of 26 medals that included 14 gold, four silver and eight bronze medals.

The mighty Americans not only ended on top of the final medals standings with a convincing lead of nine gold medals. Of course it was that ‘super man’ Tyson Gay who stole the limelight with a hat-trick of gold medals, that included a dream sprint double.

Over the past two decades, the Americans have been producing sprint merchants back to back. It was Carl Lewis at the early 80s. Continuing the American power base in sprint were Maurice Green, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin. A new sprint king was born in Osaka by the name of Gay. He bagged men’s 100m and 200m titles and went onto anchor the US men’s 4 x 100m relay team to victory.

The Americans showed no mercy to Jamaicans in the relays as they swept the board with all four relay gold medals - men’s and women’s 4 x 100 and 4 x 400m titles. They not only won all four relays but also did that in perfect fashion, recording this year’s world’s leading timings on all four occasions.

That alone is an indication of what the US has been producing over the years. Yet, comparatively athletes do not get much prominence and are overshadowed by their basketball, American football, baseball and hockey heroes.

Gay, who made the athletic world gay with a scintillating performance and track mastership, was not the only American athlete to complete a hat-trick of gold medals. It was Allyson Felix who won the top honours amongst women. She won four medals - three gold (in women’s 200, 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m) and silver (women’s 100m).

While Gay comprehensively beat world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica in the men’s 100m final to emerge the fastest man at the World Championship, it was not so for his team mate Allyson Felix. Her dream of becoming the fastest woman at the meet was shattered by Jamaican Veronica Campbell, who was just three one thousand of a second ahead of the American lass. However, the reigning Olympic gold medallist Campbell was beaten by Felix in the women’s 200m final. Jamaica is a country which has proved its might in athletics over the past few years and made their presence felt in Osaka.

‘Importing’ players is a common feature in sports. There is no exception in track and field. Most Kenyan and Ethiopians, who are talented but struggling against poverty, get lucrative deals from countries such as the US and oil-rich Gulf states. Kenyan-born Bernard Lagat is one of them. He completed a grand double for his adopted country - USA, winning gold medals in men’s 1,500m and 5,000m.

Though several of their big names deserted their motherland for greener pastures, Kenya till managed to secure a total of 13 medals - five gold, three silver and five bronze. It was the same in the case of Ethiopia, which won three gold and silver to finish fourth, behind Russia - third with four gold, three silver and nine bronze. Germany, Czech Republic and Australia won two gold medals each.

The biggest disappointments were next year’s Olympic hosts China and the World Championship hosts Japan. If not for reigning men’s 110m hurdles gold medallist Xiang Liu’s lone effort, China would have well finished without a single gold medal. Though many expected China to expose what is in store for 2008 Olympic Games, they failed to live up to expectations and finished only 11th in the final standings with one gold, silver and a bronze each.

Hosts Japan had big hopes in men’s sprints, 100m relay and hammer throw but none of those trump cards did work. The failure of Japanese athletes contributed to lesser number of spectator turn outs for three successive days. Despite huge investments made on sports infrastructure developments and massive training programs for their elite athletes, who also get lucrative sponsorship deals, Japan won just a solitary medal to finish a joint 36th place with 11 other countries including Sri Lanka.

Compared to Japan, Sri Lanka has not invested even one per cent of what Japan has done to develop stadia and its sports stars. Yet, the little Indian Ocean island nation’s pride was maintained by our veteran woman athlete Susanthika Jayasinghe, who bagged women’s 200m bronze behind American Allyson Felix and Jamaican Veronica Campbell. It is indeed a creditable performance for a sprinter to win a medal after ten years. It is no easy task , especially for a short distance runner, to maintain a world class medal winning performance for a decade.

Yet, unpredictable Jayasinghe made the world rankings a laughing stock as she raised from 22nd position in the world to become a medallist in her pet event. It was exactly ten years ago that Jayasinghe brought home Sri Lanka’s first ever IAAF World Championship medal, a silver in women’s 200m behind Ukranian Zahana Pintusevich-Blocks in Athens, 1997.

She emulated that historic medal winning performance once more to underline her reputation as the most successful athlete that Sri Lanka has ever produced.

The training that Jayasinghe has been getting is nothing, compared to what her world class opponents get. Had we invested on Jayasinghe in a better way after her Athens feat in 1997, Sri Lanka would have got its Olympic gold medal by now.

It’s not too late now as Jayasinghe has proved she has a few years left in her career. If a star sprinter like Marline Ottey could still run at 47 years alongside the cream of world athletes, there is no reason why Jayasinghe can not during the coming two to three years.

It’s never too late and we must immediately get Jayasinghe all facilities to train in the US under a reputed coach so that she has nearly one year time to prepare for the Beijing Olympic Games. Overall, the Osaka World Championship was a well-organised one but the same could not be mentioned on performance wise. Not a single world record or World Championship record was erased during the nine-day athletic extravaganza. One could say the standard of world athletics has gone down. There is some truth in that but more importantly, strict anti-doping regulations too have influenced to have a blank list of new records.

The IAAF said they have conducted a total of around 1,100 dope tests between August 20 and September 2. They have already found the first positive case, which would be officially announced next week.

Though there have been no world records, one could be happy that the IAAF was able to have one of the cleanest championships ever as the athletes virtually had no room for malpractices through performance enhancing drugs. That alone is a great victory for world track and field, forget the records altogether.

Now the cream of world class athletes prepare for next month’s IAAF World Cup finals which will be followed by their off season. Nevertheless, they would get only a short break to relax after a strenuous season as they have to get back to action quickly in staring preparations for next year’s Olympic Games in China. Surely, a better account would be given by the world class athletes at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

OSAKA, Monday