Olympics Stars #9 - David Rudisha

By Shane Thomas

Can you name the most dominant track & field athlete of the past few years? Usain Bolt? Sally Pearson? Yelena Isinbayeva? Look again. If you want to hang a gold medal around someone's neck before the Olympics begin, your best bet is David Rudisha.

Sour Taste Of World Championship Could Become Sweet Revenge

By Shane Thomas

While a great deal of sport is devoted to its winners, sport is actually more about failure than success. The same way that every fairy-tale needs a dragon to be slain, sport's tales need a loser to be vanquished and leave the victor exalted.

And like fairy-tales, there is a demarcation as to who plays the role of winner and loser. Two weeks ago, we approached the World Athletics Championships in Daegu with a clear expectation of the men and women who would leave South Korea triumphant. But it turned out to be a championships where many of the sport's understudies decided that this was their time to grab the spotlight and leave track & field's more established names in the shade. The meet became a less duplicitous version of the wonderful Joseph Mankiewicz film, All About Eve.

The list of established favourites that failed to top the medal rostrum became the story of the championships; Usain Bolt, Jessica Ennis, Yelena Isinbayeva, Phillips Idowu, Allyson Felix, LaShawn Merritt all missed out on expected gold medals. The only marquee names who seemed to be unaffected were David Rudisha and Sally Pearson - whose performance in the 100 metres hurdles was arguably the star-turn of the championships.

The reasons for these relative surprises were varied. Idowu, Felix, Ennis & Merritt all performed well - normally well enough to win gold - but came up against a new generation of athletes who seized their moment. Isinbayeva looked ring rusty after taking time away from the sport, with Daegu coming too soon for the Russian. And Bolt... well, enough has already been written about his false start in the 100 metres.

But this needs not be a portent of the established powers being swept away by a new breed of runners, jumpers and throwers, as these World Championships will matter little in a year's time. The countdown to the 2012 Olympics has truly begun, and for the competing athletes, every moment of the next 12 months will go towards ensuring that they arrive in London at the very peak of physical conditioning. While winning a World Championship can make one a national hero, winning an Olympic title makes one a legend.

Coming up short in Daegu only brings London into sharper focus. And the pain of failure could end up as a crucial part of a redemptive summer next year. All these aforementioned athletes are champion performers, and it's not in their nature to settle for second best. We've seen the likes of Bolt and Ennis be dominant on the track. It'll be fascinating to see what happens when their mood changes from supreme to angry.

Daegu 2011 will have left a sour taste in the mouth for some. Which could make London 2012 the place to witness their sweetest revenge.




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The Future Arrives As Bolt Faces Reality Check

By Shane Thomas

The men's 100 metres final has come and gone at the World Athletics Championships, and as you can see in the photo above, Usain Bolt isn't the one who's celebrating.

So what happened? Ever since his remarkable showing at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Bolt has been the sprint king. Whether the 100 metres or 200 metres, the Jamaican has wiped the floor with his competition and raised the bar of what people thought was possible in sprinting. Now Bolt hasn't had a particularly good build-up to these championships; he's missed Diamond League events with injury problems, and was beaten early in the season by the American, Tyson Gay - who seemed to be destined for a career as the perennial nearly man.

But Gay was absent from these championships, and Bolt's countryman, Asafa Powell also missed out on running in Daegu, due to a groin problem. Powell has run the fastest 100 metre time of 2011 so far, but with him and Gay gone, it seemed that all potential roadblocks had been removed. The path was clear for Bolt to retain his world title, and thrill the South Korean crowd with another potentially supersonic and effervescent display.

Watching Usain Bolt is an occasion in itself, and I made sure that I was awake on Sunday morning to watch him in action. Listening to the television commentary, they had already ordained Bolt as the winner. As far as they - and most of the press corps were concerned - the script has been written in advance. This was another chapter in the stellar career of Bolt. We had our king, let him go and claim his crown.

One shouldn't be too harsh on the media for this prognostication. Bolt has redefined the boundaries of what is possible in track sprinting, and while some has questioned his state of readiness in the lead-up to the championships, those doubts seemed to be allayed in the qualification rounds as Bolt stormed through to the final with absolute ease. Not only was the man with the reputation, but - once again - he was the man in form.

As the runners lined up in their respective lanes, Bolt was at his most ostentatious. As his name was announced to the crowd, the camera pulled up alongside him. Never one to miss out on an opportunity to grab the spotlight, he pointed to the runner on his left, and then to the one on his right, before dismissively shaking his head. It should be stated that Bolt never means any disrespect with such behaviour. It irritates some, but it has become all a part of the package with Bolt, and it entertains a lot more people than it annoys. The preamble was over, the runners set themselves in their blocks, and then...

Off went Bolt. The only problem was that the gun hadn't. The Jamaican false-started. The rules on this are clear. One false-start and you are automatically disqualified. No-one knew this better than Bolt as he roared & tore off his vest in pure frustration, the defence of his world title over. The disbelief on Bolt's face was matched by the reaction of the crowd. Athletics' marquee name left the track in ignominy.

Now many have said that this has shown the folly of the "one false-start and you're out rule". A year ago Tyson Gay said, "If Usain Bolt false started it would be a wake-up call. If it happened at the World Championships or Olympics, the result is going to need an asterisk by its side. Without him, it wouldn’t make sense."

That may be so, but misses the point altogether. Rightly or wrongly, these are the rules that are in place. And it is a proviso that has existed in swimming for decades with negligible criticism from the punditocracy. The reason that this has now become a story is because it happened to Bolt, who had been hitherto untouchable. I once wrote on this blog that every now & then, sport produces a person who bestrides their event like a god, making it all the more implausible when they are shown to be a mere mortal.

With Bolt gone, the race was down to seven mere mortals. The god was no more, leaving the field clear for an opportunist. And it was Bolt's fellow Jamaican, Yohan Blake who seized his opportunity.

Blake is Bolt's friend and training partner, and has been dubbed by the Olympic Champion as, "the future". He is only 21, and is the youngest man to run the 100 metres in under 10 seconds. Blake showed on Sunday that not only has he the talent, but the strength of character to not be distracted by his friend's disqualification. Rather than live up to his moniker, Blake has arrived on the big stage. In the end, it was a comfortable win, as he ran the only sub-10 second time in the race.

Bolt will be back to defend his title in the 200 metres, and in the post-race interviews Blake predicted that Bolt will be "angry", when he returns to the track in South Korea. We've seen Bolt beatific, but what will he be like enraged?

Either way, it'll be must-see television. Part of me thinks that this makes the story of Bolt all the more compelling. Many find serial winners boring, but this adds a delicious layer of drama to the 100 meters at the Olympics next summer. We thought that London 2012 would be Bolt's coronation. Now it could be his redemption.


Don't forget to download 'The Greatest Events in Sporting History' from www.simplysyndicated.com/shows/sportinghistory/, e-mail us at sportshistoryshow@googlemail.com and you can follow us on Twitter @TGEISH

World Championships Look Short Of Stardust

By Shane Thomas

The World Athletics Championships begin in South Korea tomorrow, but you'd be forgiven for having no idea about it. The London Olympics is drawing ever closer, and the hype has become a millstone around the neck of the World Championships. While the pinnacle of track & field is undoubtedly the Olympics, I look on with sadness at the decreased relevance of an event that at one stage was one of the biggest occasions in the sporting calendar. It's a meet where Mike Powell broke Bob Beamon's world record in the long jump, where Sergei Bubka won 6 gold medals in a row, and a place that bore witness to the incredible consistency of Merlene Ottey. The standard of competition was generally equivalent to the Olympics. Had it not been a biannual event, you could make a case for the World Championships being just as significant as its more celebrated sister.

I have fond memories of being glued to the television as a 9 year old, watching the World Championships in Stuttgart, as Linford Christie, Sally Gunnell & Colin Jackson all won gold medals for Great Britain - Jackson setting a world record in the 110 metres hurdles that would last for 13 years.

And it'd be remiss of me not to mention Jonathan Edwards taking the triple-jump to unfathomable heights in 1995, as well as Michael Johnson cementing his legacy as the greatest sprinter of his generation throughout the nineties and noughties (is "noughties" the correct term?).

But the relationship between the championships and the Olympics is no longer symbiotic. As the Olympics bubble inflates, the world championships looks to be punctured. Yesterday, Asafa Powell pulled out of the 100 metres with injury, joining Tyson Gay on the sidelines. With Usain Bolt below-par and looking distinctly beatable this season, the blue riband event of the meet has lost much of its sheen. Teddy Tamgho is also absent with injury, depriving us of a potentially enthralling battle between him and Phillips Idowu in the triple-jump.

While injuries are an unfortunate occurrence of the sport, you wonder how many absentees there would be if the Olympics weren't in a year's time. No-one wants to take the slightest risk of disrupting their preparations for London 2012, which has resulted in a distinct lack of star power in Daegu. It's understandable but also disheartening.

The one potential silver lining - for British fans at least - is Mo Farah. The long distance runner has been a revelation this season. His showed his ever improving quality when he won both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at last year's European Championships. He then took the bold career decision to leave London, and relocate his family to Oregen to train under Alberto Salazar. This change has only made Farah an exponentially better runner; he has stormed past all-comers this year. Farah is no longer just a European force in the long-distance events, but now a world one. In an event that has been a fiefdom for African runners for generations, he goes to the South Korea with a genuine chance of beating the great Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele.

It's not that there won't be some world class track & field on display, but the must-see factor that athletics had after the Beijing Olympics seems to be conspicuous by its absence. Hopefully, I'm mistaken, but the sport desperately needs a memorable meet to keep the World Championships relevant. Otherwise, they'll end up like the Pan-American Games or the European Championships, and those occasions have the increasingly enervating feel of a school sports-day.


Don't forget to download 'The Greatest Events in Sporting History' from www.simplysyndicated.com/shows/sportinghistory/, e-mail us at sportshistoryshow@googlemail.com and you can follow us on Twitter @TGEISH