Saturday, 15 September 2007
Words from the Meeting Director - Berlin
Berlin - Gerhard Janetzky (c)
For Gerhard Janetzky, up early on the eve of his ISTAF meeting in Berlin, the wait is not dissimilar from an expectant father waiting for news of the delivery of a child.
“Our athletes manager, Thomas Kramer, rang me from Brussels airport to say that everyone was there to get on to the flight at 10.10, so now I just have to wait until 11.30 for the touchdown,” Janetzky says, sounding confidently unperturbed by the idea of herding together some 160 athletes, agents, officials and press on to a Boeing 737-800 so early on a Saturday morning.
The Berlin charter flight cost the ISTAF organisers 50,000 euro - or about one-tenth of the prize money they will see given away, in all probability, to both Sanya Richards and Yelena Isinbayeva at the conclusion of the sixth and final IAAF Golden League meeting of 2007 on Sunday afternoon.
“For us, the matter is not the cost, but the convenience,” Janetzky explains. “There are not so many flights from Brussels to Berlin on a Saturday morning. It is in our interest, to get the best possible performances from the athletes, if they were competing at midnight on Friday, to be able to get them to Berlin with the least possible trouble, take them from the airport to their hotel, and there they can go to their rooms to sleep, or we have an army of physiotherapists, 15 of them, ready to provide massages and treatment.”
With less than 48 hours between the end of the penultimate Golden League meeting in Brussels and the finale in Berlin, slick organisation from Janetzky’s team is essential to ensure that the international athletics caravan can move with ease across Europe for the $1 million climax to the series, to be witnessed by a sell-out crowd of 70,000 in the Olympiastadion, the biggest audience for a single day athletics meeting in the world.
“The highlight of course will be the outcome of the $1 million Golden League jackpot,” Janetzky says, “but we also have 13 gold medallists from Osaka and 25 other medallists from the World Championships competing.”
Janetzky, ISTAF’s meeting director for the past five years, believes that two Osaka champions who were not in action in Brussels - Jeremy Wariner in the 400m and Bernard Lagat in the 1,500m - plus high jumper Blanka Vlasic (“She has been in such good form lately”) could offer the event’s other highlights.
Vlasic may appeal to the big German crowd because of the historic connections with her event and one of ISTAF’s 70th anniversary guests of honour. Rosie Ackermann will be on hand, together with a collection of other past champions going back to 1937, on Sunday afternoon to commemorate her two world records set 30 years ago and the other great performances over the past seven decades.
And Janetzky has no qualms about the apparent ease with which Isinbayeva and Richards have homed in on the $1 million golden prize in recent weeks. For Janetzky, with so much hard cash at stake, there is no possibility of any anti-climax.
“It is the same situation we had a couple of years ago, with Christian Olsson and Tonique Williams-Darling both going for the jackpot. Our TV director will go to a split screen, so that you will have one watching the other, perhaps trembling to see whether they will win $500,000 or a whole $1 million.
“Before the meeting, you have got to say that Richards is the banker to win her event. She looked so dominant again in Brussels.
“But, and I do not want to be in anyway critical of any of our athletes, you might think that Isinbayeva has more of a challenge in the Pole Vault: in Zurich and in Brussels, she cleared 4.80, but she only beat Svetlana Feofanova on fewer failures. Now that will definitely be worth watching.”
“Our athletes manager, Thomas Kramer, rang me from Brussels airport to say that everyone was there to get on to the flight at 10.10, so now I just have to wait until 11.30 for the touchdown,” Janetzky says, sounding confidently unperturbed by the idea of herding together some 160 athletes, agents, officials and press on to a Boeing 737-800 so early on a Saturday morning.
The Berlin charter flight cost the ISTAF organisers 50,000 euro - or about one-tenth of the prize money they will see given away, in all probability, to both Sanya Richards and Yelena Isinbayeva at the conclusion of the sixth and final IAAF Golden League meeting of 2007 on Sunday afternoon.
“For us, the matter is not the cost, but the convenience,” Janetzky explains. “There are not so many flights from Brussels to Berlin on a Saturday morning. It is in our interest, to get the best possible performances from the athletes, if they were competing at midnight on Friday, to be able to get them to Berlin with the least possible trouble, take them from the airport to their hotel, and there they can go to their rooms to sleep, or we have an army of physiotherapists, 15 of them, ready to provide massages and treatment.”
With less than 48 hours between the end of the penultimate Golden League meeting in Brussels and the finale in Berlin, slick organisation from Janetzky’s team is essential to ensure that the international athletics caravan can move with ease across Europe for the $1 million climax to the series, to be witnessed by a sell-out crowd of 70,000 in the Olympiastadion, the biggest audience for a single day athletics meeting in the world.
“The highlight of course will be the outcome of the $1 million Golden League jackpot,” Janetzky says, “but we also have 13 gold medallists from Osaka and 25 other medallists from the World Championships competing.”
Janetzky, ISTAF’s meeting director for the past five years, believes that two Osaka champions who were not in action in Brussels - Jeremy Wariner in the 400m and Bernard Lagat in the 1,500m - plus high jumper Blanka Vlasic (“She has been in such good form lately”) could offer the event’s other highlights.
Vlasic may appeal to the big German crowd because of the historic connections with her event and one of ISTAF’s 70th anniversary guests of honour. Rosie Ackermann will be on hand, together with a collection of other past champions going back to 1937, on Sunday afternoon to commemorate her two world records set 30 years ago and the other great performances over the past seven decades.
And Janetzky has no qualms about the apparent ease with which Isinbayeva and Richards have homed in on the $1 million golden prize in recent weeks. For Janetzky, with so much hard cash at stake, there is no possibility of any anti-climax.
“It is the same situation we had a couple of years ago, with Christian Olsson and Tonique Williams-Darling both going for the jackpot. Our TV director will go to a split screen, so that you will have one watching the other, perhaps trembling to see whether they will win $500,000 or a whole $1 million.
“Before the meeting, you have got to say that Richards is the banker to win her event. She looked so dominant again in Brussels.
“But, and I do not want to be in anyway critical of any of our athletes, you might think that Isinbayeva has more of a challenge in the Pole Vault: in Zurich and in Brussels, she cleared 4.80, but she only beat Svetlana Feofanova on fewer failures. Now that will definitely be worth watching.”