Monte-Carlo - The 2008 IAAF World Athletics Tour – ÅF Golden League, Super Grand Prix and Grand Prix - offered an entertaining season which climaxed at the IAAF / VTB Bank World Athletics Final, Stuttgart, Germany (13 – 14 Sep).

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The 2008 World Athletics Tour which took us through seventeen countries and five continents was highlighted by four World records set by Usain Bolt in New York, Dayron Robles and Dire Tune in Ostrava and Yelena Isinbayeva in Monaco.

David Powell reminds us of some of the highlights of the the Super Grand Prix and Grand Prix meetings which took place July to September 2008…

5 July
Madrid, Spain

World champion Blanka Vlasic equalled her World leading High Jump mark with 2.06m on a night when winds blew both favourable and foul. And, while Vlasic recorded her 31st consecutive victory, the field events in the Meeting de Atletismo Madrid 2008 also offered a captivating men’s Discus competition.

With a best throw of 67.01m, local hero Mario Pestano won by one centimetre from Lithuania’s Olympic champion Virgilijus Alekna. The Lithuanian unleashed a 66.54 fifth round effort to take top spot, albeit his lead was shortlived. Pestano, noisily supported by his fans, responded on the very next throw with a 67.01 effort. However, his victory was confirmed only after Alekna’s last-round attempt was measured at 67.00.

There was also a fierce battle in the women’s Long Jump in which Brazil’s Maurren Maggi, with 6.95m, beat Portugal’s Naide Gomes by only two centimetres. In a men’s Triple Jump competition aided by strong tailwinds, World champion Nelson Evora, of Portugal, recorded a narrow victory (17.40m/+3.0) over Cuba’s Osniel Tosca (17.40+5.1) on a superior second best jump (17.24/+2.4).

The 100m sprinters battled into a headwind with victories for Churandy Martina, of the Netherlands Antilles (10.03), and the British Virgin Islands’ Laverne Jones (11.28).

13 July
Athens, Greece

Another headline-grabbing performance from Usain Bolt although, for the Swedish media, it was Stefan Holm’s 2.37 High Jump which mattered the most at the Tsiklitiria Athens Grand Prix. Seven weeks after breaking the 100m World record in New York, Bolt set a Jamaican 200m record of 19.67 into a 0.5mps headwind. It was also a World season lead and the fastest ever by a Central American and Caribbean athlete.

Holm also recorded a 2008 global World lead. Returning to the stadium where he had won the Olympic gold medal four years earlier, Holm cleared 2.37 on his third attempt, equalling his outdoor best and a 5cm improvement on his season’s best.

World 100m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown, of Jamaica, recovered from her fourth place over the distance in her national trials, and failure to make the Olympic team in the event, to win the short sprint in 10.92. One month and one day after setting a World record 12.87 for the 110m Hurdles, Cuba’s Dayron Robles set a meeting record of 13.04 here. Home support was satisfied by a win in the men’s Long Jump for Greece’s Louis Tsatoumas who leapt 8.44m with his first attempt.

22 July
Stockholm, Sweden

Offering no preview of how events would unfold at the Olympics, Asafa Powell defeated Usain Bolt in the 100m at the DN Galan Super Grand Prix. The meeting was also marked by a strong but ultimately unsuccessful challenge by Meseret Defar to the women’s 5000m World record.

Powell, having lost his 100m World record to his fellow Jamaican in May, stole a march on Bolt out of the blocks. At halfway, he seemed to have an unassailable lead but Bolt closed down to within one-hundredth of a second at the line. Powell, who finished with a dip, clocked 9.88 while Bolt, who remained upright, recorded 9.89.

Defar was attempting to regain the World record which had been taken from her by Ethiopian compatriot and rival Tirunesh Dibaba in Oslo on 6 June (14:11.15). After early pacing from Olga Komyagina, Defar was forced to go for it alone over the last 3000m. She passed 2000m in 5:40, 3000m in 8:34 and 4000m in 11:29 but narrowly missed her target, finishing in 14:12.88.

Cuba’s Dayron Robles produced another scintillating 110m Hurdles performance, clocking a stadium record 12.91, and World Indoor and World Junior 800m champion, Abubaker Kaki of Sudan, set a World Junior 1000m record of 2:13.93. Sweden’s Olympic champion in the Triple Jump, Christian Olsson, returning from injury after a one-year absence in front of a home crowd, was injured again and withdrew from the Beijing Olympics.

In the highlight of the field events, Naide Gomes, the World and European Indoor champion from Portugal, gave a display of elite long jumping which is rare in these relatively low key days for this event. She jumped 7.00 in round one, followed by a national record 7.04, backed up with 6.97 and 6.85 leaps. Stefan Holm contributed a home victory in the men’s High Jump, albeit with a modest 2.30m.

25/26 July
London, Great Britain

In an experimental two-day Super Grand Prix meeting, the Aviva London Grand Prix proved a happy hunting ground for Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Yelena Isinbayeva but, for none of these, was their performance so important as Andrey Silnov’s was to him. Fourth in the Russian trials, Silnov’s 2.38 World leading High Jump mark reopened the door for him to make the team for the Olympic Games.

Silnov had jumped 2.37 in the indoor season but his outdoor season’s best before this meeting was only 2.32. He was named only as reserve for the Olympics until this performance. In what proved to be a preview of the Olympics, Silnov won at Crystal Palace with Britain’s Germaine Mason second. There was no such reprieve for Veronica Campbell-Brown who won the 100m in 10.87 but could find no way back into the Jamaican team at the distance after finishing fourth in the trials.

Powell won the 100m in 9.94 and Bolt the 200m with the fastest half lap – 19.76 – seen in Britain. Isinbayeva won the women’s Pole Vault with 4.93m before attempting a World record 5.04m. Only a light touch brought down the bar at the third attempt but she wouldn’t have to wait long – only four days – before celebrating success at the mark.

29 July
Monaco

Yelena Isinbayeva improved her World record for the Pole Vault by 1cm at the Herculis Super Grand Prix in the Stade Louis II. She raised the mark to 5.04 on an evening when, with bar already up to 4.41m and with all 11 of her opponents engaged in the event, she drove around the track in the back of a vintage sports car accompanied by Asafa Powell. It was the Russian’s 23rd World record.

Powell had to make do with a meeting record but his 9.82 was the third fastest time of the year. Portugal’s Naide Gomes set a national record 7.12m to win the women’s Long Jump and Olympic 800m champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy recorded the second quickest time of his career, 1:42.79, to win a race in which the runner-up, Bahrain’s Saad Yusuf Kamel, recorded the same time.

31 August
Gateshead, Great Britain

Even with the Olympics over, and on a rain-soaked afternoon, the Aviva British Grand Prix witnessed two World season leading best times - in the men’s and women’s 3000m from Kenenisa Bekele and Vivian Cheruiyot - and a superlative 100m of 9.87 from Olympic fifth-placer Asafa Powell.

“It would have been different in the Olympics if I had run like this,” said the former World record holder. In the women’s 100m, new Olympic champion, Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser, was beaten into second place by the former World champion, Lauryn Williams, of the United States. Williams completed a 100/200m double.

Bekele’s staying power seems to know no bounds. After a golden 5000/10,000m double at the Olympics, and a World leading 5000m in Zürich only two days earlier, he set World leading figures in the 3000m of 7:31.94. Kenya’s Cheruiyot raced away from the 3000m women’s field to set World leading figures of 8:33.66.

2 September
Lausanne, Switzerland

Jamaican sprinters Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Shelly-Ann Fraser took the spotlight in front of a 15,900 capacity crowd in the Athletissima Super Grand Prix. Nine days after the end of the Olympic Games in Beijing, where the Jamaicans dominated the sprint scene, Powell improved his position as the second fastest man in history with 9.72, Bolt equalled the meeting record in the 200m (19.63) and Fraser won a close women’s 100m in 11.02.

Two more Jamaican wins were taken by 400m Hurdles Olympic champion Melaine Walker in 53.72 and Delloreen Ennis-London in the women’s 100m Hurdles in 12.60. The other highlights were Andrey Silnov’s 2.35m in the men’s High Jump, Lashawn Merritt’s 43.98 in the men’s 400m, and David Oliver’s win over Dayron Robles in the 110m Hurdles. 

 Without the pressure of big championships at stake Powell, who was fifth in Beijing, stormed to a second successive post-Olympic victory. He followed his 9.87 in rainy Gateshead two days earlier with a run which threatened Bolt’s 9.69 World record. Powell’s time was two-hundredths faster than his personal best which was a World record at the time.

Bolt tied Xavier Carter’s 19.63 meeting record set two years ago. This was his first race over this distance since his incredible 19.30 World record and Olympic gold medal winning run in Beijing. Bolt opened a lead on the field in the first 140 metres then started to ease down. With 20m to go, he shut down completely.

7 September
Rieti, Italy

Asafa Powell continued to show rich post Olympic form and Edwin Soi supplanted Kenenisa Bekele as the fastest 3000m runner of the season at the Rieti Grand Prix meeting. On the track where he had set a World record 9.74 12 months earlier, Powell clocked 9.77 in his heat of the 100m and 9.82 in the final.

Soi warmed up for his attempt to repeat his 2007 World Athletics Final 3000/5000m double by setting a World leading 7:31.83 for the shorter distance. He would go on to win the 5000m in Stuttgart but had to settle for second place behind Bernard Lagat in the 3000m.

The other highlights were provided by Tirunesh Dibaba, the 5000 and 10,000m Olympic champion, who had a solo run to victory in the 5000m (14:23.46), Tatyana Lebedeva’s meeting record in the Triple Jump (14.94m) and Gelete Burka’s African record in winning the women’s Mile (4:18.23).

9 September
Zagreb, Croatia

An enthralling High Jump competition saw three women break the two-metre mark and Blanka Vlasic, in front of her home crowd, almost suffer her third defeat of the season. Vlasic’s only defeats had come, critically, at the Olympic Games and with a half share of the $1m Golden League jackpot at stake in Brussels.

Here, in the Hanzekovic Memorial meeting, Vlasic cleared 2.04m, a height matched by Russia’s Olympic bronze medallist, Anna Chicherova. A jump-off failed to produce a result and the Russian called it a night, leaving the Croatian to win on countback with Chaunte Howard, of the United States, third on 2.00m. Other talking points included Cuba’s double in the women’s throws as Yarelis Barrios won the Discus (64.98m) and Yipsi Moreno threw a Central American and Caribbean record in the Hammer (76.62m). “If I had thrown like that I would have won the Olympic title,” said Moreno, who was second in Beijing.

Part ONE - Super Grand Prix and Grand Prix (September 2007 to June 2008) was published yesterday, 30 December 2008

A 2008 ÅF Golden League Review will be published on 2 January 2009.

IAAF