Tomorrow’s final stage of this year’s IAAF Golden League will set the scene for the "grand finale" of the 1999 Grand Prix season, which will take place in Munich’s magnificent Olympic Stadium on Saturday 11 September.
The pressure is intense on the two candidates still in the running for the IAAF Golden League Jackpot: Gabriela Szabo from Romania, two-time World Champion in the 5000m; and Denmark’s Wilson Kipketer, triple World Champion and World Record holder in the 800m.
Should they both remain unbeaten in this seventh and final trial of the series, and contest the Grand Prix Final next Saturday, they will earn a cool $500,000 each.
But a final victory is far from being a foregone conclusion. The season has been long and strenuous and both athletes face stiff competition.
Of the two, Wilson Kipketer could be most at risk, with the final hundred metres of the two laps the determining factor. Arch rivals Hezekiel Sepeng (RSA), the silver medallist in Seville, who was beaten by Kipketer by a mere two hundredths of a second at the line, and twenty-year old Japhet Kimutai of Kenya have one aim in mind: to beat Kipketer. Both athletes are relatively fresh and, according to James Templeton, Kimutai’s manager, "Japhet feels in great shape. Normally at the end of the season they are tired, but this year we have really paced things well and Japhet is saying that he just wished that there were three more Golden League meetings to go!"
Doubtless a sentiment that Kipketer does not share. The 27 year-old Danish engineer has come back this season after tremendous health problems in 1998, with a bad attack of malaria, followed by liver complications. To do what he has done this season already, with six consecutive victories in the IAAF Golden League, culminating in one of the fastest 800m races on record in last Friday’s Ivo Van Damme Memorial in Brussels, is a feat in itself. Add to this a successful defence of his World Championship title in Seville and you can appreciate just what an incredible recovery Kipketer has made.
"It has been very hard and I shall be relieved when the season is over and I can get back home," Kipketer said. "There will be no talk of records this year, it would just be too much pressure. Next year, we will see."
Records maybe not, but tomorrow’s race is likely to be very fast indeed, as Kipketer is pushed by Sepeng and Kimutai and, why not by Andre Bucher of Switzerland, who clocked a superb 1:42.92 in Brussels. It is certainly not going to be a cakewalk.
On paper, Gabriela Szabo’s task looks a lot easier. Unless her arch rival on the track, Morocco’s Zahra Ouaziz, finally manages to overcome the devastating final kick of Szabo, the Romanian seems set to dominate the 5000m, as she has done all season.
There are likely to be spirited attacks from Fernanda Ribeiro (POR), Britain’s Paula Radcliffe and Kenyan marathon world record holder Tegla Loroupe, but none of them seems to have what it takes to break Szabo’s iron grip on this event. In every race bar one this year (in Monte Carlo she moved into the lead at the halfway point), she has hung back behind Ouaziz until the final 200 metres and then kicked for the finish, relentlessly pulling away from the rest of the field in the home straight.
Will tomorrow be the exception? At around 8:40 p.m. local time we will know whether the final hurdle of the IAAF Golden League has been cleared by the slight runner from Romania, and she will then have an anxious wait to see whether Kipketer succeeds as well.
