Sensational Duel - Klüft vs Barber

In the days leading up to the best Heptathlon duel in history, it was impossible to decide. Would Carolina Klüft overcome an injury to retain her title or would Eunice Barber turn back the clock to regain the gold medal she had won six years earlier? At 8.37pm in the Olympic Stadium, the answer was provided by a scintillating race.

For nearly two days at the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, we had seen the best two multi-eventers in the world at their peak from the manner they were outshining each other.

But here, as they prepared for the 800m, the final event of seven, they were separated by only 18 points. Klüft was in lane five - with a better time by nine hundreths of a second - from Barber on her outside in six and all that mattered now was who would be ahead of the other.

They did not even have to finish first - which they did not as the race was won by Britain’s Kelly Sotherton - but what was happening behind her was the real story.

In fact, it was a sensational story.

Barber had only one option: she had to go for it. The television camera panned in on her when her name was announced to the crowd and she gave a cheeky wink. She had nothing to lose.

As the gun fired, Sotherton, the Briton who was third in last summer’s Olympics but finished fifth overall here, took the lead. But Barber moved quickly into second.

All the time she was looking at the giant screens to see where Klüft was. She was in fourth and then third and on the second lap was growing ever closer. With 200m to go, she passed Barber and the gold medal was decided.

Sotherton won in 2:07.96, from Klüft, second in 2:08.89, with Barber fourth in 2:11.94.

The Swede had won by 63 points, with 6887, from Barber with 6824, but from all her actions, her words summed up it. Within seconds she was interviewed trackside, and she just said: “I don’t even know what to say after that race...?
It was probably impossible to describe because no predictions beforehand would have produced a Heptathlon competition like this one.

Sport is all about true rivalry. The intensity of a boxing match is always the greater when the two opponents are the best there is and here, we had the ultimate unification match in athletics.

Klüft is the Olympic and European champion, the third best ever athlete behind the legendary American Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who used to pretend she was competing against a visionary opponent who was better than her - just to drive her on.

Klüft did not need that. Her rival Barber topped the world season’s list before the competition began and almost 30 hours after they first stepped on the track together, they could hardly be separated and overnight, Barber led by just two points.

But Barber is the defending Long Jump World Champion, yet today’s first event was decided in the first round and not the way we might have expected.

Barber jumped 6.65m but Klüft responded with a sucker-punch - 6.87m, a season’s best. Barber then cleared 6.75m and 6.69m but the Swedish star was in the lead for the first time, by 38 points with 5100.

In the Javelin, whatever Klüft did, Barber improved upon this time. Barber’s final throw of 48.24m saw her finish third in the group, a place ahead of Klüft who delivered a season’s best in the second round with 47.20m.

While neither of them could compete with Ghanaian Margaret Simpson, whose 56.36m Javelin Throw was a national record to take her into third place which she maintained to win bronze, the difference was now 18 points between the top two.

A five-hour wait was ahead before the clock reac hed 8.37pm and just over two minutes later Klüft was the champion again.

Samuel Peters for the IAAF