Previews03 Sep 2005


ISTAF prepares to hit the Jackpot – TDK Golden League, Berlin - PREVIEW

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Daniel Kipchirchir Komen wins the 1500m at the Paris Golden League meeting (© Getty Images)

Berlin, Germany‘ISTAF Berlin’, the final TDK Golden League meeting of the summer takes place tomorrow Sunday (4) and there is one question firmly on everyone’s lips, will Tatyana Lebedeva succeed in winning the One Million Dollars TDK Golden League Jackpot?

Yet Berlin’s impressively refurbished 1936 Olympic stadium will witness more than just one piece of sporting theatre tomorrow afternoon, having assembled an impressive start-list across the 12 track and 6 field events to be contested. The meeting organisers today predicted they would top last year’s audience of 62,000 stadium spectators, and despite the usual series of late-withdrawals the meeting can still boast the presence of eight individual World champions from Helsinki.

Lebedeva sacrificed World crown for Jackpot

29-year-old Russian Tatyana Lebedeva needs ‘only’ to win the women’s Triple Jump here to secure One Million Dollars which is the enormous prize offered as the TDK Golden League Jackpot.

Click here for full details about Lebedeva’s Jackpot quest

We discovered today at the official meeting press conference held in the Hotel Estrel Convention Centre, Berlin, it is a goal which the former two-time World champion is so determined to achieve that when injury threatened at the end of July, she sacrificed the chance of a third outdoor World Championship title to ensure her fitness to complete the Jackpot campaign.

 “I didn’t think about winning the Golden League at the start of the season but as each meeting went by and I won, I started to think, ‘why not’ it would be cool,” confirmed Lebedeva.

“I cancelled my jumps in Helsinki (didn’t compete in the World Championship Final) because I wanted to be fit enough to complete this task.”

“You must remember the World Championships are not new for me, I had won the gold in both Edmonton (‘01) and Paris (’03), while with the (TDK Golden League Jackpot) it was something I have not got, and I want to join Olsson, Williams-Darling, Mutola, El Guerrouj…who are some of the stars who have won it before.”

“The goal tomorrow is just to win. I will try and show my top results (better distances) next year during the indoor season when the championships (World Indoors) are in Moscow. But tomorrow the only target is to win.”

“Even without (Trecia) Smith (injured World champion) I can’t relax. My other opponents are strong and could spring a surprise. So I will not relax, I will be fighting tomorrow,” concluded the Russian.

TDK Golden League Jackpot Winners

1998 - Marion Jones, Hicham El Guerrouj, Haile Gebrselassie
1999 - Gabriela Szabo, Wilson Kipketer
2000 - Gail Devers, Trine Hattestad, Tatyana Kotova
2001 - Andre Bucher, Hicham El Guerrouj, Allen Johnson, Violeta Szekely, Olga Yegorova
2002 - Hicham El Guerrouj, Ana Guevara, Marion Jones, Felix Sanchez
2003 - Maria Mutola
2004 - Tonique Williams-Darling, Christian Olsson


Beyond the quest for a Million

But there is a lot more on offer in Berlin than ‘just’ One Million Dollars, when we consider there are 17 other world class events which will take place across the 3hr45mins programme in the Olympic Stadium tomorrow afternoon.

Limo to battle with compatriots

Of the eight World champions on offer, Benjamin Limo takes on a strong line-up at 5000m which includes many of his fellow Kenyans - the World Junior champion Augustine Choge (4th in Helsinki), Sammy Kipketer who is the Commonwealth title holder, and former double World Cross winner John Kibowen (6th in Helsinki). Interestingly, two world class American runners, Bernard Lagat and Allan Webb who are better known for their 1500m exploits will also take to the field.

Songok and Komen look to get over Helsinki failures

New 5000m convert Isaac Songok however goes in the 1500m. The former Kenyan miler made a good transfer to the 5000m this season taking national championship and Rome TDK Golden League wins ahead of 2003 World champion Eliud Kipchoge but then failed to capitalise on his basic miler’s speed, finishing a disappointing tenth in the World Championships final in Helsinki. In Berlin, Songok will very much be the under-dog, as he faces compatriot Daniel Kipchirchir Komen, the IAAF World Ranked number one, who made even a greater hash of his own World Championship hopes at 1500m by not even progressing past the first round stage. Komen has been on a mission since Helsinki to salvage pride, and he took good wins recently in both Zürich (3:30.49) and Brussels (3:31.13).

Ramzi seeking more speed

The man Komen beat in Brussels was World 800m and 1500m gold medallist Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain. The outstanding athlete of the middle distances in Helsinki, Ramzi contests the 800m here in Berlin looking to sharpen up his speed after being blasted away by the Kenyan over 1500m last Friday in the Belgian capital. The two will meet again at 1500m in the World Athletics Final in Monaco next weekend.

Unfortunately, world season’s fastest at 800m Wilfred Bungei, who was slated earlier this week as a winner here, will not now compete but the second fastest runner of the summer, Bungei’s training partner, Youssef-Saad Kamel of Bahrain (1:43.96) does race.

Fast hop from Paris to Berlin

France’s Ladji Doucouré was like Ramzi a winner in Helsinki. The World 110m Hurdles champion takes on his Zürich conqueror, USA’s Dominique Arnold, but will have his work cut out just to overcome fatigue as today in Paris he was running in another meeting and will then directly fly to Berlin.

Another Helsinki medallist doing this overnight city hop is Christine Arron, the double women’s sprint bronze medallist. It is hard to believe that such a travel schedule will help the French athlete’s fortunes in Berlin where she will meet World 100m champion Lauryn Williams (USA), Olympic gold medallist Yuliya Nestarenko (BLR), and the season’s fastest Chandra Sturrup (BAH).

French men’s 100m record holder Ronald Pognon is another doing the Paris – Berlin overnight dash, and he faces fellow 2005 season sub-10 second speedsters, the Trinidadians Marc Burns and Darrel Brown, and Ghana’s Aziz Zakari. Olympic silver medallist Francis Obikwelu (POR) and Britain’s World and European Indoor champion Jason Gardener, though yet to go below 10 seconds this year, will also be in the fight. In the 200m, the host’s hopes will rest with World and Olympic finalist Tobias Unger.

Calatayud and Dietzsch face still competition

There are another two Helsinki women’s individual World champions on show other than Williams. In the 800m, Zulia Calatayud of Cuba, and in the Discus Throw, Franka Dietzsch of Germany.

The Cuban takes on a posse of three Russians of whom Tatyana Andrianova, is not only the season’s fastest runner (1:56.07) but took the bronze behind Calatayud in Helsinki. Calatayud came off her World Championships win by taking another victory in Zürich but in her absence last week in Brussels it was Spain’s Mayte Martinez who sprung a surprise, and she could again be a danger tomorrow if the pace isn’t too fast.

Dietzsch, 37, took her second career World Championship win (1999 and 2005) with her season’s best of 66.56m in Helsinki, but she will need all the local support possible to help her succeed in Berlin, as the silver and bronze medallists, Natalya Sadova (RUS) and Vera Pospisilova-Cechlova (CZE) will be fighting with her again.

Farewell Astrid

The former European champion Dietzch is coached by Dieter Kollark and another of that trainer’s charges, the 1996 Olympic and former three-time World Shot Put champion Astrid Kumbernuss, will be given a special ISTAF Berlin farewell, because she retires at the end of this season. A special competition has been arranged this afternoon, and tomorrow in the Olympic stadium there will be a retirement ceremony at the end of the meeting for the 35 year-old shot putting legend.

German hopes in Shot and Pole Vault

There will be hopes of a local Shot Put victory in the men’s event, as World and European bronze medallist Ralf Bartels (21.36m PB) is competing but he is sure to be hard pushed by 2003 World champion Andrey Mikhnevich of Belarus, the two Americans Christian Cantwell and Reese Hoffa, and Denmark’s Joachim Olsen, all three of whom are also well over 21m this summer.

German hopes are also high (pun intended) in the men’s Pole Vault. There has not been a German victor in this event in the meeting’s recent history, and looking to address that issue is Tim Lobinger who was one of three men to tie for 5th place in the World Championships final, the others being American Nick Hysong and Italy’s defending champion Giuseppe Gibilisco, who also compete here.

But the star of the evening will be the newly crowned World champion Rens Blom of the Netherlands, and even if he is again the victor, Germany will take some pride in the fact that he trains in their country. The presence also of Helsinki silver and bronze medallists Brad walker (USA) and Pavel Gerasimov (RUS), fourth placer Igor Pavlov (RUS) the indoor World and European champion, and Athens Olympic winner Tim Mack (USA) emphasise the events quality.

Värnik - still unwell

Estonian World Javelin champion Andrus Värnik’s blood pressure related problems continue so he misses his third successive TDK Golden League meeting. World leader Tero Pitkämäki of Finland, the Helsinki 4th placer, and the other two men who finished in front of him, Olympic winner Andreas Throkildsen (NOR) and Sergey Makarov (RUS) will be throwing tomorrow.

Adere in good form

The women’s 5000m will star former World 10,000m champion Berhane Adere who has taken further second place finishes over 3000m (8:31.89) and 5000m (14:31.09), respectively in Zürich and Brussels, since her silver medal run in Helsinki when she was try to defend her 10,000m World crown.

‘Third and fourth’ over the hurdles

The women’s 100m Hurdles looks set to be a three-way battle with the 3rd and 4th place finishers from Helsinki, Jamaica’s Brigitte Foster-Hylton and Germany’s Kirsten Blom the stars, but look out for 2003 World champion Perdita Felicien (CAN) and Susanna Kallur (SWE) who had bad luck at the World Championships, with difficult wind conditions making the Swedes non-qualification for the final particularly frustrating.

It will also be another battle between the 3rd and 4th placers in the one lap hurdles too. Sandra Glover (USA) faces Poland’s much improved Anna Jesien. Don’t discount American Sheena Johnson who was fourth at the 400m Hurdles in the 2004 Olympics.

The one World champion we have so far failed to mentioned is Ukraine’s High Jumping hero Yuriy Krymarenko. The 22-year-old will take on the prodigiously talented and even younger, Victor Moya of Cuba, the Helsinki runner-up. The men’s High Jump has largely gone off the boil this summer which is why the previously headlining names Sweden’s Olympic champion Stefan Holm and European titlist Yaroslav Rybakov of Russia are currently only meriting footnotes.

Chris Turner for the IAAF

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