Competition resumes after rain delays (© Getty Images)
Helsinki, FinlandThe weather, which had been circling threateningly since the Championships began last Saturday, struck with a vengeance today. James Dunaway descirbes another day in the Olympic Stadium...
It rained, and rained very hard, for almost two hours, and for a while it looked as if it wouldn’t let up. Powerful wind gusts drove water into a lot of electrical equipment, and most of the information systems went black...scoreboards, field event boards, timing, et cetera. On much of the track, the water was more than an inch (3cm) deep.
Imagine being the meet director. For a while it looked as if you’d have to cancel the entire evening programme. But you simply don’t have that option: calling off the evening’s events and extending the meet till Monday would cost tens of millions of Euros. It would affect everything from hotels and airlines for thousands of tourists to TV programming all over the world, not to mention such exotica as TV satellite time, which is tightly scheduled and quite expensive.
Luckily, the rain stopped long enough to allow the first day of the Decathlon to be completed, and for the three finals races scheduled for the evening to be run – the men’s Steeplechase, the women’s 800m and the men’s 400m Hurdles.
The rest of the evening’s events were rescheduled over the next two days but by the time the last Decathlon 400m heat had been completed tonight, the extra satellite time cost for Eurovision alone was close to $20,000, and it probably totaled as much as $100,000 when you include the rest of the world (I told you it’s expensive).
So Helsinki has dodged the bullet – but let’s hope the next five days give us better weather.
Running – and Racing
This evening, when we asked Steve Ovett, the 1980 Olympic 800m gold medallist and onetime World record holder at 1500m and the Mile, how middle distance has changed since he was running, he had some interesting things to say.
Steve, who is working here as a broadcaster, said ”It’s a different animal today from what it was 20 years ago.”
One major difference, he thinks, is that many top runners never learn how to race. because most of the races on the Grand Prix circuit have pacemakers to produce fast times.
“These guys do most of their racing in Grand Prix meets, and they run very fast,” says Ovett. “It becomes a time trial – that’s all it is. But when it comes to a tactical race, they just get outmaneuvered by other people.”
We’ve seen two examples of what he’s talking about in the heats and semi-finals of the men’s 1500m here. Two of the three fastest 1500m men coming into the meet – Daniel Kipchirchir Komen (3:30.01 this year) and Medi Baala (3:30.80) – were eliminated in slow, tactical races which were won in 3:41.64 and 3:40.51.
Case closed.
Steeples – Past and Present
The men’s 3000m Steeplechase, won tonight by defending World Champion Saif Saaeed Shaheen of Qatar (formerly Stephen Cherono of Kenya) reminds me that a world best for the event was set in this stadium in the 1952 Olympic Games – at the height of the Cold War.
It was set by Horace Ashenfelter of the United States, an FBI agent who had run the race no more than five times (and never under 9 minutes) before arriving in Helsinki. But after winning his heat in 8:51, he was brimming with confidence, despite the presence of Soviet champion Vladimir Kazantsev, whose 8:48.4 was the fastest ever run until then.
Early in the race, Ashenfelter took the lead, with Kazantsev a step or two behind him. Soon they had left the rest of the field behind, and one press-box wit joked, “This is new – a Russian is trailing an FBI man!”
In the last lap, Kazantsev took the lead and it looked to be all over. But Ashenfelter re-passed him on the final water jump and pulled away to win in 8:45.4.
As Ashenfelter was taking a victory lap, he suddenly ran off the track and into the stands where his wife Lillian was sitting 31 rows up. He gave her a kiss, then ran back down to the track to finish his Lap of Honour.
James Dunaway for the IAAF
