Mouth
Watering Bislett and we’re not just talking about the strawberries
IAAF
27 June 2002 – Oslo –
This afternoon the famous Strawberry Party which is held the day before the Exxon Mobil
Bislett Games each year will, as always, delight the palettes of the assembled athletes,
sponsors, media and dignitaries, an hors d’oeuvre prior to the main course of athletics
competition on Friday night.
And what a mouth watering athletics feast Oslo’s IAAF Golden League meeting has in store for us this year. Surely the best ever start list.
No less than eight Edmonton World Champions will challenge for honours in the Norwegian capital’s famous Bislett stadium which over the decades has seen so many memorable moments including a staggering total of 62 world records.
The last of these world marks was set by Norway’s own Trine Hattestad in the women’s javelin (69.48m) in the 2000 edition of the meeting. This year the current world record holder (71.54m) Cuba’s Osleidys Menendez will at very least be aiming to surpass Hattestad’s mark which remains the stadium record.
This year’s Exxon Mobil Bislett Games will also present the knowledgeable crowd who annually pack the stadium with many major ‘head to head’ battles.
At the American Championships in Palo Alto, California last weekend all the track talk was centred on just two names, Maurice and Tim.
Despite many other formidable sprinting talents on the circuit this season, currently over 100 metres America’s world champion Maurice Greene and world silver medallist Tim Montgomery, are the be all and end all of the men’s sprints!
In California, their first encounter this year was close. Greene just got the edge in a wind assisted 9.88, to Montgomery’s 9.89!
With growing excitement, which is attaining a level of public recognition last witnessed during the Coe and Ovett middle distance rivalry of the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the outcome of each duel between these two American sprinters is eagerly awaited.
On Friday, the second battle of this season long campaign to establish who IS the world’s fastest man will be fought out in Bislett. Never forget, Montgomery ran 9.84 here last year! Yet whether it’s Maurice or Tim that emerges triumphant at the end of the 100m straight, it’s sure to be an electrifying showdown.
Britain’s 36-year-old Jonathan Edwards has in triple jumping terms, been there and done it all. The world record holder since 1995 (18.29m), Edwards is the current Olympic and World champion but athletics is never a finite affair and younger legs are always ready to challenge for honours and to push the record boundaries further.
Sweden’s 22 year old Christian Olsson is just such a man. The ex-high jumping Swede who took the World silver medal behind Edwards in Edmonton last summer was magnificent during the winter season, comprehensively winning the European indoor title in Vienna (17.54m) and was just 3cm shy of the World indoor record (Cuba’s Aliecer Urrutia, 17.83m, 1997) with a leap of 17.80m in Gothenburg shortly afterwards.
With an outdoor jump of 17.63m in Seville last weekend, which jointly holds the world season’s lead (with America’s Kenta Bell), Olsson has indicated that he wishes to usurp Edwards’ triple jump crown.
Yet Edwards is a man for a challenge and his windy 17.67m performance in Italy earlier this month shows he is prepared to answer the Swede’s challenge with everything his experience can muster on Friday night in Oslo.
Many believe America’s awesome sprinter Marion Jones, the triple Olympic gold medallist will just be having a private battle with her own 10.82 Bislett track record, but while the record will certainly be under threat, do not discount fellow Americans Chryste Gaines (10.96) and Kelli White (22.50) who put in some impressive sprinting performances behind Jones at the US Championships last weekend.
Then of course there is the Exxon Mobil Dream Mile, an annual Oslo tradition just like the Strawberry Party itself.
World record holder Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco meets his Olympic conqueror Kenya’s Noah Ngeny, who last month in Kenya predicted he would challenge and better the Moroccan’s world marks at the metric and imperial miles during this season.
The Dream Mile is as usual the final course on Friday’s Exxon Mobil Bislett Games menu and will undoubtedly conclude a mouth-watering feast of athletics to kick start the seven meet 2002 IAAF Golden League series into action.