Surin beats Bailey and lines up against Greene and Boldon
Canada’s Bruny Surin lined himself up as another potential challenger for the sprint crown when he beat compatriot Donovan Bailey during last weekend’s Canadian National Championships and clocked 9.89 in the process.
On Wednesday, Surin will be lining up against Bailey’s great rivals Ato Boldon (TRI) and Maurice Greene (USA) and their training partner Jon Drummond (USA) in a 100 metres field here in Stockholm which is only missing Frank Fredericks (NAM) and Bailey himself to qualify as one of the fastest fields possible today.
Coach John Smith and his stable (Boldon, Greene and Drummond) have been here since Saturday training and getting acclimatised to the cold, blustery weather and we can expect fireworks on the track tomorrow, unless the weather degenerates further. Bailey beat them all in the Paris Grand Prix meet last week, gaining some satisfaction after his failure to do anything at all in the Goodwill Games, and Surin beat Bailey, which makes for an interesting equation. We will have the solution tomorrow - and don’t forget to add another unknown variable to that equation: Seun Ogunkoya of Nigeria, who had a last year’s personal best of 9.97 and may be stimulated by the competition to pull out some stops.
In the men’s triple jump, Great Britain’s Jonathan Edwards starts as firm favourite, since he appears to be back on top form after a disappointing season last year. 32 year old Edwards is the veteran in an event which includesLaMark Carter (USA), Andrey Kurennoy (RUS) and, probably Edwards’ strongest challenger, Denis Kapustin also of Russia.
In the women’s 800m we have a field which ranges from 20 year old Hasna Benhassi of Morocco to 41 year old Lyubov Gurina of Russia. Starting favourite will, however, be Mozambican Maria Mutola. Gurina is the only other competitor in this event to have gone under 1:56, but she will be pacemaking tomorrow. Another veteran in the field, but still running top times is 36 year old Joetta Clark, who will also be racing against her sister-in-law Jearl Miles-Clark.
Other star event of the evening will be the women’s 100m. Here, the young lady who is on everyone’s lips at the moment as the star of American sprinting, Marion Jones, will be facing another veteran who can still run with, and beat, the best of them: Merlene Ottey. We have seen little of the Jamaican sprinter, who is also acting as the senior patron of the IAAF’s Year of Women in Athletics initiative, this year, but she is still capable of pulling a surprise out of the bag when she is at her best.
Marion is not going to double up in the long jump in Sweden, so the battle will be between Niki Xanthou of Greece, Susen Tiedtke of German and Italy’s Fiona May, with Shana Williams (USA) also in the running.
The organisers may well be around the jewellery store at this very moment haggling on some precious stones. An athlete setting a new stadium record in this DN Galan meet, is awarded a one carat diamond; with Emma George (AUS) the current world record holder, facing off against Daniela Bartova and Anzela Balakhonova in the women’s pole vault, and only one of the competitors tomorrow under the stadium record of 4m10 in the event, there is every likelihood of a plush cushion being there among the traditional bouquets at the end of the tournament.
A full report from Stockholm and on-line results during the meet, will be on the IAAF web site.
