Lighting bolt strikes twice: two world records and two gold medals for Usain Bolt (© Getty Images)
Jamaican Usain Bolt, with three Olympic golds and three World records from Beijing, is the undisputed headline attraction ahead of the ÅF Golden League meeting, Weltklasse Zürich, on Friday (29) which will be played out in front of a capacity 26,000 strong Letzigrund stadium crowd.
Athletes who between them won 14 Olympic individual gold medals in Beijing have gathered here in Switzerland for the post-Olympic re-start of the ÅF Golden League 2008 which comes to its conclusion next week in Brussels (Fri 5 Sep).
All Olympic men’s sprint medallists on show
In the individual men’s 100m, Bolt will take on Trinidad’s Richard Thompson and USA’s Walter Dix, respectively the silver and bronze medallists in Beijing. Dix was also the 200m bronze medallist and USA’s Shawn Crawford, silver medallist at 200m, will also be in the men’s straight dash. Therefore, Jamaica’s ‘Lightning Bolt’ will face the full Olympic podiums for the 100m and 200m, in Friday’s 100m. In fact seven of the eight from the 100m final in Beijing will run, only Asafa Powell is missing.
Retired multiple Olympic and World champion Michael Johnson, now an IAAF Ambassador, whose World 200m record Bolt broke, commented during the Games that the Jamaican’s 100m victory was “perfection…when has anyone ever shut down in an Olympic final?!”
Bolt was celebrating ten metres and more before the tape, and yet he still produced a World record of 9.69 sec! Should the 22-year-old have the energy and inclination to prolong his phenomenal run of form through the last meetings of the season beginning with the Weltklasse Zürich, there is no guessing at the results we might yet savour.
As Meeting Director Patrick Magyar joked at this afternoon’s press conference concerning all the top names being on the start list – “We’ve had cheaper races in Zürich than the 100m line-up here on Friday.”
It’s sure to have been a wise if heavy investment, as with warm sunny weather forecast for the next few days, Zürich should provide perfect sprinting conditions.
$1 Million - two challengers
Jet lag and general post Olympic physical fatigue and mental tiredness are the first opponents which all athletes competing in the penultimate meeting of the ÅF Golden League have to overcome if they are to be in serious contention for the sizeable financial rewards on offer here in Zürich and at the other concluding meets of the IAAF World Athletics Tour 2008 which comes to a climax with the IAAF / VTB Bank World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, Germany on 13 / 14 September.
The greatest annual prize in track and field still remains to be won in 2008. The ÅF Golden League $1 Million Jackpot, a share of which at least is on offer to any athlete who wins his or her event at all six fixtures, will be run to its conclusion in Zürich and next week in Brussels (Fri 5 Sep).
Two women are the remaining contenders for the prize, Pamela Jelimo of Kenya at 800m, and in the High Jump, Blanka Vlasic of Croatia.
Click here for full details about their Jackpot quests so far –
Contrasting fortunes in Beijing, Jelimo and Vlasic target $1 Million - ÅF Golden League
Jelimo, 18, was triumphant in the Beijing 800m improving the Area record and World Junior marks jointly for the third time this season (the junior mark for a fourth) but by contrast despite jumping exceptionally well with a 2.05m best, Vlasic had to settle for Olympic silver in China.
In Zürich, Jelimo should again saunter to victory ahead of World champion Janeth Jepkoskei and much of the rest of the Beijing line-up, albeit not bronze medallist Hasna Benhassi of Morocco who is not in the line-up.
Notably, World 1500m champion Maryam Jamal of Bahrain, who faded badly at her specialist distance in Beijing, Maria Mutola of Mozambique, the multiple global 800m title winner, who is making her farewell appearance in Zürich, and newly crowned Olympic 1500m champion Nancy Lagat, are among the star studded field.
Jelimo wants another fast time and so the organisers have enlisted Svetlana Klyuka of Russia, the Olympic fourth placer to act as the rabbit.
Click here for previous story –
Jelimo’s Jackpot fortunes - “I don’t see any problem for her” says Mutola - ÅF Golden League, Zürich
In the High Jump, the Croatian World champion will face her Beijing vanquisher, Tia Hellebaut of Belgium and Russia’s Anna Chicherova who took the bronze. All but one of the top-8 from the Olympic final will be present, and in this illustrious company as well as keeping her Jackpot ambitions on course, Vlasic will be keen to restore the balance of power in the event which prior to Beijing had seen her take 34 consecutive victories.
Click here for previous story –
Plenty with revenge on their minds
And Vlasic will not be alone with redemption on her mind in Zürich…
Reigning World 400m champion Jeremy Wariner was blown out of sight in Beijing by compatriot LaShawn Merritt, and the two are locked in battle again. After neck and neck races between this pair during the season, Beijing found Wariner wanting in his Olympic title defence with Merritt nearly a full second superior to the 2004 Athens gold medallist - 43.75 to 44.74.
However, there is no similar opportunity for revenge for Wariner’s fellow USA team Sanya Richards in the women’s 400m. Britain’s Olympic and World champion Christine Ohuruogu, has opted instead to compete at the IAAF World Athletics Tour meeting in Gateshead, UK, on Sunday 31 August, which will be the welcome home meeting for the British Olympic squad which took 1 gold, 2 silvers and a bronze in Beijing. Last year immediately post her Osaka gold, she was heavily defeated by Richards in Zürich.
Restoring confidence
Richards, a former Golden League Jackpot winner, will again want to reassert her reputation over the one lap. Her run in Zürich will be as much about restoring the self-belief of an athlete who for so long has exuded confidence but who in Beijing adopted a suicidal paced opening 300 in the Olympic final which left her heavy legged, and overtaken for gold and silver, in the finishing straight. Shericka Willliams of Jamaica who took silver ahead of Richards is entered.
Two-time World 200m Allyson Felix, who was heavily tipped to take the Olympic 200m title but ended up blown away in the final by Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown’s successful Olympic title defence is another without her Beijing nemesis to confront.
Like Richards, Felix’s race in Zürich will be as much about boosting self confidence, as she clearly had no answer to the Jamaican in Beijing - 21.74 to 21.93. What had been billed as one of the big head to heads of the Games resulted in a ‘no contest’, and left Felix with her second successive Olympic silver. Beijing fifth placer Marshevet Hooker is on recent Olympic form Felix’s main opponent on Friday.
Trying to learn from that last barrier in Beijing
There is a revenge match in place in the women’s 100m Hurdles where all but one of the top eight from Beijing (Demu Cherry, 4th) make it to the Zürich start line. Dawn Harper, the surprise Olympic champion, will compete for the first time in Zürich in a re-match against US compatriot Lolo Jones, the World Indoor 60m Hurdles champion, who crashed into the penultimate barrier while leading the final, missing out on the medals, finishing seventh.
Sweden’s Susanna Kallur who didn’t even make it past the semis, and the silver and bronze medallists Sally Mclellan (AUS) and Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (CAN) will make certain this is no simple two way contest.
Knowing their place
The women’s Pole Vault presents seven of the top eight from Beijing as well, but with the possible exception of Jelimo in the 800m, there all similarity ends with the other five women’s events which will be contested in Zürich ends.
There is no credible revenge match in the Pole Vault. Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva remains ascendant in this event as she has done even at the lowest ebbs of her form during the last Olympiad. Her 5.05m victory in Beijing was the 24th World record of her career (14th outdoors), and a 25cm margin over her nearest opponent in Beijing, silver medallist Jenn Stuczynski of USA, in the words of the multiple World, Olympic and European made sure that even her closest advisories “knew their place”.
With Isinbayeva’s present degree of technical mastery anything is possible on Friday, as there have been vaults of her this summer when even 5.20m seemed easily within her grasp given the margin of clearance she had above lower bars.
Ramzi and Bekele remain outstanding favourites
Returning to Zürich’s men’s programme, aside the 100m and 400m which we have already summarised, there are another five disciplines in which Beijing Olympic champions take part.
Rashid Ramzi, the 1500m winner, takes on six of the top eight from the Olympic final including Asbel Kiprop, the Kenyan junior who took silver. The Bahraini who took the 800m / 1500m double at the 2005 World championships showed phenomenal form in Beijing, his opening 1500m heat in China of 3:32.89, the fastest ever run at that stage of a championship. He took an easy semi in 3:37.11 before showing a clean pair of heels to Kiprop and the rest in the final in 3:32.94. Kiprop returns to take on Ramzi with New Zealand’s Nick Willis, the bronze medallist, the only high profile absentee.
In Beijing, Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele joined the all-time greats of Olympic long distance running track history - Hannes Kolehmainen, Emil Zatopek, Vladimir Kuts, Lasse Viren and Miruts Yifter – by becoming one of just six men since 1912 to have won the 5000m / 10,000m double. The holder of the World records for 5000 and 10,000m, and the three-time World champion at the latter distance Bekele is as peerless at distance running as is Isinbayeva at pole vaulting.
Despite tiredness from his Beijing efforts, and that he is the only Ethiopian in a field of 14 which contains 10 Kenyans, don’t realistically expect any 5000m result on Friday which isn’t headed by the name - Kenenisa Bekele.
Click here for previous story –
Bekele is “very special” too - ÅF Golden League, Zürich
The two Hurdles races and the men’s Javelin Throw are the others to be highlighted by Beijing winners.
Robles supreme but Taylor will be keenly pursued
Dayron Robles is looking for a fast time in the 110m sprint hurdles. The World record holder in the absence of the injured Liu Xiang has the definitive beating of the rest of the world including David Oliver, another sub-13 sec performer who finished in bronze in Beijing.
Click here for previous story –
Robles - “I’m still motivated for big things” in Zürich - ÅF Golden League
USA’s Angelo Taylor in the 400m Hurdles upstaged his more fancied compatriots in Beijing. 2007 and 2005 World champions respectively Kerron Clement and Bershawn Jackson had much faster season’s best times going into the Olympics, respectively 47.79 sec and 48.15, to Taylor’s 48.42.
In Beijing, Taylor improved his personal best to 47.25 (8th= on all-time list) to recapture the title he won in 2000, and to become only the third man to win two Olympic gold at this man killer of an event (Glenn Davies 56/60; Ed Moses 76/84).
Clement and Jackson, 47.98 and 48.06 for Olympic silver and bronze, will have some unfinished business to take care of in Zürich. The ultimate trouble for them, as with all those seeking redemption after Olympic defeats is that however marvellous their comebacks are in the Letzigrund stadium tomorrow night, it is the Beijing honours board which will be remembered.
Thorkildsen to remain on top
Finland’s Tero Pitkämäki and Tero Järvenpää are two athletes who will want to forget Beijing when they throw on Friday. Though Finland proudly continued its Javelin Throw tradition by producing the 3rd, 4th and fifth placers in Olympic final, this nation of 5 million had expected so much more. Järvenpää, after foot fouling a massive throw in the 87 / 88m region in the fifth round will have been especially gutted to have lost his bronze medal position in the very next round of the competition.
Yet all the Finnish upset rightly counts for naught to Norway’s Andreas Thorkildsen who became only the fourth man in history to retain an Olympic Javelin Throw title (Lemming SWE 1908/12; Myyrä FIN 1920/24; Zelzeny CZE 1992/06/2000). The level of the Norwegian’s performance can be gauged by the simple fact that he broke Zelezny’s Olympic record with his last round throw of 90.57m. In his current form, remember no other man has thrown over 90m this season, don’t expect a reversal of the Beijing result in Zürich against the two Finns.
Only the 3000m Steeplechase and the Long Jump on the men’s programme are bereft of their newly crowned Olympic champions.
Sub-8 Steeple?
In the absence of Kenyan Brimin Kipruto, the steeplechase silver and bronze medallists, Mahledine Mekhissi-Benabbad of France and Richard Mateelong will fight it out again. The pace for a sub-8mins time is going to be taken out by Tareq Mubarak Taher, the third fastest steeplechaser of this year, with Paul Kipsiele Koech, the world season leader (8:00.57) who was not in Beijing seeking a result beginning ‘7 something’.
In the Long Jump, Italy’s European champion Andrew Howe, the World silver medallist in 2007 has a lot to do to prove that injury is now behind him and that his Beijing qualification round upset was just a glitch. Spain’s Beijing seventh placer, Luis Felipe Meliz, the two talented Saudis Mohamed Al-Khuwalidi and Hussein Taher Al-Sabee, and if he can find any sort of form, US champion Trevell Quinley will provide stiff challenge.
The night ends with the “Zürich Trophy” which, while line-ups will be different from Beijing, pits the Olympic sprint relay champions and World record holders Jamaica against the pre-Olympic favourites USA in the 4x100m. That USA didn’t even get the baton round successfully in their Olympic qualifying heat summed up the debacle that was the fortunes of US sprinting in Beijing.
Chris Turner for the IAAF
