Flat Hills Road

It’s official: Wilson Kipketer and I entered the same race, and I finished ahead.

They have a Media Race at the World Championships, usually an 800m. I gather this happens every time; this is only my fourth Worlds, and I don’t recall it happening in Seville, but I raced in Edmonton and Osaka. I had hoped to improve both my place and time over Osaka (9th and 2:18.8x, if I recall correctly) but I wondered about place when I realized how many sub-2:00 runners were entered here, including World Record holder Wilson Kipketer.

The field was indeed both larger (eight heats) and faster; I ran the fast heat in Osaka, but was in the second-best here. There were four men under 2:00 in the fast heat, with the winner in 1:55.19 (apparently a competitor at the French indoor championships last winter) and second in 1:55.67. Kipketer jogged.

Many of the same runners from my Osaka heat lined up with me this year. I had gone out too fast last time and vowed to follow a smarter strategy this time, so I held back a bit. I shouldn’t have. The leader went through 400m in 1:07.14 and split evenly to finish in 2:14.20. I sat 10th and passed four rivals in the third 200m, but the closing half-lap was very tough; I’d used too much making up ground after the bell. Four runners within a second of each other were like a wall in front of me, and I couldn’t close on them let alone find my way around. I wound up in 2:20.41. I’d say my tactics were OK, but my sense of pace needs work; a month ago, however, I wouldn’t have expected to run one 70-second lap, let alone two, so I’ll take what I can get.

In the composite results, I placed 13th overall, and the first American (again). Kipketer was 15th in 2:21.11.

Every World Championships has a number of TV ads which run before and after each session on the big screen. In Osaka, my favorite was a Mizuno ad in which a recreational runner out for a jog passes athletes meant to represent a series of Japanese marathon stars (Seko, etc.) and one who looks startlingly like Frank Shorter.

Here, my favorite is an adidas ad featuring marathon World Record holder Haile Gebrselassie racing a 200m against Tyson Gay. If you know Haile, and you know Tyson, you can probably guess how it goes from there.

There are some races which just won’t die. The protests surrounding the 1992 Barcelona Olympic men’s 10,000m final lasted for days before Skah finally collected his medal (to jeers). It looks like the women’s 10,000m here in Berlin may be just as complicated.

Here’s the situation: Linet Masai crosses the line first, ending an Ethiopian major-championship streak in this event going back to 1999 and winning Kenya’s first medal since that year. The results are published showing Meseret Defar in third, then abruptly withdrawn again. Later, they are republished to show Defar in fifth.

Meanwhile, those watching the video are chattering about the start. As is traditional, several of the starters were put in an outside start, expected to stay outside lane 4 until crossing a “break line” at the top of the backstretch. Normally, however, this “alley” is marked with small cones or flags; last night there were no markers, nor was the break line marked. The athletes starting on the outside broke for the rail less than 50m in to the race, and took the head of the pack.

If everything had been done by the book, those athletes–including Masai–would have been disqualified. But everything wasn’t done by the book; the alley was unmarked. Officials, apparently, decided to do nothing. The Ethiopian press, this morning, was fuming that the Ethiopian team officials declined to protest the results on the basis of the start; such a protest would have DQed Masai and Momanyi, the fourth-place finisher, and given Ethiopia a sweep of the medals.

I was speculating that if assassinating an Austrian archduke in Serbia could cause Germany to declare war on France, perhaps some missing lane cones could spark an Ethiopia/Kenya war if everything went wrong. We also wondered if the steeplechase barrier crew from Eugene was running the 10,000m start. But what options were left? Disqualify a third of the race, including the apparent winner? Or tell three Ethiopians that they are getting lesser medals (and lesser prize money) because they were beaten by two Kenyans who ran a shorter race?

The athletes should have been called back for a restart the moment the outside alley broke for the rail. When that opportunity was lost, there were no good options remaining.

I had dinner with the IAAF.org team last night, and we checked out our positions in the media tribune this morning. The stadium is, of course, gorgeous, an imposing classical temple from the outside, a soaring modern bowl on the inside. The royal blue track surface colors the whole venue.

We will be encouraging readers of the IAAF.org competition blog to submit comments and questions. I’ll promote some to the front page and answer them on the fly if things aren’t too busy; I may also answer questions without posting the question itself. I’m not sure yet how quickly I’ll be able to check Twitter.

Interesting news over the last week:

• The IAAF Congress passed a false start rule (or, more accurately, a no-false-starts rule.) I understand why the athletes complain–sometimes you just twitch–but there’s nothing that kills the drama of a sprint final like three or four false starts or so.
• I’m reading now that the World Cross is going to become biennial. This might be pragmatic but I don’t like it.
• The Jamaicans tried to withdraw four athletes. Then they withdrew the withdrawl, but only because Diack asked them. Honestly, even the Kenyan federation isn’t that pig-headed: when they yank a top athlete off their team, it’s done months in advance and the replacement is nearly as good. Obviously if Team USA wants to continue global domination, the forward-thinking route is for USATF to become more opaque and arbitrary in order to keep up with the Jamaicans and the Kenyans. (I’m joking, of course.)
• I can understand that an athlete who’s been injured as long as Paula Radcliffe might want a shakedown race before a championship-level marathon. I’m not sure why she chose a half-marathon one week before Berlin, though. A six-hour time change and, well, a half-marathon with only six days of recovery? Kara Goucher’s chances are looking better and better. (Mikitenko pulling out doesn’t hurt, either.)
• I tried to go to the Usain Bolt press conference yesterday, but I got bad directions online and couldn’t find the venue in time. Finding one’s way around in this city is like navigating by waves on the ocean; even Google’s maps show streets going where the satellite photos clearly show buildings (and buildings where there currently are none).
• The Local Organizing Committee is using the most underwhelming tag line in marketing history as the motto of the Championships: “Have a Good Time.” Seriously, that’s it. We asked one of their media staffers about it last night (after the beer but before the ouzo–long story) and he refused to offer his own opinion (good man) but did say it was chosen by a market research firm, which should tell us everything we need to know.

I’ve entered the Media Race, which is on Monday. Rumor has it that Wilson Kipketer is running, and saying he wants to run sub-1:50.

I’ve been too busy recently to comment on the pre-Berlin news; in fact, I generally still am, even though I’m seeing some stuff I wish someone would pick up on. (For example, the IAAF sent a press release today about qualifying for the World Athletics Final in Greece, and I did a quick skim of the current rankings. The U.S. women are really getting it done in the middle distances; they’re all over the top 5 in the 800m and 1,500m, and Jen Rhines is #2 in the 5,000m.)

I hope to have more notes from Berlin, but be aware of these sites:

• I’ll be writing the “competition blog” on berlin.iaaf.org. Pre-meet discussion suggested that readers will be able to submit comments and questions for me to “promote” to the blog page as well, so if this is true it will be much more interactive than previous events.
• I will have articles on the distance events on the Running Times website.
• If there’s anything too short for here and too offbeat for other venues, it may wind up on Twitter. (The IAAF competition blog may also be bridged to Twitter, but I’m not sure how many of these plans are actually happening.)