Flat Hills Road

Basketball teams talk about their home crowd as a “sixth man”, an advantage they have on the court. The biggest surprise to me about the 2010 World Indoor Championships in Doha has been Ethiopia’s third athlete in nearly all their events.

Unlike the outdoor championships and Olympics, where each country gets three entries (if qualified), the limit is two for indoors. The defending-champion “bye” doesn’t exist indoors, so there are never more than two athletes from any country in any race. But for some reason there are around 500 Ethiopian fans in the Aspire Dome every night. There was a small, vocal section for the rounds on Friday. There were three sections on Saturday, and they were chanting and cheering from the moment Meseret Defar stepped on the track until Deresse Mekonnen received his gold medal at the end of the evening. Competition isn’t due to start for the final session for another 45 minutes, but there are five sections full of Ethiopians who have been here over half an hour and have spent much of that time dancing, chanting and singing as though they were waiting for a football match and not a track meet.

They love their own team, of course, but unlike some meets with a large Ethiopian fan base (I’m thinking of the Boston Indoor Games) they’ve been more than happy to cheer athletes in events without Ethiopian entrants. They’ll clap for the high jump, chant for the hurdlers, and they’ve delayed the starts of more than one sprint race because they simply won’t be quiet for the start.

It’s not clear to me whether these fans are Ethiopian expats living and working in Qatar, or if they traveled here from Ethiopia (which is not so far away, really). Ticket prices are not steep; the primary expense of coming here is travel. Still, these fans are on the corners and in the upper deck: the cheap seats. basically. However they’re here, they’ve utterly transformed the atmosphere of the arena. This would not be the same event without them, and it would be much less than it is now.

I was asked last night which events I was most excited about at the upcoming World Indoor Championships. Because not all of the world’s best compete during the indoor season (e.g. Usain Bolt) and many of the events have different technical demands (e.g. 60m as opposed to 100m, both flat and hurdles) the quality of finals in Doha is likely to be more uneven than it usually is in an outdoor World Championships.

That said, there’s some really good competition on the horizon in events where the world’s best are showing up.

• In the distance events, the women’s 1500m should be interesting. Gelete Burka is the “defending champion,” but in Valencia she was robbed of her chance to cross the line first by a doped up Russian, and in Berlin she was just robbed, period, by someone running roller derby instead of athletics. Add neighboring Bahrain’s Maryam Yusuf Jamal, gold in Berlin and silver in Valencia, and we have a world class final.
• Bernard Lagat said in February that if he and Galen Rupp were the U.S. team for the 3,000m, they would medal. Lagat won gold in this event for Kenya in 2004, but much depends on who Kenya, Ethiopia, and hosts Qatar enter; the last two golds have gone to the Bekele brothers, and Saif Said Shaheen took silver in Moscow ‘06.
• Ethiopia is sending Meseret Defar, the 3,000m World Record holder. Kenya is sending Vivian Cheruiyot, the 5,000m World Champion and the woman who knows best how to beat Defar. (Have I mentioned my feature about Cheruiyot and Linet Masai in the recent Running Times?)

Outside the distances, which have to compete with the World Cross Country Championships for the best athletes, there are plenty of fantastic competitions.

• Trey Hardee, the decathlon World Champion, will face off against Bryan Clay, the Olympic champion, in the indoor heptathlon. The multi-events at World Indoors, unlike the rest of the events, are by invitation only, and the IAAF gets the best eight multi-eventers available for a top-class competition.
• Christian Cantwell wants to win a third shot put indoor championship, something nobody has ever done before. He also wants the world record. He’ll have to throw over Tomasz Majewski of Poland to do either.
• The women’s 60m hurdles has more athletes at near-parity than any other event I can think of. Lolo Jones, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, and Damu Cherry all have a shot; so would Jessica Ennis, but she’s doing the pentathlon.

Unlike Valencia, where the track was fit inside the bowl of an indoor velodrome and therefore produced very dramatic and distinctive images, I have no idea what to expect of the inside of the Aspire Dome. More like the Tyson Center in Arkansas, the B.U. track, or what?

Doha is GMT+3, so they are eight hours earlier than U.S. Eastern time and eleven hours ahead of Pacific time. This means most evening sessions in Doha will be over before noon in the U.S. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that part.