I did not plan to publish an article just a few days after the long one on amateurism, but then I realised that the deadline set by World Athletics was approaching fast and so I decided to write this short post just in case it would be of interest to my readers.
As you most probably know, this year we are celebrating 40 years since the first Athletics World Championships. This summer's competition, held in Budapest in the second half of August ,will be the 19th edition of the championships. World Athletics in order to celebrate this 40th anniversary is proposing a collection of the most memorable moments of the championships.
For Athletics fans this is a trip down nostalgia lane. I have been following the championships since the very first one. For me the competition that was organised for the first time in 1983, thanks to the initiative of P. Nebiolo, marked the moment when Athletics ceased to depend of the Olympics for their global championships. (That was a 70-year long bondage, at long last coming to an end. In fact when Edström created the International Athletics Federation in 1912, he had to promise de Coubertin that track and field would not have an independent world championship, the Olympic Games playing that role).
I am not going to give here the list proposed by World Athletics: you can consult it most easily at this link. In fact there are two links, one for women's events and one for men's. The deadline I was talking about has to do with a vote. You can choose the moment you consider the greatest in all the championships and vote for it. But you have to do this before May 9th, hence the urgency. I haven't given a serious thought on what my preferred moment is. If I had to answer off-hand I would probably choose the men's long jump event in Tokyo 1991. And being a great fan of Merlene Ottey, I always remember her victory over 200 m in the 1993 World's. But your choices may be different.
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