World's 2019 report: combined events

Usually my report on global championships is split into two parts: track events and field plus combined events. This time I decided to separate the combined events from the rest because they were two really exceptional competitions which gripped the spectators interest and did not relinquish it till the last event.

The men's decathlon started as expected with Warner shining in the 100 m and Lepage just behind him. Mayer was third with a personal best, so everything looked fine. The first two athletes exchanged position at the long jump with Mayer registering a season's best. The latter threw a PB in the shot put and took control of the event. He kept it through the high jump, but there the first clouds did make their appearance. Mayer could manage a meagre 1.99 m and we discovered that he was jumping with a strapping over his ankle. So he was not in top condition as everybody expected. Still his performances were maintaining him in a 9000 points trajectory. After the 400 m the classification was D. Warner first with 4513 points, P. Lepage second with 4486, followed by K. Mayer, 4483, and L. Victor who had had an exemplary first day 4th with 4476 points. I. Shkurenyov and M. Uibo were 5th and 6th with 4340 and 4317 respectively, followed by K. Kazmirek at 4315. This classification was, in theory at least, including all potential medalists. But in view of what happened, it is interesting to have a look at the 11th place where the U18 and U20 world champion, 21 year old N. Kaul, had completed a well-balanced first day with 4146 points.

Kazmirek after having missed the third hurdle

The disasters started on the second day. From the outset Kazmirek found himself eliminated  by missing a hurdle in the 110 m. The event was won, as expected, by Warner with Mayer second. However something was amiss, since Mayer did not sprint after the last hurdle finishing on his momentum. Just after the race he made a sign to his coach that he was feeling pain in his thigh. He threw a decent 48.34 at the discus (in his second attempt, having fouled the first) and stopped there. Another disaster struck at this point with Victor fouling out in the discus, an event where he has a 55 m PB. (He was 4th after the hurdles and would have been at worst 2nd had he thrown over 50 m at the discus). Kaul threw a PB of 49.20 m in the discus and climbed to the 9th place. At that point in the decathlon  Mayer was first but the final disaster had yet to come. He presented himself at the pole vault and even opted for a very conservative 4.50 m initial height but it was clear that his injury did not allow him to jump at all. 

Mayer realising that he cannot jump

With Mayer gone the pole vault was the turning point of the decathlon. Uibo jumped a huge PB of 5.40 m, with Lepage at 5.20 and Kaul equaling his PB at 5.00 m. Warner had to content himself with 4.70 m. So after the 8th event Lepage was leading with 7097 points, with Shkurenyov second (he had jumped 5.20 m), 7095 points, while Warner and Uibo were sharing the 3rd place with 7073 points. In the meantime Kaul had progressed to the 6th place with 6822 points. He was not going to stay at this position for long. 

That's where we knew that Kaul would win the decathlon

As he is an excellent javelin thrower and moreover very good at the 1500 m there was no doubt that he was going to win. The question was rather whether Shkurenyov and Lepage were going to obtain a medal. It turned out that this was not to be. Kaul threw a humongous 79.05 m in the javelin, while Uibo and Warner had throws around 63 m. Shkurenyov and Lepage with 59 and 57 m slipped out of the medal positions. At the 9th event we had Uibo first with 7869 points, Warner second with 7856 and Kaul third with 7850. 

That's where it was clear that Warner was not going to win

In the 1500 m Kaul flew towards the victory, with 4:15.70, with Uibo hanging on behind him and Warner making sure to arrive in front of Shkurenyov and Lepage. The final classification was Kaul 8691 points, Uibo 8604, both a personal best with Warner third and 8529 points. Shkurenyov did beat Lepage for the 4th place, 8494 to 8445, and J. Oiglane was 6th with 8297 points.

At the arrival of the 1500 m: Kaul is in the centre

Had anybody asked my medal prediction after the first day I would have given Mayer, Victor and Warner in that order, with around 8800, 8600 and 8500 points respectively. It turned out that things were quite different. Although I was sad for Mayer, who is still in my eyes the second best decathlete of all times  (J. Thorpe is and will always be number one), and also for Victor, in particular after his great first day, this decathlon kept us in suspense till the end. Kaul is the name to follow in the future, provided he improves his basic speed. 

A great photo of the Uibo's, both silver medalists

The women's heptathlon was viewed as a duel between Thiam and Johnson-Thompson. It turned out that it was not a real duel after alll. Things started rather tame with the 100 m hurdles which saw J-T registering a personal best with 13.09 and Thiam a season best with 13.36. The event was won by K. Williams with an impressive 12.58 (which would have given her a place in the final of the individual event). It also saw the elimination of I. Dadic, one of the contenders for a medal, who injured herself early in the race. The bad news for Thiam appeared in the high jump. She could only manage 1.95 m a height cleared also by J-T. But the worse thing is that she gave an impression of heaviness. She was far from the flying Thiam I had watched in Talence where she had cleared 2.02 m. The situation for Thiam improved temporarily at the shot put where she threw 15.22 m taking the control of the event with 3116 points. Johnson-Thompson was not far behind, with 3067 points, having thrown a PB of 13.86 m. She went on to register a season best of 23.08 in the 200 m, while Thiam could manage only 24.60. At the end of the first day J-T was first with 4138 points while Thiam was almost 100 points behind with 4042. The fight for the third place was on with four athletes (K. Williams, E. Bougard, A. Kunz and V. Preiner) separated by just 34 points.

Thiam and Johnson-Thompson

On the morning of the second day I was having a coffee with my friend K. Tsagkarakis and we were discussing the heptathlon. We ended by betting, himself for the victory of Thiam and myself for Johnson-Thompson. The very first event confirmed my intuition. Thiam, who had jumped 6.86 m just a month before, could only manage 6.40 m. Meanwhile J-T flew to 6.77 m and consolidated her position. Williams was still 3rd after the long jump but Preiner had come within 9 points from her. Everybody was expecting something exceptional from Thiam in the javelin. I was less optimistic having followed her in Talence. I knew that she had an elbow problem and she was far from her usual performances. She could only manage 48 meters while J-T registered again a PB with 43.93 m.The event saw 5 athletes over 50 m: Ruckhstuhl 55.35 m, Vetter 54.17 m, Oosterwegel 54.01 m, Voronina 5160 m and Broersen 50.41 m. It is impressive that all three dutch "wondermeisjes" threw beyond 50 m. And in fact, E. Oosterwegel, the new member of the team was the only one among the heptathletes throwing in perfect style of a specialist javelin thrower. 

Oosterwegel throwing the javelin

After the 6th event the two major medals were decided and Preiner was occupying the third position. Still only 77 points were separating the third from the seventh so nothing was decided yet for the bronze. Johnson-Thompson went on to win the 800m, with panache, and her 2:07.26 PB allowed her to break the UK record with a total of 6981 points. 

Johnson-Thompson has just won the heptathlon

Thiam was second with 6677 points, her worse performance since 2015. Preiner finished just behind J-T in the 800 m beating Bougard with almost 100 points for the bronze medal (6560 to 6470). Williams was 5th with 6415, with the two dutch heptathletes Broersen and Oosterwegel obtaining the two next positions with 6392 and 6250 points. Curiously A. Vetter did not present herself at the final event and thus was not classified. Unfortunately she seems far from the shape which allowed her to win European gold in 2016 and World bronze in 2017. Among the newcomers the names to watch are K. Williams, who must seriously improve her shot put, E. Oosterwegel, who must improve her speed, and O. Ahouanwanou (she was 8th with a NR for Benin of 6210 points) who must improve her track events. 

The heptathletes at the end of two efforts

(but why is Broersen on the wheelchair?)

And I found the fact that both combined events were held in the same time a great idea. (On the other hand having all events in one long afternoon-evening should have been taxing for the athletes, which adds even more value to their performances).

The barrier has fallen

Eliud Kipchoge is the best marathoner ever.

Two years ago he attacked the 2-hour marathon barrier and came tantalising close with a time of 2:00:25. In my article "the barrier is still intact" I wrote:

In some sense it is even better than a sub-2 time. Had Kipchoge broken the barrier we could have waved that away saying he got excessive help from the staging of the event. Having come close and failed lends to his effort a human dimension.

If somebody could break that mythical barrier that person could only be Kipchoge. He possesses the basic speed that could allow him to break the marathon world record under “normal” conditions. 

A year later he did just that, improving the world record (under regular conditions) to what looked like an "impossible" time of 2:01:39. But that was not enough. he had to break that damned 2-hr barrier. And on October 12th he did just that, with 1:59.41.

The time cannot be homologated as a world record. This is due to the fact that the pace was set by a car-mounted laser beam and that accompanying pacemakers were present in rotation throughout the race. In fact 41 among the most famous middle-long distance runners were present. Their function was not of setting the pace (this was far better done by the laser beam) but to offer a shield to Kipchoge and minimise air resistance for him. Among them one finds Olympic, World and Continental champions. But most prominent are the Kalenjin runners, the ones of Kipchoge's tribe. A small tribe numbering just 5 million individuals produces some of the finest runners in the world. Just look at the photo below. All of them are Kalenjin. (Lagat is a Nandi, which is sub-tribe of the Kalenjin).



Kipchoge's average speed was 21.18 km/hr, or 2:50 min per km. Just to get an idea of the pace, here are the official splits

  5km 00:14:10
10km 00:28:20
15km 00:42:34
20km 00:56:47
25km 01:10:59
30km 01:25:11
35km 01:39:23
40km 01:59:40

And he passed at half-point with 11 seconds in advance over the projected 2-hr time.

There were frequent references to the 4-min mile barrier, even by Kipchoge himself. This is quite acceptable, all the more so since Kipchoge pointed out that once the 4-min barrier was broken other runners soon followed, saying that he is expecting something similar for the marathon. Unfortunately journalists motivating by sensationalism started assimilating Kipchoge's feat to Armstrong setting foot upon the moon, or even worse, comparing the sub-2 performance to Bolt's 9.58 100 m record. What barrier did Bolt break? The 10 s barrier was broken by B. Hayes in Tokyo, 1964, with 9.9 s manual time. (And the stupid organisers decided to use the electronic time rounding his time to 10.0, in blatant violation of the rules applicable at the time). The electronic timing 10 s barrier was broken four years later by J. Hines in Mexico with 9.95 s. So, any reference to Bolt sounds really absurd and can potentially diminish the value of Kipchoge's feat.

PS When it rains, it pours. Kipchoge broke the 2 hr barrier on October 12th. And then on the 13th Brigid Kosgei broke the women's marathon record with 2:14.04, erasing Radcliffe's long standing 2:15:25. Kosgei has no medals from global championships but has won several prestigious marathons in her career, with a previous personal best of 2:18.20. In Chicago she passed at mid race in 1:06.59 and she managed to keep that pace till the end, smashing the world record. (It would have been a men's world record in 1964). And a funny fact. At the very last moment Kosgei decided to run with the same shoe model Kipchoge used for his attempt (a model from Nike, since both runners belong to the Nike team). The shoe is supposed to improve running economy by at least four percent. The choice paid out for both Kosgei and Kipchoge.  (And just in case you were wondering: Kosgei is also Kalenjin).

The blog is six years old

When I started writing this blog I did not have any particular plan. Inspired by Juilland's writings I decided to publish a few thoughts on athletics, hoping that some people would discover them (by pure chance since the internet is really, really vast), they would like them and would come back for more. Speaking of visitors the abnormal views did strike again. And this time it was something impressive. Over two months, July and August, I had some 30000 views (20 times more than what I consider normal traffic). 

And then, in September things went back to normal, and, in fact, even below what I would have expected, given the timing of the 2019 World Championships. 

Well, I don't care much about the number of visitors I get. A few hundreds per month is OK for me. The condition for a blog to be thriving is that the subject it deals with be flourishing. 

And I believe that athletics is indeed in good shape. This was made possible thanks to two major decisions. Both of them are associated with the late IAAF president Primo Nebiolo. The first one was the end of the myth of amateur athletes, as in 1982, the IAAF abandoned the traditional concept of amateurism, creating, in the following years, trust funds for athletes. Amateurism has plagued athletics since the very first day. It was something invented by the british nobility as (in the words of IOC member Anita DeFrantz) "a way to exclude people". The terror of the control of amateur status had reigned over athletics for decades, maintained with an extra dose of hypocrisy by the likes of A. Brundage. The second important decision was the creation of World Championships for athletics. It was a great move, liberating athletics from the yoke of the Olympic Committee, who have always been maintaining that the Olympics should serve as world championships for all olympic sports. Relinquishing the control of a sport to the Olympic Committee was an untenable situation, linking the fate of the discipline to that of the IOC. As things stand now, athletics are guaranteed to survive a (hypothetical) bankruptcy of the olympic movement. 

Some people, in particular those of an age close to mine, will argue that the golden age of athletics is over. They will mention the unforgettable matches USA-USSR, where we had to ask around in order to understand what on earth did CCCP stand for. Or, closer to myself, the match Balkans-Scandinavia, with the stadium full to capacity. But one should not forget that those were the days before the television invaded all households and when the internet was something encountered only in science fiction novels. So, I am convinced that now is the best period for athletics, with competitions which are followed by millions of spectators worldwide. I, too, am nostalgic of the evenings spent in the Panathenaic stadium following my athletics' heroes, but one must accept that that period is over.

While I am optimistic about the current status of athletics, this does not mean that I do not see the dangers waiting in ambush. First and foremost is the doping problem. I do not think that the IAAF and/or the WADA are doing a proper job. I cannot understand how the ANA status of D. Lysenko was revoked for a whereabouts violation while C. Coleman was exonerated for the same violation thanks to some legalese hocus-pocus from the USADA. I cannot understand why the tabula rasa of records was adjourned sine die while everybody agrees that the current world record list is contaminated. (What is even more infuriating is that in the Doha handbook, the IAAF gives a list of the best performances since 2000 where one finds listed V. Devyatovski in the men's hammer throw and L. Peleshenko in the women's shot put, both known doping offenders. And they are not the only ones in the list).

The second danger for athletics is the current trend to make the competitions more game-like in order to attract more spectators. This is a serious mistake. Athletics will never be as entertaining to the non-specialist who is interested more in the gossip and/or the bloopers of the tv games. On the other hand, a profound alteration of athletics would definitely alienate the real athletics fans, the "mordus" (a french expression I like a lot, literally meaning "bitten" and which can be vaguely translated as "buffs"). Having a full program, with something interesting taking place all the time in the stadium, filmed by an expert team should be enough. 

I will stop my rant here, giving you an appointment for next October (once we have survived the Tokyo Olympics) for the seventh anniversary of the blog. 

On athletic triathlons

Rest assured, I am not going to talk about the absurdity of what is known under the name of triathlon, and which is now part of the olympic program (hence the "athletic" in the title). In my post on a really modern pentathlon I was explaining that 

"I have a great respect for something like the Ironman. I could even understand a combined event based solely upon locomotion. What irks me is the fact that there is no break between swimming, cycling and running: changing clothes and shoes is made part of the competition itself. This is what I deem absurd". 

And, to be truthful, I do not get a combined event based solely upon locomotion. In fact this is the reason for which I find the eicosathlon (double-decathlon if you prefer), which is heavily skewed towards running events, also unacceptable.

What I will discuss is the inclusion of a minimal combined-event competition in the Diamond League or any other important meeting. K. Mayer presented his vision just before the Paris Diamond League meeting where the first such triathlon was staged. He revealed his plan to try to convince the organisers of the Diamond League about incorporating similar triathlons in future meetings and offering multi-event athletes the same level of prize money as specialists. He added

“We want to be treated as normal athletes who have fees and appearance money. And I want it to be a collective request from multi-athletes. This is not to gain money, but to build something that will stay in the future”.

Mayer went on to win the triathlon of the Paris competition, which consisted of shot put, long jump and 110 m hurdles. He registered two personal bests with 17.08 m in the shot put and 13.55 s in the hurdles, and had a solid 7.50 m in the long jump.

Mayer's idea is, of course, great. Bringing combined-event athletes to the limelight within the Diamond League is something the IAAF should have thought of before. And the best way to do this is with a compact, few events, competition.

Curiously the 2019 is not the historically first triathlon to be contested. In the 1904, St. Louis, Olympics, an athletic triathlon consisting of long jump, shot put, and a 100 yard dash was part of the Gymnastics(!) competition. (In fact the results from the athletic triathlon, together with those of the gymnastics triathlon event, were used for the all-around gymnastics classification). 

Talking about triathlons got me thinking about possibilities. There are three short (or medium short) running events in the decathlon, three jumps and three throws (plus the 1500 m, which we can forget). Staging a triathlon picking one of each group leads to many (in fact 27) possibilities most of them quite interesting. Vertical jumps could be a minor hassle since they take time (in particular the pole vault) but one could adapt the rules allowing a fixed number of tries (for instance 6, as in the one-hour decathlon). Choosing the 400 m for the running event could also be of interest since this is a particularly demanding event. And of course one could imagine a triathlon consisting only of jumps or only of throws. (But of course, such choices would be a definite disadvantage to the decathletes who are excel as runners). 

Although the triathlon is quite interesting, there is an alternative proposal, something that resembles really a combined event competition. In my post on combined events I discussed the proposal of Gaston Meyer of a tetrathlon and qualified it as "drab" (which it is, when you compare it to the decathlon). Then in my post on decathlon variants I re-examined this proposal and concluded that a variant comprising 200 m, long jump, shot put and 1000 m could be optimal. It can be organised both indoor and outdoor and reestablishes the parity between men and women in combined events. It could very well be organised in an afternoon. In fact even an one-hour variant could be contemplated without putting too much constraint on the meeting  organisation. The combined-event stars could shine during the Diamond League circuit competing in a real combined-event competition. But then there is a danger that this could lead to the appearance of tetrathlon specialists who would cannibalise the high-prize circuit and discourage a specialisation in the decathlon. So the triathlon, as recommended by K. Mayer, is probably the best compromise.