I was planning to write this piece at the end of the season, after the last Diamond League meeting in Doha. However the events in the Rome meeting pushed me to write this post now without waiting till the end of the month. If something happens in Doha (or later) I will add a postscript to this article.
In my previous post I was writing about how Duplantis quest for the outdoors pole vault world record was reminding me of Ch. Papanicolaou who obtained his world record at the end of October of 1970, when, despite the clement autumnal temperatures in Greece, the outdoors season was at last coming to an end. Since 1998 World Athletics is homologating a single pole vault record, independently of whether it is established outdoors or indoors. In this sense Duplantis is the world record holder since this past winter with his 6.18 m performance.
However, in the eyes of (almost) everyone, he had not yet erased the name of Bubka from the record tables. The outdoors record of 6.14 m was still standing. So Mondo had to jump higher and on the fifth competition where he attempted a 6.15 m vault he managed to pass over the bar. And as you can see in the animation below he does it with a comfortable margin.
As I have already written, now that he has mastered his new, stiffer, poles, sky is the limit. Barring injuries, Duplantis' is one of the most serious candidatures for an olympic title next year.
While Duplantis did manage to obtain his world record, his partner in the Scandi support group, K. Warholm, was less lucky. Hitting the last hurdle in his best 400 m hurdles race denied him the world record for a mere 9/100 of a second.
His Berlin and Rome races were of a very high quality, technically excellent, but somehow he did not have the extra something necessary for a world record. Since there is no 400 m hurdles in the program of Doha, Warholm will have to content himself with the 300 m hurdles record he established early in the season.
Speaking of the 300 m record makes me think of all these record attempts over not often run distances. Some attempts were successful, like the hour and 20000 m ones, while others, like the 1000 m were not. However, I, somehow, cannot assign the same importance to the records over these unusual distances as to the ones over the championship ones. Can you imagine that the 500 m record is held by an almost unknown cuban (O. Rodriguez, who was member of the 2012 4x400 m olympic cuban team) with 59.32 s? D. Rudisha has done better, with 57.69 s, but he did it on a road event, running on a straight line. (At least the women's record for 500 m, dating from 1984, is held by world vice-champion T. Kocembova, with 1:05.9 s).
The third athlete chasing a world record was R. Crouser. Early in the season he improved his shot put personal best to 22.91 m and has been vying for an 23+ performance since then. He has had particularly consistent competitions, throwing close to 30 times over 22 m, but the big throw has been eluding him. It's not sure he'll have another chance this season since the shot put does not appear in the program of the Doha Diamond League.
And it impossible not to mention J. Cheptegei who did not have to chase the record, breaking the 5000 m world record on his first try with 12:35.36. The ease with which he obtained this was astounding. Just look at the splits below:
There is a metronome regularity there. Cheptegei has announced that he will be attempting to improve the 10000 m world record on October 7th. In some sense he is better equipped for this longer race (let's not forget that he is the reigning world champion of the distance). So if anybody can break the old record of Bekele that's Cheptegei.
And of course there was another world record attempt that did not materialise. C. Kipruto had planned an assault at the 3000 m steeplechase record but he tested positive to the virus just before the first Diamond League competition. Although he was asymptomatic he had to quarantine himself, curtailing his season. Kipruto will compete in the Nairobi, October 3, Continental Tour meeting. But Nairobi is situated at some 1800 m altitude so I fear that, as far as the record is concerned, we'll have to wait for next year.
PS. The only thing worth mentioning concerning Doha was that there was again that ridiculous last effort in the long jump.
Once more it altered the classification obtained in the previous five attempts. Why on earth is WA persisting with this stupid scheme that everybody hates?
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