By Martin Gillingham - 2 April 2009

Two days, above all others, have convinced me that athletics has to change. The first was the second evening session at the Olympic Games in Beijing.

 

 

The night of the men’s 100 metres final. Seminal moment in the sport ‘n all that. But as great as the race was, it was the only track final of the night and was scheduled three-and-a-half hours into the programme. Usain Bolt was worth the wait, but …

 

The second was at the climax of last month’s European Indoor Championships in Turin. Now, if there’s one form of track and field that I would use to sell our sport to kids it is the vibrant, all-action, environment of a two-hour indoor meeting where world-class athletes, almost close enough to touch, dash round a banked track at dizzy speeds.

To sprinters it may seem like the sporting equivalent of the fairground centrifuge but to newcomersw to the sport it’s the nearest they’ll get to having world-class athletes chasing round their living room.
 

Turin wasn’t quite that exciting but what it did throw up was one of the most stunning single athletics performances of recent years. A previously undistinguished fellow called Sebastian Bayer of Germany had already won the long jump when he prepared for his final leap. Yet he reached out to 8 metres 71 centimetres to improve the European indoor record by 15 centimetres and came to within eight centimetres of Carl Lewis’s 25-year-old world mark.

It was the longest ever sea-level jump by a European (indoors or out) and 15 centimetres farther than the 29-year-old German outdoor record which had been set by an East German in winning the Olympic title in Moscow. It was truly Beamonesque.
 

Problem is, Bayer’s jump came, to use movie parlance, after the credits had already begun to roll. The track programme had finished and the only reason the majority of the crowd had stayed was because they were celebrating a medal ceremony featuring two Italians. Even if you hadn’t already left it’s possible you’d have walked out unaware of Bayer’s achievement.
 

Athletics has to address the way it presents itself. Four-hour night sessions featuring one track final have to be consigned to the dustbin and jumps like Bayer’s have, wherever possible, to be showcased.
 

And to be fair, the powers that be have already started addressing the problem.
 

Last month, the world governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), announced that from 2010 it will package its evening sessions into more compact three-hour bundles and ensure that the content is more attractive. Lamine Diack’s people did, however, reject a proposal that the outdoor World Championships be cut from nine days to six. The IAAF want their showpiece to extend over two full weekends.
 

Now that may bed good news for those of use who get hired on a day rate but for the paying punter who expects to see half-a-dozen track finals in each of Mr Diack’s more keenly packaged evening sessions, forget it. You, I suspect, shall continue to be short-changed.
 

And it’s not only the IAAF who have been making changes. This summer’s re-branded European Cup, now the European Team Championships, will see some altogether more groundbreaking innovations.
 

Twenty-two years ago at Crystal Palace I recall an innovative David Bedford adopting a devil take the hindmost event at his IAC Grand Prix meeting. Bedford’s feature was a cycle race and an intentional diversion from the regular running fodder.
 

In June at Leiria, though, it will be adopted as part of the mainstream programme; the last-placed runners in distance races with five, four and three laps remaining being told to step off the track. It’s a ruse to rumble the sort of slow, tactical affairs that have turned some European Cup races into borefests.
 

The most significant amendment in the field in Leiria involves the long and triple jumps. There, competitors will get a maximum of four jumps each. The first two rounds will be qualifying rounds to eliminate half of the 12-athlete field. The third round will see another two competitors drop out leaving four to go into the final round. Now here comes the controversial bit – because once the final quartet are established the slate is wiped clean, previous marks erased, and the final round used to determine positions one to four.
 

Purists and critics will no doubt tell us how terribly unfair this is because, almost inevitably, the longest jump in one or perhaps all four of the horizontal jump events in Leiria, won’t win. In fact, it’s highly likely that the best jumper on the day won’t win either.
 

But then, as we are frequently reminded, life isn’t fair. So why expect athletics to be any different?
 

What we can be certain of, though, is that a format that ensures the last four attempts of a 34-jump competition will determine the top four placings, and command our attention even if it is a slightly contrived climax.

 

Martin Gillingham represented Great Britain in the 1984 Olympic Games and 1987 World Championships at the 400 metres hurdles. Since retiring from the track he spent 12 years in South Africa where he was a radio talk show presenter and writer for a Sunday newspaper. He returned to the UK in 2003 and can now be heard commentating on athletics for Eurosport as well as rugby for Sky Sports, ITV and Setanta.

Comments

Martin, as ever, makes some interesting points. I think there is
no doubt that the sport has to modernise if it is to have a
future in the 21st century, however much that saddens me.
By Track Fan, Oregon USA

3 April 2009 at 10:29am

Athletics has prospered for more than a century, it is still the
top sport at the Olympics, the world champs will be the most
important event of the summer. Usain Bolt proved that at its
highest level it can still be compelling. We need for the sport
to have more people like Usain rather than just messing around
with the sport at the margins.
By Ronald Mayer, Switzerland

6 April 2009 at 16:47pm