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An upset, a near-upset and a masterclass: that’s what the three big races at the Melbourne Track Classic provided.

Given that the upset – Jeff Riseley defeating Olympic champion Asbel Kiprop in the 1500 metres, and near-upset – Ben St Lawrence threatening to do the same to Bernard Lagat off the final bend of the 5000, both involved Australians, the two most competitive races of the night fulfilled the expectations loaded onto them in the build-up to the meeting.

Since the masterclass was given by 2010 male athlete of the year in the 800 metres, there weren’t too many complaints about that either. David Rudisha set up a mighty impressive season off his 1:43.15 in Melbourne last year, he’ll be hoping his 1:43.88 on Thursday night is a prelude to another one.

Predictably, given Melbourne’s history as the self-proclaimed ‘Oslo of the south’, middle and long-distance featured heavily on the schedule for the final international meeting at Olympic Park.

This, after all, is the track where John Landy set off in lonely pursuit of the first sub-four minute mile; where Herb Elliott first broke four minutes; where Ron Clarke set the first of almost 20 world records; where Charlene Rendina – a teammate of Greg and Carolyn Lewis back in the 1970s, set a national record for 800 metres which defies all comers, but chiefly their daughter, Tamsyn, to this day; and, where Craig Mottram emerged as a top-class 5000 runner with a 13:12.04 against Stephen Cherono in 2002.

Jeff Riseley evoked all that spirit, and more, when he sprinted past Kiprop up the final straight of the 1500. Sure enough it was a first-up race for the Olympic gold medallist, but it was just Riseley’s second outing since returning from the foot injury which put him out of the Commonwealth Games and here he was surging home ahead of Kiprop, Alan Webb and Olympic silver medallist Nick Willis – not a bad collection of scalps.

It was a race lost as well as won. Kiprop sat behind the erratic pacemaking of compatriot Gilbert Kipchoge who ran 53, 1:53, the old too fast then too slow trick. Riseley followed that, too, but critically got the sit on his rival.

The other thing it showed was just how difficult it is to run the world championships A-standard of 3:35.00 other than in the orchestrated races of the Diamond League. With the pace on from the start, Riseley still ran ‘only’ 3:36.71. He will surely get the time, but the result emphasised how difficult qualifying will be for so many athletes.

Ben St Lawrence raised hopes of a second upset when he loomed at Lagat’s shoulder on the final bend of the 5000. Already, he was travelling at a pace which would lead to a 15-second ‘pb’, and now it looked as if ‘Benny Saint’ might defeat Lagat, the 2007 world champion, 2009 silver medallist and second only to Kenenisa Bekele among 5k runners in recent history.

“S**t, I’m going to pass him,” St Lawrence thought. And so thought all of us, too, but it didn’t quite happen, Lagat sprinting decisively clear to win 13:08.43 to 13:10.08.

St Lawrence is now second on the Australian all-time list behind Craig Mottram, while Lagat has his first win in three starts over 11 years in this country. His first was in finishing third behind Noah Ngeny and Hicham El Geurrouj in the Sydney Olympic 1500, his second in finishing behind El Guerrouj in the 2001 IAAF grand prix final at Olympic Park the following year. Now, Lagat has closed Olympic Park with the fastest 5000 ever run at the track.

And what about Mottram? He finished sixth in 13:25.15 behind the first two, Chris Solinsky, Matt Tegenkamp and the surprising Andrew Bumbalough. It was an encouraging step back along the road after the latest of a long series of achilles tendon problems.

 Unlike Kiprop and Lagat, there were no rude shocks for David Rudisha in the 800. His 1:43.88 saw him home an unchallenged 10 metres ahead of Nick Symmonds.

It was another business-as-usual run for the world record holder, his preferred pacemaker taking him out in a tick over 50 seconds, his rivals racing for second from then on. Rudisha’s test will come at the world championships, when he attempts to add a major title to his world record performances.

Lachlan Renshaw continued to show that his move to the OTC Elite has been a good one, running a ‘pb’ 1:45.66 in third place and there was a huge run, too, from 18-year-old Alex Rowe whose 1:46.28 was within 0.37 of 1994 world junior champion Paul Byrne’s national U20 record.

All up, three great races with more than enough local content to keep the most demanding fan happy.

There was much else besides, including a sub-2 minutes 800 from Jamaica’s Kenia Sinclair ahead of Tamsyn Lewis and a stirring battle between Jemma Simpson and Kaila McKnight in the women’s 1500, won by Simpson, 4:08.49 to 4:08.94.

Note: both the IAAF (www.iaaf.org) and Athletics Australia (www.athletics.com.au) websites have full summary and results of the meeting.

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The mind is a wonderful thing – when it’s up and running smoothly, that is.

About 70 percent of the audience at Friday’s John Landy Lunch Club were reminded of this when film of Charlene Rendina’s 1:59.0 national record at the Victorian championships went up on the big screens.

I saw that race. So did many others at the lunch. Unprovable assertion warning here - I’d guess that most people there thought that Judy Pollock had led that race before Rendina pulled away in the last 150 metres. I’ve written it that way several times, the most recent just a few days before the lunch in material supplied to The Sunday Age highlighting five performances at the Victorian championships.

Cut the lights. Cue the film. Guess what? Charlene Rendina led at the bell, Pollock clinging to her heels until the final bend.

Even Pollock, who along with Rendina was at the lunch, was surprised. “I’ve always told (Charlene) I led that race,” she said.

Rendina wasn’t. “That was my race,” she said of the record, which still stands.

Pollock, and many of the rest of us, were misled by two facts. One was general - Pollock did lead most of their races; the other was specific – in the national championships three weeks later, also at Olympic Park, Pollock scorched the first lap in 56 seconds, leading by a long way before fading in the last 200.

Rendina won then in 2:00.1 with Pollock running 2:02.1.

This year’s Landy lunch, which also served as the launch for Thursday night’s Melbourne Track Classic, took as its main theme Olympic Park history. I wonder how many other memories were revised by the archive footage.

Still, it was nice to know that there was a huge crowd watching the mile at the 1956 Australian titles when John Landy went back to check on the fallen Ron Clarke before resuming the race, chasing down a 40 yards’ deficit, and winning.

A lesser, though still substantial, crowd attended the 1964 twilight meeting when Clarke took down world record holder Murray Halberg of New Zealand, and the world record, over three miles. Notable on this occasion was the presence of Herb Elliott – in his work suit, no less – crouched on the infield waving Clarke on with 200 metres to go.

Ron Casey and Merv Lincoln did the commentary. Casey was Channel Seven’s head of sport, a great caller and commentator in his own right. Lincoln was the man whose destiny it was to be the second-best Australian behind Landy and then Elliott, which pretty much meant second-best in Victoria, Australia, the Commonwealth and the world.

Clarke also told how he had got the New Zealanders – not only Halberg, but also Olympic 800 and 1500 champion Snell and John Davies – to Melbourne in return for him racing in New Zealand. He had convinced Seven to televise the meeting and the network was to take the unprecedented step of running the athletics into its nightly news service.

The timing was almost scuttled by several false starts in the 100 yards. Casey was almost beside himself. Clarke ran down to the start to tell Olympic starter Judy Patching: “For God’s sake, just fire the gun and don’t call them back, otherwise they’ll pull the coverage.”

Of course, all these stories are only as reliable as someone’s memory, too.

It made me wonder whether some of my other recollections of Victorian championships were in need of ‘revision’. Like over 100 athletes running the heats of the men’s 5000 metres, like heats of the men’s 10,000 metres, like Marian Fisher (now O’Shaughnessy) winning four individual titles one year.

As a journalist, I always made it a rule not to use a statistic unless I’d looked it up. Every time I broke this rule, it seemed, I made an error.

So I checked these memories against the Athletics Victoria results archive. In 1972, there were 61 entrants in the 10,000. Three heats were run on 19 January, with the final on 31 January. In 1980, there were 107 entrants in the 5000 metres heats and five heats were run a week before the final.

Finally, yes, Marian O’Shaughnessy, a prolific winner of titles back then, won the women’s 100, 200 and 400 metres at the main titles in 1978, having won the 400 metres hurdles a week earlier. Cathy Freeman was another who amassed titles in clumps, taking the 100/200/400 treble four years on the trot from 1992 before restricting herself to a mere double in 1996.

Regularly, there were four rounds of the men’s sprints. In 1985, amazingly, there were four rounds of the men’s 800 metres, too – heats on 1 March, quarter-finals on 2 March, semi-final and final on 3 March. At the end of it all, Mike Hillardt won in a very smart 1:46.04 (his career best was 1:45.74). Understandably, he did not double, leaving the 1500 to Peter Bourke.

Where did they all go? These days, there is an almost total disconnect between the club athlete and state, much less national, titles. Sometimes we see this situation reversed, such as the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run on the MCG in the 2006 Victorian titles.

Well, 2011 is the last chance to run at Olympic Park. It’s a different appeal – whereas no-one had ever run on the MCG before, everyone has run at Olympic Park. But it’s going to be very interesting how many people jump (run and throw) at the last chance to run at the Park on 4-6 March.

 

Andrea Thorkildsen Press Conference Berlin - Thanks to Adidas