The Last Weekend in June

By LEN JOHNSON

When you can't be in two places at once, sometimes you're better off being in neither.

That's about the way I feel this last weekend of June as the Jamaican national championships are staged at Kingston's National Stadium and the US nationals are held at the wonderful Hayward Field Venue in Eugene. Who'd want to miss either?

Albeit Jamaica has strength in some other events, its nationals are all about sprints, and that means all about Usain Bolt. Over on the US west coast, there's depth in events right across the board, but the sprints will hold a special fascination in Eugene, too, as Tyson Gay continues his return from the hamstring injury which cruelled his chances in Beijing last year.

Now here's a funny thing about the two championships. Gay won the sprint double at the 2007 world championships in Osaka last year but bombed out in the Olympics. Nevertheless, the 'wild card' system for defending world champions means he need take no more than cursory notice of the US titles. As I write this, he's done already, running the first round of the 100 only and then playing his automatic entry card for both sprints in Berlin.

Bolt was still a 'maybe man' in Osaka two years ago, a silver medallist in the 200 way behind Gay. He was everywhere man in Beijing just 12 months later, winning both individual sprints in world record time and being a member of the world record-breaking relay.

What did that earn him in terms of selection for Berlin this year? Nothing _ Olympic champions don't get world championships wild cards. Bolt has to turn up to qualify for both events at the Jamaican champs. And lest anyone think that's a lay-down misere, just remember that it was in the preliminary rounds of the 200 metres at last year's US Olympic Trials that Gay went down with the hamstring injury.

Gay's one run in the 100 at Eugene resulted in a wind-aided 9.75 which, added to his 19.58 for 200 in New York at the end of May suggests he has regained much of his speed. But his failure to make more than a token appearance at the championships means his ability to go the rounds will remain a query until he is forced to do so in Berlin.

The 9.75 also continued the sequence of fast, windy times for Gay and leaves open the suspicion that for all his mental toughness, he perhaps can't quite run as fast as either Bolt or a fully-fit (physically and mentally) Asafa Powell. Gay's 9.77 in the quarter-finals of the US Olympic Trials (with a +1.6) remains his only legal sub-9.8. His next best is 9.84; his 9.68 in the USOT final, and 9.76 and 9.79 in 2007 were all with excessive tailwinds.

So it looks as if we will come to Berlin 2009 with much the same questions as we had before Beijing 2008. Can Gay run fast enough? Can Asafa Powell run his fastest when it counts? And one new one: can either of them _ or anyone else _ beat Usain Bolt?

 

THE ISSUE of the week in Australian athletics was the proposal to restrict support to certain events _ specifically, men's pole vault, road walks, relays and men's long jump.

This idea, in one form or another, has been floating around for a while. Sweden had great success 2001-2005 by identifying niche events _ including triple jump (Christian Olsson), high jump (Stefan Holm and Kajsa Bergqvist) and heptathlon (Carolina Kluft) _ on which to focus. But with retirements (Holm/Bergqvist), long-term injury/possible retirement (Olsson) and change of events/injury (Kluft) and no replacements of anywhere near the same class coming through, we don't hear so much about 'the Swedish model' now.

What happens in London 2012 if Jared Tallent is disqualified; if either our relays don't get the baton round or all of the USA, Jamaica, Bahamas, etc, do; if Steve Hooker misses one of those third-attempt clearances; if whatever top eights Australia gets don't convert into medals.

It's one thing to target events, quite another to hit your targets.


 

Len Johnson was The Melbourne Age athletics writer for over 20 years, covering five Olympics, 10 world championships and five Commonwealth Games. He is the author of The Landy Era, From Nowhere to the Top of the World, and a former national class distance runner (2.19.32 marathon) who trained with Chris Wardlaw and Robert de Castella.

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