Indoors: A Column By Len Johnson
By Len Johnson
In Australia, athletics is something that happens in the summer, sun-drenched tracks, hot winds, all that sort of stuff.
Views on indoor athletics range from something that happens somewhere else _ in the northern hemisphere mainly; to something that is not discussed in front of the children. When you are blessed with a climate that allows you to train outdoors all year round, why bother with athletics under a closed roof.
As the IAAF World Indoor Championships get under way in Doha, such contradictions are front of mind. It’s hot outside _ touching 30 degrees on championships eve _ cool, almost cold, inside the Aspire Dome.
Doha’s Dome reflects both the emirate of Qatar’s mania for sport and its can-do attitude. Why else build a state-of-the-art facility in a country where temperatures are 40 degrees and above for more than half of the year. Because you have the resources to, and you can, seems to be the attitude here. Qatar is serious about sport, and serious about attracting major events. There are signs everywhere promoting the bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a bid which will feature modular stadia that can be deconstructed after the Cup and shipped off to other countries.
As far as the world indoors is concerned, this will surely be the first time that competitors have been able to swim or sunbathe between sessions. Most training is being done on one of the outdoor tracks in the complex.
Surprising? More like amazing, really. Delving into Australia’s background in indoor athletics may not unearth anything to amaze, but it does reveal some surprises. If you’re under 25, you could be forgiven for thinking our involvement goes no further back than the 25-year history of the IAAF championships.
Those a little older may recall the ill-fated indoor track series in the early 1990s which brought Carl Lewis to Australia, purportedly for meetings in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne but which crashed spectacularly after just one meeting in Brisbane. Lewis, who wanted his money upfront because of previous dealings with the promoter, never budged from his hotel suite.
Those with still more years on the clock may recall the successful indoor tours of North America by Ron Clarke, Ralph Doubell and others, but few would realise that the history of Australian indoor athletics goes back even further than that _ another 30-40 years, in fact.
Back in the 1920 and 1930s, indoor meetings were irregularly conducted in Melbourne (and perhaps Sydney as well), in attempts to promote the sport. The heritage-listed Melbourne Exhibition Building staged some meetings; others were held in, or near, the old St Moritz ice-skating rink on St Kilda’s Esplanade. In collaboration with Athletics Australia historian and statistician Paul Jenes, and others, I tracked down some of this history in my other lifetime at The Age.
But it never took off. The ill-fated 1990s effort is the only one I’m aware of which had the aim of establishing a regular series of meetings. Promoter Ken Elphick, who had had great success with outdoor meetings in the late 1970s, signed up a national sponsor, commissioned construction of a demountable track and lured several big names _ Catherine Freeman as well as Lewis and other internationals.
The wheels were already falling off by the time the first meeting got under way in Brisbane. The track was something like 12-14 laps to the mile, making it difficult to generate enough momentum to avoid running off into such infield as there was. The sprinters ran headlong into padded bags at the end of the straight _ leaving an imprint sort of like Wile E. Coyote trying to run through a wall.
The concept imploded even before spectators had got back to their homes. The Sydney and Melbourne meetings never happened. The track was seized by the transport company contracted to drive it to Sydney and left to rot in a yard.
Australia’s involvement with the IAAF event has been more conventional. It seems incongruous to send teams when we have no indoor athletics, but half the world is doing exactly the same thing. Mostly, the team self-selects: those who want to go, go.
Mike Hillardt kicked off our gold medal history by winning the 1500 at the first World Indoor Games in Paris in 1985 _ reminiscent of Edwin Flack, really.Dave Smith won a bronze medal in the 5k walk, a success that was emulated three times by Kerry Saxby Junna. She won the gold medal in the 3k walk in 1989 and took silver in 1991 and 1993.
Toronto in 1993 returned the biggest medal haul _ four, but none of them gold. In addition to Saxby Junna, Damien Marsh and Melinda Gainsford-Taylor took silver medals in the 200 and Darren Clark a bronze in the 400.
Gainsford-Taylor went one better in Barcelona in 1995, taking the gold in the 200. There would be no more gold until Tamsyn Lewis’s delightful and delighted win in the 800 in Valencia in 2008, but Emma George took a silver in the pole vault in Paris in 1997, a Catherine Freeman-led women’s team (with Susan Andrews, Tania Van Heer and Lewis) won a silver in the 4x400 in Maebashi in 1999, Andrew Murphy got a bronze in the triple jump in Lisbon in 2001 and Steve Hooker a bronze in the pole vault in Valencia.
What will Doha bring?
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2 comments to "Indoors: A Column By Len Johnson"
I enjoy Len Johnson's writing. Particularly 'The Landy Era'. He seems to be crying out for someone to stimulate Australian athletics particularly running. Alot of us probably sympathise. What about an Australian Games or ANZ Games. We all know were great at getting out and supporting a big event. It would give some of our potentially great, but disheartened club runners somthing to aim for. Running for their state in front of a big crowd at a stadium and on TV.
Why does tamsyn Lewis' win get the extra delightful and delighted bit when it was the second slowest winning time in the event's history? Don't be so rude to other Aus winners. "Mike Hillardt kicked off our gold medal history by winning the 1500 at the first World Indoor Games in Paris in 1985 _ reminiscent of Edwin Flack, really". Please tell me the comparison to Flack is a joke. We should really be a hell of a lot better at this meet given the timing of it relative to our season.
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