The View From The World Indoors: By Len Johnson

Welcome to the IAAF world indoor championships.

On the 200m oval, a race is about to begin. In the infield, no more than a metre of two away, the pole vault is mid-competition; another few meters inside that, triple jump qualifying is proceeding.

Across the oval _ that’s all of another 20-30m away _ the high jump is underway. Almost every run-up intersects with the horizontal jumps’ runway; the longest intersect with both the jump and pole vault runways.

Between the pole vault runway and the high jump pit is the sprint straight. On an indoor oval the sprinters and hurdles come down the middle of the infield: it’s the only place a 60m straight will fit. Even then the sprinters momentum carries them across the banked turn and headlong into padded crash-bags.

The crowd in the back-straight is cheering wildly, waving Ethiopian flags. Someone has just noticed Haile Gebrselassie featuring in a highlights package on the big screen, or maybe Meseret Defar has emerged from the call room with the other runners for the women’s 3000 metres.

It’s chaotic, yet never quite chaos. It looks for all the world like a set for a Mack Sennett slapstick comedy, except on this set the bloke carrying the plank never quite swings it into an unwitting victim’s head and then, over-compensating in the opposite direction, brings down a ladder, a painter and the inevitable buckets of paint. And the rocking-chair always remains in perfect synchronisation with the cat’s tail, rather than coming down on it, sending the cat hurtling away with an ear-splitting caterwaul.

The hardest working officials have to be those policing the conflicting runways. It goes something like this: a vaulter does a run-down in warm-up or jump in competition; an official then holds up a red flag to shut off the vault runway while two long jumpers take an attempt. A high jumper with a super-long run-up is about to take a jump: out go the red flags across the other two runways. That same high jumper may have to negotiate their approach through flights of hurdles on the sprint straight.

It’s surreal, and adding an extra dimension of surreality, it’s all taking place in Doha, where the outside temperature is nudging 35deg.C. There is a running joke among the news team and flash quotes gatherers that for the first time ever at a world indoor championships an athlete is going to offer the excuse that he/she was suffering a touch of sunstroke, or dehydration.

Can it be any wonder that the single best field event performance, and single best performance overall, Teddy Tamgho’s triple jump world record 17.90 metres, came on his final jump, the second-last of the last event of the championships, when everything else had finished? Only then, could anyone focus purely and solely on his or her own performance. Up until then so many other things _ where’s that flag, where’s that high jumper,  intruded.

Keeping one’s head in all this must be difficult. Especially given that all the normal distractions of competition are also in force.

Not least of the elements of Steve Hooker’s win in the men’s pole vault was that he endured almost five hours in this madhouse without once losing his composure. Qualifying took three hours _ one jump for Hooker at 5.60 sufficed _ and the final almost two, yet Hooker proceeded through both as calmly as if they were training sessions.

In qualifying, Hooker had his track-suit off, his run-up stitched up and his successful jump completed pretty much before most in the Aspire Dome had even noted his presence. In the end, that was all it took, though even 5.60 was beyond the likes of Berlin 2009 bronze medallist Renaud Lavillenie and fourth placegetter Maksym Mazuryk.

The final brought further distractions. With a lopsided program _ three sessions of heats and qualifying competitions followed by two consisting almost entirely of finals _ presentation ceremonies were added into the list of potentially lethal distractions.

Again, Hooker was focused. He cleared 5.70 unobtrusively, then got 5.80 (again, at the first try), just before a medal ceremony. This was about the only time he appeared even slightly hassled as he insisted on taking his attempt before the ceremony as an official looked to have him wait. Once more, he cleared with a minimum of fuss. About the first time the whole arena was fully aware of Hooker’s presence, he had the gold medal in his pocket and was attempting 6.01. He got it on the third attempt for a championship record.

It was impressive stuff, especially in contrast with the women’s favourite. Yelena Isinbayeva almost reprised her Berlin qualifying failure, missing twice at 4.55 and getting it on her last try only after what amounted to intense one-on-one counselling over the fence by her coach, Vitaliy Petrov. In the final, ‘Isi’ looked supreme in clearing 4.60 first try but then bombed out at 4.75 to finish out of the medals in fourth place.

Steve Hooker, though, continues to notch up achievements. Not only is he indoor world champion for the first time, he now holds concurrently the Olympic, world, Commonwealth and world indoor titles. For good measure, he is also World Cup champion.

He also joins three others in having cleared six metres or more to win a major title. The other members of that club are Dmitry Markov (6.05 to win the world championships in 2001), Maksim Tarasov (6.02 in the 1999 world champs), Sergey Bubka (6.01 in 1997 world champs, 6.00 in 1993 world champs and also in 1991 world indoors) and Jean Galfione (6.00 in the 1999 world indoors).