Womens's high jump

Ariane Friedrich took the spotlight for the Berlin 2009 world championships with impeccable timing.

No better than seventh in last year's Olympics, Friedrich chose Berlin's Golden League meeting in June this year not only to defeat the woman who has largely dominated world high jumping for the past three years _ Blanka Vlasic of Croatia _ but also to clear 2.06 metres and take three credible attempts at a world record 2.10.

Instantly, the 12th world championships had a face. Germany had plenty of medal prospects, mostly in the unglamorous throwing events. Suddenly, along comes a blonde, charismatic, compelling personality in a popular event who not only possesses star quality, but has gold medal credentials as well.

In the Olympiastadion on Thursday night _ yet another Usain Bolt night for world athletes as it turned out _ Freidrich went up against Vlasic for the gold medal. Two days earlier, she had qualified for the final with typical panache, waiting out the qualifying competition until the bar was raised to 1.96 and then sailing clear with her one and only jump. As she got up off the landing bags, Friedrich pumped both fists and then gestured, palms upwards, that she was ready for greater heights.

She did not quite scale those heights in the final, but Ariane Friedrich won plenty of new admirers without alienating any old ones. She bowed out with an oh-so-close attempt at 2.06, which would have given her the lead and almost certainly the win, and then helped gee the crowd up as Vlasic went for 2.10. Classy stuff indeed.

When she gets home, Friedrich will possibly reflect that she had a chance to ride the Bolt wave _ she jumped at 2.04 in the high-octane aftermath of Bolt's latest world record _ but could not catch it. Against that, she lost to a woman who has been dominant for most of the past three years, and she had a jump to beat her.

Anna Chicherova of Russia had a chance to upstage the two-woman battle when she took the lead with a first-time clearance at 2.02. Vlasic got it second try while Friedrich needed all three attempts before clearing.

Chicherova bowed out at 2.04, which Vlasic got at the second attempt. Friedrich's two efforts here were good, but not all that close. Now, she had no choice but to take her third attempt at 2.06. With death or glory the only options, she produced her best jump of the competition, but just flicked the crossbar off with her calves. That left Vlasic the winner at 2.04, and Chicherova the silver medallist by dint of her first-time clearance at 2.02 against Freidrich's third.

Any other night, the high jump would have been the absolute highlight. Had Friedrich won, it still might have been.

But these are not normal times, this is the age of Usain Bolt. Just when we thought he had nothing left to give after three consecutive championship gold medals _ Olympic 100 and 200, world 100 _ in world record times, up he comes with another world record in the 200.

Bolt's unbelievable 19.19 put him over six metres clear of Panama's young Alonso Edward and Wallace Spearmon of the USA.

Bolt truly is in a world of his own at the moment. The rest of us are privileged to be able to see it from the world we live in. Unfortunately, 'the rest of us' includes everyone from the silver medallist down.

It's enough to discourage even the most ambitious of rivals, but Spearmon shrugged off such suggestions with a joke.

"You can look at any sport, and just because you get beat doesn't mean you stop trying. I've got to go home, work twice as hard, three times as hard, and put a picture of Bolt above my bed."

At least the picture won't be running 19.19 for 200 metres!




 

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.