A night for keeping heads

For six days, the world championships have been about letting your head go. On night seven, as real storms raged around the stadium _ not surreal, Lightning Bolt storms _ lightning flashed, thunder rolled, rain pelted down, it was a night for keeping heads.

Dani Samuels notably kept hers and the Sydney 21-year-old became a world champion in the discus _ more of that later. Many others lost their heads, or had them scrambled by the rain delays and the accompanying cold snap. Only four men cleared higher than 2.23 in a high jump competition hit particularly hard by the wet weather.

As ever, there were also some amazing brain snaps in the middle-distances, the semi-finals of men's 800 metres and women's 1500.

I have to admit to an intense dislike of the competition model which produces three semi-finals of the 800. Having only two automatic qualifiers from a semi-final seems to me at least one too few, and the two non-automatic qualifiers usually come from the same race. So instead of 2-2-2 and two more, it is invariably 2-4-2.

It also means that you cannot afford the slightest mistake. One wrong move and you're out.

That said, one thing I love about the system is that it usually ensures three cracking races. The first round and the final can be tactical; in the semi it's just run, run, run as fast as you can.

Somehow, the second semi-final here was jam packed with superstars, while the first and third were comparatively thin. Semi-final two had the defending world champion and Olympic bronze medallist Alfred Kirwa Yego, the Olympic silver medallist Ahmad Ismail, the Olympic fifth placegetter and new world 1500 champion Yusuf Kamel, 2004 Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy and perennial medal contender Mbulaeni Mulaudzi.

Talk about loaded: if the second semi were a ship, it would have been sinking way beyond the Plimsoll line.

As it turned out, all three semis produced carnage and, surprisingly, the fastest winning time of the three was Kamel's 1:45.01.

In the first, Abubaker Kaki unusually took the lead, presumably to eliminate the chance of being boxed. Instead, he was clipped from behind by Bram Som of the Netherlands. He clattered to the ground, Som came over the top of him and Poland's Marcel Lewandowski, unable to avoid the pair, came down as well.

This at least meant only two could qualify from the race, but the drama continued into the loaded dog of semi-final two as Ismail pulled out at the bell and Kiprop inexplicable stopped running at 600. Kamel, Borzakovskiy, Yego and Mulaudzi all got through from the race.

The third semi was tame by comparison, but still saw a dramatic change in the final few strides as David Rudisha lost form completely and was tipped out of second by Yeimer Lopez of Cuba.

Phew! The women's 1500 semis followed the men's 800 and saw the entire field in the second heat dawdle around and rely on a kick when they knew exactly what time they had to run. Chief casualty was Olympic champion Nancy Langat, who crashed literally, falling heavily to the track as she lunged through the finish line.

All this demonstrated one of my favourite sayings: "Never under-estimate the collective stupidity of a field of middle-distance runners.

Anyway, back to Samuels, who amply demonstrated the value of keeping cool, but also that triumph and disaster are two sides of the same coin.

The long rain delay meant she did not have any warm-up throws, and Samuels' first effort in the final wobbled out of her hand and outside the sector on the right scarcely more than 30 metres from where she stood.

It could have rocked her, but Samuels steadied and threw 59 metres in the second round. This still left her vulnerable to finishing outside the top eight until she improved to 62 in the third round. A 64-metre throw in the fourth _ the first of two personal bests _ put her into a medal, and a 65.44 in the fifth saw her vault into the gold medal position.

Cool, calm and collected the gold. What more can you say?


 

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.