A Universiade Experience: A Column Len Johnson

Once, the overlap between the Olympic Games and the Universiade (to give the WUG the title they officially adopted in Turin in 1959) was significant.

More recently, the pincer forces of growing professionalism (from the western side) and the break-up of state-supported sport (from all sides, but chiefly the eastern) have reduced the World University Games to the status of a second-tier competition. In athletics, many good athletes compete, but the best rarely do.

Not to denigrate second-tier competitions, mind you. Most of us actually love them. There’s a strong, and growing stronger, tendency these days to dismiss all but the peak championships as irrelevant, second-best, whatever.

Usually this is done with more than a hint of self-justification and especially practiced in the main-stream media. If it’s not the Olympics or world championships – or Commonwealth Games, in Australian sports culture – you can justify ignoring it. Even Diamond League meetings are broken down into those which have Usain Bolt (in which case he cannot be ignored, and will always be the lead), and those that do not, and are just track and field meetings.

Thoughts on world university sport are uppermost in my mind at the moment because I am in China working for the news service at the Shenzhen 2011 Universiade. Ironically, my main role is to cover swimming, but I’ll have one eye on the athletics.

Back in the day, the World University Games were mighty significant. In some shape or form, they go back to 1923; in their current guise, to Turin in 1959. University sport was also the power-base for the late Primo Nebiolo who became president of the IAAF and, whatever criticisms were levelled at him, oversaw great steps forward such as the establishment of the world championships in 1983.

 The 1959 Turin Universiade marked the unification of post-war university sport. In the immediate post-war era, reflecting the Cold War politics of the time, the western and eastern blocs staged their own versions of world university competition.

Being university sport, there was a fair bit of overlap. Shirley Strickland set a world record in the 100 metres of 11.3 seconds at the 1955 World Youth Festival (the eastern bloc version) in Warsaw. In Bucharest two years before that, Dave Stephens met Emil Zatopek, the great Czech runner becoming something of a coach-mentor to ‘the Flying Milko’.

A strange combination, but it worked. Stephens broke Zatopek’s world record for six miles in Melbourne at the start of 1956. He was not at his best, unfortunately, when the Melbourne Games rolled around at the end of the year.

Through to the last 10-15 years, many of the world’s top athletes were supported through the university systems of their countries. In the US, the NCAA was the home of the elite, as there was no commercial sponsorship and no club system for the post-college athlete. In other countries, east and west, the universities sustained the talent, too.

 Thus, in 1977, Cuba’s great Alberto Juantorena set his second world record at 800 metres in the Sofia Universiade. His 1:43.44 stood until a certain Sebastian Coe ran 1:42.33 in Oslo two years later.

The next Universiade was celebrated in the high altitude of Mexico City, and celebrated was the right world for Italy’s Pietro Mennea.

Mennea, who would become the 1980 Olympic champion, ran 19.72, a mark which defied Carl Lewis and all-comers until Michael Johnson ran 19.66 at the US Olympic Trials in Atlanta in 1996.

In Kobe, Japan in 1985, Igor Paklin of the then USSR set a world record 2.41 in the high jump.

Even as it went into gradual decline, the Universiade continued to introduce great champions. Said Aouita made his initial mark winning the 1500 metres at the 1981 edition. Ten years later, a young Korean named Hwang Young-cho won the marathon at the Sheffield edition of the Universiade. A year after that, Hwang won a memorable battle up Montjuic with Japan’s Koichi Morishita to become the Barcelona 1992 Olympic marathon champion.

In 1999, Bernard Lagat won the 1500 metres; in 2001, a young Chinese named Liu Xiang won the 110 metres hurdles. Like Hwang, he soon graduated to Olympic champion.

An Australian also graduated quickly from university to Olympic champion. In 1967, Ralph Doubell joined a team of Australians travelling to the Tokyo Universiade. He won the 800, beating Europe’s best, Franz-Josef Kemper of Germany, in 1:46.7.

The following year, Doubell triumphed at the Mexico City Olympics, taking the gold medal in a world record equalling 1:44.3, a time which still remains the Australian record.

Other Australian champions over the years have included Sean Creighton (steeple) and Alison Inverarity (high jump) at Sheffield in 1991, Emma George (pole vault) in Sicily in 1997, Jane Jamieson (heptathlon) in Beijing in 2001, Eloise Poppett (now Wellings, 5000) in Daegu in 2003, and Sean Wroe (400) and Robbie Crowther (long jump) in Bangkok in 2007.

Australia had its best result ever at the most recent Universiade, in Belgrade in 2009, winning four gold medals – Tristan Thomas (400 hurdles), Madeleine Pape (800), Danni Samuels (discus) and the men’s 4x400 – to place second on the medals table behind Russia.

Through it all, it is refreshing to hear a story suggesting world university sport retains some links to its Corinthian roots. Over breakfast in Shenzhen this week I was told that a competitor just turned up with his kayak at the most recent world university flatwater canoeing championship, asking to compete.

He was accepted, too. I don’t know how he went, but I hope the story is true: it sure ought to be.