How a global world championships can take over your life.
Runners always relish challenges! In a world where ever quicker communications make the world seem smaller, and news from anywhere almost instantaneous, the recent World Athletics Championships in Oregon offered a few. of them.
The army of journalists despatched to Eugene, have written more than enough of the facts, figures and medal tallies of these games, not to mention the glorious victories and heartbreaking failures that broke the dreams of many.
Eugene is on the west coast of the USA, 8 hours behind the UK. If you are a bone fide track and field geek who loves watching how a major championship unfolds and also loves the whole spectacle of live competition, the big dilemma was how can you enjoy watching the action, without knowing what had already happened!
Two options
You were left with two main options although there is a third which I will come to later.
Option one, after absorbing the whole schedule, was deciding which were the stellar events worth setting a 2am or 3am alarm for, so you could indeed see the events live on the BBC stream or the red button option when available. Other you tube streams were also available. The down side of this was that if you were trying to hold down a day job or trying to maintain your regular life routine, there would be obvious compromises in terms of possible performance and output, not to mention attention to detail and good timekeeping:-)
Option two was to keep normal sleep hours, and on waking use all your will power to resist listening to radio or TV reports, or checking any of your social media feeds, for fear of seeing even a sliver of a headline or post offering a clue to the results of what had happened over night in the small hours.
The Oregon World Championships scheduling
The morning sessions from Oregon weren’t an issue. These were scheduled to happen during Western European evenings so all was well there. The Oregon evening sessions, which corresponded to between 1 am and 4 am UK time every day, were what needed some lifestyle adaptation.
If that sounds rather sad, I will argue that the young child, who is always lurking below the surface in our sub conscious, absolutely loves playing this insane game of wanting to have the thrill of watching “as live” without knowing the result.
The what shall I watch over breakfast decision
If you didn’t get up to watch the live action, early morning is then spent, knowing what events had happened overnight, of deciding things like, do I just playback that key, must watch, final over breakfast before embarking on the days duties and see the rest tonight?
Or get up early to watch as much as you could before work using the fast forward feature and the timetable you had in AW or had downloaded from the web. Those key timetables being crucial to estimate times and to know just how much to fast scroll forward, so you didn’t overrun and sadly see the victory lap or the medal ceremony which were an absolute giveaway to the podium places before you had watched the race 🙁
Can you ever catch up seeing everything ?
One always had to bear in mind the jeopardy involved ,if you hadn’t seen all the heats form an overnight session ,before watching a UK evening session , that is a morning session in the US by the way. You might well be told or subtly figure out the result of the morning or evening heats, that had now been usurped by the later heat or semi-final you were now watching live a few hours later !!
Seasoned serial championship followers will know the serious planning and dedication needed to achieve this lofty goal.
Memories of similar global champs on the other sides of the world like the Olympics in LA 1984; Seoul 1988 and Sydney 2000 all came flooding back. Similar disrupted weeks of one’s life and the grand efforts of former medalists were dragged up from deep in your memory banks. Duals between Coe and Cram in LA; Gebrisalassie and Tergat from Sydney; Johnson and Lewis in Seoul; were revisited and sometimes you tube clips searched for!
Personal Highlights from the Oregon World Championships
As I mentioned previously , the results have all been well documented and In a championship of many highlights its hard to pick a few personal favourites but these stood out for me
- Laura Muir finally getting a world championship medal.
- The pre race excitement of the Josh, Jacob and Jake show culminating in that epic 1500m metre final.
- This almost turned into the Jake and Geoff show, with Jake Wightmans’s dad Geoff at one point almost overshadowing Jake’s momentous race on the track, with Kath Merry’s social media post of his “That’s my son” commentary.
- The sight of quiet unassuming American 400m hurdler Sydney McLaughlin sat on the track trying to process that she had just taken the world record in her event to another level completely.
- Matt Hudson Smith after what seemed like years of near misses finally getting the stars to align and achieving that individual global medal many knew he was capable of.
- A hurdles semi-final delivering a stunning world and several national record times that had both learned commentators and armchair pundits questioning if the timing system had a fault.
- Mondo just being Mondo and taking things to new heights (sorry for that bad pun) giving us the second world record of that last evening session.
- Keely Hodgkinson against Aithing Mu in that much hyped showdown that totally lived up to expectations giving one of the closest races of the championship in an enthralling mere 2 minutes of running.
If I did have a personal favourite it had to be THAT 1500metre final. Jake had given almost a throw away remark when being interviewed after winning the British Championships to secure his selection. In wrapping up the interview , he had been wished the usual “Good luck in Oregon when you get there.” His replicas ” Thankyou , we just have to figure out how to beat Ingebritsen now!”
Team Wightman had obviously given this a lot of thought since Tokyo and the result was a masterclass of tactical race execution. “Carpe Deum” is, I believe the much used phrase by many sports enthusiasts at all levels. If there was a moment to be seized at a given point in your life, it may as well be with 200 metres to go in a World Championship final to claim the gold medal.
The Third Option
The third option I alluded to earlier of how to see the events as live was one taken up by my two daughters Shymala and Dhavala. It is the most sensible, although comes at a cost. You actually arrange a trip to the World Championships in Oregon themselves. Encouraged by old friends in America, they took time out to enjoy a west coast road trip adventure. This took in 5 days in Oregon with tickets to the championships, not to mention daily morning excursions on the wonderful running routes around the city including the famous “Pre trails”.
Their scheduling sadly dictated they arrived in Oregon on the evening of THAT 1500m final but they still enjoyed a veritable feast of track and filed including getting to hi five Matt Hudson-Smith after his bronze medal winning effort in the 400 metres.
An overall highlight of the Oregon World Championships
if there was an encompassing highlight, it was as usual behind all the headlines, and records how a global athletics family, post pandemic, was able to come together again. Comments were made it is true about the small crowds at some sessions. However with the crowds being non existent in Tokyo a year ago due to pandemic restrictions it must have been great for the athletes to have the buzz of a crowd behind them.
It was also great to witness excellence in performance and high-level competition, not just from the aknowledged stars of the sport. Seeing the dreams of other athletes just experiencing the thrill of reaching a global championships, and even setting a PB or national record, even if eliminated in a heat. So many athletes, coaches, training squads and clubs, families and friends will all have had their own life defining moments.
Most runners in Edinburgh have their own Jake story
For Scottish, and in particular Edinburgh runners, myself included, many will have memories of Jake and Josh and other current Scottish distance stars, running through the junior ranks as they set out on their own “running journeys” with dreams of reaching the top. Then following their careers as seniors and how they perservered to reach the top, to now be regular finalists and medallists at major championships. Not everyone makes it of course for different reasons. Amongst other things you need perseverance, dedication, a good team around you and a little luck to seize opportunities as they arise.
If you haven’t read it yet Chris Creegan’s blog on Jake and others, through his memories of competing in the same cross country event in Lanark on a cold, blowy and wet November day, is well worth a read. HERE
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