You knew she would mow down the Brit but to get up and win is ridiculous.
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3.27.08 for the Irish girls so no NR but still a savage achievement.
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It was her that fell at end of mixed wasn’t it? You’d have to be happy for her there.
8th in the world. Minus your world class operator at this distance is great going.
Yep it was. The night of the Dutch sniper
Top class from their male colleagues as well in the celebrations.
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T’was her alright.
Sport can have the best redemption stories’ sometimes.
Brilliant week of track and field, definitely going to try and head over to Paris for a couple of days next year it’s top class all around.
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The lack of inter county GAA really gives the Athletics a spotlight the last 2 years
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Split season
There was a mate of mine, who’d be fairly involved in the athletics who was at the World Championships in Gothenburg in 1995. The javelin final was on the Sunday. The stadium was full of Finns for the javelin. The 3 Finns were all eliminated after 3 throws. He was saying the stadium literally emptied even though there was some huge track finals still left including the men’s 1,500.
They love their javelin in Finland.
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I’m deeply suspicious of any Dutch athlete, any US or Jamaican sprinter, any Scandinavian middle distance runner and anyone on the springbok panel.
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I see the Brits ditched Uhourugu from the relay team. Dodgy like her sister.
It’s their national sport
The dodgy sister coached the lad who got silver in the 400m. He didn’t seem to be on the relay team.
Just to put Adeleke’s talent in perspective, her Irish NR is faster than the GB one set by Olympic champion drug cheat Ohourugu
I’d add any GB sprinters to that list. You couldn’t trust any Dutch sportsperson since Eric de Bruin
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Cathal Dennehy: Amusan can’t hurdle the hard questions forever
Athletes like Tobi Amusan make it increasingly difficult for serious journalists to cover their sport
Cathal Dennehy
August 27 2023 02:30 AM
‘Do I look like I’m angry?” asks Tobi Amusan, looking increasingly angry. It’s Tuesday night in Budapest, midway through the World Championships, and the fastest female hurdler in history is narrowing her gaze, leaning forward, making sure she hears the question as it’s repeated.
“The fact there was a charge,” I say. “How do you feel about that now? Do you carry some anger about that?”
“What anger?” she says. “If I don’t look like the question you just asked, then there’s no point for it.”
In steps Robert Johnson of LetsRun.com, one of the few outlets in athletics with objective coverage: “Well, some people will think, even though you were cleared, there had to be something there.”
Amusan stares at him. “Are you some people?”
“No, but there are people out there …”
Amusan cuts him off. “You can’t speak for people then,” she says, walking away. Seconds later, she stops for a cluster of Nigerian journalists, one of whom calls her “our Tobi express”, asking what message she has for fans.
“Just on the point of your fans,” I add when she’s finished, “I guess a lot of them are wondering what led to the charge. Would you be able to clarify the reasons behind that?”
Her smile turns to stone. “I’m talking about my fans here, you’re talking about charges. What charges?”
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“I’m asking [about] the charge, about the whereabouts violations, because a lot of your fans and a lot of the athletics public …”
She leans in, studying my accreditation. “Mr Cathal, I am done answering your questions. You ask the same questions like five times now.”
But that’s not true. “That’s the first time I asked that question.”
She stares back, unimpressed. “Thank you,” she says, shaking her head.
A few hours earlier, the heads of the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), which runs the sport’s anti-doping programme, sat in a room close to where Amusan was speaking and explained how, in the coming weeks, they’ll order a review of the decision that saw the world record holder cleared of charges that she’d committed three anti-doping whereabouts violations — essentially not making herself available for drug tests — in a 12-month period. They will then decide whether to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“We have some concern it might set a precedent which will be difficult for future cases,” said its chair, David Howman. “We will ask [the World Anti-Doping Agency] what they’re going to do about it. We’re concerned at the impact the decision will take.”
The fine details of her case have yet to emerge, but they will soon. Amusan, who transformed herself from a very good athlete to an all-time great last year, smashing the world record with 12.12 in Oregon, certainly wasn’t keen to discuss them. Not here. Not now. Maybe not ever. The 26-year-old is a national hero in Nigeria, and after the video went online of our exchange, it wasn’t long before Twitter carried a river of revulsion.
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“You will get what you are looking for. Just wait.”
“You are pathetic human and deserves everything bad come your way.”
“Useless piece of shit. I wish her manager was there to smack the taste into your tasteless sewage of a mouth.”
“You worthless slime.”
“You low life degenerate journalist”
“F**king idiot”
“He is a pure racist.”
“The Irish potato.”
This, of course, was expected. It’s not like the Irish public had a better response, back in 1996, when US swimmer Janet Evans cast doubt on Michelle Smith at the Atlanta Olympics. But what you don’t expect, in this sport with its poisoned history, is the backlash from colleagues.
A British reporter, Lillian Okolie, retweeted the clip, writing: “This is disgusting. What is actually wrong with you lot?” She claimed the questions were “STUPID & RUDE”, adding: “This is what I was saying about White Media.” She had done an interview of her own with Amusan, which she closed by saying: “God’s got you, and you know I’m rooting for you.”
A Nigerian journalist, Christopher Maduewesi, wrote: “Get off your high horse. You are not relevant!” He later added: “You carried your rac!st agenda into the mixed zone to try and mess with her mind.”
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Maduewesi was probably unaware that at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, I put similar questions to Craig Engels following the four-year ban handed to his coach, Alberto Salazar, and at the Chicago Marathon in 2017, I spent 15 minutes asking Galen Rupp in a one-to-one interview about the accusations against him and Salazar.
But when all you have is a fanboy hammer, every sceptic starts to look like a nail.
On Thursday night, shortly after the hurdles final, Amusan is back in the mixed zone, smiling and joking with the horde of friendly fans who secured media accreditation. The love-in is interrupted by Jonathan Gault of LetsRun, who witnessed the exchange two days earlier and who has decided the question needs to be put to Amusan again.
“Through this whole AIU process, you’ve maintained your innocence. I’m just wondering: why did they charge you in the first place?”
Amusan is not amused. “Why you always wondering when there’s a good interview going on?”
“Because I don’t get the chance to ask these questions otherwise,” says Gault.
“I’m sorry I can’t answer your question,” says Amusan, before looking away.
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Monday night, the press conference for the women’s 100m final. Sha’Carri Richardson, a 23-year-old from Texas with a spiky personality and an undoubted star quality, has just won gold in 10.65 seconds, making her the fifth-fastest woman in history alongside Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson and disgraced drug cheat Marion Jones.
Richardson is coached by Dennis Mitchell, a former sprinter who was banned for two years due to unusually high testosterone levels, which he claimed was due to drinking five beers and having sex with his wife four times. “It was her birthday,” he said. “The lady deserved a treat.”
Mitchell later testified that Trevor Graham — former coach to Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin — had injected him with human growth hormone. After hanging up his spikes, Mitchell moved into coaching and in 2017, the year he guided Gatlin to the world 100m title, he told an undercover reporter he could get him steroids.
During the press conference with Richardson, a reporter from the US got the mic. “I want to be able to speak some life into you. I just want you to know I’m so proud of you. I’m just so proud of the way you have handled yourself, the way you have grown over the years from LSU to now to be able to come out with a World Championship medal. For everybody who doubted you, on social media, because I know it can get real ruthless, for all your competition that didn’t believe in you, for the moments you probably didn’t believe in yourself, I’m just glad you came out here and did what you are destined to do because, girl, I truly believe you are anointed by God because you have been through so much, but here you go, on top, and it is your time and I’m so happy for you.”
And breathe. She went on to ask Richardson how she plans to transcend the sport.
Athletics is changing, that much is clear. So is journalism. The fans with typewriters that David Walsh alluded to during Lance Armstrong’s era are now, by and large, fans with smartphones, showering athletes with love when they step off the track, avoiding any question that might irk them. The result is athletes grow so used to praise that a minor meltdown occurs if they face basic questioning.
On Friday night, Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson ran the second quickest female time in history for 200m, her 21.41 behind only Florence Griffith-Joyner’s world record of 21.34. Given the widespread allegations of doping against Flo-Jo — among them from a former training partner — a reporter asked Jackson: “As old journalists, we know that women’s world records from the '90s, '80s, can’t really be trusted. Don’t you just feel that you are the world record holder?”
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Jackson was asked something similar after winning the world title last year, which she said was “rude”, but this time she was more diplomatic. “I am not one of those athletes that questions anybody’s world record. If a person hasn’t failed a test, I cannot comment on any world record. It is the world record.”
Flo-Jo, who died in her sleep at the age of 38, was joint-coached to that 200m record by Bobby Kersee, who also coached her in her time at UCLA. In 1989, a Canadian inquiry into doping in sport, initiated after the Ben Johnson scandal at the Seoul Olympics, saw Angela Bailey claim that she left Kersee’s group because he was unable to coach athletes who did not use drugs.
These days, Kersee has two of the biggest stars of the sport under his guidance: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who withdrew from these championships with a knee injury, and Athing Mu, who will square off with Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson in tonight’s 800m final.
The way things are in the mixed zone, no one will bring up the past. Best to just live in the moment, and churn out that sweet, sweet content.
Best to enjoy the show.
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Thanks
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And any Kenyan, I forgot to add.
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