Flashes of Panic

The “political half” of the press conference featured IAAF President Lamine Diack, JAF President Koji Sakurai, and IAAF General Secretary pro tem Pierre Weiss, who between them covered all three translation languages. (Diack apparently speaks both French and English, but prefers French.) The most interesting point I learned was that the 2010 Commonwealth Games will be in New Delhi, which means there’s been a dramatic shift in venue for major athletic championships towards Asia and the Indian Ocean rim: 2006 World Cross in Fukuoka and Commonwealth Games in Melbourne; 2007 World Championships in Osaka and World Cross in Mombasa, Kenya; 2008 Olympics in Beijing; 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. That’s a lot of big events not happening in Europe.

Diack fielded a question about the shift back to a one-day format for World Cross, with the questioner noting that it will also mean a return to teams of nine rather than six. The questioner noted that this is likely to strengthen the dominance of the “African teams” (though it would be better to be more specific and say “East African,” or even just “Kenya and Ethiopia,” since Nigeria and Senegal aren’t in any danger of medalling at World Cross,) and discourage the rest of the world from sending full teams. It’s an interesting point, in my opinion; on the other hand, it will also have the effect of temporarily undermining the “Kenyan B team,” Qatar, which will find it harder to put together a medal-winning team when six athletes rather than four are scored. So it might be easier for teams to steal a bronze behind the East Africans.

Diack, unsurprisingly, took the only realistic line of argument, which is that the rest of the world will need to raise its standards to those the East Africans set. (More on this later.) More pointedly, he observed that Germany did not send any teams to Fukuoka (they’ve sent one woman who will run the long-course race;) “That really shows that they’re giving up, and that’s something we need to fight,” he said. He did point out Japan as an example of a country making a greater effort to raise their standards.

Another observer pointed out to me that the very fact that it’s possible to win a short-course/long-course double highlights the failure of the two-race program to bring in (for example) the milers, who might hypothetically have enough speed to knock off a long-course trained athlete in the shorter race. Instead, both fields are weakened to the point that a truly superlative athlete can win both, and more than a few will race both.

When Diack was asked if he had seen the course, he noted that he had only arrived last night from Osaka and the IAAF Council meeting there, so he had not yet had a chance to see it. Weiss said he had seen it, and he thought it was “a fantastic course. Some of us may regret that this course is maybe too fast. It is very flat.”

The “athletes half” of the conference featured Kenenisa Bekele and Tirunesh Dibaba (thereby including all the senior defending champions,) Craig Mottram (who we’ve met here before,) and Kayoko Fukushi of Japan. Many of the quotes are already online, so I’ll just skip through again…

The photo on the website is oddly distorted, most likely because of Mottram’s height: he towered over the other three, not to mention Diack. He also brought to the table Ciara, daughter of his coach (Nick Bideau) and Sonia O’Sullivan.

Bekele accepted an Amharic translation of the first question, but he responded, in English, himself, with very little accent and a clear voice. He was only up for the one answer, relying on the translator for the rest of the press conference, but he unquestionably earned my admiration for that first attempt. Most of the East Africans, particularly the Kenyans whose English is sometimes so heavily accented I feel thick for not being able to understand them, speak barely above a whisper when talking to the media. Bekele was almost as direct and clear as Mottram, who when he travels probably fits into that category of men who get dates because he has a cute accent.

Bekele did acknowledge that he was spurred by the idea of winning the last short course, and acknowledged that Saturday’s race would be tougher than the long course on Sunday. Win either of them, though, and Bekele would have a win for each finger. Win both, and he’ll need a toe to count them. He spoke with utmost respect for his opponents, noting a few by name, and properly pointed out that while he would be a target for several countries, he might face his toughest opposition on his own team—Sileshi Sihine and Gebre Gebremariam got special note for giving Bekele a hard race in the past.

Yikes, I’m dozing off… good thing I passed on the “dinner with Lamine Diack,” or I’d be asleep in the soup about now.