Flashes of Panic

I’ve had several people ask what event I’m going to Stuttgart for. (Not “Why?” because the obvious answer is, “Because there’s paying work there.”) With the World Championships last week, and the Golden League $1 million won last Sunday, what’s left?

It’s a little-known feature of the World Athletics Tour (an umbrella name for all IAAF-standard professional track meets, what might more colloquially called “the circuit,”) that event placers win points in their event. The points on offer at each meet vary according to the meet’s standing in the Tour; the six Golden League events earn the most (and I’m not so young that I don’t remember when there was only the Golden Four,) and the point value of a win decreases through Super GP and GP meets, with the lowest being “permit meetings” like the Adidas Grand Prix in Carson, California.

The point of these points, so to speak, is to have a sort of season-ending “playoff” between the top point-getters: The World Athletics Final. The top X athletes in each event (seven or eleven depending on the event, with an eighth or twelfth spot filled by special IAAF invitation) face off in a straight final to end the season.

That’s the idea, at least; as Steve Cram points out, between the Golden League and the World Championships, it’s pretty easy to have “championship fatigue” by now, and the fields are seldom quite as miraculous as one would hope. There was an old system in which prize money was awarded for the places in the WAT point standings, and the winners simply had to show up at the WAF (or similarly-named event; sometimes the WAF was simply part of ISTAF-Berlin, the last Golden League meet) to claim the loot. (The Golden League jackpot winners have to compete at the WAF to collect, as well.)

Cram only hints at another aspect of the WAF, which is the real fatigue of the athletes. Nearly all the Americans I follow have already burned out and caught flights home, even though many are on the bubble for selection to the WAF and almost certainly could run if ready. Matt Tegenkamp, for example, is ranked 11th in the 3,000m, but he’s already called an end to his season.

That said, some athletes—Susanna Kallur comes to mind—are just beginning to approach a peak. There’s likely to be a few interesting races; they just might not be quite the titanic clashes this meet was conceived for.

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