Sex, Drugs, Hop and Pole

Before Marathon Fever struck Britain, some of the most famous sportswomen on the planet were athletes. Apart from a few plucky Brits, most seemed to hail from Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union and East Germany dominated, and I would watch the likes of Renate Stecher, then later sprinter/long-jumper Heike Drechsler, sprinter Marlies Gohr and javelin thrower Petra Felke reigning supreme in their dark blue vests. Marita Koch and the burly permed figure of Czechoslovakia’s Jarmila Kratochvilova enjoyed some fascinating tussles throughout the early Eighties, setting world records in the 400 metres and 800 metres, respectively, which have yet to be broken.

They were almost certainly achieved with the aid of steroids provided by national coaches, without the knowledge of the athletes themselves but, as we know, the so-called Western world cannot cast the first stone when it comes to allegations of cheating. From Marion Jones to Justin Gatlin, Linford Christie to Dwain Chambers, the rogues gallery is formidable, and they were just the ones who were caught and/or publicly identified.

At the time, I just lapped up the excitement of the sport. Nobody had ‘I am a cheat’ on their vest, so I just took the competition at face value. It wasn’t only on the track where the great contests took place. The field events tend to be used as fillers on TV, recorded throws and jumps being squeezed in between the ballyhoo of the better-known runners. However, occasionally they would provide as much, if not more drama than anything else I’ve witnessed in an athletics arena.

There were some tremendous battles with the javelin in the Eighties and Nineties, often involving Brits such as Tessa Sanderson, Fatima Whitbread and Steve Backley. I would enjoy watching the cameras follow the spear flying through the air and use my copious reserves of expertise (!) to guess how far it would go. Sadly for Backley it would never quite sail far enough.

Perhaps the most memorable field competitions were between the Russian pole vaulters Svetlana Feofanova and Yelena Isinbayeva in the 2000s. I forget whether it was in the 2004 or 2008 Olympics or a subsequent world championships but their duel to the finish was as electrifying as anything on the track. Thank goodness the BBC director stuck with it. The two women were at the time by far the best vaulters in the world, swapping world records consistently. I tended to support Feofanova, probably because she was the shorter and a fellow redhead. However, she appeared the moodier of the two and, when it mattered, tended to lose out to her great rival. For about five years, Isinbayeva ruled the roost and retired having set no fewer than 28 indoor or outdoor world records, and was one of those athletes who always demanded your attention.

While I often pledge my allegiance to the plucky also-rans or nearly-men and women, there is something special about watching undisputed masters of their event do their stuff. It’s true of many sports but probably athletics most of all. Before Isinbayeva, it was Sergey Bubka who was the Prince of the Pole (I made that one up); he was seemingly invincible for more than a decade, winning golds at each of the first six World champs either as part of the Soviet Union or Ukraine. His detractors criticised him for maximising his earnings by breaking world records a centimetre at a time, garnering WR bonuses at every event. He was one of the few field event stars to be true ‘box office’. Meet organisers may have needed to cough up extra cash but spectators and TV viewers like me would lap up the drama as he would plant the pole, leap and twist towards the bar. Would he dislodge it or clear once more? It was usually the latter. Sadly he seemed to suffer the curse of the five rings, taking only one Olympic crown, in 1988. However, his 35 world records are testament to his enduring supremacy.

Sprinters never seem to get on with each other. At least that’s how it comes across on screen. Maybe, as with boxers, it’s just showbiz hype, inventing hatred and aggression as a ruse to get the punters and, consequently, sponsors and broadcasters to splash the cash. Perhaps being a 100-metres runner is a more solitary experience, requiring mental strength to zone out of everyone else to focus. What I particularly like but watching field events is that competitors seem to generally like and support each other. Whether it’s big burly shot putters offering handshakes and hugs when someone produces a whopper, jumpers leading the audience handclaps for their opponents or those collective end-of event laps of honour by heptathletes or decathletes, there’s something life-affirming about sportsmen and women setting aside their intense rivalries to be decent human beings.

Javelin is one event where this always seems to happen. Even when the Czech thrower Jan Zelezny was taking the event to new heights – and lengths – the dozen men contesting championship or circuit finals seemed to get on, even when they all knew that, even when he seemed down and out, Zelezny was capable of producing something spectacular to grab victory. He wasn’t invincible in the manner of Moses or Bubka, but there was something inspirational in the way the mild-mannered Czech – tall but not disconcertingly muscular – went about his business so efficiently. Throughout the Nineties I willed Britain’s Steve Backley to go one better, even by a solitary centimetre, and claim that elusive global gold, but it never came. He did briefly hold the world record and regularly topped the podium in European and Commonwealth championships, but in the Worlds and Olympics it was usually Zelezny who emerged on top. 

Then there was Jonathan Edwards. He was British, fresh-faced and articulate, his event was one of my favourites - triple jump - and for several seasons he was one of the most thrilling athletes to watch. Though not as consistently dominant as those mentioned above, when he finally made his breakthrough at the age of 27, he made a difficult, very technical event look ridiculously simple. I shall never forget the World Championships in Gothenburg. In his first jump, he became the first man legally to break the 18 metres barrier. In the second, he went even further, to 18.29 metres. In each of his three sections Edwards looked absolutely perfect; he seemed to float over the runway, to defy gravity. In 2002 he held all four possible ‘major’ titles and retired the following year. Others have threatened his world record since but none have either surpassed it or come close to matching that free-flowing technique.