On Saturday, September 3rd Shannon, myself, and six friends all headed down to the central city of Daegu to attend the 13th annual IAAF Track and Field World Championship. Held every two years at
different locations around the world, this is arguably the biggest/most important event for track and field after the Olympic games.
Most of the group, Shannon, Jamie, Melissa, Julia, Josephine, Shelly (missing is Frank and Mark)
The entire event actually spanned the course of a nine day period, and they would typically hold both morning sessions and evening sessions. The morning sessions would generally be only qualifiers and heats, and the evening sessions were made up mostly of semi-final and final events. We had chosen the final weekend of the championship meaning that only evening sessions were being held, but all of the events were either semi-finals or finals. Being the end of the meet, we also got to witness some of the popular favorites (women's 4x400m, men’s 200m, men’s and women’s 4x100m).
The facility is really quite beautiful; it was built for the 2002 World Cup that was co-hosted by Japan and Korea and is one of the more interesting structures I’ve seen over here. That being said, the spot they chose for the construction is a mystery to me, as it was a good 15 kilometers outside of the city and fairly inconvenient to get to via the normal public transportation system. Luckily for us the city had organized free shuttle buses directly from the east Daegu train station, so it really wasn’t such a bad commute.
Day 8 (well, day 1 for us) - Saturday September 3rd
We arrived at the facility an hour or so before things got underway. On our way to our entrance, we ran into a volunteering group that were doing free face painting as a way to advertise their organization (brilliant!). A few of us took them up on their offer.
*Yes, Shannon’s flag really does have 50 stars - perhaps it was that face painter’s masterpiece?
We arrived at the facility an hour or so before things got underway. On our way to our entrance, we ran into a volunteering group that were doing free face painting as a way to advertise their organization (brilliant!). A few of us took them up on their offer.
*Yes, Shannon’s flag really does have 50 stars - perhaps it was that face painter’s masterpiece?
We sat in the A section, which meant we were fairly close to the track but on the opposite side of the finish line. While the picture of the stadium makes the place look really big, it really didn’t have that feel and I must say we had pretty decent seats for the price. Our view of the men’s javelin throw was really great, but it was sort of hard to give women’s high jump our full attention.
Women's high jump, to our right, on full zoom.
Great View of the screen and the mountains behind.
Julia and Melissa. More of the stadium
And there was a lot to see! There were two wheelchair races (800 and 400, men’s and women’s, respectively) that were I believe a first for a championship event. Following that we saw a young American (Matthew Centrowitz) take bronze in the 1500 (after a close finish with two Kenyans).
Centrowitz, Second from the right.
Perhaps the most impressive feat of the evening, though, was next in the 100m women’s hurdles. Sally Pearson (Australia) has really been shining in the event and she looked just liquid in this race. Her hurdling was so fluid, the hurdles might as well not have been there at all. She was seriously playing with the world record and did manage to set a championship record (CR, this is the best time ever run at the world championship event) which so has it was the fourth fastest time in the event: EVER. It was seriously a sight to see. The US did try to keep up and managed to take silver and bronze with personal best times (Danielle Carruthers and Dawn Harper, respectively), but they were outshone by Pearson.
Following that, the men’s 200m was nearly as exciting - we (and the world) finally got to see Usain Bolt in action after his unfortunate mishap in the 100 a week earlier. He performed much as expected (19.40), totally blowing away our US competitor, Walter Dix, by a third of a second (19.70) to leave us with silver.
Usain Bolt in the middle in yellow and Walter Dix to his right facing us.
This was really funny, Usain was literally playing with the paparazzi during his victory lap; at one point he took a photographers camera and took a picture of the photographer with it.
At some point in the evening we notice a guy wearing a USA coat sitting in front of us, and after a few double checks we realized that it was Bershawn Jackson, Olympic medalist in the 400m hurdles and co-gold medalist of the men’s 4x400m the day before. On our way out of the stadium we managed to strike up a conversation with him while he was waiting for his wife in the bathroom. He was really a nice guy and he explained what it is like to come to these events (they had been in Korea for a month prior to get ready and acclimated), how sponsorships work and some other business related things (apparently there is a huge monetary reward to the athletes for winning at an event). Anyways, we were chatting for a bit and he offered to show us his medal! After 30 seconds of taking pictures with it, he was MOBBED by other attendees, so we sort of let him go so he could be fawned over. I wish him the greatest of luck in his career!
Day 9 (Day 2 for us!)
Second day, woot! We got there a lot earlier this day and also met up with an additional friend at the track (he couldn’t manage to get a ticket for Saturday). Getting there earlier meant we could explore some of the attractions they had set up around the facilities.
In our wanderings we also stumbled across a Swedish film crew. They are currently making a film that is investigating the issue of doping (in all forms) in sports so they interviewed Shannon and I regarding our opinion. Personally having a strong negative opinion on doping it was kind of fun to talk to them about it (although I must say they were a little bit leading in their set up before the interview and with their questions, not that I needed to be lead). I hope it works out for them.
OK, then we finally made it into the stadium! Our seats for the second day weren’t as good, so we sort of just moved to the prime seats in front of the triple jump pit - best. decision. ever. We had perfect seats, and apparently the jumping teams (who had since finished with their events) from a bunch of different countries were hanging out all around us. Having been hooked on the championship events all week back in Seoul (we had been watching them pretty much each night), we recognized a handful of faces. Also the triple jump coaches were just crawling all over the place, hanging around the edge of the stadium to give advice to their athletes. At one point we looked back and saw a familiar face: Dwight Phillips, Olympic long jump gold medalist and four time Championship gold medalist (most recent one being only days before) sitting behind us 2 or 3 rows back. He seemed to be secretly enjoying his victorious performance with a concealed celebratory brew, so I bought him another and passed it up to him! And gosh darn it, I’m pretty sure he drank that beer!
Dwight Phillips
If you look closely, you can see the little electronic cars ferrying the javelins back and forth.
As mentioned before, right in front of us was the triple jump and we had two amazing jumpers from the US, Christian Taylor and Will Claye. Taylor was way behind the UK favorite, Phillips Idowu, up until his fourth jump when he absolutely flew, an astounding 17.96m to firmly clinch the lead for the rest of the contest, the fifth longest triple jump of all time. Will Claye couldn’t manage to follow suit though and had to settle for bronze behind the Brit. Again, we had amazing seats to see all of this!
The men’s 5000m saw us again battling with Britain for the top spot, but this time we were on the losing side to their star, Mohamed Farah, who narrowly beat our veteran distance man Bernard Lagat. Lagat had paced himself very well throughout most of the race which had fooled us into thinking he was out of the running as he stayed in the middle pack for quite a few laps. But he turned on the heat later on which made for a really spectacular finish against Farah.
While the next event, the women’s 800m, didn’t see an American placing, it was interesting nonetheless as it saw the performance of, up until very recently, a controversial South African athlete Caster Semenya, who was also expected to win the event. HOWEVER, she was “outkicked” on the final stretch by the Russian athlete Mariya Savinova to make it an upset victory. Very exciting race.
Caster Semeyna is the third one back.
To close the entire championship up, we saw some of the most anticipated events: the men’s and women’s 4x100m relays. The women were up first and it was a tight one, with Jamaica pushing themselves to a Jamaican national record time (41.70). Luckily for the US (Bianca Knight; Allyson Felix; Marshevet Myers; Carmelita Jeter), we were even more formidable that night, pushing it to another world leading time (41.56) to secure gold (the second in two days for Allyson Felix who was also a member of the winning 4x400m team).
Finally that brought us to the end, the men’s 4x100m. It turned out to be a disappointment for the US fans, as we had a collision at the hand off between the 3rd and 4th legs of the race, knocking us out. But Jamaica upped the ante over their women’s team counterparts, not only setting a Jamaican national record but also bumping up the world record as well (37.04). Anchored by none other than Usain Bolt, and setting the only world record of the entire championship, the crowd went wild after the feat.
Having seen all the events, we opted to skip out on the K-pop and final awards ceremony in an attempt to get home a little earlier. We managed to get onto one of the shuttles in good time and even managed to change to an earlier train back home. We were in bed by 1:00AM!
I really must say that this was my favorite sporting event that I’ve ever attended and it has served only to increase my desire to see the Olympic games. I highly recommend that if you find yourself near an Athletics championship in the future that you try and budget it in, as it was really, really worth it.
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