WOULD-BE OLYMPIC MEDALLISTS 'REHEARSE' AHEAD ...

Would-be Olympic medallists ?Rehearse? ahead London 2012
Wednesday, 14 March 2012 00:00? By Ayo Ositelu

? As Heptathelete Ashton Eaton smashes world record

MAYOR Boris Johnson?s London, the quintessential international tourist city, over the course of the last weekend, gave abundant evidence that it was not only on its way to delivering an Olympic Games to remember, but also desirous of its athletes performing creditably well at the Summer Games, dubbed ?the greatest show on Earth? by anyone who knows anything about sport.????????????????????????? .

While sports officials of less-serious-minded countries are already busy preparing their usual trumped-up excuses for their much-predictable failure to win medals at the forth coming London Olympics, athletes from other countries or ?usual suspects? e.g. USA, Russia, Great Britain, Ethiopia, Kenya, Germany, France, Australia, Morocco, Jamaica, Ukraine, Croatia, Cote d? Ivoire, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Senegal, Ghana etc, whose countries? national anthems would be played as their national flags are simultaneously hoisted before the entire appreciative worldwide audience of more than two billion people, during medal victory ceremonies,? have been preparing themselves ever since the curtains were drawn on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Those athletes did not wait for the last three months or less, to launch a life-long bid to win medals at the world?s biggest sporting spectacle. The attentive world has seen athletes from these countries measuring the state of their preparedness in well-publicized competitions, like the annual IAAF-organised Golden League series held in different locations, the biennial IAAF World Athletics Championships (Outdoor and Indoor), in the case of Track and Field, among numerous sporting disciplines.?????????????? .

Of course, not all the athletes who hope to win medals in London were in Istanbul last weekend. The world?s 100 metres and 200 metres record holder and undisputed fastest human, Jamaica?s Usain Bolt was not there. Also absent were Jamaica?s official reigning world 100 metres champion, 21 year-old Johan Blake, serial 100 metres world record breaker Asafa Powell, also of Jamaica, and America?s fastest-ever Tyson Gaye were not there. The women?s dominating High Jumper Blanca Vlasic of Croatia, sat out this year?s World Indoor Championships, citing injury.???????????????? .

But just about everybody else was in Istanbul, to gauge their measured standard towards reaching their peak form, leading to the ?mother of all sporting competitions,? the Olympic Games, which is only four months away.???????????????????????????????????????????? .

If the performances at last weekend?s IAAF World Indoor Championships are anything to go by, then, London is the place to be in the Summer, just as it was the place to be last weekend in Istanbul.????????????????????? .

There are no surprises at the Olympics. Athletes simply go to the Games to confirm mostly what is already known. With all guns blazing, athletes give everything as if there is no tomorrow, and leave pieces of themselves in the Olympics venue.

USA?s Bob Beamon smashed the then world record to win the Gold medal at the 1968 Olympic Games Long Jump event by nearly two feet, jumping 29 feet 2 1/2 inches (or 8.92 metres), and never again went near 28 feet for the rest of his career. Beamon?s ?wonder jump? lasted 23 years until it was broken 23 years later, at the 1991 World Athletics (outdoor, of course) Championships in Tokyo, by American Mike Powell who leaped 8.95 metres. Incidentally, while Powell never jumped over 28 feet after his record jump in his second try, teammate Carl Lewis, generally acknowledged as the world?s greatest athlete of all time, registered the most stunning series of jumps in history in the same Long Jump competition, by leaping an average of 8.85 metres with his last jump of 8.93 falling just short of Powell?s world record jump.?????????????????????????????????????????????? .

Finding the limits of man. That is what the Olympics is all about. Whoever imagined that a human would cover the 100 metres in less than 9.60 seconds, when it had taken all of 36 years (between African American Bob Hayes? 100 metres gold in 10.00 seconds at the 1960 Rome Olympics, and Canadian Donovan Bailey?s 19.84 seconds in winning the same event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games) for the record to be lowered by a total of just sixteen hundredths of a second? It had taken a life time before Brit Roger Bannister in 1954 (now Sir) became the first long distance runner to break the four-minute barrier in the Mile event (now 1,500 metres). Just see how fast they are running the event these days.??????????????????????? .

If athletes continue to disobey science, as Great Britain?s multiple gold medallist Sebastian Coe was suggesting last week, who knows how fast sprinters would run the prestigious 100 metres this Summer in London????????????????? .

Who knows how high athletes would jump, or vault, how long they would throw, how fast a man or woman could serve in tennis, how hard basketballers could dunk, or how heavy a weight lifter can lift? I say London is the place to be next summer.???????????? .

However, many of the world?s best athletes succeeded in giving the world a sort of sneak preview of what to expect in the London Games.?????????????????????????? .

In arguably the most rigorous and most physically demanding Heptathlon event (it is Decathlon ? 10 event- at the Olympics) in Istanbul, American Ashton Eaton virtually obliterated the opposition while smashing the existing world record in the seven-event discipline by an unimaginable distance, just as Bob Beamon did back in 1968, and Usain Bolt is doing presently.???????????????? .

Having already won the event, even before the last event, the 800 metres, Ashton needed just a modest finish in the event to cement his sure gold. Instead, he ran his fastest 800 metres ever, winning the event and finishing tops overall with a stunning new world record of 6645 points. Ukraine?s O. Kasyanov was a distant second in 6071 points, and Russia?s A Lukyanenko won the bronze with 5969 points. Experts believe everybody else in the decathalon event in London will be fighting for the silver.??? .

In the women?s 60?s metres Hurdles, Australia?s Sally Pearson, no less a superstar than fellow compatriot Cathy Freeman of the 2000 Sydney Olympics ? fame, confirmed her status as arguably the greatest female hurdler-ever, when she cruised to win the 60 metres Hurdles with a world leading stunning time of 7.73 seconds. And in just her second try in the shorter distance sprint Hurdles event for that matter. Never close to hitting any of the six hurdles confronting her, Pearson showed obvious signs of the shape of things to come in London 2012. Great Britain?s Tiffany Porter won silver in 7.94 seconds, while bronze medal-winning Belarussian Alina Taylay returned 7.97 seconds.???? .

There was drama in the women?s Long Jump event, when American Brittney Reese, the reigning IAAF World Outdoors Championships queen left it late before coming up with the third longest jump in history to ?steal? the gold from? Great Britain?s Shara Proctor, whose earlier world-leading jump of 6.92 metres had led for much of the competition. On her last jump, Reese, whose jumping style reminds Athletics followers of the jumping style of Bob Beamon and Russia?s Robert Emmiyan, jumped 7.23 metres, a distance made even more remarkable by her taking off well before the jumping board, perhaps to make assurance of a legal jump doubly sure

Source: http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/generaltopics/?p=118578

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