2023 World Athletics Championships (Budapest)

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Montag up with the leading pack in this walk.

Am enjoying Jane Saville's commentary too - very informative and engaging for an event which many find boring.
 

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Too much to do, too much sport to watch and too little sleep over the weekend.

Stayed up after the morning session of day 1 finished which about 11.30pm after the rain delay and watched thru the evening session, dozing off for a few minutes here and there and paid for it yesterday by being a zombie all day, so didn't post anything.

But the two track finals of day 1 were amazing finishes. The Dutch threw away 2 medals maybe 2 golds with Hassan falling over with 20m to go trying to hold off Tsegay and Bol in the mixed relay with 10m to go trying to hold off Holmes of USA team. Relays always seem to provide great drama.

I enjoyed the shot put. There are some big units there, not quiet as athletic as the hammer throwers. Ryan Crouser is a 6 foot 7 inch beast. He's now back to back world champ to go with his back to Olympic champ. Which is a first as others have been back to back champs in either competition but not both.

Dan O'Brien said he was squat lifting 750lbs, but I think he meant 570lbs. I found a video of him training and squatting 230kgs = 506lbs in early 2022 getting ready for 2022 IUATF Indoor Championships. Kiwi throwers went close to medals, Tom Walsh who has won gold and silver at WCs finished 4th and its amazing to think the Kiwis had no pedigree in either male of female shot putting until Valerie Villi/Adams came onto the scene in 2005 with a silver medal and not only inspired the women, but also the men. I met Valerie and had a 10-15 minute chat in 2007 during a Telstra grand prix series, or whatever it was called back then, at the Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre when she was Commonwealth champ and a few months later became world champ in Osaka.

The Aussies, the flying mullet ran well in his heat, 1500m guys were disappointing in their heats and Matt Denny nicely qualified for the final as expected.

Day 2 started well with Jemima Montag taking silver in 20km walk after finishing top 8 at a few global events. Then got a bit of a shock when i found out Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone had pulled out of the WCs when the 400m heats were on. Good to see Wayde Van Niekerk running well again.

Missed the 400m hurdles heats, but saw the results that Warholm had a cruisy time. Not expecting another Tokyo race but Dos Santos and Benjamin did good times, the fastest and 4th times respectively. 100m women's heats no surprises, USA and Jamaicans dominated with a few others in there. Ta Lou was slow by her standards, she usually likes to set the fastest heat time. The Oz 100m sprinters Lewis and Masters just weren't in the same class to get close to qualifying. I think I like that when runners get a yellow/red card for breaking, can still run under protest just in case they win their appeal.

Brandon Starc left it to his last jump to qualify as 1 of 13 who cleared 2.28 to go into the final. Nobody cleared the auto qualifier of 2.30. Joel Baden struggled and only jumped 2.14.

Thankfully Day 2 evening session started at midnight SA time not 2.30am so wasn't going to be a late one. Noah Lyles dominated the semi and final of the 100m. He talks a big game but he delivered. I thought Jamaican Seville would get a medal. He looked very smooth in his first two runs. Kenyan Omanlaya who made the final on 2nd of fastest qualifying times is built like Ben Johnson was in his prime. Is a ball of muscle. Chris Coleman was disappointing in the final I though to only run 9.92. Browing ran a 10.11 in both his heat and SF, which means he was ranked 14th for the event. Biggest disappointment was defending champ Fred Kerley who didn't make final and ended the event ranked 9th with a 10.02.

The women's 1500m SF had mixed results. Jessica Hull ran very well, almost did a PB and was 6th in the fastest of the two SFs. The first 3 will win the medals Faith Kipeyon should win but Ethiopian Welteji and Siffan Hassan will push her. Maybe just maybe Hassan can can beat Kipeyon.

The men's 1500m SF was a chance for Ingebrigtsen to do a bit of showboating.Loved him 90m out waving to the crowd to fire up and cheer more. Bit sad to see Timothy Cheruiyot miss out, but another Cheruiyot got into the final. No idea if they are related.

Loved the hammer throw final - more big boofy blokes screaming and throwing. Don't think anyone picked Canadian Katzberg to win, especially him. The fact a Hungarian was a chance to medal and eventually Halas win bronze fired up the stadium for a good vibe.

The 800m final event in the heptahlon was great to watch mainly because for the first time I can remember seeing they had the provisional points showing, and changing on the screen, so you could what was happening, as 2nd placed American Anna Hall started with a 5 second pb better than 1st placed Brit Katrina Johnson-Thompson, was 43 pts behind KTJ and shot out in front by about 40m and her pts flipped up to first and for about 500m the points counter kept changing and in the end KJT had to do a near 2 second PB to win the title. The time difference was 1.54 seconds which meant Hall only clawed back 23 pts and finished 2nd by 20 pts.

I like watching Joshua Cheptegei crusie around a 500m and 10000m race and the Ugandan usually keeps the Kenyans and Ethopians at bay. Did it again last night and won his 3rd 10000m title.

Great there was no morning session today and I can get some sleep and get up at 2.00am to watch plenty of sprint semi finals and finals and a couple of field events.

Go Matt Denny. Make up that beer can distance difference you missed out on a bronze in Tokyo.
 
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My body clock is totally rooted. Only 9pm but I am about to fall unconscious. Then (hopefully) wake up after 2am to watch Day 3 live. Will probably sleep half the day like I did today.... I think... can hardly remember.
 

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So many highlights from evening 3. Richardson wow, what a run and what a beautiful style. Magnificent.

Holloway is a total beast, he is just perfect.

Warholm looks too good in the 400m hurdles, womens 400m seems a bit flat without McLaughlin. Bol looked a class above as expected.

Also, how good is the overhead drone shot? I love it.
 

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Last night's sprinting was drama packed.

The women's 100m Richardson got a poor start in the 100m SF but was always going to make the final with a 3rd placed 10.84 SF time.

What was strange was she that she got lane 9. Now I know the 2nd non auto qualifier there was a dead heat down to the 1/100th of a second and normally they only use lanes 2 to 9, here they had to use lane 1, but her SF time was the 3rd fastest as her SF was the fastest by a long way of the 3 and she went into the meet as the 4th ranked runner and had the 2nd fastest time of the year, but they stuck her out in lane 9.

I don't understand why, but I think it gave her a big advantage in that Jackson and Fraser-Price couldn't see her. If she ran a 10.65 from lane 3 they might not have caught her but they would have seen her and the margin might not have been 0.07sec.

The rules were changed in the lead up to this WCs a few weeks ago, to be based on positions in SFs not times, but this doesn't make sense to me.

The other thing to note was that World Feed caller Rob Walker didn't even mention Sha'Carri Richardson until about 10m after the finish line. From about 60m mark I was saying Richardson, Richardson and all I hear was Jackson, Jackson.

Reminds me of the famous 1991 men's 100m in Tokyo WC when Carl Lewis got a poor start and the famous BBC sports and athletics commentator David Coleman, didn't even mention Lewis' name until well after the finish line and thought Burell had won.

Bruce at about 50m said I don't think Carl can win with hear but pick up at 80m that Lewis was surging and got him winning.

And a good caller makes all the difference to the excitement of sprint races.

Australia has lucked out that so many of our good athletics broadcast callers, have started off calling horse/dogs racing so are use to talking fast and describing lots of runners. Other English speaking broadcasters tend to only call the bleeding obvious and can only get out the names of 2 or 3 of the runners.

I remember as a kid, Channel 7 had the accurate one, Bill Collins call the athletics at Montreal in 1976 and again 4 years later in Moscow. I am pretty sure he called the first WCs in Helsinki in 1983, but can find anything confirming that. 7 used him to call athletics in Melbourne in 1956 when he was 28 and had established himself over the previous 2 or 3 years calling the horses. Bill was Bruce's inspiration, he wanted to be a horse race caller like Bill.

Adelaide people will know him, as will keen watchers of Adelaide and SA horse racing, but another race caller - Terry McAuliffe was used by ch 9 in their athletics coverage of 1990 Comm Games in Auckland and 2006 in Melbourne. He also regularly is the ground announcer at the SA Athletics Centre just out of the Adelaide CBD.

I thought 9 would use him in London in 2012, but they used Peter Donegan who started his career calling greyhounds for a decade, then did same horse race calling, as well as call so many sports including the Stawell Gift weekend on Ch 10 for many years. He called so many sports at the 2008 Olympics for 7, and did a good job, I started a thread on Olympics titled something like Peter Donegan - A Greater Allrounder than Garry Sobers?

I thought I would miss Bruce in London but Donegan was so good, that I didn't. Got the shock of my life watching 2018 Winter Olympics and there was Donegan not calling the speed skating and short track skating for 7, but for the English language IOC world feed. He got the job again 4 years later in Beijing 2022, and I'm pretty sure at Tokyo he got some IOC feed gig, think swimming, but I'm not sure.

George Grljusich called athletics on ABC for 2 or 3 Olympics, as well as equestrian and boxing for 3 or 4 in the 1990's 2000's and he was a regular trots caller in Perth as well as called 39 sports all up in his career. George won some award for his 1988 call of Johnson v Lewis 100m in Seoul. David Morrow did a few Olympics with ABC and he had a background of calling greyhounds and horse racing in his early career in country NSW. He called a couple of Olympics with Tim Lane before Tim went to Channel 10 and continued on after that. I don't think Tim has a horse racing back ground, but I rate him highly calling athletics.

For those who don't know Leigh Diffy, who used to call the car and motor cycle racing on Ch 10, decided to go to USA about 20 years ago and become a NASCAR caller. He used to come back to Oz and call for 10 here but stopped that about 10 years ago, moved there permanently when he got a gig at NBC covering NASCAR as well as Formula 1 and a lot of other car and motorcycle racing stuff. In 2014 he went to the Winter Olympics with NBC, called the Luge, Skelton and Bobsleigh and over next few Olympics he did a lot of the minor sports for NBC - a lot like Peter Donegan did with 7.

In 2021 NBC made him their athletics commentator and he called the US Olympic trials, call at Tokyo, last year in Eugene and is in Budapest calling for NBC. The yanks love him as a caller and he gets high praise regularly from fans and the media industry.

Compare the two calls. Took me a long time to find Leigh Diffey's call as the NBC Sports video is Geo Blocked but Richardson's Alma mater LSU athletics program, put up the video. First Rob Walker then Leigh Diffey. Oh and Hannah England becomes very annoying after more than 15 minutes of listening to her.

Yep I'm bored - can't go to sleep and athletics start in an hour.









Found the 100m call from Tokyo 1991 WC. Compare the pair indeed.


First BBC's David Coleman call






Bruce's call of the actual race starts at 3.00.

 
Pissed off we didn't get to see any of Matt Deny's throws on 3rd night. The guy delivers on the big stage but can't just quite win that global medal. He knocked off Benn Harradine's 10 year old national record of 68.20m last night.



2019 World Championships Doha, Qatar 6th Discus throw 65.43 m PB misses bronze by 1.39m
2021 Olympic Games Tokyo, Japan........ 4th Discus throw 67.02 m PB misses bronze by 5cm
2022 World Championships Eugene, Oregon 6th Discus throw 66.47 m misses bronze by 1.08m
Commonwealth Games Birmingham, England 1st Discus throw 67.26 m PB
2023 World Championships Budapest, Hungary 4th Discus throw 68.24 m NR misses bronze by 0.61m



 
RussellEbertHandball said:
Pissed off we didn't get to see any of Matt Deny's throws on 3rd night. The guy delivers on the big stage but can't just quite win that global medal. He knocked off Benn Harradine's 10 year old national record of 68.20m last night.
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The coverage of all the field finals has been a bit disappointing. As you said, we didn't see Denny, and I don't even think we saw any of reigning champion and silver medalist Ceh's throws.
 
TheGreatBambino said:
Boy, the commentator (Tim Hutchings?) really wasn’t impressed by Peter Bols performance in his heat.
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Fair call too. He put himself in a bad position so go shoved and then didnt run to the line, gave up and just turned off when he didnt get auto qualifying top 3 spot and still had a small chance to qualify on time.
 
Upstart Swan said:
The coverage of all the field finals has been a bit disappointing. As you said, we didn't see Denny, and I don't even think we saw any of reigning champion and silver medalist Ceh's throws.
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I had the SBS coverage on TV and - with my VPN set to Vietnam - watched the entire Discus final on my laptop.

If you use a VPN and go to the World Athletics YT site there are live streams of all field events. Not sure if these might also be available on SBS-ondemand.
 
The Kenyan dominance of the Steeplechase is officially over as per the result in the race this morning Oz time evening session of day 4.

Between 1968 and 2016 the only time a Kenyan didn't win the Olympic gold was 1976 and 1980 when Kenya ( along with other African nations, but not all,) boycotted Montreal over New Zealand being allowed to compete after the All Blacks played a series against the Springboks that year at home, and 1980 when they joined US led boycott of Moscow Olympics after Soviets invaded Afghanistan. They regularly team ran and made sure a Kenyan won buy along with those 11 gold medals they won 7 silver medals and 4 bronze medals and twice did a clean sweep - 1992 and 2004.

Only other single male event to be clean swept twice by one nation, since the break up of soviet union and eastern European state sports system, has been the USA in 200m in 2004 and 2008.

At WCs the Kenyan's didn't medal in 1983 and 1987 but between 1991 and 2019, Kenyans won all 15 events, but 2 were won in 2003 and 2005 were by Stephen Cherono who was the 20 year old 2002 Commonwealth champion, had been world junior champ and world junior record holder had a dispute with Kenyan athletics association and moved from Kenya to Qatar in 2003, along with some other Kenyan athletes. He changed his name to Saif Saaeed Shaheen, he was reported to have received over $1mil to become a Qatari citizen. After he won the 2003 WC in Paris Kenyan athletics protested that he wasn't eligible to represent Qatar in 2004 as he hadn't been a Qatari citizen long enough. The IAAF agreed and he was ruled ineligible. He won 2005 event in Helsinki. He was pissed off about mising the 2004 Olympics and set the WR a few weeks later which stood for almost 19 years until Ethiopian Lamecha Girma broke it in Paris in June this year.

In those 15 WCs Kenyans also won 12 silvers and 5 bronze medals, but they regularly team run and sacrifice minor medals for wins, and had 3 clean sweeps in 1997, 2007 and 2015.

It wasn't just that Moroccan El Bakkali has won the last two world champs and also in Tokyo Olympics, but also that Ethiopian Lamecha Girma has taken silver at those three meets plus in Doha in 2019, by bugger all margins in the 3 before last nights finals, and is now the world record holder, and Kenyans are struggling to get bronzes. They can't team run like they used to. 4 time world and 2 time Olympic champ Ezekiel Kemboi was one of my all time favourite track athlete. Don't know if they can find someone else like him or his compatriots of the past, anytime soon.
 
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Good start in this morning heat/qualifying events for the Oz woman.

Abby Caldwell ran a smart 800m heat, got out of potential trouble 150m out and finished 3rd comfortably in an auto qualifier. The German athlete who finished 2nd looked a foot taller than her.

In Javelin group A Kathyrn Mitchell's first throw was a season best 62.10m and easily over the auto qualifier of 61.50.

Catriona Bisset, front ran her 800m heat, making sure she didn't get in trouble and get knocked over like Eugene and finished 2nd only being passed in last 10m by Ethiopian Alemu who has made Olympic and WC finals.
 

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2023 World Athletics Championships (Budapest)

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