Watching Tigist Assefa go, it seemed downright absurd that even in the 1980 Olympic Games, 1500 meters was the longest running distance for women, writes Pekka Holopainen.
Pekka Holopainen Sports journalist
The European Athletics Championships in Rome in 1974 were a success story for Finland, the likes of which no blacksmith Ilmarinen will ever be able to forge again. Expectations of success towards the Olympic Games in Montreal also rose high in women’s endurance running, because the young Nina Holmen washed the entire top guard of Europe at 3000 meters – which at that time was almost the elite of the world.
However, a glance at the competition program of the Olympic Games sheds light on the waves. The men’s club of the International Olympic Committee decided that in Montreal 1976 it was not suitable for women to run a distance longer than 1500 meters. Holmen finished 9th in its final in Montreal. In general, even 1500 meters had not entered the Games until 1972 in Munich; even in Moscow 1980 it was the longest running distance for women.
The traumas of 1928
Sports Museum Tahto’s sports historian Matti Hintikka says the reason is the trauma of the Olympic men from the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. The women’s 800-meter distance exhausted some of the participants into such an unaesthetic pattern that even half a mile was deemed best to put in mothballs for 32 years after the experiment:
– The tired, suffering-looking woman was distressing from the male point of view at the time. For example, at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, the women’s longest distance was 200 meters.
Of course, such things came to mind when Ethiopia Tigist Assefa, 29, the other Sunday moved the women’s marathon in Berlin into a whole new era with one of the most astonishing performances of the entire sporting year. 2.11.53, which cut more than two minutes from the previous ME, shows that a male marathoner ran harder for the first time in 1967.
If you split the time into the times of the 3000 meters mentioned above, each segment of this length went in 9:19. In the season that ended, two Finnish women ran harder.
The long-departed Olympians are turning in their graves.
Science has known for a long time
Test doctor of the Jyväskylä Racing and Elite Sports Research Center Esa Hynynen scientists who studied physiology would already have been able to tell the chauvinistic sports world in the 1960s that the marathon is the most suitable journey for women.
Due to women’s natural fat reserves and lightness, the differences in performance narrow, the longer the time and the more energy-demanding performance is concerned. The sports world responded to science at the Boston Marathon in 1967. The race director caught a woman who secretly sneaked into the race, which was forbidden to women Kathryn to Switzerwho managed to run to the finish line.
In women’s athletics, we jumped over long track distances in a way, when the marathon boom that started in America at the end of the 1970s, also for women, brought completely new earning potential to the sport. The women’s marathon was added to the competition program in the early 1980s, and the great pioneers of the early days included the Norwegian Ingrid Kristiansen67. Also the ME 2.21.06 run in 1985 by the World Championship-level skier, who was brilliantly successful on track trips, lasted no less than 13 years.
Seven times smaller
Kristiansen recalled to Urheilu how his generation struggled for starting money and ME bonuses for the men’s level.
– In the early days, I could get seven times smaller fees than the man who won his series. It was unfair, but things got better.
Assefa’s ME period has also been explained with the so-called water slippers. According to Esa Hynynen, they play a role at top speeds, when the step contact is very fast and the energy stored in the shoe pushes the runner in the optimal direction.
Kristiansen, on the other hand, admits that he also watched Asseba’s personal record improvement of about four minutes wearing skeptic glasses. Basically, he is not quite convinced of the mesh size of the anti-doping traps in East Africa.
– In general, it’s hard to believe that a four-minute record improvement can be achieved at that level with the help of slippers, says the Norwegian legend.
Pekka Holopainen
The author is a columnist based in Pori and the only sports reporter who has been selected as Journalist of the Year in Finland.
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