Winning a World Cup medal is an achievement comparable to an Olympic medal in athletics. Winning a medal must be given the value it deserves, writes Atte Husu from Hayward Field.
OREGON. Pop in.
The World Athletics Championships started excitingly when Kimberly Garcia achieved the world championship as the first Peruvian track and field athlete. Overall, the medal is Peru’s first at the World Cup level.
More positivity was offered by the first evening session of the World Championships, which almost filled Hayward Field, even though the evening session contained practically only qualifying competitions.
Only the World Cup medals of the 4×400 meter medley relay were awarded at the stadium, where the home team USA finished third. The prestigious athletics competitions in question are the undersigned’s fifth. As for the opening day, you can immediately say that the atmosphere of the competitions is exactly where it should be.
Especially in the men’s 100 meter preliminaries, the crowd’s roar was deafening, when the host country’s Fred Kerley ran a front straight time of 9.79. It is the fastest time run in the heats in history. By far.
You don’t even own the previous record For Usain Boltwho ran the 100 at his best, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, before the semi-finals with a time of 9.92. Justin Gatlin ran a time of 9.83 in the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, but the time was a result of the wind.
Before Friday and the semifinals, only the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo had run harder, where Kerley’s compatriot Carl Lewis cleared his way to the semi-finals with a time of 9.80. Was the US audience aware of that? However, the encouragement was deafening already in the heats.
However, the climax of the opening night was experienced in the second leg of the 4×400 meter medley relay, when the 18-time World Cup medalist Allyson Felix got up to speed. The home run ends the career of Felix, 36, who had the crowd at Hayward Field blasting the decibels with their support.
Why did the Kaleva kisa pattern repeat itself?
The United States is known for remembering its own heroes. Therefore, against this background, it was difficult to understand why Felix and partners received their bronze medals almost half an hour after the competition events ended. At that time, there were only a few hundred spectators in the stands of the historic small World Cup stadium, which holds 13,000 spectators.
A similar series of events aimed at friends and relatives can be witnessed every year at the award ceremony of the Kaleva Games on Friday and Saturday, as in 2019. The international sports federation should follow certain etiquette issues regarding the medal achieved at the World Cup level and its recognition.
In recent years, there has been a public debate about the value competition status of sports such as race walking. An argumentative discussion is always desirable and desirable. However, the activity must be scrutinized, and race walking struggles with the popularity problem the most among athletics.
But as long as the International Association of Athletics World Athletics, or WA, blesses its selection of sports to the Olympic or World Cup level, be it race walking or any other, it should be given the value it deserves.
Now, the prizes for both women’s and men’s 20-kilometer race walk were awarded after the last race, i.e. the above-mentioned mixed relay. In this case, there was no longer any talk of full capacity.
It should also be mentioned that there is no need for the organizers to appeal to busy schedules. In the prime time in the middle of the evening, there was enough time for a spontaneous running competition between elementary school children and the race mascot, during which both walking medals would have been distributed.
The organizers could have handed the medals to the athletes in front of an almost full audience. However, that’s not how they worked.
Value choices. The schedule played into the organizers’ pockets so much that the awarding of Felix and the rest of the 4×400 meter mixed team was done last. It meant that there were at least a few hundred spectators watching the event in the stands.