by Stuart Weir
The timing, location and rules of the competition reduced the World Relays to a qualifying competition for the relays at the World Championships to be held in Tokyo in September. In theory the World Relays should be the premier relay competition in the sport but for the reasons listed above its place in the packing order is well behind the Olympics and the World Championships – and for European athletes arguably behind the European Championships. The World Athletics offers $40,000 to winning teams makes it a decent payday for successful athletes. That a significant proportion of the world’s top athletes were not in China confirms this impression.
That said it was an exciting and very watchable weekend of action with cut and thrust in every event, the drama of dropped batons and faulty changeovers. It was interesting to see a mixed 4X100 for the first time on to note predictable problems as teams struggled with the woman to man changeover.
The BBC TV commentators – not athletics specialists – kept talking about athletes booking their tickets for Tokyo – teams yes, athletes no. Many of the second string athletes performed well to get qualify their teams will be replaced by first choice athletes in September
The six winners were South Africa twice, Canada, Great Britain, Spain and USA once each. South Africa’s victory in the men’s 4X100 was a mystery as the race was stopped for a false start, with South Africa being shown by the technology to have beaten the clock yet the next thing we saw was an official holding up a green card.
The medals went to 10 countries. South Africa topped the table with two golds, USA and South Africa were equal top on number of medals with three. The continental breakdown was Europe, Africa and North America 5 each, 2 for the Caribbean and 1 for Australia. Hosts China made two finals but were not in the medals.
Spain’s women taking gold and silver was an unexpected achievement. Flash quotes are often bland and clichéed but you can almost hear the excitement of the Spanish 4X400 gold-medallists: Blanca Hervas “Myself and all of them never felt like this before. We are crazy excited – gold medal, world relays champion, national record, everything – my biggest dream, I am so thankful. To our coaches, to our families, thank you for everything. This is their medal, too, coaches, families, friends, everyone.”
Daniela Fra “To the team mates that were not in the race today, they were with us throughout these championships. This is also thanks to them, so we are happy. We have been training and working a lot for this. Our coaches did, too. This is thanks to them, and to everyone in the team back home who is supporting us”. Paula Sevilla “I have really enjoyed this race, and I am very happy to be here”.
The same enthusiasm comes across from the South African 4 by 400 medalists: Zeney van der Walt “This is the most amazing experience. We are truly thankful to be here and we were so excited to be in this final top 8. The goal was to leave it all on the track, and it brought us the bronze medal, so we are very excited. To top it up, we broke the national record by a few seconds, so it is unbelievable” and Miranda Coetzee “It means a lot [to be part of this team]. We came here with a goal, and I am so excited and happy that we achieved what we wanted to”.
Finally the athlete who most lived up to her name was Britain’s Success Eduan who can an anchor leg to a gold medal.
