Kelly Holmes wins her friend-assisted silver medal
RUNNING INTO PROBLEMS
By Peter May
Although the climactic weekend of the World Athletics still awaits, the fickle sporting fan will be reluctant to invest four supplementary days in a tournament which has been a consistent source of frustration and disappointment.
Devotees of the sport will no doubt be delighted to embrace the rare opportunity of seeing their chosen passion broadcast on mainstream channels at mainstream times. At a time when legions of football fans are rejoicing at the return of their chosen vice after an apparently crippling 91-day period of going straight, such an opportunity is, no doubt, a great bonus for devotees of athletics.
Yet enthusiasts of any major spectator sport are able to enjoy the fruits of the leading lights' labours on a weekly basis through pay-per-view channels.
The major events are broadcast to attract sport's equivalent of the floating voter, drawing an apparently ambiguous fan into appreciation, albeit without total understanding, of sport contested on the grandest of stages. Athletics is perfectly set up to viewed from this perspective – while the subtleties of the more obscure events may be lost on the uninitiated, many viewers will have been looking forward to enjoying the major attractions.
Those viewers will have found themselves disillusioned with both the quality in competition and, just as pertinently, the coverage thereof.
Sue Barker is well known for excelling as a broadcaster for Wimbledon fortnight but she hasn't been as effective in Paris.
Her colleagues are very much reminiscent of the SW19 television experience, flanked as she is by a set of uninspiring Britons with inadequacies that are highlighted by a daunting and articulate American.
Michael Johnson is Barker's late summer John McEnroe, speaking with authority and articulation markedly lacking in Jonathan Edwards, Colin Jackson and a tepid supporting cast.
On the track, the athletes have done little to distract viewers from the mediocrity of the coverage.
Most ridiculous, of course, was Jon Drummond's curiously enjoyable pantomime routine before the quarter-finals of the 100m. But while that particular farce highlighted the IAAF's status as primus inter pares of world sport's ineffectual governing bodies, it was the successive events which will have proved a turn-off for biannual athletics fans.
Ato Boldon's claim that he and his colleagues could not be expected to run while the crowd had the temerity to make noise put many truths of the sprinting art and wider sport in a harsh and damaging light.
The request for silence in golf or tennis can be simply justified by the argument that Tiger Woods' putting swing or Roger Federer's service action can be isolated as the only significant variable in movement and sound at a decisive moment. The same is not true of sprinting any more than it is of a Jonny Wilkinson kick, and it is hard to imagine Britain's leading sportsman enjoying a library-style atmosphere should England require a penalty conversion to clinch the World Cup against Australia in Sydney come November.
Those observing the third semi-final for men's 400m hurdles will have seen a repeat of this tedium from yet more individuals who have blurred the lines between sporting competition and a unilateral display of physical prowess. This is Paris' sporting venue, not its catwalk.
There have been other problems, too. Few can have sat easily in the armchair upon seeing Kelly Holmes' manipulation of the 800m final, claiming a silver medal on account of her close friendship with Maria Mutola of Mozambique.
For Holmes to then follow this up by joining Mutola on a lap of honour while waving the Union Jack is nothing short of a national humiliation - one can only imagine Britain's reaction if Dwain Chambers had lived up to the hype and brought home 100m gold only to be followed by Tim Montgomery or Bernard Williams brandishing the stars and stripes.
But then, whatever one places on a list of undesirable Americans characteristics – and many alternatives present themselves - pride in coming second seldom features.
There is an indisputable need for multiparty re-evaluation in the world of athletics, not least with the Athens Olympics and its massive global audience around the corner.
Tournament organisers need to justify their job title and exude competence in the very near future while the British team need to ask themselves how best to fulfil their potential. From Chambers, through to Edwards and Daniel Caines, too many top performers have flattered to deceive. Only Darren Campbell can look in the mirror, bronze medal around the neck, having proven himself a genuine world-class competitor capable of lifting his game
