Last week Sunday, 24th July, the curtains came down on the 18th edition of the IAAF World Athletic Championships (WAC) Oregon22, staged at the famous Hayward Field, at the University of Oregon, USA. The spectacular state-of-the-art stadium, refurbished during 2018 -2020 at an estimated cost of US$270M – funded entirely by private donations, led by past alumnus and Nike co-founder, billionaire Phil Knight – provided those track and field enthusiasts with a ‘theatre-like’ experience and unobstructed sight lines from any seat in its 25,000 capacity.
Those aficionados in attendance and those viewing the event on television broadcasts across the planet were treated to a fabulous show by the athletes who broke three world records, and set 13 WAC records, seven by the women and six by the men. Among the record setters were our Caribbean sisters, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson, from the Isle of Speed, Jamaica.
Whilst clocking 10.67 seconds to repeat as 100M champion, Shelly-Ann broke the WAC record of 10.70 seconds set by the now disgraced American sprinter Marion Jones in Seville, Spain, in 1999. In doing so, she captured her fifth title, the most by a woman in a single event, and tied the Polish hammer thrower Pawel Fajdek’s record for the most gold medals in one event in WAC history.
In a blazing sprint to the remarkable time of 21.45 seconds, the second fastest ever recorded in the Women’s 200M event, Shericka broke the WAC record of 21.63 seconds set by Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands in 2015, in Beijing, whilst becoming the first woman to earn medals in the 100M, 200M and 400M events at WAC. Her silver medal in the 100M at Oregon22 follows bronze medal performances in the 400M, at the WAC in 2015 and 2019.
Of course, one would have expected that Fraser-Pryce’s performance at Oregon22 would have stolen the spotlight, when in fact it was Shericka’s dash that has garnered the attention. When Shericka stopped the electronic timer at 21.45 seconds, the closest any female athlete had come to Florence Joyner-Griffith’s (Flo-Jo) phenomenal record of 21.34 seconds set in 1984, she sprung open the Pandora’s Box of women’s track and field records and out popped the ghosts of the 1980s, much to the embarrassment of the IAAF. The doping ghosts, the omnipresent elephants in the room in the track and field world, are difficult to return to the trunk once released.
Oh, the glorious 1980s. The sport of Track and Field soared to incredible heights of popularity with the inauguration of the IAAF World Championship in Athletics (changed to WAC in 2019) in 1983, in Helsinki, Finland. It meant that fans would not have to wait every four years for the summer Olympics to argue who were the best athletes. In 1993, the 4th edition of the world championships was the first biennial staging of the event, thus sating the appetite of athletic enthusiasts three times in every four-year cycle. The increased interest saw the arrival of the peloton of television, sponsorship, relaxation of the amateur rules, appearance fees, prize monies and the temptation of performance enhancement drugs (PEDs). Along with prolonging the careers of ageing track and field stars, came a plethora of new records.
Savvy long-time observers were immediately aware of what was taking place. Pleas to the IOC Congress by then track superstars Sebastian Coe, current IAAF President, and Edwin Moses for testing of athletes on a regular basis were met by dragging feet. After Ben Johnson streaked to the then stratospheric time of 9.79 seconds in the 100M final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and the news of his subsequent positive test for steroids dominated the headlines of newspapers around the world, it still took the IOC 12 years to establish the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
How much suspicion lingers over the 1980’s records book? Consider this simple fact. An entire generation – 30 years – of women track and field athletes has failed to bother the printers (excluding hurdles) with regard to the 100M, 200M, 400M and 800M records which were all set in the 1980s. Prior to Shericka’s blitz, the only other athlete to enter to Flo-Jo territory was Elaine Thompson-Herah (Shericka’s teammate) who, last year, clocked 21.53 in the 200M, and 10.54 in the 100M, where Flo-Jo’s 1988 record of 10.49 remains the Holy Grail. Disgraced drug cheat Marion Jones’ 1998 times of 10.65 and 21.62 round out the top five in both events. The 400M record of 47.60 seconds set in Canberra, Australia in October, 1985 by Marita Koch (of then East Germany) still bears an unattainable label. Only her main rival, former Czech star Jamila Kratochvilova, has also managed to record a time of less than 48 seconds in the 400M. In the 800M event, Kratochvilova’s 1:53:28 leads a pack of ten of the 15 fastest all time, who achieved their best times before 1990.
In the field events the picture is even gloomier, where all of the top 15 women’s shot putters had their longest throws prior to 1991. In 1988, Ukraine born Galina Chistyakova, then competing for the Soviet Union, leaped 7.52M in the long jump. The closest anyone has come to that mark this century is 7.42M, by Tatyana Kotova, another Soviet, in 2002, the fifth all-time best. A 2016 Forbes Magazine article described Galina’s leap, along with the women’s 100M, 200M, 400M and 800M marks as “Five track world records that may never be broken.”
Once out-of-competition testing commenced in 1991, the sequence of constant record breaking petered to a stagger, but the records still remain on the books, a stain on the sport and a huge embarrassment to the IAAF. Attempts to deal with this blight have been tried. Five years ago, European Athletics, despondent with the rampant decade of PED usage and the resultant times and distances now seemingly out of reach, proposed expunging all the records set prior to 2005 (Rewriting History, SN Editorial, 10th May, 2017). The proposal which received the backing of Coe and World Athletics received an angry backlash from some of those affected and threats of legal action, spearheaded by the UK duo of Paula Radcliffe, the then marathon record holder and Jonathan Edwards, the former triple jumping superstar, who still holds the world record set in 1995. The European Athletics suggestion never gained momentum despite a modification of the date to 1991.
So where does that leave the fans, the real drivers of the Track and Field World? Will they ever be sure that what they are seeing is authentic? More so, after the 2016 McLaren report which had uncovered widespread doping in sport, particularly athletics. Richard McLaren, the Canadian lawyer had found that the Russian government, security services and sport authorities had colluded to cover up widespread doping by Russian athletes prior to the 2012 Olympics in London, at the 2013 World championships in Moscow and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Any doubts over McLaren’s report have since been removed with the publication of The Rodchenkov Affair, by Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, the architect of the scheme, who now lives in protective custody in exile.
In an interview two Fridays ago, Coe, now entering his eighth year as IAAF President acknowledged the hopelessness of the world authority to deal with the ‘suspicious’ standards set during the 1980s. “Legally, they are the existing records,” stated Coe, “Legally, there’s nothing you can do or say beyond the evidence of a positive test. It was my era [Coe was a leading middle distance runner in the 1980s] so I have to accept it was a time when testing was a bit sporadic. We know it was a different era.
“There’s nothing that I’m in a position to do to rewrite the record books but I’m open about it – some of these records are not safe records. The reality is there is very little legally you can do and I think we have to be realistic about it.”
The stigma of doping will never go away, it seems. Perhaps, the IAAF can include a footnote on the opening page of its record book that year-round testing for PEDs only commenced in 1991. The public can draw their own conclusions.
