How lady luck deserted my idols

Like most sports, athletics is a sport of tremendous highs and lows, and the reason for that is because of the incredible amount of hard work and sacrifice that is invested by the athlete to get them to their goals.

When all of that effort pays off, there is no better feeling, all the days of working yourself to exhaustion, all the pain, it all can become worth it in an instant when everything comes together.

The flip side of the coin is a sobering slap in the face, when you put the work in, but don’t get the result you want, or the result you feel you deserve. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

Injuries are of course, the most common cause for the ass to fall out of your biscuit, but certainly not the only one. Peaking at the wrong time, an opponent shanking a once in a lifetime performance, or just having to compete in the same decade as a genetic freak, can all have you kicking the sand thinking it’s just not fair.

Many of the athletes I idolise in the sport have come up against situations like this, they all were successful, sure, but at one point or another they got shafted (sometimes repeatedly), and they really didn’t deserve it.

800m – Wilson Kipketer never winning Olympic gold

Until my later years in high school, I was about 40 kilograms soaking wet, and though I dabbled in the sprints, being light as a feather with shoulders like a brown snake, I had more success in middle distance. For this reason, throughout the mid 90s I was a huge fan of Wilson Kipketer as he stomped a mudhole through all his rivals in the two lap event.

Kipketer was the best 800m runner the other side of David Rudisha. He was rarely beaten between 1994 and 1999, and though he broke the world record (twice) and tasted great success at world championships (winning gold in 1995, 1997 and 1999)… He never won the elusive Olympic gold.

Kipketer was born in Kenya and as an 18 year old traveled to Denmark to study at the Copenhagen University. He enjoyed his time there enough to apply for Danish citizenship, and ran for Denmark when he won the 800m at the 1995 world championships.

Unfortunately a year later, the rules for Olympic competition differed to those for the world championships. At the Olympics, since Kipketer was not yet a citizen of Denmark (that process would be completed in 1997), he could only run if Kenya granted him permission. As Kipketer running would have greatly reduced Kenya’s chances of winning the event, they denied him permission to run at the Olympics.

Kipketer beat all the eventual Olympic medalists in other races that year, and remained undefeated in 1996, but wasn’t able to compete in Atlanta and his best chance at Olympic glory evaded him.

By the time the 2000 Olympics rolled around, Kipketer no longer had any citizenship issues, but he wasn’t the runner he was previously after a bout with Malaria in 1998. Still, even though he was not at his best, and pretty much butchered the last 300m, Kipketer came heatbreakingly close to winning the gold medal, finishing just 0.06 of a second behind the eventual winner, Germany’s Nils Schumann.

Four years later in Athens, few gave 33 year old Kipketer a chance at winning, but he seemed to gain form throughout the heats and semi finals, to the point where some (or maybe just me) were starting to believe he could get a fairytale finish.

As Kipketer took the lead with 80m to go I jumped up and down in my living room, I thought he finally had it… But he was passed in the final few meters by Russia’s Yuriy Borzakovskiy and Kenya’s Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, finishing with the bronze medal, just 0.2 of a second from the gold.

He ended his career a world record holder, three time world champion, being ranked number 1 in the 800m six different seasons, having run 1:43 or better almost every year from 1994 to 2004 (2001 was the only exception)… But no Olympic gold medal.

400m – Darren Clark not winning an Olympic medal.

Michael Johnson is my all time idol over 400m, and he had his fair share of back luck, but most of it was over 200m. The favourite for the 200m at the 1992 Olympics, he got food poisoning prior to the games and was run out in the semis, and injury denied him the chance to defend in Sydney the 200m title he won at the 1996 Olympics. Had luck gone his way he certainly could have been a three time 200m Olympic champion.

He’s pushed off this list though, because despite the fact that for years he had to chase around a 400m WR time that Butch Reynolds somehow pulled from nowhere, at 31 years of age at the 1999 World Championships in Seville, MJ turned it all around and told Reynolds where he could stick his world record with a race that still makes my hair stand on end.

So instead in here I'm going to put an Aussie legend named Darren Clark, who 24 years ago at the Seoul Olympics set a national 400m record that still stands. Being an Aussie 400m runner not much taller than myself, perhaps the only reason that Clark isn’t my all time idol over 400m is because he did most of his running while I was busily pretending to be Optimus Prime.

I was introduced to Clark as a wide eyed 8 year old that was still trying to understand what steroids were and why Ben Johnson was suddenly a bad man. I can recall watching the 1988 Olympic 400m final a few days later when Aussie Darren Clark lined up in the field.

Clark had set the Australian record of 44.38 in the semi final, but in the final he couldn't match the three Americans as they cleared away from him in the home straight, and he crossed the line in the thanks-for-coming, you-get-nothing position. (otherwise known as 4^th).

Because the Internet wasn’t around back then, I wasn’t able to hop onto youtube or wikipedia and research Clark’s career, if I had, I’d have learned that he had already been much unluckier previously.

As an 18 year old 4 years earlier, Clark led into the home straight in the Los Angeles Olympics 400m final, only for someone to drop an invisible piano on his back as he faded (to again finish 4th ) in a time of 44.75. (Which was at the time a new Australian record and is still the Australian under 20 record). 

In LA he was just a cruel 0.04 of a second from the bronze. (the 4 key on my keyboard is about to give out here), and with a little bit of luck, could have easily walked away with an Olympic medal or two.

100/200m - Frankie Fredericks, king of the silver.

Namibian Frankie Fredericks is one of the best sprinters of all time. In the 200m, he has broken the 20 second barrier 24 times (for now, more than anyone else on the planet), and in the 100m broke 10 seconds 27 times.

The only real problem Frankie had, was that even though he ran some of the fastest races in history, he was unlucky enough to almost always come up against someone better.

At the 1992 Olympics, in the 100m Fredericks was beaten to the line by Great Britain's Linford Christie, while in the 200m he faced American Michael Marsh, who had almost broken the world record in the semi finals. Fredericks pushed Marsh to the line, but again he came away with the silver medal.

I don't remember much about Frankie in 1992, at the time to me he was just some runner from a country I’d never heard of, but after finishing 4th in the 1995 world championship 100m final, Fredericks went to help Linford Christie (who had pulled a muscle in the race), and just like that, the gesture of sportsmanship made me a fan.

By the time the 1996 Olympics rolled around, Frankie was in the shape of his life and I was on hype street in Frederick town. Leading into the Olympics he came close to the 9.85 world record, running 9.86 into a headwind. If I’d had any money to my name as a 16 year old, I’d have bet it all on him winning the Olympic 100m title, but after a good start that resulted in one of the fastest times in history, (9.89), Canada's Donovan Bailey steamed home over the top to set a new WR of 9.84 and beat him once again into second place.

In the 200m, I was torn between two idols, Michael Johnson and Frankie Fredericks, somehow I wanted both to win (and in a way they kind of did), together running two of the fastest three times in history. I didn’t get to see the race live, I was in Tamworth competing at the north west athletics carnival (fitting), when they announced over the loud speaker Michael Johnson had just set a new 200m world record. I was excited, but I had to go up to the office and bug them to find out what Frankie had run and where he had placed.

He’d run 19.68, almost breaking Michael Johnson's world record of 19.66, but he was yet again beaten into second place as Johnson was busy out in front shattering that world record of his with a time of 19.32.

Though he did win a world championship gold in the 200m in 2003, his world championship career was also littered with silver medals, winning 200m silvers in 1991, 1995 and 1997, to give him a tally at the majors of 1 gold, 7 silver medals, despite laying down some of the fastest times over both distances for over a decade.

Long Jump – Carl Lewis not holding the world record.

While the rest of the athletes in this blog entry were indeed unlucky, and I felt for them, I wasn't really jumping up and down about it. Sure it was bad luck, but I wasn't going to lose sleep over it.

This one though, is different. The rest of this blog post until now has just been the entree to this main course.

Carl Lewis not holding the long jump world record I see as the greatest injustice of luck and fate that there is in track and field.

Carl Lewis is the best long jumper of all time, and I’ll argue to the death anyone who disagrees with me. The injustice is, he sits a paltry third on the all time list.

Sitting 2^nd on the all time list is Bob Beamon. Now respect where respect is due, but when you look at the stats its fairly clear that Beamon was the beneficiary of pretty much perfect jumping conditions the day he jumped 8.90m at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

He hit the board perfectly, had the maximum legal tailwind of 2.0m/s, and was jumping at a high altitude (7,349 feet), where studies had shown the thinner air could lead to jumping an extra 20cm.

Adding to the mystique of the jump was the fact that at no other point in Beamon's career, that day or otherwise, did he ever surpass 8.33m. Take that 8.90 away from him and he’s just another in a long list of ~8.30 jumpers, but everything came together one day in Mexico city to produce the perfect jump, which many thought would never be surpassed.

As Carl Lewis built a decade long unbeaten streak in the long jump (from 1981-91), he continually peppered the mark, on occasion beating it only to be called for the tiniest of fouls, he just couldn’t seem to actually break it. Lewis even refused to jump at high altitude during his prime, saying that he didn’t want to break the record only for it to have an asterisk.

Lewis would eventually surpass Beamon's mark, but on that night not only would his 8.91m jump be wind assisted and illegal for record breaking purposes, it would be beaten by another ‘perfect jump’.

Mike Powell was a great long jumper, he's probably the 2^nd best long jumper in history, but when I was a kid I didn’t know him from a bar of soap. I’d grown up watching Carl jump, I used to have dreams the night before the school athletics carnival of jumping like Carl, clearing the long jump pit, landing on the grass and breaking my legs, but not caring about my legs being broken because I’d gotten the record breaking jump in and that was all that mattered.

I may have had an issue with priorities.

Too young to be allowed to watch the competition live in the evening, I was able to catch the highlights the next morning, and stalled as long as I could watching the competition while my mother yelled at me that I would miss the bus if I didn't move it. As an eleven year old, to see Powell jump 8.95 and beat Carl Lewis, breaking Beamon's world record in the process, it seemed like the equivalent of watching Da Vinci spend years perfecting the Mona Lisa, and then some guy just stumble over a paint can and it splatter something better onto a canvas.

Actually, no, it was nothing like that. I was eleven.


Let’s take a look at Powell’s 6 jump series that night;
7.85m, 8.54m, 8.29m, Foul, 8.95m, Foul

And now Lewis:
8.68m, Foul, 8.83m, 8.91m, 8.87m, 8.84m

Not quite the great 'back and forth battle' history made it out to be...

Excluding jumps at altitude, there have only been six 8.80cm plus long jumps in history.

Lewis had four of them. In a row. On the same night. And he got beaten.

Talk about bad luck.

If we throw out the wind assisted leaps of both men, the second best jump of Powell's career was only 8.70, a mark Carl exceeded ten times, and Powell surpassed 8.65m just three times. Lewis on the other hand, soared over 8.65m a whopping 22 times:

The graph illustrates just how often Lewis peppered Beamon's (green) mark, and that vertical axis only spans a distance of 30cm, showing how many times Lewis was within about half your keyboard's width of breaking Beamon's record.

So many factors could have led to Lewis getting the record, he was just never lucky enough to get the perfect wind, perfect position on the board and perfect jump all at once. If he put that together at altitude, my thought is he had potential to break the sand at around 9.20m, he just never did, and as you can tell, I’m still not over it...