Qatar Athletics Federation president Dr Thani Abdulrahman al-Kuwari addresses the media at a press conference yesterday. PICTURE: Noushad Thekkayil
As the 2018 Diamond League season kicks off in Doha today, there is a story to follow for everyone. A grand buffet of athletic competitions and rivalries. Here’s a taster.
There is of course Qatar’s own high jump star Mutaz Barshim, who is coming off an unbeaten 2017, where he won his first outdoor championship and also picked up the IAAF Athlete of the Year award. He will have the spotlight when action begins at Qatar Sports Club today evening.
“I am super excited that the Diamond League season is back on track again,” Barshim said at a press conference, which was held at the City Centre Mall in Doha. “Talking about the previous season, I won everything. It was great. That only gives me more motivation for this season. My coach and I sat down and started discussing our targets for this season. So I think our target for this season is to get more records, meeting records.”
Greek pole vault star Katerina Stefanidi is the reigning Olympic, world, European and Diamond League champion, whose 19-event winning streak came to an end courtesy Sandi Morris of the US at the World Indoor Championship earlier this year in Birmingham. Morris boasts of a higher personal best of 5m, as against Stefanidi’s 4.91m, and the two go against each other today, with other big names also in the line-up.
“I needed to lose once so that I get my motivation back,” a smiling Stefanidi said yesterday.
There is Caster Semenya, arguably the best women’s 800m runner around, and as of now at the centre of a debate stemming from International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) recent rule that requires athletes who naturally produce high levels of testosterone to chemically lower them to run any international race of 400m up to the mile.
And while the South African, who smashed the Games record when she won the Commonwealth gold at Gold Coast last month, has so far only used Twitter for her responses after the ruling, Greek pole vaulter Katerina Stefanidi was quoted by AFP as saying, “They (the IAAF) want to create equality, whether that’s equality or not... and at which point do you stop? As some people mentioned on social media, I’m one of the shortest girls on the track right now. What are we going to do? Are we going to cut everyone’s legs or arms to make it equal because there’s definitely a correlation between height and pole vault?”
There are Pablo Pichardo and Christian Taylor, who could set up a repeat of the 2015 edition where both of them went past the 18m mark in triple jump and the Cuban picked up the victory.
“It was one of the proudest moments for me, because I had gone beyond 18m for the first time. But I had lost. It’s very humbling. Sometimes you have to let your downfalls be your strengths,” Taylor said yesterday at the conference, he had been an MC for at the last year’s edition. Yesterday, the hosting duties, were taken over by Britain’s 200m runner Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake and Jenny Simpson, the World silver medallist from the US, who is moving up to the longer 3000m from her usual 1500m.
Javelin anyone? Teammates go up against each other. World champion will go up against the Olympic champion. Germany’s Thomas Rohler will be back at the field where he threw a mammoth 93.90m last year, the then second on the all-time list, fortunately missing out on a television crew member. That was before the 2017 London champion Johannes Vetter beat that with a 94.44m later in the year. It’s one of those events where the world record (98.48m) has been untouched for more than two decades.
“It’s more a question about when and where,” Rohler said yesterday when asked about beating the record.
Qatari interests in javelin lie with Ahmed Bader, the 22-year-old, who won the Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku late last year, while there will also be India’s Neeraj Chopra, the 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medallist, the 2016 U20 world champion and the 2017 Asian champion.
Team Qatar’s Abderrahman Samba will look to retain the 400m hurdles Doha meet crown that he won last year by beating reigning Olympic champion Kerron Clement, and has form on his side having raced to a world leading time of 47.89s in South Africa earlier this year. Also in the mix are Diamond League champion Kyron McMaster and World Championship silver medallist Yasmani Copello of Turkey. Samba had missed out on a World Championship medal when he clipped the last hurdle in London and has said in the past that the miss will only act as a motivation.
Abdalelah Haroun, the 2017 World Championship bronze medallist, will line up alongside a strong field including the 2017 Diamond League champion Isaac Makwala of Botswana and 2017 Worlds silver medallist Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas.
For a full-blown, 13-course Diamond League meal, complete with other action-packed sides, over to Suhaim bin Hamad Stadium today evening.
