SPORTS: Athletics, not tennis
Sep. 12th, 2021 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI'll post about the US Open after the result of the men's singles.
I watched the final meet of athletics’ Diamond League at Zurich over the past week. The winners of every event got a wildcard into the World Championships next year – especially valuable if you live in a country where there’s competition for the limited slots (the USA, basically, although it then turned out that the reigning World Champion had a stronger wildcard, which both sounds like a very complicated Dungeons & Dragons game and meant that it didn’t apply to every winner.)
The first day of the two-day event was held right in the centre of the city, with some stunning views, although they and the low sun of evening may have disconcerted the athletes. There were spectators (a bit scary after Tokyo, if I’m honest although I have no idea what the vaccination/infection rates are in Switzerland or what the arrangements were for the crowd.) I thought it worked better for the field athletes. The women’s high jump was particularly exciting, with the two other medallists challenging Lasakskina (sp?), who is imperious as a tsarina when she’s competing. It was less good for the women and men running the 5,000 metres, because the track was so weird.
The second day was in a normal stadium, and it had mostly attracted a strong crop of competitors, most of whom had got over post-Olympics fatigue, although if you were doing PBs (Simankova breaching 5m in the pole vault) wouldn’t you have been gnashing your teeth and wondering ‘Why not three weeks ago?’
Top three positions were some reward for Dina Asher-Smith and I was impressed by those running the two sprint ace in one night, Hodgkinson continued to impress in the 800m, and the programme overran because the Iralian high jumper (Tambini?) wasn’t done jumping, and Duplantiss(?) wanted to try for a new world record in the pole vault. The commentator along the excellent Steve Cram was pretty good.
I watched the final meet of athletics’ Diamond League at Zurich over the past week. The winners of every event got a wildcard into the World Championships next year – especially valuable if you live in a country where there’s competition for the limited slots (the USA, basically, although it then turned out that the reigning World Champion had a stronger wildcard, which both sounds like a very complicated Dungeons & Dragons game and meant that it didn’t apply to every winner.)
The first day of the two-day event was held right in the centre of the city, with some stunning views, although they and the low sun of evening may have disconcerted the athletes. There were spectators (a bit scary after Tokyo, if I’m honest although I have no idea what the vaccination/infection rates are in Switzerland or what the arrangements were for the crowd.) I thought it worked better for the field athletes. The women’s high jump was particularly exciting, with the two other medallists challenging Lasakskina (sp?), who is imperious as a tsarina when she’s competing. It was less good for the women and men running the 5,000 metres, because the track was so weird.
The second day was in a normal stadium, and it had mostly attracted a strong crop of competitors, most of whom had got over post-Olympics fatigue, although if you were doing PBs (Simankova breaching 5m in the pole vault) wouldn’t you have been gnashing your teeth and wondering ‘Why not three weeks ago?’
Top three positions were some reward for Dina Asher-Smith and I was impressed by those running the two sprint ace in one night, Hodgkinson continued to impress in the 800m, and the programme overran because the Iralian high jumper (Tambini?) wasn’t done jumping, and Duplantiss(?) wanted to try for a new world record in the pole vault. The commentator along the excellent Steve Cram was pretty good.
