Athletics at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow saw over 1,000 athletes from more than sixty-five nations compete in fifty events. On the morning of Sunday, 27 July, the men and women’s marathons began the seven days of athletics competition, and were won by Michael Shelley of Australia – the first non-African winner of the men’s event for twenty years – and Kenya’s Flomena Cheyech Daniel. With no walking events on the calendar, the track and field programme which then commenced was held at Glasgow’s Hampden Park: Scotland’s national football stadium, converted into an athletics stadium for the games. With work beginning last December, and costing £14 million, this involved digging up the football pitch, and raising an athletics surface on steel posts and beams 1.9 metres above pitch level in order to meet Commonwealth size requirements. Eight rows of seating were taken out, but Hampden still afforded space for just over 40,000 athletics spectators throughout the duration of the games.
While this construction work was described as ‘pioneering’, from a sporting perspective athletics at the Commonwealth Games remains notable for incorporating – since Manchester in 2002 – para-sports within the mainstream of competition. The standout para-sport event at Hampden saw Scotland’s Libby Clegg triumph in the T12 100 metres, alongside her guide Mikail Huggins. It was Clegg’s first Commonwealth gold, and she came into the competition as a strong favourite, having taken silver medals at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, a gold and then two silvers at the 2011 and 2013 World Championships, and golds in the 100 and 200 metres at the 2012 European Championships. Fanie van der Merwe from South Africa won the men’s T37 100 metres; while in the women’s T54 1500 metres – a wheelchair event – Australia’s Angela Ballard narrowly beat out Canada’s Diane Roy and England’s Jade Jones.
Blessing Okagbare starred on the first full evening of competition, as she won the women’s 100 metres ahead of a strong field, which saw the Jamaican former Olympic-medalists Veronica Campbell-Brown and Kerron Stewart finish in silver and bronze. Campbell-Brown was returning to major competition on the back of contentious proceedings which saw her provisionally suspended from the sport, then cleared, after testing positive in June 2013 for the diuretic HCT. HCT is one of a group of banned substances which encourage the body’s production of urine, and therefore may be used to mask performance enhancing drugs. After testing positive in 2013 and missing out on the World Championships, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a Jamaican appeal in February, citing blatant flaws in the collection procedure which had resulted in Campbell-Brown’s positive test, and thereby reinstating her right to compete. On the back of her silver and Stewart’s bronze, both athletes went on to help Jamaica to relay gold in the 4×100 metres. Just as Usain Bolt did for the men’s team, so Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce eschewed the individual events, but emerged to effortlessly take the last leg and lead her compatriots home.
Okagbare, from Nigeria, took her 100 metres gold medal in a games record time of 10.85. Starting out in the sport as a jumper – competing in the juniors at both long and triple jump – her first major success came at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when she achieved a bronze medal in the long jump. She has increasingly turned her attention to the sprints, complementing her silver in the long jump at last year’s World Championships with a bronze in the 200 metres. And at the Commonwealths later in the week, she added the 200 metres gold – ahead of the young Englishwomen Jodie Williams and Bianca Williams, both twenty years old, but not related – to complete an impressive sprint double which could prove the impetus for a challenge upon the world’s elite.
Her black hair tipped with pink, Stephenie Ann McPherson continued her rise in the 400 metres, heading a Jamaican 1-2-3 which also comprised Novlene Williams-Mills – running well at thirty-two and having overcome surgery for breast cancer in late 2012 – and Christine Day. The women’s middle distance events saw one of the most popular achievements of the games, as Scotland’s Lynsey Sharp fought for silver in the 800 metres, behind Kenya’s Eunice Sum. Sharp has suffered a series of leg and foot injuries over the past couple of seasons, which have resulted in a leg infection which has yet to heal. Worse, a virus saw her in the hospital and on a drip the night before her final, combatting the affects of dehydration. Her silver followed Eilidh Child’s silver in the 400 metres hurdles the night before; and allied to Libby Clegg’s gold and a bronze in the men’s hammer for Mark Dry, saw the home nation come away with four medals from the athletics events at the games.
Elsewhere in the field, Greg Rutherford backed up his 2012 London Olympics gold with a victory in the men’s long jump, while Nigeria’s Ese Brume edged England’s Jazmin Sawyers by two centimetres in the women’s affair. Closely fought too were the men’s shot, won by Jamaica’s O’Dayne Richards; and the men’s javelin, which saw a three-way battle eventually won, with a games-record throw, by Kenya’s Julius Yego, ahead of Keshorn Walcott, from Trinidad and Tobago, and Hamish Peacock, from Australia.
The long distance running events were marked by two exceptional and palpable displays of will. In the women’s 5,000 metres – won comfortably in the end after an accomplished performance by Mercy Cherono – Jo Pavey, at forty years old and with two young children, finished with a bronze medal. While Pavey’s age and perseverance make her result exceptional, equally so was the performance itself, which saw Pavey push a trio of Kenyans from the front only to be passed by them twice in the closing two laps. When they ran past her on the bell, with a lap to go, and kicked away, Pavey could easily have folded; but instead she clung on and, having regained a little ground, drove in the home straight to take the bronze, delighted although only narrowly missing out on silver.
It was a similar story in the men’s 10,000 metres. Mo Farah’s absence from the Commonwealth Games owing to abdominal pain seemed to leave the men’s distance events open. Moses Kipsiro, who had won both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres four years ago in Delhi, was coming into the games still struggling with knee and hamstring injuries, and he finished only eighth in the 5,000 metres final this time around. Yet he returned for the 10,000 metres, and stuck with the race’s leaders on into the final lap. As the Kenyan Josphat Bett Kipkoech and Canadian Cameron Levins kicked with 150 metres to go, Kipsiro grimaced – and appeared to determine at once that he wasn’t in the shape to win the race, but would hang on all the same and see what might happen. As things did happen, he squeezed through on the inside of Levins and won the race on the line, his chest ahead of Kipkoech’s – with the Kenyan initially thinking himself the winner, having failed to spot Kipsiro coming through on his inside.
Perhaps only superficially surprising was David Rudisha’s defeat in the 800 metres. The Olympic champion and world record holder, Rudisha is still recovering his fitness having missed the 2013 season thanks to a knee injury. Though he attempted to control the race from the front, and kicked with just over 100 metres remaining, he was run down with ease by a sprightly Nijel Amos. Botswana’s Amos, who took the silver medal at the Olympics two years ago, is still only twenty and will undoubtedly prove a match for Rudisha as and when the older man regains full fitness and form. He is already the joint-third fastest man of all time over the distance, behind Rudisha and Wilson Kipketer, and alongside Sebastian Coe. Meanwhile, in the 400 metres, Olympic champion Kirani James managed a games record of 44.24 in taking gold.
Hot on the heels of the Commonwealths, the European Championships begin in Zurich tomorrow, lasting until Sunday afternoon. The absence of the Jamaicans and Nigerians in the sprints, and the Kenyans in the distance races, means that the Championships should see a host of new faces and alternative victors. While Adam Gemili will look to continue his good form after a silver medal in the 100 metres, the men’s sprints provide strong opportunities for the French, with the fastest times in Europe this year belonging to Jimmy Vicaut in the 100 metres, Christophe Lemaitre in the 200 metres, and Pascal Martinot-Lagarde in the 110 metres hurdles. In the 800 metres too, Pierre-Ambroise Bosse is second only to Nijel Amos in this year’s fastest times.
Mo Farah will be back for Britain in the men’s distance events; a returning Christine Ohuruogu will compete in the 400 metres; Lynsey Sharp will look to defend her 800 metres title; and Jodie and Bianca Williams and Asha Philip will be bolstered by the eighteen-year-old Dina Asher-Smith for the women’s sprints. The Netherlands’ Dafne Schippers and France’s Myriam Soumare will be the athletes they have to beat over 100 and 200 metres; while France’s Cindy Billaud may force Tiffany Porter to be content with another silver in the 100 metres hurdles. The Dutch are strong too in the women’s distance events, with Sifan Hassan preeminent in the 1500 metres and accomplished also at 5,000 metres.
In the field, one of the battles of the championships should see Germany’s shirt-tearing Robert Harting challenge for gold in the discus against Poland’s Piotr Malachowski. The javelins will be hotly contested between athletes from the Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Finland, and Ukraine. Christian Reif will push Greg Rutherford in the men’s long jump; and Russia’s Darya Klishina has been the most consistent performer this season from a competitive group in the women’s event. Renaud Lavillenie will see how high he can go in the men’s pole vault. The women’s high jump is routinely a highlight of major international athletics competition, and will see Blanka Vlasic hoping to fend off the Russians Anna Chicherova and Maria Kuchina.
