Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 124, November 2019 | Page 56

crowds improved thereafter. Of course, it helped that
Barshim’s high jump final was held on a Friday night,
the start of the weekend in Muslim countries.
Interestingly, and going back to the SA performance,
those were the only Qatar performances at final level
in Doha, and secured them 16 th place on the medal
table and 29 th in the placing charts. This reinforces the
fact that the medal table does not predict the depth of
athletics in a country.
Lasting Legacy
Far from being a failure, Doha can be seen to have
been a great success for the sport in many respects,
even if some were born from error:
• The review and decision to move the marathon
and walks out of Tokyo to Lake Sapporo, and to
have all distance events in the evening, may well
have come out of the medical and monitoring
experiences in Doha.
• Doha’s air-conditioned stadium resulted in some
of the greatest strength-in-depth competition
ever seen, and a consistency of conditions that
provided more world leads, continental records,
national records, personal bests and season
NEW TALKING POINTS FROM DOHA
A number of innovations were witnessed at the Doha 2019 IAAF World Championships to enhance the experience of athletes,
fans and TV audiences alike. Here’s what some of the athletes thought. – Courtesy www.iaafworldathleticschamps.com
2 New timetable
Doha’s daytime heat also led to an unusual timetable,
with no morning sessions and an extended evening
programme. For many, not having to compete in the
morning was a welcome change – none of those 9am
heats in the 100m, for example – while for others the
long wait to get going each day was hard to adjust to. As
defending decathlon champion Kevin Mayer of France
said, “I started at 4pm and woke up at 7.30am, so I
had to wait eight hours.” As for the late nights, perhaps
Norway’s 400m hurdles champion Karsten Warholm
best caught the mood: “Don’t you all want to go home?”
he asked the blurry-eyed media before fielding yet
another question at his 1am post-race press conference.
1 Air-cooled stadium
How to hold a championships on the edge of a
desert was a problem solved with a state-of-the-art
cooling system that kept conditions in the Khalifa
Stadium at a near-ideal 26 degrees centigrade. For
athletes emerging from the humid warm-up track
through the “chilly” call room, Khalifa’s air-con was
all too welcome. As the Czech Republic’s javelin
great Barbora Spotakova put it, “I have never seen
such conditions before at any championships. We are
competing outdoors, but it feels like indoors.”
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For USA’s world record-breaking hurdler Dalilah
Muhammad, who raced here in May at the Diamond
League, the conditions were no surprise. “I loved the
cooling system. It definitely gives me confidence that
we can run fast,” she said with well-placed confidence
before the championships.
Of course, sprinters don’t much mind the heat...
“It’s a lot like Florida, you just sweat a little more,”
said fellow American Noah Lyles, before coolly
despatching his opponents in the 200m.
ISSUE 124 NOVEMBER 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
No events finished later (or earlier) than the road
races, as Doha witnessed the first ever night-time
World Championship marathons and race walks,
and the first to start and finish on different days.
This presented a few body-clock challenges for the
athletes. For women’s marathon champion Ruth
Chepngetich, the key was to train in the middle of
the Kenyan afternoon, “when the sun is up high. It is
not easy to run in these conditions, but that gave me
strength and power.” Japan’s Yusuke Suzuki also took
it in his stride as he walked away from his rivals in the
men’s 50km event. “It was very hot today,” he said,
forgetting momentarily it was night.
4 Mixed 4x400m relay
It was no surprise that the United States won the first
ever mixed gender event at a Worlds, but few could
have predicted the manner of their triumph as they
smashed the mixed 4x400m world record twice en
route to gold, dragging four other teams under the
old mark. The race also provided evergreen sprinter
Allyson Felix with a chance to add one more world
3 Night-time road races