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Stabroek News



Robles' IAAF award a bolt out of the blue
published: Wednesday | November 26, 2008


TRACK AND FIELD'S world governing body, the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF), needed to have added another criterion for its selection policy for its Performance of the Year Award: The person who wins the Athlete of the Year Award cannot also win the Performance of the Year Award.

Might not sound plausible but, at least it would go some way in explaining how Cuba's Dayron Robles was selected as the winner and presented with that award at its grand gala on Sunday in Monaco, ahead of Jamaica's Usain Bolt.

Robles clocked 12.87 seconds to win the men's 110 metres hurdles race at the Golden Spike Grand Prix meeting in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on June 12 to break the previous world record of by 0.01 seconds.

That is ONE-HUN-DREDTH of a second better than the previous world record, 12.88, that was set by China's Liu Xiang on July 14, 2006, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Shaving a mark

That's really shaving a mark, one which had recently been recorded and appeared capable of being wiped out anytime.

When Xiang established the new standard, he had reduced a mark he previously shared with British hurdler Colin Jackson of 12.91 seconds. Xiang equalled that mark on August 27, 2004, and Jackson had established the mark on the same date in 1993.

The 110 hurdles also, is the 21-year-old Cuban's pet event.

The 200m is Bolt's pet event, the one he's been running all his career. He only started competing over 100m in the latter part of last year, decent, but not eye-popping times of 10.03 at first go.

At the Olympic Games in Beijing, the events biggest stage, Bolt set two individual world records.

He set the 100m world-record 9.69 seconds - reducing his own mark of 9.72 - with absolute no wind (0.0), by THREE-HUNDREDTHS of a second. Don't forget that is wasn't 9.69 flat-out running either, as Bolt was beating his chest as he started celebrating at least 15 metres from the finish line. And this is an event in which he has barely been competing for one year. Before Beijing, the 200m world record was held by American Michael Johnson, who established the mark of 19.32 at the Atlanta Games in 1996.

Unbreakable

It is a record many thought unbreakable, similar to the women's 100m world- record mark (10.49 seconds) owned from July 14, 1988, by his now deceased countrywoman, the colourful Florence Griffith-Joyner.

The fastest times recorded by other leading male athletes over the 200m also suggested it would have been difficult to surpass.

Americans Tyson Gay (19.62), Xavier Carter (19.63) and Wallace Spearmon (19.65) were not closest, but the least farthest, with Bolt running 19.67 on July 14 this year.

However, the Jamaican, in the form of his life, simply exploded in a race against the clock to shave TWO-HUNDREDTHS of a second off the previous mark, setting the new standard at 19.30.

It was simply mind-boggling.

After breaking the world record this year, Robles, whose previous best of 12.92 was done last year, was quoted in a report posted on the website www.news.bbc.co.uk/sport, saying: "Wow! I did not expect that."

I have no doubts he said the same upon realisation he'd been selected ahead of Bolt for the IAAF Performance of the Year Award for male athletes in 2008.


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