Dear all,
Thinking of you from Daegu World Champs where i got a job from a leading newspaper.
I landed in Seoul on Thursday and had a 5 hours trip in car down to Daegu. Not too bad after 17h hours plane travel…
I’m staying at a friend’s place downtown, he is english teacher here and knows Daegu very well. That’s how i manage to eat proper and very cheap Korean food (kimchi, kimbap, soi gogi deop bap, soju, etc), and have a lot of fun. Korean people are really nice, always trying to talk, asking for pictures, giving cakes, sweets or their telephone number. They are always willing to help you but infortunately they don’t know how and slow you down. This is so irritating at times because you always are in hurry during such major events.
Many collegues are really getting bored in this city so i realise how i’m lucky to have my personal guide and this is definitively a place where i would like to live. One month would be more than enough though lol
Champs opened in the weirdest way with Bolt’s dq. I was at the warm-up stadium and knew something wrong was going on when i saw Bolt practicing starting-blocks before the semi-final. I’ve always witnessed his warm-ups, Beijing and Berlin and never he used blocks. I guess he came in Daegu after only five 100m (versus 11 and 12 before Beijing and Berlin), so he was not ready, so he was not confident, so he changed his habbits, so he messed up.
See you my friends!
PJ, thank you for your updates! It’s great to have information and perspective directly from the event. Look forward to more updates and hopefully a detailed post championships wrap up.
Finally a rational and supported reason for Bolt’s DQ. Hopefully this will silence the conspiracy theorists.
Hey good to hear from you PJ! Enjoy your live viewing for us schmucks back home.
Insightful analysis of the DQ, thank you. Preparation, Preparation, Preparation, Preparation…
He’s probably been preparing for 10 years. Accidents happen.
Thank you, maybe everyone now can move on and stop all the non-sense.
Thanks PJ. I am highly impressed with the “class” being exhibited by some of the medallists in Daegu. For instance comments made by Kim Collins : "I don’t think it’s right and as much as I want to be on the podium, tonight is a sad night for athletics.
“I don’t think fans all over the world are going to be happy. And I wouldn’t be if I was defending champion and I lost like that. You want to lose like a man.”
… and 110H winner Jason Richardson: “I am disappointed to have won the gold medal on a technicality.”
Athletics can be the most selfess game in the world but these guys show character and an understanding of their environment and even a bit of compassion for their opponents.
Enjoy Daegu, PJ, you are “lucky” to be able to be exactly in the spot where the world of athletics is trying to focus right now.