http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/athletics/article7125820.ece
Diamond League needs more than Usain Bolt to sparkle
Asafa Powell used to be the fastest man in the world, but that was before Usain Bolt debunked decades of science and took a turbocharged showboat into the mainstream. “If he is human, then he can be beaten,” the deposed Jamaican said. It sounded a big if.
That is the problem facing the Diamond League as it launches in Doha, Qatar, tonight. A homogenised 14-date calendar is welcome, as is news that Bolt, Powell and Tyson Gay have agreed to meet on at least three occasions this summer, but the sport is still far too reliant on its star turn.
Take Gay. The American is the second fastest 100 metres runner in history. He clocked 9.71sec in the World Championship final in Berlin last August, despite a groin problem, and says that there are chinks in Bolt’s armour. Yet Gay remains on the periphery of public consciousness while Bolt is ingrained in it. One Christian website famously referred to him as Tyson Homosexual, his profile evidently not high enough for anyone to notice software settings had renamed him.
The Diamond League is being billed as a $50 million (about £34 million) series to save athletics and there are promising signs. The BBC has signed up for it, meaning viewers will be able to watch Bolt regularly, and we will get more head-to-head duels. However, until everyone knows Gay’s name, the sport has a problem.
There are other obstacles to overcome, too. There is an inherent lack of trust after so many drug scandals. The situation is muddied further by the different stances taken by leading players. All the top European meetings have an unwritten agreement not to invite convicted dopers to their events, which may be admirable but nevertheless leaves them open to criticism from the likes of Travis Tygart, chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
He suggested this week that Justin Gatlin should be allowed to run in Diamond League meetings when he returns from his doping ban in July. “He has done his time” was the crux of Tygart’s reasoned argument, albeit that Gatlin was also one of the nails in the coffin of athletics and has never admitted culpability, despite two failed tests and a four-year ban.
The cycle of the sport does not help reinvention either, as any league system inevitably plays third fiddle to the Olympics and World Championships. There is a trophy at the end of the year for winners of each of the 32 individual Diamond League events, but athletes are more concerned with medals and the millions on offer from promotional deals. The unavoidable fact is that a league struggles to work in athletics because athletes do not commit to the same number of races and face fields of varying quality.
Meanwhile, the whiff of parochialism does not deflect from the issue that the dominance of African athletes in the middle to long-distance events is a turn-off for many in Europe. Indeed, the only European runner to win gold at last year’s World Championships was Marta Domínguez, of Spain, in the 3,000 metres steeplechase.
Yet athletics, as evinced by the drama of the big championships, is a global riot of good, bad and ugly. It is so corruptible because it is the purest of all sports. Run in a straight line and become a megastar.
That is the Bolt story, but there has to be life after that. The IAAF knows this. So does Lord Coe, who will decide later this month whether to stand against Lamine Diack for the presidency of the governing body.
Bolt has given the sport a gilt-edged opportunity, but knowing how to take it is another matter. The real hope, for Britain at least, is that the double whammy of Bolt and the London Olympics, backed by a more visible grand-prix series, will lead to more athletes entering the mainstream.
The next two years could be do or die.
Doha must make do without Bolt, who will make his Diamond League bow in the next round in Shanghai. In his absence, and with three modern legends — Kenenisa Bekele, Sanya Richards-Ross and Yelena Isinbayeva — all pulling out, Powell is the big draw. “I want to do something to open people’s eyes,” he said. With the elite refraining from their habit of ducking each other, there should be plenty of startled expressions this year. Gay is talking about getting the 100 metres world record. Already this season, Bolt has run the fourth fastest 200 metres of all time. “I was not surprised,” Powell said. “That’s a jog for him.”
How it works
• There are 14 meetings: May 14, Doha; May 23, Shanghai; June 4, Oslo; June 10, Rome; June 12, New York; July 3, Eugene, Oregon; July 8, Lausanne; July 10, Gateshead; July 16, Paris; July 22, Monaco; August 6, Stockholm; August 13/14, London; August 19, Zurich; August 27, Brussels
• 32 events will be contested in total, 15 at each meeting Points are scored for the top three places at each meeting
• There will be $450,000 (about £306,000) in prize money at each meeting
• Winners of each event at the end of the season will win the Diamond Race and receive a diamond trophy and $40,000
• Top athletes contracted to make a set number of appearances