Key events
First up this morning/evening, we’ve got the heats of the men’s 400m. Matt Hudson-Smith, the Olympic silver medallist goes in those for GB – he’s fourth-fastest in the world this year.
On which point:
I said I’d come back to Dennis Mitchell, so here we are. He comes across as really good dude but it’s hard to disagree too much with Gabby Douglas. Here’s Sean Ingle:
While there was a great atmosphere on the track, there has been a rather frosty one in the sprinting community. That is because in the buildup to these Championships, Gabby Thomas, the American who won 200m gold in Paris last year, posted a comment on social media that sent tongues wagging. “Doping coaches should be banned for life from coaching in the sport,” she wrote. “Whether you were banned while competing as an athlete or caught distributing as a coach [for some, both],” she wrote. “Idc idc idc [I don’t care] … If you train under a coach who is known for doping … you are complicit.”
Her message was directed at Dennis Mitchell, who is coaching the four American women 100m sprinters here, including Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, the favourite for gold, and Sha’Carri Richardson, the reigning champion.
Mitchell was a top sprinter who made perhaps the most preposterous excuse for failing a drugs test. It came in 1998 after he tested positive for excessive testosterone and blamed it on having drunk five beers and having sex with his wife four times. “It was her birthday,” he said. “The lady deserved a treat.”
Mitchell was banned for two years. A decade later he testified under oath in the Balco investigation that he had received human growth hormone from his coach, Trevor Graham.
More recently, in 2017, Mitchell and an athletics agent, Robert Wagner, were caught on camera offering to supply performance-enhancing drugs to a fake actor in an operation conducted by the Daily Telegraph.
Preamble
こんにちは – kon’nichiwa – and welcome to the World Athletics Championships – night two!
In the summer of 1991, Toyko hosted this same competition, and to this day it stands as one of the greats, featuring perhaps the greatest men’s 100m race ever run. With Leroy Burrell looking set for victory, Carl Lewis came from nowhere, on his literal blind side – his right eye is legally so – dipping for a finish that took some time to unravel.
In the event, Lewis took gold by 0.02s, breaking the world record in the process, while Burrell also improved on his pre-existing mark; Dennis Mitchell, more on whom later, snaffled bronze. The overwhelming sense was that this was most significant sporting event in the world, the entire planet captivated.
Things have changed since then, Usain Bolt putting the leading mark so far out of sight as to be almost invisible; we are no longer inspired by watching the fastest humans ever to sprint the earth. On the other hand, though, Kishane Thompson and Noah Lyles could barely be split at the Olympics and since then, Oblique Seville has established himself as a serious rival, while Letsile Tebogo and Kenny Bednarek remain threats. Tonight’s final mightn’t be epochal, but it will be brilliant.
Similar is so in the women’s competition. The fastest runner on paper, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, is well past her best, so too Shericka Jackson and perhaps also Sha’Carri Richardson – who might still fancy herself to bring it home. More likely, though, the gold will be contested by Julien Alfred, the Olympic champ, and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, easily the fastest in the world this year – or, to put things another way, we’re in for a treat.
