On Sport-Express.ru, Yuri Yuris wrote:19.09.2007
Sergey BUBKA: "CANCELLING RECORDS WILL DO NOTHING"
THE FIRST OF FOUR
For the elite of runners, jumpers and throwers, the world championships in Osaka, although the peak of the season, were particularly formal. None of them produced results in Japan which would fire the imaginations of the worshippers of the queen of sport. Yes even this title seems ever more like an anachronism, a tribute to something which stands in the past. In recent years the "kingdom" has gone through difficult times, losing its citizens – both in the grandstands and in front of the televisions.
Therefore the actions of the IAAF congress, which met in Osaka before the start of the championships, drew no less attention from those concerned with light athletics, than the tournament itself. 74-year-old Lamine Diack, the long-standing head of the world community of athletes, received four new deputies. The new First Vice President of the IAAF is the illustrious Ukrainian former pole vaulter Sergey Bubka, who is still well known and a high-ranking Olympic official: he is a member of the IOC executive committee and the President of the Ukrainian national Olympic committee. Logic suggests that Bubka, who is now 43, will prove to be heir to the elderly Diack in the post of IAAF President. Or maybe not?
- “Let’s immediately drop the theme of "heredity", since it’s irrelevant,” proposes Sergey Nazarovich. “Today I work under the command of Lamine Diack, a man for whom I have endless respect, and in any case I am only one of four Vice Presidents.”
- Not "one of", but first! Is there really no difference?
- Fundamentally, no. I was proclaimed the First Vice President only because I collected a few more votes than the other candidates. Our "inequality" comes down to some procedural nuances: if for some reason the President isn’t able to be present, let’s say, at the IAAF council session, then I’ll conduct meeting. That’s all. However, as far as the functional responsibilities are concerned, their distribution between the Vice Presidents won’t take place until the end of November, when we gather in Monte Carlo. Each will receive his share of the work: one Vice President will answer for the judicial component, including questions involving the fight against doping, the second will be occupied with marketing, the third will begin solving problems in the development of our form of sport, and the fourth will concentrate on the organization of the major competitions.
- Your predecessor in the IAAF First Vice President’s armchair, Sweden’s Arne Ljungqvist, has been occupied with the legal issues and doping. Does this mean that his responsibilities will now undoubtedly pass to Bubka?
- (smiling) This isn’t completely mandatory either. Everything depends on the President’s decision.
- "And you, my friends, no matter your positions..." Further and grandfather Krylov’s new "quartet" in the IAAF management would be put to shame. The world of sport at least expects this, depressed by the stagnation which light athletics has recently been going through. Do you agree that your form of sport has a problem, and a big one?
- It’s hard to deny the obvious. Only you shouldn’t think the IAAF itself isn’t concerned with all this and doesn’t search for ways of overcoming the crisis, which is connected, in my view, first of all with insufficient popularization of light athletics. But to be more precise: with a decrease in its level of presentability.
- What do you have in mind?
- First of all, the competition calendar and selection of arenas. Today the IAAF calendar contains a bunch of different-caliber starts, from the privileged "Golden League" down to the "Grand Prix II" category. Sometimes I ask myself the question: If the athletes survive under the conditions of rigorous competition, then why not the tournament organizers as well? I’m not confident all six cities that now comprise the "Golden League" are worthy of it. For example, clearly Oslo needs replacing, where there are many questions about the appropriate housing of athletes; the transportation; the spectacle of the tournament. Everything that they offer there, to athletes and spectators – this is yesterday. Yet it’s an entirely different matter in Stockholm, where they hold an exemplarily tournament in the "Super Grand Prix" series. Why not move the "Golden League" stage to the Swedish capital if the neighboring Norwegians can’t manage the task?
Similar to how teams in the play forms of sport move form one league to another depending on their achievements, so should there be competition among the rotating cities that take on the biggest athletic tournaments. Furthermore I say the "Golden League", in my view, should expand beyond the limits of Europe, where it’s cooked in its own juice. One tournament can be in Australia, one in Asia, one in the USA. Also we shouldn’t brush aside South America. Ideally for the popularization of light athletics, the "Golden League" should take place on all five continents.
- Are you going to take it away from Europe?
- Not at all. First, the number of stages can be increased. Secondly, if a couple of European cities that forgot how to carry out competitions at the proper level were "relegated", nothing terrible would happen. Let them fight again for entry into the "Golden League".
NO TRICK AGAINST THE PAINS
- You once told me that light athletics is much more comfortably suited to small arenas, where the spectators can literally hear the breathing of the competing athletes...
- And perhaps this isn’t so? What’s the sense of being in an 80-thousand seat Olympic stadium in Rome, if even for the "Golden League" they fill up only a third? You won’t find a better anti-advertisement for light athletics than running and jumping against a background of empty plastic armchairs. The man who sees all this on television involuntarily thinks: There are so few spectators at the stadium, I was right to stay home.
- In your opinion, which city that hosts the "Golden League" manages its task better than the others?
- If you’d asked this question several years ago, then I would have answered without a moment's hesitation: Zurich with its effectively unlimited financial resources. But today, in my view, the supremacy has passed to Brussels. Wilfried Meert, in his capacity as permanent director of the competition, has carried it out for several decades in the Belgian capital already. This tournament, by the way, was conceived by sportswriters who wanted to immortalize the memory of the distinguished Belgian middle-distance runner Ivo van Damme, a double silver medalist at the Olympic Games in Montreal, who was killed in a car wreck. In spite of the tournament’s contemporary status in the "Golden League", in Belgium, as before, they call it nothing but the "Memorial van Damme".
- But how is it distinguished among the other tournaments?
- By the highest level of organization and the enormous love Meert and his assistants show, both to the athletes and to the fans. This is probably the only 50-thousand seat arena in the world today in which light athletics competitions are held under the sound of strings. Even during my time as an athlete, Meert had begun to experiment: to complete each light-athletics competition with a concert by musical stars, including even Montserrat Caballé.
- So you consider that without a musical "dessert", the light athletics fan cannot be satisfied by the main dish which is offered on the track and in the sectors?
- Of course I don’t consider it to be like that. I only give this as an example of how it’s possible to embellish the competition, to make it more of a festival. Why assume the distance runners, winding around their circles, can’t do it under music?
Consider how light athletics is a very complex form of sport for the audience perception. In football, for example, one hundred thousand pairs of the eyes are simultaneously focused on one ball – and there’s no problem. For us this is impossible, since the competitions take place simultaneously in different corners of the arena: some are running, some are jumping, some are throwing... The beginning light-athletics fan is like a child with unsettled attention and delayed reactions. He needs help.
- How?
- By instantly issuing information about everything, going on at this moment. Who leads in the race and how many laps remain to the finish. The javelin thrower or long jumper’s result must appear on the scoreboard immediately, not after a delay of several minutes, when the spectators’ attention is already concentrated on something else. The length of the competitions must be quite compact. In my opinion, any more than two and a half hours is excessive for the fans. Maybe it’s even appropriate to "pack" the world championships, which now extend over nine days, into six or seven. Morning eliminations can go on as long as you want, but then leave only finals for the evening, or if any semi-finals, only in the sprints, as these are always a bright spectacle.
- How does the IAAF intend to compete against football, which displaces light athletics from the stadiums, converting her from the "queen" into Cinderella?
- Alas, there is no trick against the pains. The latest, you could say, scandalous example: we had an understanding with Stuttgart that the world athletics final, as the concluding event of the season, would take place at the city’s main stadium three years in a row. Last season it took place there, this year as well. But next year, most likely, the Germans will give a neck twist to light athletics. The football club of Stuttgart, to our misfortune, became the German champions this year, and is going to buy out the stadium and make it a football-only facility. Without the track and sectors.
- The President of the All-Russian Federation for Light Athletics, Valentin Balakhnichev proposes a revolutionary step: to discard the 400 meter permanent track in favor of a 300 meter temporary one that can be quickly installed and later dismantled in any open arena, including football-only. What do you think in regard to this?
- At the moment no one can say how to actually carry out something like this, but Valentin Vasilyevich’s proposal deserves respect, for its courage at least. In the rigorously competitive conditions under which the international federations of the various different sports exist, you must be able to adapt quickly. So I hope that the IAAF will get rid of its work on "minutia", and will concentrate on the strategic problems of developing light athletics.
- "Minutia" – of what sort?
- About changes in the rules, for example. I’m completely convinced that the IAAF congress, which meets only once every four years, mustn’t be occupied by such trifles as the type of reinforcement on the handle of the hammer or the brands of fluids with which vaulters may lubricate their palms before their jumps... this can be completely handled by specialists on the technical committee, and the IAAF council can approve the changes operationally. The false start rule in the sprints is also a technical issue in general. We even separate this ecumenical discussion, which is now catching up with the swimmers, although the question of disqualifying an athlete after the first false start has also been moving right along for us. Gradually we’ve become engrossed in it for years... Supposedly a compromise version was found: one "non-judicial" false start charged to all participants in the race. Consequently we pardon one, and immediately punish another with disqualification. Where’s the logic?
CLOSE TO THE LIMITS
- Now in your capacity as first Vice President of the IAAF you can try to find the logic. By the way, a radical step has been proposed to pull light athletics out of this stagnation: to abolish all the previous records - to start everything with a clean sheet. How do you like this idea, as a man whose world achievements outdoors and in have already stood almost a decade and a half?
- Does anyone really think that if we abolish the records tomorrow, then the day after a vaulter will be found who will jump 6.16? Or will we declare 5.80 of the last century as the new "record"? I don’t even want to enter into the discussion. A directive to "cancel" records will achieve absolutely nothing.
- Then what can kick start a rise in the results, which in the overwhelming majority of light-athletics disciplines have been stuck in place a long time already?
- And why do you dismiss the notion that athletes are approaching the limits of human possibilities if they’re "stuck"? Frankly, I sometimes entertain this thought. Only a few individuals are capable of getting beyond these limits, and they be born extremely rarely.
Although, in my view, there’s one more reason - mercantile characteristics, for which the athletes prefer to not try their utmost. Now there are so many commercial starts that the economic side of the question darkens the sport. It’s possible, without particularly straining, to make a living everywhere little by little, and further – without overworking. I don’t say this as a condemnation. Such is life: a sports career is short-lived, and God forbid you get injured...
What could provide a rise in the results are new technologies. "Faster" tracks let’s say, or poles from a new material. I, for example, am a "contemporary" of the fiberglass that vaulters still jump on now. Is this because there have been no more advanced materials? Yes and no. At one time they began to try adding graphite into the fiberglass. The poles became lighter, but more fragile. The majority of jumpers declined to use them.
- The modest results which the athletes have manifested in recent years are in no way connected with the tougher fight against doping?
- I don’t think so. We fight with this evil, but alas, we’ve hardly put an end to it. You’ll always find people who will search for shortcuts to the trophies and the glory. The large personalities are always predestined for success in our form of sport, and as I said, they are born infrequently. Perhaps Carl Lewis has remained in memory for a generation only as an outstanding sprinter? Nothing of the sort. The whole enormous world of light athletics was associated with his name. I dare to think immodestly that one can say the same about Bubka...
- You don’t need to pretend modesty. Light athletics are still firmly associated with Bubka – and as a prominent official today. A member of the IOC executive committee, President of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee, and now the first Vice President of the IAAF as well. How do you intend to manage it all?
- Largely these figure to be "three in one"; one form of activity. In seven years I’ve gotten a lot of practice and learned a lot. You could say I’ve became a different person. However, as far as my duties to big-time sports are concerned, which, I repeat, don’t burden me at all, I’ll have fewer a year from now: when my term in the IOC executive committee expires, and I’ll return to my post as chairman of the athletes’ commission, which I’ve held in the International Olympic Committee since 2000.
- Can you answer, as a still active member of the IOC executive committee: is a boycott of the Olympiad in Beijing possible, as someone in the USA has suddenly suggested?
- Utterly out of the question. It’s the usual propagandistic posturing directed against a country, which today puts shoes and clothing on half the world. I don’t like it at all. Yes, there are ecological problems in Beijing, and the Olympic organizers are doing everything possible to deal with them. Yes, China isn’t the most democratic country in the world; but the human rights problems that existed there prior to 2000, when Beijing received the games, and the same problems today – it’s like night and day. More important things are still to come, but the country has already changed beyond recognition; it’s become considerably more open. And this has happened, I note, because of the Olympiad.
Yuri YURIS
Kiev
Edited to restore all the text that got lost awhile back due to the old server's incorrect handling of non-ANSI characters.
