Edmonton Welcomes the worlds
By Mark Lee

Mark Lee can't wait to see Canada's athletes go head-to-head with legends like Maurice Greene, Marion Jones and Hicham El Guerrouj.

This summer, Canadians will have a rare opportunity. The City of Edmonton will play host to the World Championships in Athletics. It is the first time this global event that gathers the world’s finest track and field athletes has ever been held in North America.

Since their inception in 1983, the World Championships have stayed in Europe, save for one sojourn to Tokyo in 1991. Now, the sport distinguished as the main event of the Olympic Games, will choose its 2001 champions on Canadian soil.

With Olympic images from Sydney still fresh in the mind, the world’s fastest man, Maurice Greene, and peerless woman, Marion Jones, are among the champions coming to Edmonton. These and many more phenomenal athletes will run on the brand new track at Edmonton’s refurbished Commonwealth Stadium. It is the first and perhaps only opportunity Canadians will have to witness such a spectacle in person.

Maurice Greene is the world record holder in the men’s 100 metres - the man who took that mark from Canada’s Donovan Bailey - in a supernatural 9.79 seconds. (Incidentally, Greene’s standard equals the infamous world-record time set by Ben Johnson at the 1988 Seoul Olympics before he was disqualified for testing positive for steroids.) Greene recently ran 9.98 seconds into a head wind, proving his fitness despite nursing tendinitis in his knee.

But Maurice Greene heads to Edmonton, at the very least, vulnerable. Fellow American Tim Montgomery is suddenly a threat, running the fastest 100 metres of the year -- 9.84 seconds with a legal 2.0m/second tailwind in Oslo, Norway. And what about Canada’s Bruny Surin and former Olympic champion Donovan Bailey? Injuries and sickness ruined their Sydney experience. Age and mileage are catching up to them, and Edmonton will be their last hurrah. A last chance to see them run. Bailey is fighting a nagging heel injury, and Surin has been hindered by a hip ailment, but might they find one last explosion of sinew and muscle on home ground? The numbers say no. The intangibles say every race writes its own ending.

Marion Jones won three Olympic gold medals, and quite frankly, she remains unbeatable in the women’s 100m. Few sprinters have ever held such dominion over their event. Jones has modelled her career after the legendary sprinter Carl Lewis. Like Lewis, she is multi-talented, excelling at 100m, 200m, 4x100m and 4X400m relays and the long jump. This season, she has decided not to compete in the long jump in order to give her body a break. That’s bad news for the rest of the field in the sprints.

While the 100 metres is the blue ribbon event of track and field, it’s just one part of this sporting showcase. The middle distance races will feature Canada’s friendly rivals, 2001 Canadian Champion Graham Hood of Hamilton and Brantford’s Kevin Sullivan, winner of his first Grand Prix event this year in a stacked field. Both will challenge in the 1500m, an event that features world-record holder Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco and his quest for his third straight world championship.

The big men in the throws will have Canadian company in Edmonton. Jason Tunks of London, Ontario is a serious threat for a medal in the men’s discus. He is currently ranked in the top five in the world. Brad Snyder of Windsor, Ontario set a new Canadian record this summer in the hammer throw, breaking the vaunted 20m barrier with a 16 pound ball of steel. He hopes to be on the podium in Edmonton.

Two buddies plan to help each other to great heights in the high jump. Mark Boswell and Kwaku Boateng both compete for Canada and against each other, but they encourage and celebrate each other in competition in a way that’s unusual in the world of cutthroat sport. They both have serious hopes of winning a medal, especially Boswell, who won a memorable silver medal at the 1999 world championships.

In 1912, George Horine became the first man to jump two metres in the high jump. Sixty-five years later, Rosi Ackermann became the first woman to reach that same height in Germany. Women were prevented from entering many of the events contested by men during the early 1900s as many male experts worried the female body was not up to the task. Of course, that was to be proved a fallacy and today, women compete in virtually every event. And there have been some memorable champions. At the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, Jarmila Kratochvilova of Czechoslovakia set the world record in the women’s 400m of 47.99 seconds – a record that still stands. The next day she went out and won the women’s 800m.

There are several Canadian women with high aspirations in Edmonton. Diane Cummins, who became just the second Canadian woman to run the 800m in less than two minutes this summer, has proven herself to be a world-class performer. Ladonna Antoine made it to the Olympic semi-finals in Sydney in the women’s 400m and no longer doubts that she can run with the world’s best. Wanita May is chasing Debbie Brill’s long-standing Canadian women’s high jump record of 1.99m.

The World Championships in Athletics is always a compelling sporting event in which the victories of the great champions are measured against the humanity of the unknown athletes who often win the hearts of the spectators. Right from the opening ceremonies, which will feature for the first time the finish of the men’s marathon in front of a packed Commonwealth Stadium, these games will be worth watching.