As both an athlete and a trackside photographer, I've often said that I feel I have an unique view of events, as I tend to see a lot of them from both sides. My lasting positive views of Clermont Ferrand will be of the tremendous friendliness between athletes, and the fantastic Clermont indoor stadium.
But those views will be tempered by the oh-so-common complaints about poor organisation of some parts of the event. Sadly, on this occasion, some of those organisational failings were rather frequent.
Access to the magnificent Jean Pellez stadium was superb, particularly using the tram system. The arena campus was a problem, though. The Information Centre (TIC) was 300m from the stadium.
For several days, the only supply of results and qualification details was at the TIC. This was slow and apparently random. The weather was bad most days. Who really thought that warmed up or recently-raced athletes would be prepared to shuttle between the arena and TIC, to find whether they made the next round etc? And when the programme over ran past 7pm, the TIC still closed, bang on time.
Lack of warm up facilities was a complaint in Riccione, last September. It was almost as bad at times in Clermont. OK, there was an outside all-weather track next to the indoor track, but that was useless when it rained and snowed (as it did, several times), and in the evening with temperatures down around freezing.
The "warm up" room was a sick joke. It was a small indoor basketball court, half of which was used up by the shot put cage. The rest had a loose glass fibre mat on the floor. Whose idea was it that this was adequate for a World Indoor Championships?
There was some space in the indoor arena to warm up, but when jumps and vaults used the runways beside the main track (most days), this was inadequate. There was room to jog around the perimeter of the arena, but for the first two days of the championships, officials tried to stop this. The fact that the situation improved slightly from day to day showed that someone was listening, but it wasn't enough, and could have been anticipated. There was nowhere to warm up under cover for fast events, and nowhere for, say, hurdlers, to practice.
In my view, every athlete will have severe and justified criticism of the call room procedures. The call room was a heated tent next to the arena. Athletes who went to the call room on time usually found that delays in the programme meant they were there too early, but no one could ever say for certain when to come back. That meant that many people hung around, so as not to risk disqualification.
Lack of basic information for athletes meant that when one arrived at the call room, this was almost always the first time that one discovered which heat, semi, lane etc, one had been allocated.
Trouble was, this never seemed to stay the same. For one of my 200m rounds, the heat and lane draws changed while we were in the call room, and changed after we had reported, too! Then, when we got out on the track, these had changed again. The same happened in the 60m rounds.
By mid-week, some random results and draws were being displayed in the warm up room as well as the TIC, but these pieces were, as I say, apparently random, and seldom seemed to be what had been given to call room officials. The officials were doing their utmost to help, and were very frustrated. Lack of almost any language except French in the call room was an added problem. I was in the same hotel as many of the officials and spoke to some of them about their own concerns.
In my view, none of this was helped by an arrogant attitude by a few elite athletes, who were not prepared to wait in call room, if they even went there at all, that is. They seemed to think it was fine just to turn up at the start of the race, having been warming up while others were waiting in call room, as per the rules. I never saw anyone DQ'd for this abuse. Funny, that.
These things all became a big problem on the second evening of the Championships. The track walks for the older age groups had run badly over time during the day. M35 200m runners were still racing second round heats at 11.15 p.m. that night, and call room procedures seems to have all but broken down. The call room was freezing; it was snowing outside, and no one seemed to have any idea who was actually calling the shots.
The number of heats, rounds and semis was published in the meet program. However, there were several occasions when this was ignored. This led to several appeals, which call room staff could not resolve.
In one of my own events, a third semi-final race was run three hours after the other two, as a result of appeals. However, officials made inadequate efforts to tell the athletes, and there were empty lanes. One of my team colleagues looked on in amazement as the race he didn't know was going to happen ran without him. Despite the extra recovery time these athletes will have had, the heat was significantly slower than the other two.
Next day, by mere chance I just happened to be in the TIC when officials posted the line up for an A and B final in one of my events. The B final was a complete surprise, and was due to run in just an hour's time. What's more, having believed that I'd been knocked out in the semi final, I found I was in the B Final. My team Manager was with me, and had no idea about the race, either.
Fortunately, I was in the process of warming up for another event, and I was able to tell several other athletes who had not heard the news. I won the B Final race, so clearly I have mixed feelings on this subject, but it ought have been handled better!
Particularly bad weather (rain, gales) on the Friday led to the outdoor race walk being postponed until the Saturday morning. A justifiable decision, and just bad luck on anyone planning to do both events. However, it then snowed on the Saturday morning, so conditions were still difficult.
And why were the medal ceremonies held in the TIC, and not in the arena? The medal presentations for relays and events on Saturday were held on the spectator walkway in the arena, which proved it could have been done all along, in my view.
Every host nation for championships like this gets a bit chauvinistic at times, and the trackside announcers, who did a good job of trying to get some atmosphere going in the stadium can be forgiven for favouring French athletes. However, when one 1500m qualifying race contained only French athletes, many asked whether this was really the result of correctly applying the rules?
Ancona, Kamloops, EVACs and, most of all, WMA -- please listen and learn.
