Day 3 at Eurovets: Heat shrinks distance fields
While athletes fight the hot conditions, our reporter in Poznan is fighting technical glitches keeping him off the Internet. Pete apologizes for late report on Day 3 (Saturday) of the Eurovets championships in Poland, saying, āThe server at the stadium went down and still not fixed. No internet acess at my hotel. Thatās modern for you.ā But with true British grit, he found a way to send me his latest reports. Hereās the Saturday installment:
Euro Champs Day 3 for Ken
European Veterans Championships, July 22 Day 3
From Pete Mulholland
And the heat goes on. But no heats for many of the events!
It may be the injuries; it may be the heat, but whatever the reason, non-attendance for events is at a high level; some say as high as 20 percent overall.
In many an instance there are no heats, just straight finals and more often than not, athletes are informed of the situation after they have done their āwarm-upā. Consternation all round.
Back to non-attendance: The W45 1500m showed 10 entries but only six toed the line. Same category but over 10,000m. Only one entry here, but, on the day no competitors.
Considering the heat, it was also surprising that the organisers had the M60 1500m brigade contesting two heats just to delete two runners from the finals
As Yogi Berra may have said, āItād deja-vu all over again,ā as the M40 100m proved a re-run of San Sebastian with Britainās Tony Noel once again having to hold off a strong finishing Enrico Saracini; the Italian who has an M40 47.82 world record gracing his CV.
It was a British 1-2-3 in the M50 100m with first man home Dr. Stephen Peters, heading towards yet another M50 sprint treble for the eighth time of asking in a championship event.
āI was pleased to win, but not happy with the time,ā he admitted after clocking 11.83 seconds with a slightly favourable reading of +0.5.
The German āsuperstarsā, M65 Guido Muller and M75 Wolfgang Reuter were well to the fore in their respective 100m events with the latterās 13.73 proving a championship best and into a slight headwind of -0.3
Yet another gold medal for W65 Evaun Williams with her British shot record of 11.53m.
How come that a world record discus throw is less than that logged up for a European record?
Confused? Join the club: After Finlandās Kauro Jouppila M85 discus went out to 31.41 (103-0) it was announced as world record, disposing of Ross Carterās 30.81 (101-0) set in 2000. But hey, didnāt Osmo Renvall hurl his implement 37.86 (124-2) in 1991? Ironically, both of these past efforts are indicated on the Hy-Tek result sheet but still the announcers chose to ignore the European mark.
On discussion with the EVAA stats guru Ivar Soderlind, the official line appears to be, āThe matter is being sorted.ā
Hopefully this is so, for similar instances abound throughout.
