2005 Track and Field World Championship

Is underway right now in Helsinki, at the very Olympic stadium I saw not two months ago.

They just ran the women's 3000 Meter Steeplechase. Talk about masochism! A Russian woman barely taller than the barriers was leading for awhile, and then fell apart after a stumble in the water pit. Poor thing.

That's the great thing about Russian sports coverage (aside from getting me hooked on biathalon) - track and field is considered a serious sport here worthy of consistent news coverage, not just during the Olympics and not just during some drug scandal or another. It may be because the Russian (women) kick ass and are awesome, but hey, I'm watching them play the Ethopian anthem, and I just saw them do the American anthem. Now that's democratic coverage.

Here are some track and field facts, in case you were interestet (courtesy of the Kommersant sports insert which had a feature on the world championships).

Of the 23 main events in women's track and field:

9 records are held by women from the Soviet Union and its successor states of Russia and the Ukraine.
6 more are held by women from Eastern Europe.
The world records in sprinting events (100M -800M) were all set in the 1980s and haven't been broken since, with the exception of the 400M hurdles, which was set exactly 2 years ago by a Russian.

An American woman, just a few minutes ago, cleared her high jump height of 2 meters, which is a bar that was broken not long ago. And a Swede JUST cleared 2.02!!! There's a battle on!

I miss running. I've just given it up this summer. The last time I ran was in May and it sucked. Then when my back started hurting, I thought it best not to run, but now I think the lack of running and general physical exertion is adding to my back and other skeleto-muscular problems. I also miss track. The last time I competed was over half of my lifetime ago, but I still love it, its still in my blood.