Yohan Blake and Vivian Cheruiyot are the true world athletes of the year

All smiles: Usain Bolt and Sally Pearson with their awards (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)

The world governing body of athletics may have got one vote right by choosing London instead of Doha to host the 2017 World Championships, but its choice of the male and female world athletes of the year has provoked understandable anger.

So much so that it prompted a walk-out by Kenyan delegates in protest at the women’s vote at the International Association of Athletics Federations gala in Monaco.

The choice of Usain Bolt as the male winner was controversial enough. Even Bolt would admit that 2011 was not one of his best years as he struggled to find top gear in the early part of the season and then false-started in the 100 metres final at the World Championships in Daegu.

His training partner, Yohan Blake, was surely far more deserving of the accolade for his 100m world gold, his brilliant bend to set Jamaica up for a world record-breaking 4x100m relay victory and his spectacular 200m performance in Brussels, where his winning time of 19.26sec was the second fastest in history.

But when it comes to its choice of female athlete of the year, Australian Sally Pearson, the IAAF would appear to have lost the plot.

That is not to denigrate Pearson’s achievement in winning the 100m hurdles gold in Daegu in the fourth fastest time in history. She is one hell of an athlete.

But how could the IAAF possibly rate her above Vivian Cheruiyot? The Kenyan was untouchable this year, winning world titles in the 5,000 and 10,000m to add to the 8km crown she won at the World Cross Country Championships.

She rounded off her unbeaten season by taking the overall Diamond League title – a feat Pearson was unable to match after falling in the Diamond League final in Brussels.

The vote for the two athletes of the year, which carries a substantial prize of $100,000 for the winners, is a relatively internal affair and is not open to the public.

Members of the so-called ‘IAAF family’ – national federations, meeting directors, athletes and their representatives, media – are invited to vote for three male and female athletes. A final shortlist is then drawn up and the IAAF’s ruling council has the final say.

The IAAF says it went for Pearson above Cheruiyot because she attracted more votes than the Kenyan in the IAAF family poll.

But that has provoked the ire of Isaiah Kiplagat, the chairman of Athletics Kenya, who says the election procedure penalises African athletes:

“We are all disappointed and the reason I was given when I asked – that Vivian received 30 votes less than Pearson in the online voting – is not enough. The purpose of the sportsman or sportswoman of the year is nothing else other than the performance.

“This is not a beauty pageant where the one with the best looks gets to win. Neither should they use online voting as a reason since it is quite clear that Africans are not on the same level in the usage of the internet. The selection needs to be changed.

“Even Pearson admitted Cheruiyot should have won it. Everyone there thought the same and to have any other outcome does not reflect the true nature of the awards.”

By way of a consolation prize, both Blake and Cheruiyot were presented with 'Performance of the Year' awards at the IAAF gala, though neither of them looked too enamoured as they received their trophies, which do not come with any prize money. They are both entitled to feel hard done by.

It is surely no coincidence that Bolt is the most marketable and iconic athlete on the planet, while the personable and articulate Pearson has emerged this year as the new face of women’s athletics.

Despite their brilliance on the track, Blake and Cheruiyot simply do not have the same cachet or charisma off it. You need to be popular to win the IAAF's top award. Running fast just isn’t enough.

London kept its side of athletics legacy bargain, now IAAF must award capital the World Championships

Not again: Lord Coe will be praying for no repeat of the jubilation when Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup (Photo: AFP)

I am trying to picture the headlines next week if Doha is chosen ahead of London to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships. It doesn’t make pretty reading.

If anything, the humiliation would be even greater than England’s last-place finish in the 2018 World Cup vote because London is so obviously a more suitable candidate than its rival, with its furnace-like temperatures and crowds so sparse that they have to bus in migrant workers for Diamond League meetings and then lock the

stadium doors to stop them leaving early.

One can only imagine the backlash. It would be seen as a snub of epic proportions, and it would certainly re-open the debate over whether a permanent running track in the Olympic Stadium can really be justified.

If the International Association of Athletics Federations couldn't care less about cementing Britain’s athletics legacy, then why should we spend tax-payers’ money keeping the Olympic Stadium in public ownership just to guarantee the future of the running track?

The clamour to tear up the track would be deafening, while the personal criticism of Lord Coe for his insistence on a permanent athletics legacy would also grow louder. And all this at a time when Britain was supposed to be getting ready for a gigantic celebration of Olympic sport, with athletics at its centre.

Such a scenario is why the IAAF council members must do the right thing next week and vote for London. It is surely payback time for the efforts of Coe, and indeed the Government, in sticking so firmly to London’s promise to retain an athletics legacy for the Olympic Stadium.

That promise was made to the International Olympic Committee in Singapore in 2005 and was a key factor in London’s success in securing the 2012 Games. It is widely believed that Lamine Diack, the IAAF president, switched his vote from Paris to London because of that undertaking.

Diack certainly did not forget London’s promise earlier this year when the Olympic Park Legacy Company were weighing whether to allow Tottenham to tear up the track and rebuild the stadium as a football-only venue.

In fact, his outrage at such a prospect could not have been plainer as he talked of “betrayal” and “a big lie” if the track was removed.

It is worth recalling the statement he released in support of a permanent running track. He wrote:

The crux of the stadium debate for the IAAF focuses on the commitment given by the London bid committee in Singapore in 2005 to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which has many members from the sport of athletics, to retain a sustainable athletics legacy after the London Games.

This promise was not a footnote of London’s bid: it was a core  policy of their presentation to convince the Olympic family of their exciting, viable legacy plans. It offered a vision of year-round health and fitness opportunities for the local community and a venue to stage national and major international athletics competitions ranging from meetings like the Samsung Diamond League to Area and World Championships.

So there it is. In reminding us of London’s promise, Diack also acknowledged the city’s vision of a vibrant athletics legacy with major international meetings, including the World Championships, being staged in the stadium.

That is the vision that Coe has held on to ever since London was awarded the Olympics, despite the pressures to water down the promise made in Singapore.

London has kept its side of the bargain. Now it is up to the IAAF to deliver.

Paula Radcliffe should not be stripped of her marathon world record

World's best: this is no longer considered a world record

Having plumbed the depths of incompetence with its botched elections at last month’s Congress in Daegu, the International Association of Athletics Federations has not exactly covered itself in glory with its ill-considered decision to strip Paula Radcliffe of the marathon world record she set in London in 2003.

In its wisdom, the world governing body has decreed that only times set in women-only road races will now be counted as world records and that world marks set in mixed races will be downgraded to the less prestigious classification of ‘world best’.

Because the 2003 London Marathon was mixed, Radcliffe’s remarkable time of 2hr 15min 25sec will no longer be recognised as the world record.

Instead, the time of 2hr 17min 42sec she set in winning the women-only 2005 London Marathon is now the official world mark.

Radcliffe has described the decision to apply the new rule retrospectively as “unfair”, and she has every right to feel aggrieved.

It is a classic case of fixing something that ain’t broken – in a sport where there are plenty of things crying out for repair.

The strangeness of the IAAF’s decision is underlined by a glance at the current list of women’s world records.

Many were set in to the drug-tainted 1980s, perhaps never to be broken without pharmaceutical help, yet the record-breakers remain honoured in the history books in indelible ink.

The governing body has stubbornly resisted calls to sweep away the old, suspicious records and start afresh with a clean slate.

But, presented with statistical evidence that mixed races tend to produce faster women’s times than women-only races, the IAAF rushed to judgment with a knee-jerk response that has erased arguably the greatest women’s world record of them all.

Why, you may well wonder, has the issue suddenly reared its head more than eight years after Radcliffe set her world record on the streets of London?

The reason is that IAAF’s road-running commission has for some time been agitating for the creation of separate world records for mixed and women-only road races to recognise the performance advantage women can gain from being paced by male runners in a mixed race.

The proposal to establish two records of equal weight and prestige was formally proposed by commission member David Bedford, the race director of the London Marathon, at the IAAF’s Congress.

But the idea has proved to be an own goal. Congress delegates accepted the argument about performance differentials but rather than creating two world records, they went along with a recommendation from the IAAF’s ruling council to downgrade records set in mixed races and recognise only women-only races for world record purposes.

The decision has caused consternation in the road-running world and both World Marathon Majors, who represent the five biggest city marathons, and the Association of International Marathons have stated that they will defy the IAAF and recognise two separate world records for women’s road-running performances.

The two quickest marathon times of Radcliffe’s career were both set in mixed races – in London in 2003 and in Chicago the previous year – but she rejects the idea that she was helped by the presence of male runners in the field.

“In my two mixed races it was not my decision, rather the race organisers', to have male runners with me, and in each case I very consciously ran alongside them rather than ever behind,” she said.

“Indeed, in London, I was actively racing the two guys. Furthermore, I fully believe that I would have run pretty much the same time that day alone with the crowds and motorbikes.”

But even if Radcliffe did derive an advantage, so what? The IAAF had no problem with Haile Gebrselassie running with a coterie of pace-makers when he established the men’s world record in the 2008 Berlin Marathon.

But in 2002-03, when Radcliffe was at her peak, there was not a woman in the world who could have paced her in a 26.2-mile race, such was her domination of women’s marathon running. Only male runners could have done the job.

The point is that, during that golden period, Radcliffe ran out of her gender, and her time in London in 2003 was that fastest marathon by a British athlete, male or female, in the entire year.

It was one of the greatest athletics performances of all time and it deserves far better than to be downgraded by a governing body that should have known better.