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.

London 2012 Olympics: Dwain Chambers deserves a second chance like Simon Vallily

Redemption: Dwain Chambers has expressed an interest in running at London 2012 (Photo: AFP)

A week ago, Commonwealth heavyweight boxing champion Simon Vallily missed his chance to book his place at London 2012 with a defeat in the last 16 at the World Championships in Azerbaijan, though the Middlesbrough fighter will have other opportunities to qualify for Team GB between now and next summer.

The same cannot be said of sprinter Dwain Chambers who, as things stand, is barred from competing in a British vest in London because of the British Olympic Association’s lifetime ban on ex-drug offenders.

The connection between the two men? Well, Vallily is an ex-drug offender himself who, fuelled by a cocktail of cocaine, ecstasy and vodka, plunged a six-inch kitchen knife into the shoulder of an innocent teenage victim in an unprovoked attack on the streets of Teesside six years ago. He was so stoned that afterwards he had no recollection of his crime.

His vicious assault earned him a four-year custodial sentence in a young offenders’ institution where, in a classic tale of redemption through sport, he worked hard in the gym and became so

adept at combat under Marquess of Queensberry rules that, after his early release, he was invited for a trial with the GB elite squad and has never looked back.

His case underlines the fundamental moral contradiction at the heart of the BOA’s hard-line stance on former drug cheats.

A man who was once a highly dangerous street robber and drug dealer and who pleaded guilty to wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm can apparently be forgiven and welcomed into the British Olympic team.

Meanwhile, an athlete who was tempted to use performance-enhancing drugs eight years ago and served the mandatory two-year ban can expect no mercy.

In the eyes of the BOA, Chambers’ transgression is beyond redemption. Drug cheats can never be forgiven.

Following the recent legal victory for American athlete LaShawn Merritt in overturning an International Olympic Committee rule that barred him from running at the London Games, the likelihood is that Chambers will mount his own legal challenge to the BOA’s position.

The battle is likely to centre on technical minutiae such as the BOA’s insistence that their own rule differs to that of the IOC because it includes an appeals procedure for athletes.

That is disputed by Chambers’ manager, barrister Siza Agha, who says appeals against the BOA ban must be on the grounds of mitigating circumstances. In Chambers’ case there were none, and so effectively there was no possibility of any appeal. Quite simply, the sprinter was banged to rights when he tested positive in 2003. Just as Vallily was when he was arrested.

But beyond the legal arguments, there is a wider philosophical issue here. British law is underpinned by the principle that, beyond the most heinous crimes, those who transgress have the chance to be redeemed and rehabilitated. Vallily is a shining example of that.

But redemption cannot be selective. Either you offer an athlete a second chance, or you don’t. The BOA can’t have it both ways.

Athletics fails its fans by robbing them of competition for Usain Bolt

Competition: Usain Bolt needs to race rivals, not pose for photos (Photo: AP)

Athletics may still regard itself as the blue riband sport of the Olympic Games but it seems determined to alienate its dwindling band of fans.

On Friday, the track and field season reaches its conclusion at the Diamond League final in Brussels, where the cast list includes Usain Bolt and fellow Jamaican Yohan Blake -  the man who dethroned Bolt as world 100 metres champion after the Olympic champion was sensationally disqualified for false-starting in last month’s final in Daegu.

The Ivo van Damme Memorial meeting is one of the best attended on the circuit, and with an expected sell-out crowd of 48,000 it offered the perfect stage to re-run the world-final-that-never-was, testing Bolt’s boast that, had he not been red-carded, he would have been too quick for Blake and the rest of the 100m field in South Korea.

Only the match-up will not be taking place. Unbelievably, the two athletes will be kept apart in different races in Brussels, with Bolt competing in an invitation 100m and Blake running the 200m.

And people wonder why athletics has declined in popularity since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Diamond League, which is reaching the end of its second year of existence, was meant to promote more head-to-head clashes between the biggest stars yet the sport continues to shoot itself in the foot by allowing athletes to avoid each other so flagrantly.

In fact, since the last World Championships in Berlin in 2009, you can count on one hand the number of genuinely competitive 100m races Bolt has had – one against Tyson Gay in Stockholm in 2010 and two against Asafa Powell in Paris in 2010 and in Rome earlier this summer.

The world 100m final in Daegu would have been the first time Bolt had raced Blake this season had he not been disqualified. He competed against him only twice last year.

Now call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think that sport works best when competition is involved.

Since the Beijing Olympics, Bolt has been a godsend to meet promoters, more than justifying his eye-watering appearance fees by putting bums on seats and bringing in sponsorship revenue, but building meetings around what is essentially a one-man exhibition is not sustainable in the long term.

I have seen Bolt in action perhaps a dozen times in the last three years and there are already signs that the pre-race theatrics, the lightning-bolt gestures and the laps of honour are starting to

wear thin.

The Rome and Olso crowds lapped it all up this season because he was making his first appearance at their meets, but in Paris, where he was returning for the second successive year, the atmosphere was noticeably more muted – not helped by a dismal 200m race delayed by a faulty start.

What the recent World Championships showed is that true head-to-head competition is the heartbeat of athletics rather than exhibitionism for its own sake.

The moments that stick in the memory are Ethiopian Ibrahim Jeilan hunting down and catching a distressed-looking Mo Farah in the 10,000m final, or Grenadian teenager Kirani James pipping Olympic champion Lashawn Merritt on the line in the 400m final.

They are the kind of moments we can look forward to being repeated in the Olympic Stadium next summer, though outside the major championships, competition appears to be a dirty word.

A 100m clash between Bolt and Blake in Brussels would have been a fitting climax to the season. Instead, the 48,000 paying customers have been outrageously short-changed.

World Athletics Championships: the Curse of the Olympic Gold Medal

Shock: the curse of the Olympic Gold Medal struck Christine Ohuruogu (Photo: GETTY IMAGES)

So the ‘Curse of the Cover’ has finally been broken after Russian Olympic champion Olga Kaniskina won the women’s 20km race walk on Wednesday despite being pictured on the front cover of the daily programme at the World Athletics Championships in Daegu.

The previous day, newspapers and television stations had been abuzz after Russian pole-vault great Yelena Isinbayeva became the fourth athlete to bomb out of the Championships after appearing on the front cover.

First it was Australian pole-vaulter Steve Hooker, who failed to make it through the men’s pole vault qualifying round, followed by Usain Bolt, red-carded on the second day for a false start, and Dayron Robles, who was stripped off his gold on the third day for man-handling an opponent mid-race.

It is the kind of silly-season story that is so beloved by media outlets (remember Paul, the result-predicting Octopus, at the football World Cup in South Africa?) but the coincidence of under performing cover stars has a more interesting explanation.

All four of the affected athletes were Olympic champions in Beijing three years ago, which is clearly the required qualification for being given cover-picture status, and all four are part of a far

bigger trend in South Korea that would be better described as the Curse of the Olympic Gold Medal.

So far, the World Championships have been a graveyard for Olympic winners. After Hooker’s surprise departure on the opening morning, Britain’s only defending Olympic champion, Christine Ohuruogu, became the next high-profile casualty without even getting the chance to run in her 400m heat.

Since then the stream of Olympic medallists heading for the exit door has turned into a flood.

The statistics are extraordinary. Of the 17 Olympic champions from 2008 who have competed on the opening five days, just three of them have won gold in Daegu.

Step forward Kaniskina and the two ‘Valeries’ – New Zealander Valerie Vili, winner of the women’s shot put, and Russian Valery Borchin, who triumphed in the men’s 20km race walk.

The other 14 have all failed to add to their gold medal collections, some through freak circumstances (Ohuruogu, Bolt and Robles), some because of their injury histories (Hooker, Keninisa

Bekele) and others because they were simply not good enough (Isinbayeva, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Nancy Jebet Lagat, Natalyia Dobrynska).

For the record, the other fallen heroes are Maurren Higa Maggi (Brazil, long jump), LaShawn Merritt (US, 400m), Stephanie Brown Trafton (US, long jump), Primoz Kozmus (Slovenia, hammer) and Gerd Kanter (Estonia, discus).

What is happening has nothing to do with programme covers but is nothing more than a changing of the guard – proof that success in athletics is temporary and that, with just 11 months remaining until the London Olympics, the intensity of competition is cranking up.

Before the championships, UK Athletics head coach Charles van Commenee drew a distinction between winning a track and field gold medal and triumphing in the Star class in sailing or in archery.

The struggles of the British team so far reinforces his point that medals in athletics are fiendishly difficult to win. Of all the Olympic sports, track and field is the most global. Even Botswana has been celebrating its first ever world gold medal this week.

This is not to make excuses for Britain’s disappointments in Daegu. As recipients of £25 million of Lottery funding over the current Olympic cycle, UK Athletics are rightly expected to deliver at the highest level.

But a measure of realism is also required. If 14 out of 17 Olympic champions have found the going tough, then Britain’s athletes need to be cut a bit of slack.

And besides, the team still have plenty of medal opportunities to come, beginning with a chance of gold for hurdler Dai Greene on Thursday.

The Olympic champion, American Angelo Taylor, is also in the final line-up. And quite possibly on the programme cover, too.

How British athletics has risen to the challenge of hosting London 2012 Olympics

Setting the standard: Mo Farah and UK Athletics have risen to the challenge of hosting the Olympics (Photo: AP)

By Jason Henderson, Athletics Weekly Editor

Six years ago, when London won the bid to stage the 2012 Games, British track and field athletes nervously gathered themselves to rise to the challenge.

Competing on home soil in the biggest Olympic sport would bring huge pressure. The team in 2005 was hardly brimming with potential podium contenders either.

Yet now, with one year to go, things could hardly be more promising.

Seven national records have fallen already this summer, with possibly more to come as the season nears its peak at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu.

Encouragingly, three of these performances have been set by 19-year-olds, while one of the record- breakers, Mo Farah, has earned the prestigious title of best distance runner in the world.

Not since the Eighties, when the sport enjoyed unprecedented popularity and success when athletes such as Daley Thompson, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram dominated the world scene, has there been such a golden era.

In short, British athletics is great again and the host nation’s medal hopes in the showcase Olympic sport look better every week.

The UK records this summer have been set by Sophie Hitchon in the hammer, Holly Bleasdale in the pole vault, Tiffany Porter at 100m hurdles, Lawrence Okoye in the discus, Chris Tomlinson in the long jump and Farah over 5,000m and 10,000m.

Others look imminent, too, such as Dai Greene in the men’s 400m hurdles and Jessica Ennis in the heptathlon.

Success has not been limited to senior level either. Led by sprint prodigy Jody Williams, Britain won 15 medals at the European Junior Championships in Tallinn from July 21-24.

Earlier in July, at the European Under-23 Championships in Ostrava the GB team enjoyed its biggest-ever medal haul.

The IAAF World Youth Championships in Lille also saw superb performances by young Britons, with two gold medals from sprinter Desiree Henry and hammer thrower Louisa James. For them, London 2012 will come too soon, but Rio 2016 and beyond beckon.

All this compares with more modest achievements in recent years.

Victories by Kelly Holmes and the GB men’s 4×100m team at the 2004 Olympics, for example, covered up a generally poor team display by the GB athletics squad.

Beijing in 2008 was arguably worse, with Christine Ohuruogu in the 400m being Britain’s only athletics gold medallist.

“Three gold medals in Athens masked a very poor team performance,” says Ed Warner, chairman of UKA.

“Kelly’s two golds and the men’s 4×100m was fantastic but then you have Kelly Sotherton’s bronze and that was it, with lots of failures to reach finals.

“Then in Beijing we didn’t deliver as we would have liked, so that’s your nadir, probably, across those two Olympics. And I think there’s been a pretty sharp upswing since then.”

Sharp upswing is probably an understatement and credit should go to the coaches andofficials who were put in place during a bold reshuffle that occurred when the sport realised the system in place six years ago was not working as well as it could.

UKA chief executive Dave Moorcroft was replaced with two men – Warner and Niels de Vos – the latter becoming the governing body’s CEO.

Key figures in Moorcroft’s team, such as Zara Hyde Peters, Callum Orr and the deputy chief executive Adam Walker also left UKA, while major structural and personnel changes at England Athletics also took place.

Later, UKA performance director Dave Collins was replaced after the Beijing Games by head coach Charles van Commenee.

Along with the Dutchman, a number of international coaches were headhunted to work in Britain’s high performance centres, including Peter Eriksson – the leader of a disability athletics team that has also improved hugely and looks set to enjoy a terrific Paralympics.

Of course, there are still a few holes and for every world beater like triple jumper Phillips Idowu there is a weak event such as the men’s hammer or women’s triple jump.

Then again, during the Eighties – or any period for that matter – the GB team has always had some weak events.

Right now, though, British athletes can hardly put a foot wrong. The London Olympics are one year away and the timing could not be better.

Back in July 2005, when London was picked by the IOC to host the 2012 Olympics, Moorcroft issued a rallying cry to Athletics Weekly, saying: “We need athletes, coaches and volunteers to wake up every day telling themselves that the London Olympics in 2012 is their goal.”

The sport was clearly listening.

• Athletics Weekly’s ‘One Year To Go’ special edition is out now. Visit http://www.athleticsweekly.com/ for more information