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.

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.

World Athletics Championships: the curse of the programme

Daily disqualification: Usain Bolt and Dayron Robles have both been hit by the curse of the IAAF programme

When the victorious Dayron Robles faced a protest about his World Championships win in the 110m hurdles, he had no further to look than that day’s IAAF souvenir programme cover for a sign of the outcome.

There he was in full colour effortlessly clearing the hurdles. But it was the curse of the magazine cover than did him in. Day one IAAF poster boy Australian Olympic pole vault champion Stephen Hooker failed to make the final and day two’s, Usain Bolt, didn’t get beyond the start line of the 100m final when he false started. It has become a running joke in Daegu that to be honoured on the cover is bad luck. So of course it was no surprise to the superstitious that Robles, from Cuba, lost his hurdles title, disqualified in the protest room because he had hit the arm of his neighbouring hurdler, China’s Liu Xiang. So who will be on the magazine title page next? Or will more than a few athletes be running for cover?