Ben Bloom argues it’s not the clock that counts, but rather the people taking part, when it comes to creating the finest sporting moments
Any athletics fan with access to the internet will have seen and heard it. “UCC from the depths of hell are powering through,” shrieks the commentator – regular AW contributor and all-round athletics expert Cathal Dennehy – his voice reaching octaves previously thought out of human range in sheer disbelief at future Olympian Phil Healy streaking down the finishing straight to claim one of the most remarkable 4×400 metres comeback victories of all time.
Dating back to 2016, it is a wonderful clip that travelled worldwide, going viral online at the time and on countless occasions since.
Ask anyone what event it is from (the Irish Universities Championships) and the chances are they will not know. Ask them who UCC are (University College Cork) and they will almost certainly have no idea. Ask them what the winning time was and prepare to be terrified if they know the answer because the footage of the race did not even feature a clock on screen.
Yet those three things were entirely irrelevant. Here was perfect proof that, for all of athletics’ fixation with numbers, they can be superfluous in creating sporting drama.
It was to the iconic “depths of hell” video that my mind wandered when Femke Bol anchored the Netherlands to an astonishing mixed 4x400m Olympic gold on the second night of track action in Paris.
So, too, when Noah Lyles triumphed in the 100m in a thrilling blanket finish. And when Cole Hocker produced an epic 1500m upset, hugging the inside rail to thwart Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s quest for glory.
In creating and promoting his controversial Grand Slam Track competition, which launches next year, Michael Johnson has somewhat laboured the point that he does not care about athletes breaking records when competing in his lucrative creation. Go on the competition’s website and you will find talk of “head-to-head match-ups… rivalries… [and] storytelling”.
Not numbers.
Of course, these will be the finest short and middle-distance runners on the planet, a million miles away from Ireland’s Class of 2016 university students, ensuring that fast times are a natural by-product. But the focus will be on winning and winning alone.
So, what constitutes a great race? Why, as a British athletics writer and fan, was I infinitely more excited before the men’s Olympic 1500m final than the women’s 800m final?
Keely Hodgkinson (Getty)
Through Keely Hodgkinson, the latter provided the promise of as close to a guaranteed gold medal as any British athlete had experienced for many an Olympic cycle. It offered an opportunity to see the coming of age of a British athletics legend; a moment in time that instantly ranked her alongside just seven other GB athletes to have won individual Olympic titles over the past 30 years.
Her phenomenal performance was fully deserving of the abundance of accolades, endorsements and riches that will doubtless come her way. And yet as a competitive racing spectacle… it was, well, fine.
Almost exactly 24 hours later, Kerr stood on the start line alongside Ingebrigtsen for one of the most eagerly anticipated races I can remember. The rivalry, the talking, the respective medal hauls and the recent performances had all contributed to a showdown of epic proportions.
My only fear beforehand was that no one else would muscle their way into the gold and silver medal positions to ruin what many people hoped and expected would be a two-man battle.
That Hocker did, and for it not to detract but add to the spectacle, is testament to just what a phenomenal race it was. Sure, Hocker broke the Olympic record and Kerr consigned Mo Farah’s British record to history. But those were mere markers of the quality of performances they delivered rather than highlights in themselves.
Olympic 1500m final (Getty)
Greatness as a race came from the folly of Ingebrigtsen attempting to run his rivals to the ground, from Kerr thinking he had delivered his finishing burst to perfection, from Hocker catching them all unaware with a lightning under cutting manoeuvre and from the sight of the world’s most over-confident athlete (an attitude that I love, I should add) fading off the podium as the finish line approached.
That it did not bring the curtain down on that evening’s athletics action – it was followed by two further races – will forever baffle me.
This is why we love relays, which, to the average athletics fan, are even less about times than individual races. Relays thrive on the drama of the ebb and flow, the thrill of a comeback that can emerge on any one of the four legs, and the possibility of disaster at any handover.
We all love seeing the limits of human ability stretched ever further by true sporting greats. Mondo Duplantis ending the night’s action by becoming the first man ever to pole vault over 6.25m while the best of his rivals languished some 30cm lower was an impeccable sporting moment produced by a showman born for the biggest stage.
Of course, the likes of Usain Bolt was streets ahead of his opponents, and it did nothing to prevent him from becoming the sport’s biggest breakout star of recent decades.
But – and I readily acknowledge that this is a frankly absurd emotion to have experienced – I could not help but feel disappointed by a women’s Olympic 400m hurdles final in which Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone continued to re-write what was thought possible by breaking the world record for the sixth time in a little over three years.
Her achievement was unfathomable, and yet it was the lack of the much-anticipated contest with Bol that struck me hardest.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (Getty)
The best races, and the best sport, are filled with drama because of the interplay between those taking part. In being so extraordinarily good, Hodgkinson and McLaughlin-Levrone turned their finals into processions, to the detriment of a sporting spectacle.
A clock is no replacement for people in creating sporting drama, whether at the Olympic Games or the Irish Universities Championships.
» This article first appeared in the September issue of AW magazine. Subscribe to AW magazine here, check out our new podcast here or sign up to our digital archive of back issues from 1945 to the present day here
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