“The level of the World Cup and the games are the same, and in Tokyo there was more”

• Luke Bligeboom

  NOS Editor in Eugene, Oregon

9.5 for the first part of the tournament and 5 for the second half. Ad Roskam, outgoing head coach of the IAAF, needed two report marks in Eugene on Sunday to judge the IAAF World Championships in Eugene with the same number of faces.

At the end of the ten days, 36 athletes commissioned by the Netherlands had not achieved their goal. “The ambition was five medals and twelve places in the final. With four medals and nine places in the final, we didn’t achieve that,” he added.

However, Roskam didn’t want to know anything about the downhill spiral in Dutch athletics. The three-time silver result (4 x 400m mixed relay team, Anouk Vetter on the heptathlon, Fimki Ball in the 400m hurdles) and one-time bronze (Jessica Schelder with shot put) contrasts sharply with the Olympic return for the Tokyo 2020 Games, which had Two goals. Gold, three silver and three bronze were completed.

Roskam firmly believes that “the standard of this World Cup is no less than that of the Olympic Games”. He described it as illustrative that Schilder’s throwing racquet, who earned a bronze medal, joined Gorend van Klinken, who finished fourth in the discus, to the top of the world.

“The level in Eugene was the same or perhaps higher than during the Games. Only in Tokyo everything was going well.”

All finalists and top eight places came in the women’s name during the global title fight. Oregon22, as the tournament was called in terms of marketing, continued the trend seen since the 2013 World Cup in Moscow.

Since that tournament in the Russian capital, no Dutchman has won a World Cup medal. The exception in Eugene confirming this rule was Tony van Diepen and Lemarvin Bonifacia with a silver medal in the 4 x 400m mixed relay. However, this was entirely attributable to Femke Bol. It was 22-year-old Amersforsi who personally raced from the undefeated position to second as the last sprinter.

who – which girl power It can be interpreted according to Roskam. “In Pappendale, men and women have been training together for a long time. In addition, in Dutch sport in general, there is more interest in women’s sports than in other countries. We are also at the forefront of knowing how it should be women who have trained at the highest level.”

There is talk of a growth in breadth, but Eugene did not win a world title. For the first time since 2015, the team went home without a gold medal. During both Beijing 2015 and London 2017, it was Daphne Schippers who climbed the highest rung on the podium after 200 metres. In 2019 Sivan Hasan was crowned the world’s best in the 1500 and 10,000 metres.

Schippers was absent from the United States due to a back injury. It has not yet been concluded that the sprint specialist will return to the highest level.

Hassan Eugene entered with very few kilometers on the table. After the Olympics, I preferred half a vacation to a full World Cup preparation and paid for it. 4th in the 10,000m and 6th in the 5,000m. It marks the beginning of a long career path that will end in Paris in 2024. In the French capital, the two-time Olympic champion will defend her titles with teeth and nails, as she solemnly promised.

At Hayward Field, there was only one athlete in orange who could be expected to win a world title. In the 400-meter hurdles, Paul has the misfortune only that he is doomed to fight for the rest of her career against a fellow of no size.

The world record of 22-year-old American Sidney McLaughlin, a foreigner of 50.68, was one of the undisputed highlights of the ten days of athletics in Eugene. The Bolus 52.27, good for silver, looked almost pale.

The elimination of the two relay teams in the 4x400m was a huge dampener for Roskam this past weekend. The women were disqualified, and the men (in Tokyo still good to win the Olympic silver) were a hundredth of a second in the series for a place in the final.

Roskam was not at all sorry that he saved some strengths in qualifying with the goal of reaching the final, thus not forming the strongest quartet. He described them as a calculated business risk.

The disqualification was partly responsible for the fact that he revised the score from 9.5 to five. So as not to be misunderstood, he added the sum and then divided it by two. “So on average, I end up with a 7.”