Athletics Africa Magazine

awesome competition

Former African 400m champion and Roma '87 world silver medallist, Innocent Egbunike, has lamented the deplorable condition he found the Nigerian team at the just concluded 11th IAAF world championships in athletics in Osaka, Japan. Egbunike, who was in Osaka with the USA team as coach to Sydney 2000 Olympic 400m champion Angelo Taylor, recounted his experience in a write-up for the Nigerian Thisday newspaper. He explained that 20 years down the line the lack of organisation, forward planning and mediocrity of the Nigerian athletics officials has not abated, but instead has got much worse. More harrowing for the former African champion is the fact that the officials seem incapable to get the simplest things right - athletes were not registered on time for their events, the team do not have uniform kits and even they flew into the venue of the games on the day of their events.

Just how fast can this man really go? 9.50s may be. Asafa Powell the fastest man in the world.

Jamaica’s Asafa Powell wrote a new chapter in the Rieti Grand Prix’s history book, breaking his own World 100m record with an incredible 9.74 second run (+1.7 m/s). "What made Powell's feat more sensational was the fact that he made it in the heats easing up in the final metres giving the impression that something very special was to be expected in the final. In that later race in windless conditions (wind +0.0 m/s), Powell could not dip under his new record but he ran smoothly in another impressive sub 9.80 time of 9.78, one hundredth of a second slower than the World record of 9.77 which he had set in 2005 and twice equalled last year, and which he had improved in the earlier heat." Diego Sampaolo for the IAAF

The star act of the fourth leg of this season’s Golden League was without doubt the newly crowned World 800m champion Janeth Jepkosgei. The Kenyan took a virtually gun to tape victory with much the same style if not the same speed as in the semi-final and finals stages in Osaka. No one is currently in Jepkosgei’s class. Her 1:59.03 was achieved coming away from the field in the last 100m, with Osaka bronze medallist Mayte Martinez of Spain in second (2:00.42) and Italy’s Elisa Cusma, third (2:00.54). Kepkosgei though was not pleased with her run and blamed the ‘slow’ time on the cold weather. “The reason is clear: the weather change from (the heat of) Osaka.” READ MORE Powered by ScribeFire .

Kenya's Janeth Jepkosgei devours the competition in the women’s 800m final beating her own personal record and national record in a time of 1:56.04 - beating he own world season leading time set in the semi-finals.

Catherine the Great just got greater. Kenya's Catherine Ndereba lived up to her nickname – and her reputation as the world’s most consistently successful woman marathon runner – by regaining the World title she lost to Paula Radcliffe in Helsinki two years ago. In Radcliffe’s absence – the Briton has not raced a marathon since Paris due to injury and childbirth – Ndereba extended her astonishing success record. A former World record holder, she has now placed in the top two of the last four global championships (three Worlds, one Olympics) and has been a top-two finisher in four of the five World Marathon Majors (WMM). Ndereba has even won in Osaka before, in January 2006. As she sat on a chair, with ice under her feet to cool her after a race in high heat and humidity, she was asked to sum up the difference between racing a marathon in Osaka in winter and one in summer. Her answer showed that, even so soon after such a trial of endurance, she still had the capacity for humour. REA...