Laura Muir was told to take her rivals into the killing zone but she was 0.07 seconds short of breathing new life into a championship that has been choking in a moral maze.
After the Justin Gatlin loathe-in, another long-running issue reared its familiar head. Lord Coe would like to talk about more than intersex and drugs but Caster Semenya’s late surge to deny Muir a bronze medal by the smallest of margins will sharpen the focus on athletics’ other court battle.
It was a brilliantly mad dash of a 1,500m. Faith Kipyegon, the Olympic champion from Kenya, took the gold medal in a time of 4min 2.59sec from Jenny Simpson, of the USA, in a shocked second. Muir, the second fastest British woman this century, gritted her teeth and grimaced but was overhauled by Semenya yards from the line.
“I gave it everything,” she said as she fought back tears. Of her late duel with Semenya she was phlegmatic. “I couldn’t react. I was so tired.”
Semenya said she was tired, too, of the intersex debate and likened it to hearing the same old song for nine long years. Muir had the energy for one last sidestep. “I’m not going to talk about that,” she said of hyperandrogenism, which can scarcely be seen as a vote of support.
Advertisement
Sifan Hassan, an Ethiopian refugee running for the Netherlands and coached by the Cuba-born Alberto Salazar, was the favourite and was ahead entering the home straight. Then she went backwards. Genzebe Dibaba, the world record-holder whose former coach Jama Aden was arrested as part of a drugs raid in Spain last June, was nowhere. Aden has always denied committing doping violations.
Muir tried to take control. She went to the front from the start but did not push the pace as many felt that she should have done. The second lap was particularly slow and allowed the field to concertina back together. “I ran the race exactly how I wanted to,” she insisted. “It was only in the last ten metres that it got away from me. I didn’t know what was happening.” She then pondered the cost of three weeks missed with a stress fracture. “For seven hundredths of a second, you wonder.”
Semenya, in her unfavoured event, deserves respect for the grace and also resilience that she has shown in dealing with other people’s issues.
Nobody else in sport has been subjected to the same degree of prurience-cum-cynicism. She is perhaps the truest heroine of these World Championships but her curse is to be saddled with a footnote. Last month the IAAF went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport as they seek to bring back rules limiting testosterone levels. This may be a watershed week for her.
Muir can run 3:55.22 so has the pace, but the sharp elbows and staccato tempos of championship racing are more complicated. Kipyegon stayed on her shoulder with Hassan happy to sit at the back in a show of huge confidence. Behind her a gaggle of world-class threats lurked.
Advertisement
On the second lap Muir was clipped from behind and Kipyegon went past her. She looked beaten but clawed her way back into contention before hitting the wall ten metres too soon. After last year’s seventh place at the Olympics, when a brutal lap from Dibaba undid her, this will be a body blow. She has had a stress fracture and is still young, but must be thinking this sort of thing shouldn’t happen to a vet. Next year she will concentrate on her studies at Glasgow’s School of Veterinary Medicine so her graduation to a major global podium will have to wait until 2019.
Coe had said that Muir needed to take her rivals into the killing zone to win here. The field was certainly loaded even if bereft of loaded Russians.
The 1,500m in this stadium in 2012 came to rival Ben Johnson’s infamous 100m from 1988 as the dirtiest race in history. Five women in that race were subsequently investigated for doping while another had already served a two-year ban.
Lisa Dobriskey finished tenth that day and was roundly criticised for saying she did not think the playing field was level. Only Laura Weightman, coached by Steve Cram, remained from the detritus of that 2012 race. She finished sixth last night.
Muir’s best time is not only the 13th best time in history but close to the unofficial world record when you bleach that list of probable dopers and those who have faced questions.
Advertisement
The event scarcely needed the added hyperandrogenism controversy. Semenya is the unwilling flag-bearer for the intersex issue even though Dutee Chand, an Indian sprinter, is the athlete who challenged the IAAF rules in CAS. Chand was sixth in her 100m heat so few noticed. Semenya has been a cause célèbre since 2009 and one of the IAAF’s grubbiest hours when they admitted she was undergoing gender tests just before her 800m final. She won anyway and, after two Olympic and two world titles, now has her first 1,500m medal.
Semenya has received medal upgrades due to the retrospective ban for elite Russian cheat Mariya Savinova. She said she will do more 1,500m races now, which will chill the bones of Muir and Co. For her, the middle-distance medal double is still on. Muir, too, gets another chance in the 5,000m. “I’ve had disappointments. I thought Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games was hard,” she said. “Last year in Rio was hard. Now this. It’s gutting.”
What to look out for today
Evening session7.20pm Javelin (Women, final)
7.30 200m (Women, heats)
7.35 Pole vault (Men, final)
8.35 400m hurdles (Women, semi-finals)
8.40 Shot (Women, qualifying)
9.10 3,000m steeplechase (Men, final)
9.35 800m (Men, final)
9.50 400m (Men, final)
Men’s pole vault
Final 7.35pm
World-record holder Renaud Lavillenie is not the favourite for this final, having only cleared 5.87m this year. Sam Kendricks, of the US, and Poland’s Piotr Lisek are his rivals.
Advertisement
Women’s 400m hurdles
Semi-final 8.35pm
Eilidh Doyle hopes to repeat her Rio effort and reach a major final. She is joined by Meghan Beesley. Dalilah Muhammad is the favourite.
Men’s 800m
Final 9.35pm
Britain’s Kyle Langford, 21, surged in to tonight’s final. With defending champion David Rudisha out injured, Botswana’s Nijel Amos is the favourite despite a lacklustre semi-final race.
Men’s 400m
Final 9.50pm
Can Wayde van Niekerk break the 43-second barrier? At last year’s Rio Olympics, the South African lowered Michael Johnson’s 17-year-old world record to 43.03s. This time around, he has high hopes of securing a 200m-400m double.
