Junior World Track Championships, Cape Town, South Africa
30 July 1997
1000m Time Trial
1. Jeffery Hopkins Australia 1.07,724 53.277 km/h
2. Tim Zuhlke Germany 1.07,724 53.157 km/h
3. Alberto Loddo Italy 1.07,826 53.077 km/h
4. Arnaud Duble France 1.08,048 52.904 km/h
5. Craig Garrett Corbett South Africa 1.08,076 52.882 km/h
6. John Travis Garland USA 1.08,244 52.752 km/h
7. Alejandro Valverde Spain 1.09,268 51.972 km/h
8. Gordon Leslie Bearman New Zealand 1.09,427 51.853 km/h
9. Lukasz Szymanski Poland 1.09,571 51.746 km/h
10. Yuichi Sasaki Japan 1.09,597 51.726 km/h
Individual Pursuit ? Finals
1. Christian Bach Germany 3.30,904 51.209km/h
Benoit Genauzeau France 3.36,941 49.783km/h
2. Brett Lancaster Australia 3.30,271 51.363km/h
Manuel Quinziato Italy 3.31,511 51.061km/h
3. Michael Rogers Australia 3.27,569 52.081km/h
Vladimir Sidorenkov Russia 3.33,434 50.602km/h
4. Marco Hesselschwerdt Germany 3.30,569 51.289km/h
Sylvain Chavanel France 3.35,109 50.207km/h
Semi Final Start List
Brett Lancaster Australia v Marco Hesselschwerdt Germany
Michael Rogers Australia v Christian Bach Germany
Report from Sydney Morning Herald, Friday August 1, 1997This article appeared under the headline "How Sam Riley, Neil Stephens turned heat on track and field" and was written by Jacquelin Magnay.As Australia's track and field stars prepare for combat in Athens, there are doubts about the sport's Olympic funding. JACQUELIN MAGNAY argues that success in other sporting arenas has put the squeeze on athletics. THERE is one very popular sport in Australia about to undergo its sternest test this decade. At the forthcoming world championships the pressure is not on its glamour high profile participants, but rather on its overall results. The sport - track and field - has faced similar pressure before but as one of the leading sports administrators bluntly expressed it yesterday: "This is the acid test." In a subtle way the outstanding triumphs of scores of other sports in this country, rocketing up the international rankings in the past six months, have merely shifted a more intense focus onto the exploits of stars like Cathy Freeman, Kyle Vander-Kuyp, Joanna Stone and Tim Forsyth in Athens. For Australia is in the midst of a post-Olympic boom. While the rest of the world is taking a breather after the hectic Atlanta Olympics, and timing their four-year cycle for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Australian athletes have been on an upward spiral of sporting endeavours, with their feats splashed across the globe. Driven by the enthusiasm for a hometown Olympics, and financed by the Federal Government and the Australian Olympic Committee, hundreds of Olympic athletes have excelled in recent months. "It has been unbelievable," said the Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates. "Every week, no, nearly every day, someone is doing something. I think we are just starting to see the results of all the hard work since we were awarded the Olympics." The Australian Olympic Committee and the Australian Sports Commission can rightly take much of the applause through enhanced opportunities for international competition, more professional coaches, national training camps and highly personalised training programs. Thus, Neil Stephens winning a stage of the gruelling Tour de France spearheads an unprecedented rise in the status of the Australian men's road cyclists. Samantha Riley comes within centimetres of breaking her own two-year-old shortcourse breaststroke world record. The Australian rowers have been blitzing the world cup regattas at both senior and junior levels, as have the canoeists. Archer Jackson Fear fires off a world record; the Australian women's softball team cracks the Olympic champions, the United States. Even the under-19 Australian junior men's softball team wins its world championship. In a fortnight's time the Australian swimming team will in all probability grab further headlines at the Pan Pacific Championships and again early next year at the world titles. Similarly, much is tipped for Charlie Walsh's track cycling team at the world championships in Perth this month. By comparison Athletics Australia can count on one hand, maybe one finger, its chances of gold medal success. Cathy Freeman probably has little idea how important her 400m race will be for athletics in general, what with it being her best chance of that elusive gold medal. Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, too, may be in contention, given her national record-breaking pre-championship times, alongside distance runner Margaret Crowley, while the leading prospects in the field events are with javelin thrower Joanna Stone and high jumper Tim Forsyth. There may be a few relay medals to boost the overall tally, especially as they are "soft" events internationally. But if Athletics Australia executives are not feeling nervous, or at least anxious, they should be. The world track and field championships are a crucial benchmark about the state of athletics in this country. For much of the past few years there has been a reliance on Australia's love affair with the heroes of the past: Mathews, Cuthbert, Elliott, Strickland, et al, to underpin the sport's No1 Olympic status. That has now gone, usurped by swimming in most Australian eyes, and the ASC has responded in kind, demanding results, not excuses. The sport was quite shocked when it lost $750,000 from its Federal Government funding last year. Its status was downgraded to category two - putting it on a level with other Olympic sports like gymnastics, tennis and baseball. Yet track and field still gets $3.1 million in taxpayer funds each year, based to some extent on its traditional niche in Australian sporting culture, but also in recognition that, like basketball and road cycling, track and field is a highly competitive arena. But the sport is on notice that it will have to convert significant numbers of its former top eight performances into medals this week for that degree of financial support to continue. In Atlanta, track and field had 11 top-eight placings including the silver medals to javelin thrower Louise McPaul (who is injured at present) and Freeman. It is believed that money that could be removed from the costly track and field program might filter through to sports now favoured in the political ranks, like softball, yachting, and women's hockey - all of which have shown remarkable recent success. "If track and field don't do well [at the world championships] it is highly unlikely that they will identify new talent for medal success in Sydney," said the Commission's director of sport management, Geoff Strang. In real terms that means track and field athletics might be left floundering. THE CARVE-UP of an annual $25 million Olympic athletic program grant is based entirely on each sport's ability to contribute to a projected Sydney Olympic medal target of 60 medals, 20 of them gold. The sternest critics, however, will not be the number crunching money handlers in Canberra. Certainly they want their pound of flesh - having the sport come up to speed as a potential source of a handful of medals. But the big critics will be the sports-loving public who have been patiently waiting for track and field to move into the 1990s era of professionalism. A case in point was the extraordinary length of time taken to appoint a new chief executive of Athletics Australia following the January 1 departure of former boss Neil King. The former head of skiing, Martin Soust, was named in the role last week and will take up his appointment next month. Vacancies for the important posts of head coach (the incumbent Phil King left six months ago) and a high performance manager still have not been filled, despite both being of the upmost priority. Soust has said he expects no problems with the Sports Commission, but that expectation may well be based on the pre-world championship form of athletes, which generally has been good. Everyone is crossing their fingers that the Athens stadium will sizzle with green and gold. Certainly, if the athletes fail to live up to the increasing expectations resting on them, they can quite easily, and rightly, point the finger elsewhere. WHAT FUNDING SUPPORT YOUR SPORT GETS:Archery $500,000 Athletics $3,112,550 Badminton $284,090 Baseball $900,000 Basketball $2,782,627 Boxing $285,707 Canoeing $1,859,024 Cycling $3,293,593 Diving $538,008 Equestrian $1,322,740 Fencing $107,000 Gymnastics $1,240,489 Handball $100,000 Hockey (men) $1,934,405 Hockey (women) $1,975,030 Judo $356,440 Modern Pentathlon $43,500 Rowing $4,213,845 Shooting $1,256,980 Shooting (claytargets) $72,000 Shooting (pistol) $89,000 Shooting (target rifle) $32,000 Soccer (men) $1,375,486 Soccer (women) $1,000,000 Softball $1,493,646 Swimming $4,261,442 Synchronised swimming $255,800 Table tennis $382,240 Tae kwon do $500,000 Tennis $938,682 Triathlon $818,750 Volleyball $1,696,204 Water polo $1,573,238 Weightlifting $364,000 Yachting $1,234,800 SOURCE: Revised Australian Sports Commission funding levels 1997-98 |