SPAR European Team Championships, Leiria, Portugal
Top points for Dwain Chambers
Day One
The previously successful European Cup, revamped now as the European Team Championship, ended its first day with GB & NI at the top of the leader board. There were some big, and in some cases controversial, rule changes as the competition was adjusted to cope with twelve teams and scores for men and women being added together to produce an overall result.
As Europe's speediest sprinter, Dwain Chambers was drawn in the faster of two six man 100 metre races with the overall result being worked out on times. The major change here was that anyone false starting was to be immediately disqualified - an improvement one feels. Dwain was clearly the class of the event. He won handsomely, just 1/100th slower than his season's best, but one felt that he was looking for something better still.
Dwain has come to terms with being left out of the relay squad as, barred from the Olympic Games, UKA feel they want to concentrate on bonding a team who will all be eligible to run in 2012. Sadly this backfired when Ricky Fifton ran with a niggle which became a full blown problem on his leg; the British team dropped back from a probable win to last place. Surely, having Europe's fastest man on hand, it would have been better to have swallowed a little pride and rested a hampered Fifton in favour of Chambers. Fifton was due to run the 200 on day two. Would Chambers, clearly the next best by a long way, get called up for the longer event?
In the high jump (as with the pole vault) any athlete who records four failures finds himself out of the competition - this in addition to the normal three consecutive failure rule. This was a change which was sure to affect Samson Oni who very often needs all three attempts on his journey through the middle heights of the competition. Two shots were needed at 2.20m, a full three at 2.24m, and predictably his opening attempt at 2.28 went awry and he left the competition. An unfortunate rule this one. An athlete could win the competition and then only have one attempt in which to attempt a new, and perhaps record, height.
Generally the idea of the field event athletes having to qualify for a third attempt by placing in the top six, and then earning a fourth and final effort by placing in the top four - on which the full focus of the meeting was then directed for a few minutes - went well. Far more contentious was the issue of pulling out the last placed runner in the distance events at various stages. It resulted in mid-race surges where it was sometimes not clear who was actually in last place. Races became nightmarish as runners tried to cope with the oxygen debt caused by unwanted sprints. In one case the runner deemed to be last could not believe she was the unlucky one and continued ... to win the race ... only to be disqualified for not having dropped out. A farcical rule change this, which must be dropped.
Day Two
Olympic Triple Jump Champion Nelson Évora of Portugal opened with an impressive 17.48m only for Phillips Idowu to go one centimetre further with a ragged effort on the very next jump. While the Portuguese was unable to improve in round two, Phillips leaped out to 17.50m; but it was far from over as Évora cut the sand at 17.59m and Phillips no-jumped in round three. Neither could improve in the final round and Phillip's rival had done it again.
Dwain Chambers did indeed get the call to step into the 200m and a most successful reserve he turned out to be. His second victory of the weekend meant that he was top scorer in the British team, contributing 24 points to the team's tally.
100m: a 1rB D Chambers 10.07/0.2. 200m: b 1 D Chambers 20.55/-0.9. HJ: a 9 S Oni 2.24. TJ: b 2 P Idowu 17.50/0.1.
Restored from the club's earlier website, belgraveharriers.com, and published here as originally written.