An Athletic Weekend

Months ago I booked tickets to the Aviva Athletics Grand Prix to be held at Crystal Palace, it's an international athletics meet and generally has some world class athletes competing.

So on Friday night we headed down to Crystal Palace which is just a 15 minute train ride from Balham. It was suitably busy with the atmosphere of an international athletics event.

We were blessed with nice weather, clear but not too hot. We were settled in our seats having only missed the first couple of events. There was lots going on with several field events going on throughout the evening including triple jump, long jump, javelin and pole vault. Along with all that there was a good selection of track events.

It was all good entertainment. Some of my highlights were:

men's 3000m steeplechase was a good race and it's always interesting seeing a running race mixed up with some hurdles and water


women's javelin was good because it was close to where we were sitting and it was interesting to see the athletes going through their different routines.

One of the ladies in action in the javelin - no one got speared with a javelin

the men's 110m hurdles were good fun, there was one guy who knocked over all but one hurdle, he was shorter than everyone but really, some more jumping practice required.

I'm pretty sure this is the race where the guy on the inside lane only got over 1 of  his hurdles, needless to say he didn't make the final

men's 100m heats and final were good, it was a shame that Usafa Powell pulled out of the competition at the last minute but it was still a strong field. The winner broke 10s which was good to see. Our seats were looking straight down the 100m from the finish line so the runners were racing straight towards us, it made it difficult to get a perspective on the speed but we had a good view of the race.

This is the end of one of the 100m heats, they took it relatively easy towards the end so all of the times were above 10s.

The final of the 100m, there was no easing up towards the end and the winner broke 10s

Men's 5000m was good, Craig Mottram of Australia won comfortably in the end but it was a good race. It was interesting to see how long it took them to run 5km, just over 13 minutes. I don't think I've ever run 5km under 20min! Another highlight of this race was a little guy who could have been a jockey, he looked very much like he didn't belong, a decent club runner at best however he did pretty well and didn't come last so good on him, he was still a laugh though.

Men's 5000m, Craig Mottram is third at this stage, the second person in green. The jockey is the short person in red, just in front of the person in orange.

The women's 4x100m relay was a real treat thanks to Team Slovenia, reason being the athlete running their final leg was Merlene Ottey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlene_Ottey), she first competed at Crystal Palace in 1980 aged 20, then she was representing Jamaica, now aged 51 she races for Slovenia. She's an athletics legend and it was great to see her race. In her post race interview she seemed like a good person too, and she half joked about being back in London for the Olympics next year, I think the interviewer was a bit taken aback by this.

Merlene Ottey, finishing in the inside lane, the last person to finish on this occasion,  although the two British teams failed to finish as they dropped the baton

Merlene Ottey (in white) after the finish, very fit for a 51 year old although her body seems literally out of shape, like she has a saw back, I wonder if it is from so many years of competitive racing. Either way she can still move, it would be great if she qualified for the Olypmics

The final race of the night was the biggest highlight though. It was the men's 3000m and all eyes were on British Athlete Mo' Farrah. He's a bit of a legend himself and there are great hopes/expectations that he will win gold for Britain next year. The race was reasonably ordinary to start, Mo was nestled in the front bunch of three and it looked like it was going to be a tight finish. However coming down the back straight Mo put the foot down and had a 20m lead in no time, he powered all the way over the finish line with a substantial lead. A brilliant race and an amazing athlete.

Mo is third at this stage, the pacer is leading (which wasn't always the case , I think some of the pacers weren't quite up to the grade). Mo is much shorter than most of is competition but he flew at the end, no amount of long stride was going to catch Mo.

It was a good precursor to next year's Olympics, there were many genuine Olympic chances competing so it was great to see them at much lower cost (£16pp) and without having to go into a ballot to get the tickets.

To top off the athletics, on the Saturday I went to watch a friend race in a triathlon at Hyde Park, it was a huge event and included athletes of all levels, starting with the elite women (the elite men were racing on Sunday), then the races for non-elite athletes started with starts throughout the day. Again lots of impressive athletes but also lots of people having a go who weren't so well trained. The route that the elite athletes did is the same as will be used for the Olympics, it was a great place for watching the event so I'm hoping we might be able to go down and watch the Olympic triathlon next year for free.