While recovering from the accumulated lack of sleep caused by watching the World Championships Athletics the last 10 days I observed a few interesting things.<\/p>\n
I guess everybody\u00a0 noticed the many surprises, positive and negative: Mo Farah and Usain Bolt lost where they looked undefeatable so many times before. The loss of Elaine Thompson in the 100 meter women, etc. For Jamaica the WC results were bad, mainly due to the fact that three athletes dominating sprint before, Bolt, Thompson or Fraser-Price, were not in good shape or weren\u2019t there at all. Interesting though: Jamaica does no longer seem to limit itself to producing only good sprinters: a gold medal in men\u2019s hurdling, also finals in shotput women, and even the 5000 meter men.<\/p>\n
Focusing on the positive surprises: USA 3000m steeple women: gold and silver. The boost of South Africa and smaller countries: Venezuela, Norway. Syria taking a medal in high jump. The \u201crecovery\u201d\u00a0 of the dominance of USA in sprint events and Kenia in the longer distances. France and Germany taking their places again and yes, the 800 meter men, which is always a roulette, saw two non-Africans winning gold and silver. Turkey winning the gold medal in the 200 meter.<\/p>\n
And what about the Netherlands, many people ask me. Yes, we have 5 very good athletes, all female: Dafne Schippers (100m and 200m), Nadine Visser (hurdles and heptathlon), Sifan Hassan (1500m and 5 km), \u00a0Anouk Vetter (heptathlon), Susan Krumins (5 km and 10 km). \u00a0They were all good and they peaked at the right moment.<\/p>\n
The men were terrible this time: Churandy Martina injured himself before the Championships and the years start counting against him. \u00a0Eric Cadee, our discus thrower threw 64.93 in 2017, but did not make into the finals with a disastrous 58.60, more than 6 meter less! Menno Vloon, our pole-vaulter jumped 5.85 this year but had a strange accident during the qualifications and was out.<\/p>\n
Thymen Kupers, who won his 800 meter heat very convincingly with the fastest time overall, did not start in the semi-finals due to an injury.<\/p>\n
Richard Douma, the 1500 meter runner stumbled in the heats, still made it to the semi-final and became dead last in a terrible time, of course.<\/p>\n
Eelco Nicolaas, our best decathlete of the last decade,\u00a0 scored a hopeful 8539 points this year only to give up the second day due to an injury. His colleague Pieter Braun, scored 8334 points this year but ended with 7890 points, 500 points less.<\/p>\n
The 4×100 relay showed where they are without Martina: nowhere. They\u00a0 stumbled in the heats with a sixth place in 38.66.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t it peculiar, the men doing so terrible, injured or not being able to peak and the women doing so great with\u00a0 4 medals?<\/p>\n
The rest of the women, like the men, were quiet unconvincing too to put it mildly.\u00a0 In throwing and sprinting they, like the men, stayed far behind their best performances of 2017. 4×400 meter relay got DQed, 4x100m was dead last in the final, Broersen, heptathlon, gave up injured and in shotput Boekelman more than 1 meter from her best performance in 2017(!?).<\/p>\n
Here is the secret: \u00a0Schippers trains with a foreign coach, and so does Hassan, Krumins is training in the US as well.\u00a0 Vetter is coached by her father and Visser might leave her coach as well, if history is an indication for the future.<\/p>\n
These hard numbers prove that Dutch track coaches suck and although our Olympic Committee tries to tell the world that we have the best educated coaches in the world, nothing is further from the truth. Their education is practically non-existent or totally inadequate to cope with the demand of performing at the highest level. \u00a0If they are as good as they think, why are the best performances\u00a0 produced by athletes who train with foreign coaches?<\/p>\n
Enough about the Dutch.<\/p>\n
It also becomes more and more clear that the concept of nationalism or competing for your country is old-fashioned and arbitrary, athletes change countries as easy as they change clubs or coaches.\u00a0 Just as in other sports. International immigration is normal.\u00a0 They rightly choose for the money, the passport or the training facilities. Is the medal in the 5 km for Sifan Hassan a medal for the Netherlands, for Europe (like a reporter said) or a medal for Africa? I don\u2019t know and I don\u2019t really care, as it is a medal for Sifan Hassan. Where she comes from, where she lives and for which country she competes is hardly interesting. Until we find a better solution we will have to deal with athletes who compete for a country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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