22nd July 2013 08:01
Twelve months on from the spectacular events of 2012, the Sainsbury’s Annversary Games, the official title for the IAAF Diamond League meeting, has caused quite a stir.
It took only 75 minutes for all the tickets to sell out, an example of what an Olympic legacy can do and by Sunday, it will be full again when the paralympians take centre stage.
It is tradition that the Diamond League meeting in London is a two-day event and this year’s competition will have even more status now that the tax law in the United Kingdom has changed which means the public will see Usain Bolt run there again in an international event.
But it is beyond these two nights where the legacy for track and field has to work, and as one of Britain’s greatest stars from 2012 has revealed, that is now happening.
Jessica Ennis-Hill was the European female athlete of the year for her brilliant victory in the heptathlon at the Olympics. But as she says now when she trains in Sheffield, those achievements have extra resonance because of what she sees.
Ennis said: “All the kids that come down to the track, they all know the athletes, they are all doing the different Mobots (Mo Farah’s celebratory routine)…and they all know your name. And I don’t think I have ever witnessed anything like that before.”
Yet 12 months on from London, and 12 months before the European Athletics Championships in Zurich, Europe’s athletes generally are playing no small part in ensuring that 2013 is a year which could prove as pivotal as 2012.
Sport, and heroes and heroines, move on so quickly in this day and age that they can easily become forgotten. But not in track and field in Europe at the moment.
Take Farah. Those 160,000 fans inside the Olympic Stadium on the finals night last year will never forget his double gold in the 5000m and 10,000m but now he is making headlines again after his amazing 1500 run in Monaco on Friday that broke the European record.
Take Zuzana Hejnova, of the Czech Republic. A star in her own country after the Olympics where she won bronze, but now one that is shining even brighter this summer. She is unbeaten in the Diamond League over the 400m hurdles and heading to the World Championships in Moscow as the favourite.
Take the men’s pole vault, which is fast becoming the private property of European athletes. Renaud Lavillenie won gold both in Helsinki and London last summer ahead of Germans Bjorn Otto and Raphael Holzdeppe while Greece’s Konstadinos Filippidis was back in seventh. A year on, they are making the same sort of impression, with Filippidis now just behind Lavillenie in the Diamond League rankings and on Sunday in Athens, at the national championships, cleared 5.80m before missing out at 5.85m on breaking his own national record of 5.82m which he set in Doha in May.
And take the men’s 100m. While it seemed for so long that France’s Christophe Lemaitre would be the biggest European challenger to the speed of the Jamaicans, suddenly the summer of 2013 has brought the arrival of Britain’s James Dasaolu with 9.91 and France’s Jimmy Vicaut running 9.95, twice, and then 9.99 in Monaco.
Legacy lives on, and it is not just from 2012.