The IAAF World Athletics Indoor Championships were held in Sopot, Poland last weekend...Fri 7th to Sun 9th of March 2014. Irish interest in the competition ended on the Friday when the five Irish athletes competing went out in the heats.
One of the big suprises in the following two days was the defeat of the Olympic champion Sally Pearson from Australia. It was almost taken as a given that she would win the final but it wasn't to be. (Click forward to 3 minutes)
POS..ATHLETE..CTRY..TIME..REACTION TIME
1 Nia ALI USA 7.80 PB 0.140
2 Sally PEARSON AUS 7.85 0.129
3 Tiffany PORTER GBR 7.86 SB 0.163
4 Cindy BILLAUD FRA 7.89 0.164
5 Janay DELOACH SOUKUP USA 7.90 0.172
6 Cindy ROLEDER GER 8.01 0.148
7 Nadine HILDEBRAND GER 8.02 0.166
8 Yuliya KONDAKOVA RUS 8.08 0.152
One interesting aspect of this final is to compare the times to what Irish athlete Derval O'Rourke might have done, especially in light of her recent funding cut.
In March 2013, Derval O'Rourke recorded these times in seconds in the European Indoor Championships in Gotenburg, Sweden....
Womens 60m hurdles...Heats = 8.05, Semi-final = 8:00, Final = 7.95
Due to an operation on her achilles in 2013, Derval O'Rourke was never going to get to the championships in Poland but her times from last year certainly show the potential. When she won the World indoors in Moscow in 2006, she ran 7.84 seconds. It's obvious that in this particular event at least, she is up there with the best in the world. In that light, the recent funding cut seems all the more unfortunate.
Re athletes funding, year after year over 100 Aosdana artists and writers get tax free €17,180 plus access to a subsididised pension fund plus a tax credit of € 40,000 per year. They decide themselves who gets the money and since the scheme began 12 years ago, some have got in excess of € 100,000 in addition to any Local Authority funding any may have received. Compare this extraordinary lavish funding to how athletes are treated and the standards they have to meet and be measured against. And it isnt going to change until people start to express some sense of outrage at how politicians favour their own vested interest groups.
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