My first love

Athletics aka track and field is my first love. I used to represent my school in the 100m and 4 x 100m relay and recall attending night time athletic meets at Crystal Palace in the seventies. At the beginning of 1981, I started doing the high jump. I mastered the Fosbury Flop and successfully failed at progressively higher heights. In April 1981, we moved to Kenya and when I saw the crash mat had been replaced by a sand pit, I called time on my nascent athletics career. In 1992 I attended the national trials for the Kenyan Olympic team and met Paul Ereng (he gave me a signed photo) and Kenya's 5 time world cross country champion, John Ngugi. When I approached the latter for an autograph, he brusquely told me that he didn't know how to write - my sympathy was in short supply when he was subsequently banned for 2 years after refusing to provide the drug testers, who showed up at his house, with a urine sample.

On my return to England, I attended meets at Birmingham, Crystal Palace and Sheffield. It was in Birmingham where I witnessed the Kenyan born Dane, Wilson Kipketer, smash the world indoor record for the rarely run 1000m. I've visited Berlin's Olympiastadion in 1995, but somehow missed the memorial to Jesse Owens unparalleled feat in 1936 - doh!! In 2003, I went to the World Athletic Championships, at the Stade de France in Paris - this was the scene of France's 3-0 drubbing of Brazil in the FIFA World Cup final in 1998. My seat was in the 2nd row and it overlooked the finishing line so I had a very good view of the proceedings. I saw Carolina Kluft, after a titanic struggle with Eunice Barber, become only the 2nd woman in history, after the legendary Jackie Joyner Kersee, to amass more than 7000 points in the heptathlon. The now disgraced Kelli White won the women's 100m - I had hoped to see Marion Jones run, but she had taken time off to have a baby. I was in the stadium when Jon Drummond staged a lie-down on the track, in protest at his disqualification, and held up proceedings for 10 minutes - the crowd was on his side because replays on the big screen showed he had not moved. A little known fact is that the current 100m world record holder, Asafa Powell, was also disqualified along with Drummond. While I was in New York in 2005, I went to the Reebok Grand Prix at Icahn Stadium, Randall's Island. There, I saw first hand, the media frenzy that surrounds China's Olympic gold medallist and world record holder, Liu Xiang. There was also a welcome return for Jamaica's Usain "Thunder" Bolt and we saw Ethopia's Tirunesh Dibaba, leave her sister, Ejegayehu, and the rest of the field trailing in her slipstream.

I have a purpose bought autograph book which contains the signatures of various Olympic & World Champions. To drop a few names, I have Ato Boldon, Stephane Diagana, Maurice Greene, Sally Gunnell, Aisha Hansen (a very classy lady), Allen Johnson (lovely man) Christian Malcolm, Sandie Richards, Peter Rono, William Tanui, and numerous others. At Crystal Palace, I would strategically book seats next to the athletes' tunnel with a view to getting the athlete's autograph after their race - it was an unwritten rule of mine not to approach them before their competition while they were in the zone.

I remember waking up at 2am in an Aberdeen hotel in July 1996 to watch the evening session of the track and field program at the Atlanta Olympics. It was time for the men's 200m final and the array of flash bulbs that went off as the starter's gun fired, was momentarily blinding. I watched, in a state of suspended disbelief, as Michael Johnson's gold shoes propelled him to a Beamonesque world record of 19.32s. Namibia's Frankie Fredericks, a thoroughly decent man, ran 19.68s to record the 2nd fastest 200m of all time as both first and second fell within Pietro Menea's previous world record of 19.72s. I recall Marie-Jose Perec doing an elegant 400m/200m double at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to replicate Valerie Brisco-Hooks feat in 1984. I watched Marion Jones win her first Olympic gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics as she streaked to the 100m title in 10.75s - Evelyn Ashford won the 100m title at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, in a time of 10.97s and later went on to set a world record of 10.76s. I remember willing Marion Jones on at the in her drive-for-five quest. Even though she won bronze in the long jump and the 4 x 100m, Marion Jones became the first woman to win FIVE Olympic medals at a summer games.

Citius, Altius, Fortius or Faster, Higher, Stronger is the Olympic motto and is fundamentally, what track and field is all about. With all the tawdriness surrounding the sport at the moment, how refreshing to see the Olympian ideals espoused so winningly by Carolina Kluft - she competes uninhibited and maybe that explains why she's the reigning, Olympic champion, World and European champion, both indoors and outdoors, in the pentathlon and heptathlon.