Hubert Lawrence | Sign of the times

Time will tell whether the recently announced details of the Continental Tour will placate those wounded by cuts to the Diamond League.

In the meantime, with the sport’s glitterati gathered in Monaco, Eliud Kipchoge and Dalilah Muhammad were named the track and field male and female athletes of the year respectively. Muhammad won the 400 metre hurdles in world record time at the glitzy World Championships in Doha.

The New Yorker was co-favourite for the award alongside the amazing Sifan Hassan, who was the only person, male or female, to win two events in Doha. The Dutchwoman lowered the 23-year-old world record for the mile to 4 minutes 13.33 seconds for the mile before Doha and went there to win a unique 1500m/5000m double. Perhaps she lost to Muhammad because the American set her second world record of the season in the Worlds at 52.16 seconds.

Hassan’s candidacy for the Athlete of the Year title may also have been damaged by the troubles assailing her coach Alberto Salazar. In any case, Muhammad’s world record run in Doha made a great impression by marrying the sport’s two great achievements in one performance – championship success with unparalleled quality.

The situation with Kipchoge is different. The brilliant Kenyan missed Doha in favour of a successful attempt to break the two-hour barrier in the marathon. However, if you scan the list of world records, you won’t find his time of 1 hour 59 minutes and 40 seconds. World Athletics considers the performance in Vienna to have been illegally aided by pacemakers.

Contradiction

One British newspaper labelled the run as ‘heavily manufactured’ with laser lights guiding Kipchoge’s every footfall and a legion of pacers keeping time and sheltering him from the breeze. Olympic champion in 2016 and world 5000 metre winner in 2003, the endearing Kenyan is one of track’s great stories. However, it is contradictory that the sport’s most treasured award would tilt to a performance so flawed that it cannot be adjudged a record.

It was more like the way race cars are tested. On private tracks, engineers and test drivers push prototypes to the limit, dialling through different tire compounds and different settings for aerodynamics and suspension. Viewed that way, Kipchoge’s test run could provide information for marathoners of the future and, make no mistake, breaking the two hour barrier is a great achievement. However, it is no record. Given that the Kenyan skipped Doha, worthy candidates like Norway’s undefeated 46.92 400 metre hurdler Karsten Warholm might well feel hard-done by.

Taken in the context of the wave of change sweeping track and field, the award to Kipchoge is a sign of the times. There is a drive to make the sport more compelling, even in non-Olympic years. Purists might scoff but more broadly, the time by the smiling marathon king might well be the most memorable track and field performance of the year.

Hopefully, he will bid to be just the third man to win the Olympic marathon twice in a row.

After his 2016 Olympic win, and his world record – 2 hours and 23 seconds in Berlin last year, Kipchoge probably is now the sport’s biggest star in some quarters. From that vantage point, the award has a certain logic.

One can only hope that, twinned with the details of the Continental Tour, the awards to Kipchoge and Muhammad will give the sport a boost. In the same breath, track and field has been searching for a hero for the post-Bolt era. His name could be Eliud Kipchoge.

Hubert Lawrence has scrutinised local and international track and field since 1980.