Tom Phillips (versione inglese)

Titolo: Tom Phillips (versione inglese)
Data: 2008-04-09
Un'intervista di Tom Phillips

Testo:

A close up view of Clermont Ferrand British athlete and photographer Tom Phillips enjoyed it. Mostly.

 

I was awestruck by the huge Jean Pellez stadium. Many people felt <city></city><place></place>Linz was the “best ever” indoor arena, but for sheer size, and completely unobstructed views from every part of the building, this was the best in my view. What a pity that some of the organisation of the 3^rd World Masters Indoor Athletics Championships failed to live up to the quality of the track.

 

I get a privileged view of things, of course. I am fortunate to have the chance to work on the track as a photographer (see www.tomphillipsphotos.co.uk) , but I’m also part of the M50 sprint squad from <place></place>Great Britain. I see things from both sides. I also felt that, amongst the athletes, the Clermont Ferrand Worlds were a fantastically friendly games. I have good friends (and rivals) in the Italian, German, French and <place></place>USA teams. It was great to meet and race with them again so soon after Riccione.

 

The French meeting officials have taken a lot of criticism in the Masters press since Clermont. Some of it is deserved, yet I know from what was said to me by officials down on the track, that they were aware of most of the problems, and did their best to improve them each day. My own experience, both working and running, supports this. They did try. Some things did improve, but unfortunately, some important things did not. It is a shame that these are probably the memories of Clermont that will get the most publicity. It is the quality of the athletes and the competition that deserve to be remembered most.

 

Call Room procedures, warm up facilities, the random production and display of results and seeding information, and the stupid decision to have the medal ceremonies (before the Saturday afternoon) in the TIC and not the main stadium building are my main criticisms. As a 200m runner, I suffered along with others the worst of the Call Room delays on the Tuesday evening. OK, some of the officials there didn’t help things, but I personally blame the systems elsewhere in the arena. These were too slow at getting seeding information, lane draws and so on to the Call Room in the first place. I’m fortunate to be able to speak a bit of French, Italian and German. Was it too much to expect that the Call Room staff could have done the same? French and (if put under pressure) a bit of English was usually all they would offer. But I share with Call Room staff the sense of frustration I know they felt. Many were staying in the same hotel as me, and they were not proud of the way the Call Room worked.

 

Why were there no proper indoor warm up facilities for anyone, no facilities for hurdlers to warm up, and an information centre (TIC) that was half a kilometre from the stadium? These are issues that I feel we athletes should be asking WMA about. Did the WMA top brass who awarded the championships to Clermont Ferrand really think that what was on offer was adequate for a World Championship? We asked the same questions after Riccione, too, of course. However, these are common failures. Were the warm up facilities in <city></city>Helsinki for EVACI 2007, or in <place></place><city></city>Poznan for EVACS 2006 any better? No, of course they were not. Are you watching and listening, Ancona 2008, Lahti 2009, Kamloops 2010…? The athletes hope so.

 

Down at trackside, once the athletes had managed to warm up, negotiated the Call Room, and arrived for their event, things were electrifying at times. I have high praise for how well the trackside officials coped. The arena announcers, although limited to French and occasional English, worked themselves hoarse to drum up a good atmosphere in the arena. It was a great shame that the stadium had no big screen for race results. It was an even bigger pity that the meeting programme had no list of athletes and their race numbers. I was more fortunate than most. As a photographer, I obtained a list from the TIC, but it should have been widely available.

 

The announcers were, of course, chauvinistic towards the French athletes. Take Saturday morning as an example, with great French athletes at work in the women’s pole vault and the men’s triple jump. It gave a great atmosphere, but the audience in the stands were not predominantly French, and were loud in support of their own champions too. I can vividly recall the deafening sound of the crowd as I raced off the bend in the M50 4x200m relay with my German friend and rival Rudolf König close behind me. What was not so good was the occasional sight of whole races filled with French athletes, while the preceding and following heats contained none. We were left wondering whether that was the seeding system. Or something more partisan?

 

For me, when I put my camera away, this was my best championships as an athlete. I won the “B” Final of the M50 60m in the Tuesday. But I only found out an hour before the race that there was even going to be a “B” final!  It wasn’t in the programme, and no explanation was ever given about why it was added. Fortunately for those of us who took part, we were all warming up for the 200m heats anyway. There were two empty lanes, and I never did find out whether this was because the athletes who should have been in those lanes simply didn’t know the race was on. The same happened when a third semi-final of the M50 60m was added on the Monday evening. No stadium announcement was made. One of my team-mates was simply amazed when he watched the race start without him late on the Monday evening. The information about it was in the TIC, of course, but the TIC closed promptly at 7pm every evening.

 

Doing four rounds of the M50 200m was hard, especially when the quarter finals stated (eventually) at 10.30 on the Tuesday night, and the semi-finals were scheduled for 10.15am next day. No proper chance for a meal, a massage etc in a programme like that. However, I made the final – my first World Championships final in an individual event. The less said about running in that final from lane 1 the better!

 

And beating the very strong German team in the 4x200m relay was something, quite honestly, I had not thought we Brits would do. I was sure we could (and would) get the silver medal. To win gold was a great delight. We ran the second fastest time ever by a GB M50 4x200m squad, even without Steve Peters at the Championships, and wore our medals home with great pride.

 

See you in Slovenia, and again in <place></place><city></city>Ancona.

 

Tom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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