The right track

Sebastian Coe’s new job as head of world athletics will be a heck of a lot easier thanks to the outstanding World Championships that just finished in Beijing. He has a chance to push athletics back to the forefront of world sport — after all, what is more thrilling than one human being trying to outrun another? The star was Usain Bolt, but even that unassuming giant of a man cannot go on for ever. Athletics needs characters, champions that people can identify with, preferably in the blue–riband events. And Beijing showed there are outstanding athletes waiting to step forward.

Julius Yego took gold in the javelin with a throw of 92.72 metres — just over 100 yards. For those of us who did the 100 yards at school, the finishing line seemed a long way away. Imagine chucking a spear that far. Yego learned to throw a javelin from YouTube when he realised he couldn’t run fast enough: last week he made the longest throw by anyone for 14 years and took Kenya’s first ever field gold.

It was a magnificent championships for the Kenyans, who topped the medals table. Athletics needs winners like the utterly scandal-free David Rudisha, who took gold in the punishing 800 metres: he is a brilliant runner to watch (Coe rated him as his favourite at London 2012). The Jamaicans still dominate the sprints but their women are nowhere near as high-profile as the men because they can never set a world record. This is a big problem for Coe, and it all dates back to the drug-fuelled 1980s, when the Soviet bloc and the USA set the main women’s sprint records, all now 30 years old.

There’s a great character coming through in the 200 metres and he’s British (sort of).