Open Mike: Peak Track (OT)

The essay I promised you about how photography is not ending is underway, but it needs percolation time. Can't rush some things.

Meanwhile, I thought I would mention how much I've been enjoying the recent World Championships in Budapest. One of the best athletics meets I've ever seen, right up there with Beijing 2008. The USA did spectacularly well, and it seems like there are many young talents in a large number of disciplines, from many countries, all peaking at the same time. Some absolutely wonderful performances and some great stories.

The only dark spot is the absence this year of Sydney Superstar, out with a knee injury, whose Bolt moment you can see here, at the 2022 Championships. "Absolute greatness," as the announcer says.

A few of the many highlights from the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Hungary:

• Sha'Carri Richardson, who races with the longest fingernails ever recorded in track, has suffered some of the wayward setbacks of an unbridled youth, including her heartbreaking disqualification from the pandemic-delayed 2021 Olympics in Tokyo after testing positive for marijuana, which she had resorted to after the death of her mother. But if you've ever seen a young kid happier about an unexpected triumph than she was at these Championships, I don't know when it could have been. Her mouth was shaped like an "O" for minutes afterward. (By the way, the clip shows a really dire video editing mistake—they cut away from Sha'Carri at the exact moment she sees confirmation that she's won the race.)
• Noah Lyles, Noah Lyles, Noah Lyles. On top of the world. And the USA wins its fourth 100 World title in a row. Rising star Erriyon Knighton grabber silver, on the podium with Letsile Tebogo from Botswana. (Watch for the names Knighton and Tebogo in the future.) Noah Lyles also caused a huge viral explosion with his comments about the NBA. See also his golds in the 200 and the 4x100.
• After her catastrophic fall just meters from the finish line in the 4x100 Mixed, Dutch standout Femke Bol redeemed herself anchoring the 4x100 and in the 400 hurdles.
• Katie Moon and Nina Kennedy agree to share the gold medal in the pole vault. I love this. I used to play Risk with a bunch of people including my friend Jim Schley at Shoestring Farm, where I lived after dropping out of Dartmouth, and, in one game, when Jim and I had the last armies standing, he looked up and said, with a chuckle: "why can't we just live in peace?"

That's not all, but I gotta go. I have to get back to it. I'm hard at work on the post I promised you on Monday, and it will be up soon. It's called "The Antidote."

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David Drake: "Looking forward to your post Mike. We all have to keep positive and inspired! The antidote is your blog! That’s the best thing about the web is being a part of online communities, whether they are for photographers, marimba dancers or knitters, Being part of a community or communities and sharing our experiences is so important. Sure, I would love to be able to make a living off my work; but just creating something and being able to share with others - that’s the essence of a creative life."

Dan Montgomery: "Track meets always make me cry. Whether it's a middle-school meet or the World Championships, there is always a moment (or many) in which an athlete decides that he or she may not be out of the race after all, chooses to plumb the depths of their own conditioning and tolerance for suffering and pushes themselves toward the finish line through pain that is both off the scale and entirely voluntary. Gets me every time. And you have the surprises whose joy at a win (or a medal or just making the final) tells you something about what it takes to get there. And then you have the people who just lay down the law.

"By the way, it seems to me that the World Championships, which only started in the 1980s, are always great (not that I have seen them all, of course), in part because only the best of the best qualify, in part because the crowds are better informed, in part because the track meet is the whole point, not a subset of a bigger global athletic-cultural-commercial-political spectacle. But yes, too bad Sydney couldn't make it. And, I don't know, did you see Flo-Jo's nails back in the day?"

Comments

[Aakin]

I think the comments about photography ending are all from people who think painting ended when cheap acrylics became available.

Just because the medium and tools have changed doesn't mean the artform is dead. It just means you have more practitioners at the beginners end of the spectrum, because beginning is easy now.

And that's a great thing.

[Bruce Robbins]

I can no longer enjoy athletics because of the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs. It's a bit like digital photography: impressive but you can't always believe what you're seeing. Of the 50 fastest men's 100m times, all but 15 have been posted by sprinters who have been busted in one way or another. All of those 15 times were recorded by Bolt. Was he using PEDs? He WAS the sport and there's no way the authorities would ever have allowed him to be caught if he were.