Klüft Voted 2006 Waterford Crystal European AOY

Story written by EPelle

Carolina Klüft, our national athletics queen who has not lost a heptathlon competition in nearly five years, was voted the female Waterford Crystal European Athlete of the Year for 2006 - the second such accomplishment in her four-year professional career.

Klüft was voted number one by a tally of three different vote criteria which was open on the European Athletics Federation's homepage (click here for full press release) up to 31-December.

Klüft collected the fewest points (four) on the tally system, three fewer than runner-up Kim Gevaert of Belgium.

The Waterford Crystal European Athlete of the Year internet poll on the European Athletics website was open to Member Federations, the media and the public through three different voting forums.

All athletes' points were calculated by adding their position in each of the three voting categories.

Klüft, who was narrowly beaten for the award last year by pole vault world-record holder Yelena Isinbayeva - four points to seven - has not had a setback in the heptathlon or indoor pentathlon since finishing third (4535) to Russia's Yelena Prokhorova (4622) and Portugal's Naide Gomes (4595) at the 2002 European Indoor Championships in Vienna.

Klüft, according to our national federation's homepage (Friidrott) as well as the EAA, is planning on defending the pentathlon crown she won in Madrid in 2005 (4948) in Birmingham in March.

"For me the sport is all about performing at the major championships and I am really looking forward to the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Birmingham" she said.

"I won the World Indoor title there in 2003 and my great rival Kelly Sotherton (GBR) will have the home crowd willing her on this time, so it will certainly be a big challenge."

Sotherton (4733) finished second to Klüft in Madrid by 215 points, with Natalya Dobrynska (4667) of the Ukraine finishing third.

The three last met here in August at the European Championships, with Klüft (6740) winning the title over Holland's Karin Ruckstuhl (6423), with Germany's Lilli Schwarzkopf (6420) earning the bronze medal.

Sotherton finished a disappointing seventh with 6290 points.

Gevaert, who won the 100m/200m European sprint double here in Göteborg (11,06/22,68), and Isinbayeva - the 2005 Waterford Crystal European Athlete of the Year winner and 2006 European pole vault champion (4,80m - Championship Record), tied for second place just ahead of reigning Olympic long jump champion Tatyana Lebedeva (Russia) and high jumpers Kajsa Bergqvist (Sweden) and Tia Hellebaut (Belgium).

Lebedeva won the triple jump (15.15m) in exciting fashion over Greece's Hrisopiyi Devetzi (15.05m), jumping a championship record on her final attempt to secure her first outdoor European Championships title.

Bergqvist and Hellebaut were part of an exciting high jump final which saw no fewer than four women successfully manage the 2.00-metre barrier.

Hellebaut won the competition with a life-time best, national- and championship record jump of 2.03m, which was equalled by Bulgaria's Venelina Veneva, who finished with a silver medal on misses. Bergqvist, the indoor world record holder after a 2.08m jump in Arnstadt earlier in the year, jumped 2.01m in front of our home crowd, good enough for third. Blanka Vlasic, who had finished second to Bergqvist in the world-record meeting, finished fourth, also at 2.01m.

Klüft first won the prestigious trophy in 2003, following a spectacular break-out year where she improved from beating the best juniors in the world to winning two IAAF world titles (indoor pentathlon and outdoor heptathlon).

Klüft is a finalist for the 2006 Gerringspriset, a very coveted prize which Radiosport here in Sweden awards for the year's best Swedish athletic performance. Susanna Kallur, who won the European Championships in the 100m hurdles (12,59) is also among the finalists.

One amazing feat which deserves notice is that Klüft has been atop the heptathlon world rankings for 223 weeks, and was awarded a spot among the world's top-10 best females by Track & Field News magasine (link) - the fourth-straight year she has appeared on the list. Klüfts appearances there are spectacular, because the magasine takes into consideration every athletic event when selecting its top-10 list. Klüft on average participates in three heptathlons per year.

Friidrott.se ran a great analysis (link) of Klüft through the years, netting the following great points:

• Three losses in her career, the latest in the 2001 European Cup; she's racked up 17-straight victories.
• Since she established herself as a senior in 2002, she has only twice (Euro Champs 2002 and World Champs 2005) not beaten her competition by at least 200 points, and her average score over 2nd-placers in those 15 competitions is 367 points.
• Her average hep the past 12 competitions (between 2003-2006) is 6,780 - a mark which only 12 other people in world history have surpassed in a single competition.
• 24 competitions without pulling out of one (she didn:t contest the 2000 Swedish Junior Nationals, because she was merely along to help a teammate chase the World Junior qualification mark).

Klüft was voted the fourth-best European female athlete by a panel of European sports journalists at the New Year. Klüft tallied 13 points in the voting. Isinbayeva (21) ranked third, and Gevaert (11) finished two points behind Klüft with a fifth-place spot.

Tennis player Justine Henin-Hardenne pulled in the most votes with 28 points.

2006 Waterford Crystal European AOY results:

1. Carolina Klüft, (SWE), 4; 2. Kim Gevaert, (BEL), 7; 2. Yelena Isinbayeva, (RUS), 7; 4. Tatyana Lebedeva, (RUS), 14; 5. Kajsa Bergqvist, (SWE), 15; 6. Tia Hellebaut, (BEL), 17; 7. Susanna Kallur, (SWE), 25; 8. Tatyana Lysenko, (RUS), 26; 9. Lornah Kiplagat, (NED), 32; 9. Vanya Stambolova, (BUL), 32

2005
Results:

1. Yelena Isinbayeva (RUS), 3 points; 2. Carolina Klüft (SWE), 7; 3. Tatyana Lebedeva (RUS), 11; 3. Paula Radcliffe (GBR), 11; 5. Kajsa Bergqvist (SWE), 12; 6. Christine Arron (FRA), 18; 7. Tatyana Kotova (RUS), 26; 8. Yuliya Nosova-Pechonkina (RUS), 28; 9. Christina Obergföll (GER), 31; 10. Eunice Barber (FRA), 32; 10. Olimpiada Ivanova (RUS), 32

Klüfts heptathlon/pentathlon portfolio (Source: IAAF):

Pentathlon

• 1st 28th European Indoor Athletics Championships 4948 Madrid 04 03 2005
• 1st 9th IAAF World Indoor Championships 4933 Birmingham 14 03 2003
• 3rd 27th European Indoor Championships 4535 Wien 01 03 2002

Heptathlon

• 1st 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics 6887 Helsinki 07 08 2005
• 1st 28th Olympic Games 6952 Athens 21 08 2004
• 1st 9th IAAF World Championships in Athletics 7001 Paris Saint-Denis 24 08 2003
• 1st 18th European Championships in Athletics 6542 München 10 08 2002
• 1st IAAF/Coca Cola World Junior Championships 6470 Kingston, JAM 20 07 2002
• 1st IAAF/Coca Cola World Junior Championships 6056 Santiago de Chile 21 10 2000

Through the Pages of Time

Story written by EPelle

How many times have you gone into your basement, dusted off the top of a plastic container carton and dug up a particular athletics magasine to find the result to a trivia quiz?

How many stacks of those magasines do you have available at your disposal to wade through for old time's sake?

I own a small collection of Track & Field News magasines - 86 to be precise, and have seven Athletics Weekly ones to add to the growing pile for good measure. Or was that good dusting?

I began subscribing to the monthly publication, Track & Field News, back in 1986. I used to read it from cover-to-cover, often memorising all the stats, results and records printed therein. I'd re-read the same issue the following three weeks until a new one arrived, so I had time to let everything sink in!

The issue above is the oldest edition I have, and was given to me as a gift by an old running buddy of mine - an Olympian who happened to also be one of my five other housemates. He'd ordered it from the Track & Field News archives, and it was a true treasure chest; the NCAA edition was relevant to my competition level at the time.

Many a face has graced the cover of Track & Field News, and many of history's fastest, furthest and longest marks ever recorded are in my basement. Collecting dust. Hardly visited. They lay stuffed under another carton of books I've already read and likely won't re-read any time soon.

I'm the proud owner of some of the most fascinating historical data in print - including programs and newspaper clippings from meets around the world, but I don't recall the very last time I was so inclined to open the books and re-live those old memories.

High speed connections and a world at my fingertips has caused me to stare at flashing photos and fancy graphics instead of looking at standard black print on white glossy pages under a dim light. Whereas I once used a yellow highlighter to recall an important fact, I now use a mouse click to bookmark that important result, that tidbit of information -- that "must remember" detail meant to give me appreciation of who did what, where, when, why and how.

I'm good on bookmarks - I won't need to lift another finger for a local, national, international or championship result anywhere around the world so help me God. Everything's nightly packaged into one folder visible on my laptop screen.

Feature articles and everything news-worthy has its place, too, as RSS feeds give me the first-hand scoop I need when events happen, names make the news, and the world should know.

Honestly, I can't recall when the last time was that I read an athletics article in magasine print, which has brought me to the question of the hour:

When does a collection hardly used turn into a bonafide junk pile?

I can see the terrific value of holding on to old magasines filled with more stats and information for trivial games than one can handle. Athletics magasines are data intense.

However, I realise that any stats, figures, numbers, names, places, times, dates or the like are readily available as quickly as I can tap the enter key and a server can take me to my requested page - to that spot among hundreds I have saved for such an event as trivial awareness.

Meanwhile, the cobwebs continue forming along the edge of my carton along a wall in a dark room. Inside that space are eight piles of 10 magasines in yearly order - July 1984 at the top, April 2003 the final of the subscription mail pieces I have ever received from Mountain View, CA, USA - home of Track & Field News.

I've grappled with the thought of nicely parting ways with the magasines, but conscious has held me back on my only serious attempt. I've donated issues to fans new to the international scene - people eager as I was to read physical print back in the day.

I suppose only thing keeping me from tossing them all together is that there is a market for such treasures - there is a price on Carl Lewis' head, so to speak. Then again, it feels completely unnatural to sell off undefinable treasures - splits, paces, times and honours - when those exact details are what made the sport interesting to me when I took it up 21 years ago.

The other compelling reason I have not thrown out my aging newsprint is that Track & Field News calls itself "The Bible of the Sport."

Funny, but it feels that, by some supernatural occurance, throwing out history will be a curse of never being able to repeat it - quite to the contrary of the principle of one's not knowing his history making him doomed to repeat it. Knowingly parting ways with one of those magasines seems to be akin to leaving a Bible near an open fire with gasoline tipped over without a lock.

Oddly enough, no matter how quickly I've been able to pace my way through results around the world - one mouse click at a time, it seems nothing truly has taken the place of previously having waited an entire four weeks - 30 whole days - to appreciate what athletes had accomplished nearly two months before the results hit my post box. I couldn't appreciate clicking on results three days old - let alone 10-times that amount - nowadays.

Therefore, it seems most prudent to hold on to the memories as long as I have a computer. The day computer results turn into the next best invention to trick me out of reading, I promise to take a day, open that clear plastic rectangular box with a blue top, and try remembering who this guy named Michael Johnson was, and what was so special about some hot night in Atlanta.

Until then, it'll be click, click away until my fingers turn numb.