SYDNEY, 12 August 2003 — The retirement of Cathy Freeman has stripped the Australian track and field team of its genuine world star for the world championships in Paris.
The Sydney Olympic and two-time world 400-meter champion quit the sport in mid-July citing a lack of passion to compete and with her exit went Australia’s best chance of a gold medal, even though she was struggling for peak form.
Among the reasons Freeman offered for her retirement was the competitive hunger of Australian 400m hurdler Jana Pittman, who inflicted Freeman’s first loss in five years over the 400m flat during the domestic grand prix series in March.
Twenty-year-old Pittman on world rankings is in line for a medal in the 400m hurdles in Paris.
The Commonwealth Games champion missed the worlds in 2001 with injury, but her form since the 2002 Manchester Games has marked her as Australia’s best female track talent. Pittman has competition experience at the world championship venue — the Stade de France — having won her first Golden League meet there last year.
However Russia’s Yulia Pechyonkina laid down the gauntlet to her with a new world record of 52.34sec at the Russian championships - shattering the eight year old mark of America’s Kim Batten.
Pittman, though, responded by winning in the Berlin Golden League meeting.
Australia also have hopes for sprinter Patrick Johnson, who last May became the first Australian to break the 10-second barrier for 100m, clocking 9.93 seconds in Japan. Johnson won the 100m final with a legal tailwind of 1.8 meters per second to become the fastest Australian in history, shattering Matt Shirvington’s national record of 10.03sec set in 1998.
However his form has been in sharp decline since then and a career in the Australian Foreign Office looks more likely to be fulfilling than a long term athletics one. Coach Esa Peltola said Johnson has benefited from training alongside Shirvington at the Australian team base in the seaside Italian town of Ostia.
Johnson was scheduled to base himself in Peltola’s original hometown of Helsinki leading up the world championships.
Pole vaulter Dmitri Markov will defend his world title in Paris after coming into form following a series of injuries.
The former Belarussian showed he was back on track with a commanding victory at the grand prix meet in Lausanne in early July and followed it up with a triumph in the Berlin Golden League meet.
Markov’s winning height in Berlin was 5.86 meters, lifting him in the 2003 rankings. It was his best clearance since he vaulted 6.05m in August 2001 to win the world title in Edmonton, Canada.
Markov has been hampered by a serious hamstring injury since the world championship victory but is now back to full fitness.
Another with a genuine medal chance is shot putter Justin Anlezark, who set an Australian record of 20.96m in Brisbane last April.If he can get an extra 4cm it will probably mean a top-five place, and potentially a medal, in Paris for Australia’s grand prix male athlete of the year.
Bronwyn Eagles is a chance of a medal in the women’s hammer throw after setting a Commonwealth record early this year.
