World athletics championships: Peter Bol fails to escape heats, Jenneke through to semi-final
Peter Bol’s fairytale return to world athletics ended in a nightmare, but the storyline was a happier one for his compatriots Joseph Deng and Michelle Jenneke.
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If you weren’t looking at the big screen you could have easily have thought a hometown Hungarian was being introduced in the heats of the 100m hurdles.
Instead it was Australia’s Michelle Jenneke whose pre-race dance routine was being shown on the screen, prompting an enthusiastic reaction from the 30,000 fans inside the stadium.
While Jenneke has come a long way since her prime ‘Jiggling Hudler’ days around the 2016 Rio Olympics, she is still very much a fan favourite as her Instagram account shows with more than half-a-million followers.
Tobi Amusan🇳🇬 takes heat 5 of the women's 100mH in 12.48s ahead of Megan Tapper🇯🇲 in 12.51s and Michelle Jenneke🇦🇺 in 12.71s pic.twitter.com/msOuzPEQKC
— O.L.O.R.U.N.F.E.M.I. (@femii_p) August 22, 2023
To her credit Jenneke, 30, is now making more noise on the track than off it and she again impressed in the heat, qualifying through to the semi-finals in a slick 12.71sec.
It will be the fifth time at a world championships she has made the semi-finals (4.40am Thursday AEST).
“The start was really good and having Tobi (Amusan) on the inside, I was a big fan of that,” Jenneke said.
“I know she is always going to be fast so the game plan was to go with her for as long as I could but then towards the last couple of hurdles I think I played it a little bit safe.
“I had a bit of an incident about a month ago in one of my races when I clipped one of the last hurdles and almost fell flat on my face so that was a little bit in the back of my head so I made sure I got through.
“But I won’t be holding anything back tomorrow.”
Nigeria’s Amusan is the defending world champion and world record holder but her presence in Budapest has been controversial given she has just been cleared after a case of missing drug tests.
A disciplinary tribunal found that Amusan did not commit an anti-doping rule violation meaning her provisional suspension was lifted with immediate effect although it’s understood the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) hasn’t closed the case.
“I have full faith in the system that they are doing everything they need to do,” Jenneke said. “I don’t really know enough about the situation so I respect the Athlete Integrity unit is doing what they need to do.
“She’s here, she is racing and that’s all I think about it.”
Fellow Australian Celeste Mucci (12.90sec) is also through to the semi-finals while the Sally Pearson-trained Hannah Jones didn’t progress (13.05sec).
In the men’s high jump final Brandon Starc finished eighth with a best clearance of 2.25m.
BOL’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BID IMPLODES
It was almost like the past seven months came crashing down around Peter Bol at the 50m mark.
For so long he’d thought he wouldn’t be at the world championships so when his fairytale return began to go sour down the home straight of the 800m heats, Bol didn’t know what to do.
He’d fought so hard off the track to clear his name that he suddenly had no more fight left in him when it mattered on the track.
So he shut down, gave up and almost walked over the line.
The Tokyo Olympic finalist knew the heat had been slow so when it was obvious he wasn’t going to finish in the top three automatic qualifying spots, attempting to get in as one of the three fastest losers was a waste of time.
There were signs early that this wasn’t the same athlete who’d run fourth in the Tokyo Olympics and made last year’s world championships final.
The race was all over the place, normally Bol runs from the front, asserts himself and then fights like a man possessed down the straight.
This time he pushed up from lane two to be contesting the lead at the start of the race but then in the blink of an eye at the 200m mark he was shuffled back to sixth.
The Bol of two years ago wouldn’t have let that happen.
From then it was a hard watch. A surge with 300m to go looked promising initially but by the time the field turned the bend he was still fifth on the outside and the gap to the leaders seemed to be increasing.
For a few more strides he put his head down before reality hit and all those missed training sessions, the niggles he picked up doing a reality TV show to pay his legal bills and the mental stress of being labelled a drug cheat came back to haunt him.
Bol didn’t comment afterwards and by this stage the world’s media were chasing him given he’d been a point of discussion a couple of hours earlier at a media briefing with World Athletics’ Integrity Unit.
They wanted to know what the athlete who’s beaten the system and forced WADA to review its EPO testing procedures had to say about the case which the World Athletics integrity boss labelled as a “disaster”.
Expectations in the Bol camp were subdued in the lead-up. They knew he’d missed a lot of training but there were signs over the past month that he had turned the corner.
On the night his training partner Joseph Deng stole the Australian 800m record back off him, Bol went out a few minutes later to run a personal best in the 1500m.
He then had a positive training camp in Andorra before rounding off his preparation with some impressive sessions in Germany.
He did all of this with no contact with the Australian team. He didn’t attend the pre-championships camp and even tossed up not staying at the team hotel.
Bol is still angry at how Athletics Australia handled the initial revealing of the positive EPO test in January and what he sees as a lack of support since.
It was a messy situation for everyone and sadly it ended not the way anyone wanted on the biggest stage, in particular his good mate Deng.
Twenty five minutes earlier he’d done what Bol couldn’t, ran a brilliant tactical race to progress through to the semi-finals.
It was a glorious moment for the national record holder who several times over the past five years thought about walking away from the sport.
“It has been pretty rough,” Deng said after cruising to the line in his heat, finishing third in 1min45.48sec.
“I lost interest in the sport, I wasn’t interested anymore. I had been doing it for a while since like 2012 and earlier than that.
“I think I just needed that time off and it’s been really good since then.”
He was particularly pumped about being on the same team as Bol given this was Deng’s first world championships appearance.
“It’s awesome, having both Pete and I here, that is the first time representing Australia together so it’s very good,” Deng said.
While that fairytale didn’t last long, Deng isn’t ruling out completing one of his own
“Anything is possible,” he declared. “Top two is the main goal on Thursday (semi-final), come top two and then see what I can do in the final.”
HULL’S PURSUIT FOR GLORY AMIDST GREATNESS
Jessica Hull understands she is a part of something special which was the reason behind a last-minute change of tactics in the world championships 1500m final.
There isn’t a hotter event on the world circuit at the moment, thanks largely to Kenya’s wonder woman Faith Kipyegon who this year alone broke world records in the 1500m, mile and 5000m.
She is in a league of her own which was again on display in Budapest when she put down the foot with 200m to become the first woman to win three world 1500m titles.
Kipyegon, 29, was simply brilliant, clocking 3min54.87sec to defeat Ethiopia’s Diribe Welteji (3:55.69sec) with Sifan Hassan taking bronze (3:56.00sec).
Hull ran a conservative race to finish seventh (3:59.54sec) and revealed afterwards she’d deliberately gone away from trademark front-running style after a gruelling semi-final two nights earlier.
“After the semi two nights ago we reflected and were pretty realistic, we were like we are 12 months away from being able to do what Faith and Sifan are doing so we had to play it a bit smarter tonight,” Hull said.
“I did a lot very maturely, I think 12 months ago I wouldn;t be able to race like that and let the first 100 go.
“I went out in 29 seconds two nights ago and it is too fast so I went out in a controlled 31 and I am pretty sure the only person behind me was Sifan and I thought if she is behind me that’s Ok because I knew she would move out.
“I was exactly where I wanted to be after 500 but I just got there a bit smarter than I did two nights ago.”
Hull, who is now coached by her father, said the memory of blowing up in last year’s world championships final in Eugene played a part in the tactically “pivot”.
“It is a big change and pivot but also changing the mindset over the last 12 months I have thought about how to absorb a 58 second first 400 and be there and that is in my head every training session,” she said.
“After the semi we said that is 12 months away. If you look at Faith, Sifan, Ciara (Mageean), Laura (Muir), they are 29 and 30, I am 26 and I think we are starting to see the peaks a bit later.
“So lets pivot, let’s be mature and race where we are at as a 26-year-old and know that this next Olympic cycle is my peak.”
Kipyegon will be chasing a historic third Olympic 1500m title in Paris next year but she still has unfinished business in Budapest, aiming to become the first woman to sweep the 1500m and 5000m at the one world championships.
“She is the greatest and I think you have got to respect that,” Hull said about the Kenyan superstar who she ran third behind when she broke the 1500m record in June.
“She is the best there has been and I’m sure she is going to be going for three Olympic titles. She is lifting us all up.”
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Originally published as World athletics championships: Peter Bol fails to escape heats, Jenneke through to semi-final
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