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This week in Race to Canberra, hot track competition for places in the combined European team at the World Cup.
And in field we look at a young man whose dad was a medalist at the Melbourne Olympics.
Welcome to week two of our build up to ABC Sports live coverage of the 85 World Cup, to be held in the first week of October in Canberra.
Of the eight teams which will compete in the World Cup, three come from Europe.
Two of those represent single nations, they're the Soviet Union and East Germany.
The nations which came first and second in the Europa Cup the weekend before last in Moscow.
The European combined team is made up of the best of the rest.
And it's the competition between athletes for a place on this European all-star team that we look at this week in Race to Canberra.
Our action comes from early season competition in Scandinavia.
And we begin at the historic 1912 Olympic Stadium in Stockholm.
First it's the women's 400m hurdles in which Oceania's World Cup hopes rest with Debbie Flintoff.
Debbie has achieved tremendous improvement this year, getting very close to the 55 second barrier.
But she'll need to improve another notch still to beat fields such as this one.
The line up for this women's 400m hurdles is probably the strongest in the world this year.
And probably the strongest outside of the World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 ever.
We've got Wendberg of Switzerland in 1, the Olympic silver medalist from the United States, Judy King Brown in 2.
Stepanova, a veteran but still the second fastest in the world ever in 3.
Then the Olympic champion, Mata Wokl of Morocco.
Sabine Bush, a new convert to this event from the flat 400.
Blaszczak of Poland in 6 and Pfaff of the GDR, fourth in the World Championships on the outside lane.
So an incredibly strong line up.
The goal to watch Sabine Bush in lane 5.
This is only her third race at the distance and that in lane 2 is Judy King Brown,
the first American to really specialise in this event and how well she's done
because she became the Olympic silver medalist in Los Angeles.
Running most of them now, 15 strides down the back straight.
Mata Wokl of Morocco, the first African, she's in lane 4 to win a gold medal in the Olympic Games.
She's been suffering some injuries and she's struggling and out of it at the moment.
Bush it is in lane 5 that's making all the running.
Looking more like a 400 metre runner than a hurdler.
But she's certainly well ahead of Blaszczak at the moment.
But a good battle between these two.
The question is, can Bush maintain the hurdling control?
And as I say that, she stutters into the seventh hurdle,
getting into the eighth hurdle, getting into trouble again on the ninth.
But a good run. Blaszczak however coming through with superior hurdling.
Watch the last hurdle, you see Bush almost falling over
and Blaszczak showing how much easier it is if you're a good controlled hurdler.
And 54.62, the second fastest in the world this year.
And that if confirmed will be a new Polish record for Blaszczak.
And what a controlled race she ran against a girl from East Germany
who when she gets it all right has got tremendous potential in this event.
Blaszczak will represent Europe in Canberra while Bush has subsequently
become this year's fastest woman over the one lap hurdles
and won the event at the Europa Cup.
Now to women's middle distance and at the start of the program you saw
Doreena Malinta, the Olympic champion, edge out Jamiro Kratik-Vilava,
the world record holder over 800 metres in Stockholm.
This is a rematch in Helsinki.
23 races to Malinta, where will she position herself and how will she
follow the Olympic champion, the tall girl, the yellow vest and the blue shorts.
Straight into the loop there goes Louise Romo, the young American runner.
And it's another American runner on the inside who looks to be going through
into second place.
And yet again I can't see them as they didn't in Stockholm following the pacemaker.
This is a battle between the Olympic gold medallist in the yellow top of Romania
and in the red Kratik-Vilava from Czechoslovakia.
So the pacemaker there irrelevant to the race.
Kovac, the other girl in the yellow vest, also from Romania.
Interesting, the European indoor champion and 13 years younger than Kratik-Vilava.
So the battle at the moment further back down.
You can see Kratik-Vilava third from the end at the moment.
This is Louise Romo.
She's going through in around 57 seconds, exactly 57.
Joetta Clark is having a good run in second place.
But now Melinti has moved through into third.
And what we've got to watch out for here, Alan, is it at the 200 meter mark as to how
far behind Melinti Kratik-Vilava is.
Yes, in Stockholm two nights earlier she was about three or four yards down.
She's already four yards down now as they go into the back straight.
But the interesting thing was that Kratik-Vilava actually got into the lead in the home straight
and then Melinti held her off.
So Kratik-Vilava's really got to get right up on her shoulder.
And already Melinti's making her move.
And one wonders whether Kratik-Vilava's overestimating her own ability.
Kovac in second place now as the pacemaker drops out.
And with 150 meters to go as Kratik-Vilava coming up onto the shoulder of the girl in
second place.
And Melinti kicking away from the front as they come in three abreast into the home straight.
And Kovac looks as though she might be the one that caused us the surprise.
But Melinti kicks away and here comes Kratik-Vilava again now.
They're neck and neck with 20 yards to go.
But Melinti's going to do it again.
Another yard ahead of the world record holder for this event.
The Olympic champion makes it.
Kratik-Vilava will still run the 800 in Canberra with Melinta selected for the 1500.
Her countrywoman Marichika Puika will run the 3000 meters, the event she won at last
year's Olympics.
And here she's in action over that distance in Stockholm.
The field includes 5000 meter world record holder Ingrid Kristiansen of Norway, who is
Europe's World Cup 10,000 meter representative.
The fastest time in the world so far this year, 8 minutes 44.54 from Zola Bradd of Great
Britain.
That was a solo run in slightly breezy conditions in Gateshead.
But Puika now beginning to stretch out down the back straight and the only girl that's
challenging her at the moment is Burki, the Swiss girl.
And these two look set to fight out first and second place.
And little Debbie Scott of Canada has come through in the third.
She won the World Indoor Games in January.
So she's obviously quite a good athlete.
But it's very hard to beat Puika.
Burki is obviously going to try and give her a run over this last 200.
But Puika has just got this ability to surge.
She's so strong, a many times winner of the World Cross Country Championship.
So there's got a lot of power.
She's running extremely wide, Puika there.
She was right out in lane two.
And in fact, Burki, had she been near her, might have been just able to pop in inside
her.
But Puika's away and running very freely.
Seems she can beat 8.45.
She can be very close to it.
She's outside Zola Budd's time.
But in these windy conditions, it's hardly surprising.
And Burki second, Debbie Scott finished in third place.
The European women have their best chance for World Cup honours in events from 800 metres
up with the GDR and Soviet athletes tending to dominate the more explosive events.
Not so though in men's competition in which Marianne Varonen of Poland can be expected
to threaten the USA's sprinting dominance.
And young British 400 runner Derek Redmond is the only athlete to beat Darren Clark to
the tape this season.
In middle distance, even without Steve Cramme, Europe is strong.
We go back to Stockholm now for a clash between Steve Ovett, Steve Scott and Jose Louis
Gonzalez, who was second to Steve Cramme in his world record breaking mile.
Massive stand there at the end of the home straight.
1 minute 57 at 800 metres, so the pace slightly dropping there.
59 second lap.
And really they were looking if they were looking for that very fast time of 1 minute 53.
Looks like Pierre Deleuze of Switzerland coming around in the fourth place and
Ovett not actually responding very rapidly, just holding his form.
But he, Ovett back in sixth place in the white dress and black shorts.
And it's Gonzalez of Spain, who's a really good runner, who finds himself leading.
And that's unusual because he does like to sprint.
And as you were saying earlier, there's Ovett, but he's really boxed in at the bell.
That's right, as he came around that previous bend, you could see that it was in his mind,
can I live with these guys now as we approach the final bell?
He's never been somebody that's wanted to run from a long way out, Ovett.
Even when he's chased world records, he's often lost them as a result of his inability
to get to the front.
And so at the bell it was 2 minutes 42.
And Gonzalez still in the front with a pack poised on his shoulder.
There goes Steve Scott, has attacked very savagely.
And Ovett in sixth place, isn't really responding yet.
Maybe just wants to coax himself rather than risk a sudden burst of energy.
But Scott has got about eight or nine yards on him and he just can't give Steve Scott
that much room.
The American record holder, second fastest ever in history over a mile.
And when he's running well, he's hard to beat.
In fact, it's America 1 and 2, but with Gonzalez coming through,
in the second place out of Aragon.
And now Ovett's woken up, but he's left it awfully late.
Steve Scott running on his heels, his neck, his head up, his chest very tight.
But he's still got a couple of yards.
And Ovett looking relaxed, but he isn't really sprinting fast enough.
And indeed, it's Steve Scott who gets a memorable victory.
He's saying, Alan, it's been eight years since he beat Steve Ovett,
when Ovett was really a youngster.
And that'll be a very sweet victory indeed for Steve Scott.
That is, in fact, Ovett's fastest time of the season by about a second.
Gonzalez in third place, 3.37.95.
But we had a chance to ask Ovett whether he was disappointed by his first
competitive race of the season.
No, not really.
I hope they understand.
I've come back from hell of a problem since LA.
And I don't think I can really expect to come back at the top level straight away.
It's just impossible.
I'm obviously lacking some races and a bit of speed work, which I said when I
got beat at the 15 up at Gateshead.
It's just that at the moment, I'm not doing the work that I'm supposed to do.
It allows me to change the pace that a lot of guys have got here at the moment.
Now to 10,000 metres and a giant killer American emerges.
Bruce Bickford is not in the USA World Cup team.
Mark Nenow, who comes second in this race, will run the 10K for the States in Canberra.
Bickford's other scalps here, a world record holder Mameda,
Olympic and world champion Kova, and Japanese great Seiko.
...beginning to drop back even further.
That's Seiko Japan there as well.
And a brief glimpse of Steve Jones way back in 10th, 11th place.
Bickford, a former junior steeplechaser, went to the University of Lawrence.
Going through the bell, comes from Maine in Massachusetts.
He came to the four in Brussels last year when he beat Kova.
That was his first claim to fame.
And he took a quarter of a minute of his best time a couple of weeks ago in Oslo
for 5,000 metres.
So obviously in great shape at the moment, David Bedford,
the former world record holder for this event, predicted beforehand that this is the man
to watch in this event and really he shattered and left a world-class field trailing in his wake.
That was the impressive thing about it.
He saw a chance and he went away very hard.
But the crowd are roaring now because they've seen Mameda back in fifth place,
suddenly changing gear.
He's coming past Nenow and the two Japanese runners.
There he is in the green and white stripes, really racing away.
And Bigfoot's chasing the American record, set in this race last year by Alberto Salazar
of 27 minutes 13.81.
So watch for the time on that.
Looking a little bit tired, Bigfoot, hardly surprising.
He's really made the effort in this race.
But Mamedi's finishing it with extraordinary speed behind him.
He's really chasing very hard.
He's just such an irritating runner, Mamedi.
He's got all that talent.
But look how late he's left it.
If he'd been with Bigfoot, I'm sure he'd have taken him.
But Bigfoot deservedly gets his reward.
It's a fast time anyway, 27.37.17, the fastest in the world this year.
And he got that time because he was prepared to make the commitment
and commit himself early on in the race.
Whereas Mamedi just was happy to chug along with the pack.
But then produced that incredible last lap, which must have been around 56 seconds.
Alberto Kova has since won the Europa Cup title and could add the World Cup crown
to the Olympic, World and European titles that he's collected in the last three years.
Now the 110 metres hurdles and Europe's ace is Artur Bregari of Finland,
bronze medalist at the Olympics and second at the 83 World Championships.
But Georgi Bakos in lane six will be its World Cup representative.
...the Commonwealth champion and the man who was second in the World Championships,
the home star, the tall, blonde Artur Bregari of Finland.
He goes in lane five, the man on his right hand side in lane six is
Gregor Bragas of Hungary, the European indoor champion.
Lane seven is Robi, probably the fastest of the white Americans.
But Turner, it is in three.
Then McCoy in four, Bregari five and Bakos in six.
Watch for those.
That's Mark McCoy, the Commonwealth record holder.
Commonwealth champion and he gets a very fast start and perhaps a little bit too fast,
but he's well in the lead at the moment.
Turner trying to chase him in lane three.
Bregari, the strong man, coming back and pressuring him now.
McCoy starts taking the hurdles out very close as they go into the line.
McCoy holds on.
Turner in second place, Bregari third.
What an incident-packed race that was.
I'm sure that when we look at the replay, you'll see that if he didn't get a full start,
Mark McCoy in lane four certainly got, there he is, a flyer.
He certainly went with the gun and that must have disturbed the concentration of the other
hurdlers. It's very important to be first to the first hurdle.
There goes McCoy.
Bregari, the big man, is almost a yard down, I would think, at the first hurdle.
McCoy very quickly down onto the ground, but watch his left arm.
It whips back, pulls him off balance and then he begins to hit the hurdles
as he's pressured by the two men behind him and particularly the daunting figure
of Bregari, the blonde man in lane five.
Very close off the ninth hurdle, but then McCoy regains his composure
and is just slightly faster on the run-in.
McCoy wins it Turner second, Bregari third and Bakos fourth.
The 110 hurdles at the World Cup should be a great race.
Olympic gold medallist Roger Kingdome will represent the USA,
while McCoy should certainly win selection for the Americas.
You may recall that McCoy won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane
and the man who will probably represent Oceania in October, Don Wright, was not far behind him.
And away Wright got out fast, Smith on this side away well and over on the far side.
Holtam doing well.
Wright, Holtam and the Canadian McCoy.
It's between the three of them.
Holtam in front of McCoy, then back to Wright who can't win.
Holtam, McCoy. McCoy wins.
McCoy first, Holtam second, Wright third.
Don Wright, thanks for being with us in Race to Canberra.
Mark McCoy ahead of you in Brisbane.
Roger Kingdome coming from the USA.
Can you close the gap?
I certainly hope so.
Training has been going well and those fellas have been having excellent competitions this year,
but I certainly want to do my best.
You're a semi-finalist at the Olympics and also at the World Championships the year before that,
but ran at a faster time in Brisbane in 82.
Was that a better year or is it the advantage of being at home?
I think Brisbane, it was certainly great to have a home crowd.
I feel my preparations for 1983 and 84 were somewhat better
and I was a little disappointed that I didn't improve on my times at both of those championships.
The idea of excuses I guess isn't a nice one for any athlete,
but do you have an excuse for the Olympics?
Partially I suppose. My preparation for the Olympics was to go to England about six weeks
prior to the Olympics and after getting to London and opening up with an extremely pleasing first
race, the next week in training I tore a ligament in my lower back and while it was very painful
to train and to prepare, I guess I would have to say that is my excuse, but I was extremely
devastated by getting injured at that point in time.
How does someone like yourself psych yourself to meet them again after they have both beaten you in very big events?
I don't know. Each race you look upon it as a single entity I suppose.
You don't think about previous races. You prepare yourself for a particular race
and your training is all aimed at that particular day
and I don't consider what they're doing or I have a job to do and I just go ahead and do it.
What sort of time can you run with a bit of luck and a fair breeze on a good day Don?
I would like to run sub 13.5 and I think that would be a very realistic appraisal of my ability I think.
Going back to the early part of your career you were showing a lot of potential for a junior in the mid 70s.
You went away to America. How did that all turn out for you?
I was very pleased with my about four years that I spent in the States.
I had marvelous competition every weekend. It was like running a national title here in each of the competitions.
It was very valuable to me I think to experience the level of competition and also be involved with the training that some of the Americans do.
And being able to get an appreciation of the lifestyle over there as well.
Let's talk about hurdling for a moment. We saw Sabine Bush in the 400 hurdles. She was an outstanding flat runner.
I think about the eighth fastest in history. She's learning the craft.
How relatively important is the technical aspect of hurdling? I suppose even more so in the high hurdles.
Yes, the technique is, you know you can have a great sprinter but you could never put him over the hurdles.
The technique has to be I think natural to the athlete.
With the 400 meter hurdles though sometimes with the hurdles being at a lower height the technique is not so important there.
Although the stride pattern is extremely important for them.
And if they perhaps come up to a hurdle on the wrong footing then it can blow out the whole race.
Who do you admire most as a technician?
I think Rodney Milburn in the 110 meter hurdles was one of the greatest exponents of the event.
He was very short though. He was only about 5 foot 10 and yet he still did a marvelous job.
Well finally you talked about how nice it was to compete at home in Brisbane. You'll be doing the same thing in Canberra.
Assuming everything goes well and you're selected. Does that give you a leg start?
Certainly does. I'm looking forward to it and especially living in Canberra here.
And being around the Institute of Sport all the time. All the preparations are going ahead.
And so the atmosphere is building already and I'm sure that's boosting along my training too.
And I'm sure that it's going to be here in just a few short weeks.
All the best Don and the lead up and particularly in the first week of October.
Thank you very much. Thanks for being with us Don.
Well now to field. And the discus is the oldest of all throwing events.
It's also the field event with the most obscure origins.
It's unlikely the discus would ever have been useful in either warfare or hunting.
So we can only assume that ancient man accidentally discovered and was fascinated by the unusual flight properties of some disc like object.
The question that Debbie's been asking is what sorts of disc shaped objects were kicking around the everyday world of ancient man.
Homer perhaps provides the answer when he mentions that a flat circular shape was the standard mould for precious metals in ancient Greece.
He goes on to explain that at certain funeral games throwing contests were held using a copper ingot shaped like a disc.
The man who threw the furthest was allowed to keep the precious prize.
The discus throw is probably the most celebrated of all athletes in Greek art.
How accurately the style of the discus throw was depicted however is open to some debate.
Sculpture and vase paintings show us that the throw was made from a raised pedestal without a turn.
More recent speculation is that the Greeks actually threw the discus much the same as we throw it today.
And poses shown by artists were simply more suitable because they could be held for the long hours needed to model for artwork.
Indeed, Homer backed up this theory when he described the delivery as involving a whirl and a throw.
The size and weight of the ancient discus varied greatly.
The fact that it was solid metal suggests that it usually outweighed its modern counterpart.
In fact, some ancient discs weighed up to 50 pounds and that was one feature of the Greek contest that the moderns never attempted to copy.
From the closing stages of the 19th century the discus weight was standardized at 2 kilos for men and 1 kilo for women.
Improvements in distances since then have been mainly due to refinements in design.
In the 30s it was discovered that increasing the weight around the rim of the disc was a major factor in the discus weight distribution.