22.08.2009

Adams best in the 50km walk

On a warm but rainy Berlin morning Olympic silver medallist Jared Tallent and Beijing 10th place-getter Luke Adams returned to the walks course at the historic Brandenburg Gate to contest the 50km walk.

The longest distance at this championships, the event is both physically and mentally torturous for the 40-man field and thankfully, today it was a bit cooler than yesterday’s 32 degrees.

The third member of the Australian Flame, Chris Erickson, had to withdraw from this event earlier this week due to ill health and so despite having four walkers eligible, Australia will be represented by just two, as Nathan Deakes also failed to make it to the start line, a place he earned when winning the historic world title two years ago in Osaka, due to an ongoing injury.

The race began in the shadows of the Brandenburg Gate with the Japanese athlete Yuki Yamazaki shooting to an early lead and Luke Adams only a few metres behind. Moving up towards the lead alongside Adams at the 9km mark Tallent looked strong, and Adams led the group through 10km in 44.34, just a little quicker than the leader's split in Beijing (44.39).

As the race drew on the lead pack had thinned to six athletes with the Australian Flame’s Adams and Tallent in first and second followed closely by Russians Kirdyapkin and Nizhegorodov and by the 30km mark Tallent (2.11.36) had a two second lead over Adams and Nizhegorodov, but was one minute adrift of his personal best pace.

With 10 kilometres to go Adams, with one warning, dropped back and Tallent was joined in the lead by 2005 champion and eventual winner, Kirdyapkin.

The Russian, Kirdyapkin and Norwegian Nymark overtook the Olympic silver medallist with 8km to go and Tallent held the bronze position until the final 2km circuit when the experienced Spaniard Garcia upped the pace.

After some aggressive racing and a gallant fight Luke Adams finished in a personal best time of 3.43.39 for sixth place just ahead of teammate Tallent in seventh, who was hurting over the final lap and recorded a season's best time of 3.44.50.

The 2005 champion Sergey Kirdyapkin won the title in 3.38.35, Norwegian Trond Nymark took the silver and a new national record of 3.41.16 and the bronze medallist was Jesus Garcia in 3.41.37.

Both Tallent and Adams were physically struggling after the event.

"I did what I could. I put myself up there. I was in the red at 38km and from then it was just agony," Adams said.

According to Adams’ coach, Craig Hilliard, the conditions were tough and the early lead was good but didn’t tell the whole story.

"It was pretty tough out there,” he said.

"I've been around enough 50km races and so has Brent (Vallance) to know that the race doesn't really start until 30km. So really what was going to occur from 30-40km is how the race was going to pan out, if they got to 42-44km feeling good I think it would have been a totally different result."

Jared and Luke both went out looking for the gold medal. Brent Vallance, Tallent’s coach, said: “That's what you want when you are a double Olympic medallist. Neither of these guys died wondering whether they had it in them or not. That was the plan. He stuck to it well."

To watch the post-race interviews click here

Later in the day in heat three of the men’s 4x100m the Australian Flame sprinters went  up against the in-form Jamaicans without spearhead Bolt.

Led out by Anthony Alozie, who passed to national champion Joshua Ross, the Australians went down the back straight in the middle of the field. Ross passed to Aaron Rouge-Serret for the bend and Matt Davies brought the baton home. Crossing the line in third place behind Italy and Jamaica, their time of 38.93 was not enough to progress to the final.

The team achieved its goal of breaking thirty nine seconds and running their best time this season but was frustrated.

“We were closer than we thought to Jamaica, but with Italy in the outside lane, you don't see where they are until the final exchange and they popped out well,” Rouge-Serret said.

“Watching Matty go down that home straight it didn't look like we were that far off Jamaica. I thought the time might have been a bit quicker. Our goal this championship was to break 39 seconds and we did that so we are all rapt.”

They believe they can improve with more training and time.

“We're all young blokes, we've got many years to come. I still think there is a lot of time we can make up in the exchange zones. We should be in for some good times in the future,” continued Rouge-Serret.

National champion and twice world championship representative Josh Ross was positive about the race.

“I felt really good. Anthony got a great start, good exchange, it was clean. We were leading for half the race. We've run our quickest season's best so we walk away holding our heads high and look forward to the Commonwealth Games,” he said.

The final of the 4x100m will be held on Saturday night with the Jamaicans firm favorites despite only qualifying equal seventh fastest. With Bolt and Powell added to their line-up for the final they will be hard to beat. Fastest qualifiers the USA may line up unchanged, unless Gay, who withdrew from the 200m is fit to run. The other teams to watch will be Great Britain and Trinidad and Tobago.

To watch the post-race interviews click here

The action continues tomorrow when the Australian Flame marathon team of Martin Dent, Andrew Letherby, Mark Tucker and Scott Westcott take to the streets of Berlin from 11.45am Berlin time (7.45pm AEST). At the Olympic Stadium from 6.00pm Berlin time (2:00am AEST) Fabrice Lapierre and Mitchell Watt will feature in the long jump final, Olympic champion Steve Hooker will line up in the pole vault final and the qualifying round of the women’s 4x400m relay with Madeleine Pape, Tamsyn Lewis, Caitlin Pincott and Pirrenee Steinert will line up for the Flame.

Catch all the action on SBS One and Two – check your local guides.