Home » News and Media » News » 2009 » August » One day to go: Flame fires up in Berlin
14.08.2009
Berlin – August 11, 2009. It’s Tuesday evening and we’ve arrived in Berlin. Our hotel is called Berlin Berlin – go figure!
Justin Anlezark was first to the bus video system with a movie called Rock Star, Kimberley Mickle was next with American Wedding and then Scotty Martin produced Be Cool. Some slept, some caught bits and pieces of some of the movies, all stretched their legs on the two stops.
Accreditation is often a slow, boring and difficult process. However with trademark German efficiency and lots of smiling, helpful volunteers, it took less than half an hour to process, photograph, print, laminate and lanyard our mug shots so they could hang around our necks at all times.
Next stop was reception to check in. Smooth as a baby’s bum again. That is, until the athletes let themselves into their rooms in pairs, and many of them discovered they were meant to be sharing more than they expected. Several of the rooms had double beds! Chris Erickson and Adam Rutter were one such ‘couple’.
The management team of Sue Hobson, Eric Hollingsworth and Nicole Roache quickly swung into action and rearranged things as best they could. Athletes were moved into twin rooms and coaches were moved into doubles. (Event coach) Penny Gillies and I had hung all our clothes, put our knickers into shelves, put the kids’ photos up, stuff in the bathroom... we’d made our little home. We were oblivious at this stage to what was going on down the hall.
So we moved and others moved, and we were back to happy athletes once again. Penny and I discovered that if we unzipped the casing enclosing the top mattresses and took it off, and also the valance, we could split the bed into a twin set-up. (Team staff) Gary Bourne and Adam Larcom had a double mattress that was a single unit and couldn’t be split, so we gave them one of our top mattresses and gave the other away as well and then we had VERY happy male coaches as well as females. The joys of travelling had struck again!
It’s exciting to catch the lift to go to the dining area, internet area or anywhere and see athletes from around the world. There are 47 different countries staying in the Hotel Berlin Berlin, which has 700 rooms. The other main hotel is the Estrel and it has 1000 rooms. New Zealand and Fiji are here and it’s great to run into our neighbours and friends.
There are buses to the training track every half hour from 9am till 9pm. It’s a blue track – not Nudgee College blue, a really bright royal blue. Sally did a warm-down in bare feet today and they were royal blue – it looks funny. They have killer ice baths at the track for all athletes and physiotherapists for the countries that can’t bring their own.
In Cologne we were served a sit-down three-course meal each night but here it’s buffet style. I think the athletes enjoy the change in style. Meal times are extremely generous, with more than five hours available for breakfast, three hours for lunch and another five hours of availability for the evening meal. Everyone can now start practicing their competition time frames and know that they can still get a meal and not miss out.
Berlin – August 13, 2009. It’s Thursday, the day after the launch of the new team name, the Flame. Athletics Australia CEO Danny Corcoran and President Rob Fildes both spoke with pride and passion for the team going into battle at the championships. Everyone here has proven their fitness and is here to be competitive. There’s a really excited buzz now. We actually had a mini-launch of the team name in Cologne and I haven’t heard of anyone who doesn’t like it. They seem to like the feel of the name.
We had team photos and apparently this hasn’t been done for a number of years. View the photos online here. I’m the short one on the end. We ‘older’ ladies were very hesitant about wearing the little Asics skirt but we’ve decided it doesn’t look too bad.
Our medical team have scored quite a good area to set up in here at the hotel. They hung the Australian flag on the door but apparently that was deemed inappropriate and it’s been taken down and hung inside the room. They have space for four treatment bays. We’re very spoilt.
There have been a few ‘scares’ in terms of injuries but the wonderful team of (doctor) Adam Castricum, (physiotherapists) Liz Molloy and Stan Garland and (massage therapists) David Flowers and Brad Foster have got everyone on track now and ready for competition.
(Distance coach) Lindsay Watson arrived two days before the bus loads and has done all the reconnaissance work for us. We know where the pool is, the training track, the gym, the running trails (and walking), the supermarkets, the shopping centres, the railway stations, the laundromat. He also worked out just how long it would take to get to each of these. A very important part of his job was to ascertain where the sun and the shade are for the marathons and race walks. With the temperature tomorrow predicted to be in the high-20s and next week in the low-30s, this is important information for athletes and their coaches to fine-tune their preparation. They also need to work out where to place their drinks, what strength their drinks will be and how many.
Athletes need to fill in their days so that they’re not sitting around stressing about competition, so Lindsay checked out many of the local must-sees and must-dos and passed the info on to the team.
(Athletics Australia media officer) Nicole Roache organised an Australian Flame sightseeing tour on an open-top bus this evening for those who weren’t training. All enjoyed the trip and said it was well worthwhile. Many of these athletes have family coming over for the champs and they will be quite well versed in the best of the local tourist attractions by the time their loved ones arrive.
Some of the private coaches have found Berlin interesting. Donna McFarlane had organised a three-bedroom apartment for her husband Marty, and another coach and Graham Pitt, who coaches Justin Anlezark, needed a place for just a few days, so he joined them. Well, the three bedroom turned out to be one bedroom with three beds plus a double-decker. There were no towels and no cutlery! Again, the joys…
My husband Peter arrives tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to seeing him. I don’t know how this will happen yet, but it will. Peter, Graham Pitt and Kim Mickle’s coach Grant Ward, are all joining the World Class Coaches’ Club for the duration of the championships. They get accommodation, breakfast and accreditation passes allowing them to go to every session and all at a price far lower than any accommodation we could find. They will also have some presentations by world-renowned coaches and have had to do a couple of assignments in preparation for the whole experience.
Sally (McLellan) has only one track session and one pool session left to go before race day. Pool tomorrow, and then just a competition warm-up on Saturday. She’s looking very fast and is keen for competition to begin on Tuesday. The training track has only seven lanes and when we arrived today four of them were already taken up with hurdles so we were a little concerned. By the time Sally had warmed up, all lanes bar one were free.
There are 2101 athletes competing in the championships so that’s a lot of training sessions to be accommodated. There are two training tracks and both are about 20 minutes from the hotel.
The 1936 Olympic Stadium and the warm-up track are open for the athletes tomorrow. Most of them will go and have a look and get a feel for where they’ll be throwing or from which direction the wind is coming. Sally has competed in two Berlin Golden Leagues, so already has a good knowledge of the venue. There will be a few starters at the warm-up track for three hours to give athletes practice at hearing a German voice give the starting commands. They will be given in English, but it’s good to hear the accent beforehand.
There is definitely gender inequity here as 1154, or 54.93% of the athletes are male. There are 100 men entered in the 100m, 73 in the women’s 100m. Steve Hooker has 38 others to contend with in the pole vault and Sally has 41 other females contesting the 100m hurdles event. In the 20km walk our three Aussies Adam Rutter, Jared Tallent and Luke Adams have 47 others lining up beside them at the Brandenburg Gate to walk the streets of Berlin. Someone told me today that only Gothenburg in 1997 had more competitors.
I hope you can feel the excitement building with all the different reports coming through now on the Athletics Australia website. Get behind your Flame and give them lots of support. Messages of support can be submitted to the team here. They are truly an amazing group of young people and I’m very proud to be working with them.
Cheers from me again.
Sharon
Read previous instalments of Sharon's online diary here.
News
One day to go: Flame fires up in Berlin
On the eve of the 12th IAAF world championships Olympic coach Sharon Hannan reports on all the latest news from inside Flame HQ.Berlin – August 11, 2009. It’s Tuesday evening and we’ve arrived in Berlin. Our hotel is called Berlin Berlin – go figure!
Justin Anlezark was first to the bus video system with a movie called Rock Star, Kimberley Mickle was next with American Wedding and then Scotty Martin produced Be Cool. Some slept, some caught bits and pieces of some of the movies, all stretched their legs on the two stops.
Accreditation is often a slow, boring and difficult process. However with trademark German efficiency and lots of smiling, helpful volunteers, it took less than half an hour to process, photograph, print, laminate and lanyard our mug shots so they could hang around our necks at all times.
Next stop was reception to check in. Smooth as a baby’s bum again. That is, until the athletes let themselves into their rooms in pairs, and many of them discovered they were meant to be sharing more than they expected. Several of the rooms had double beds! Chris Erickson and Adam Rutter were one such ‘couple’.
The management team of Sue Hobson, Eric Hollingsworth and Nicole Roache quickly swung into action and rearranged things as best they could. Athletes were moved into twin rooms and coaches were moved into doubles. (Event coach) Penny Gillies and I had hung all our clothes, put our knickers into shelves, put the kids’ photos up, stuff in the bathroom... we’d made our little home. We were oblivious at this stage to what was going on down the hall.
So we moved and others moved, and we were back to happy athletes once again. Penny and I discovered that if we unzipped the casing enclosing the top mattresses and took it off, and also the valance, we could split the bed into a twin set-up. (Team staff) Gary Bourne and Adam Larcom had a double mattress that was a single unit and couldn’t be split, so we gave them one of our top mattresses and gave the other away as well and then we had VERY happy male coaches as well as females. The joys of travelling had struck again!
It’s exciting to catch the lift to go to the dining area, internet area or anywhere and see athletes from around the world. There are 47 different countries staying in the Hotel Berlin Berlin, which has 700 rooms. The other main hotel is the Estrel and it has 1000 rooms. New Zealand and Fiji are here and it’s great to run into our neighbours and friends.
There are buses to the training track every half hour from 9am till 9pm. It’s a blue track – not Nudgee College blue, a really bright royal blue. Sally did a warm-down in bare feet today and they were royal blue – it looks funny. They have killer ice baths at the track for all athletes and physiotherapists for the countries that can’t bring their own.
In Cologne we were served a sit-down three-course meal each night but here it’s buffet style. I think the athletes enjoy the change in style. Meal times are extremely generous, with more than five hours available for breakfast, three hours for lunch and another five hours of availability for the evening meal. Everyone can now start practicing their competition time frames and know that they can still get a meal and not miss out.
Berlin – August 13, 2009. It’s Thursday, the day after the launch of the new team name, the Flame. Athletics Australia CEO Danny Corcoran and President Rob Fildes both spoke with pride and passion for the team going into battle at the championships. Everyone here has proven their fitness and is here to be competitive. There’s a really excited buzz now. We actually had a mini-launch of the team name in Cologne and I haven’t heard of anyone who doesn’t like it. They seem to like the feel of the name.
We had team photos and apparently this hasn’t been done for a number of years. View the photos online here. I’m the short one on the end. We ‘older’ ladies were very hesitant about wearing the little Asics skirt but we’ve decided it doesn’t look too bad.
Our medical team have scored quite a good area to set up in here at the hotel. They hung the Australian flag on the door but apparently that was deemed inappropriate and it’s been taken down and hung inside the room. They have space for four treatment bays. We’re very spoilt.
There have been a few ‘scares’ in terms of injuries but the wonderful team of (doctor) Adam Castricum, (physiotherapists) Liz Molloy and Stan Garland and (massage therapists) David Flowers and Brad Foster have got everyone on track now and ready for competition.
(Distance coach) Lindsay Watson arrived two days before the bus loads and has done all the reconnaissance work for us. We know where the pool is, the training track, the gym, the running trails (and walking), the supermarkets, the shopping centres, the railway stations, the laundromat. He also worked out just how long it would take to get to each of these. A very important part of his job was to ascertain where the sun and the shade are for the marathons and race walks. With the temperature tomorrow predicted to be in the high-20s and next week in the low-30s, this is important information for athletes and their coaches to fine-tune their preparation. They also need to work out where to place their drinks, what strength their drinks will be and how many.
Athletes need to fill in their days so that they’re not sitting around stressing about competition, so Lindsay checked out many of the local must-sees and must-dos and passed the info on to the team.
(Athletics Australia media officer) Nicole Roache organised an Australian Flame sightseeing tour on an open-top bus this evening for those who weren’t training. All enjoyed the trip and said it was well worthwhile. Many of these athletes have family coming over for the champs and they will be quite well versed in the best of the local tourist attractions by the time their loved ones arrive.
Some of the private coaches have found Berlin interesting. Donna McFarlane had organised a three-bedroom apartment for her husband Marty, and another coach and Graham Pitt, who coaches Justin Anlezark, needed a place for just a few days, so he joined them. Well, the three bedroom turned out to be one bedroom with three beds plus a double-decker. There were no towels and no cutlery! Again, the joys…
My husband Peter arrives tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to seeing him. I don’t know how this will happen yet, but it will. Peter, Graham Pitt and Kim Mickle’s coach Grant Ward, are all joining the World Class Coaches’ Club for the duration of the championships. They get accommodation, breakfast and accreditation passes allowing them to go to every session and all at a price far lower than any accommodation we could find. They will also have some presentations by world-renowned coaches and have had to do a couple of assignments in preparation for the whole experience.
Sally (McLellan) has only one track session and one pool session left to go before race day. Pool tomorrow, and then just a competition warm-up on Saturday. She’s looking very fast and is keen for competition to begin on Tuesday. The training track has only seven lanes and when we arrived today four of them were already taken up with hurdles so we were a little concerned. By the time Sally had warmed up, all lanes bar one were free.
There are 2101 athletes competing in the championships so that’s a lot of training sessions to be accommodated. There are two training tracks and both are about 20 minutes from the hotel.
The 1936 Olympic Stadium and the warm-up track are open for the athletes tomorrow. Most of them will go and have a look and get a feel for where they’ll be throwing or from which direction the wind is coming. Sally has competed in two Berlin Golden Leagues, so already has a good knowledge of the venue. There will be a few starters at the warm-up track for three hours to give athletes practice at hearing a German voice give the starting commands. They will be given in English, but it’s good to hear the accent beforehand.
There is definitely gender inequity here as 1154, or 54.93% of the athletes are male. There are 100 men entered in the 100m, 73 in the women’s 100m. Steve Hooker has 38 others to contend with in the pole vault and Sally has 41 other females contesting the 100m hurdles event. In the 20km walk our three Aussies Adam Rutter, Jared Tallent and Luke Adams have 47 others lining up beside them at the Brandenburg Gate to walk the streets of Berlin. Someone told me today that only Gothenburg in 1997 had more competitors.
I hope you can feel the excitement building with all the different reports coming through now on the Athletics Australia website. Get behind your Flame and give them lots of support. Messages of support can be submitted to the team here. They are truly an amazing group of young people and I’m very proud to be working with them.
Cheers from me again.
Sharon
Read previous instalments of Sharon's online diary here.
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