Spear a thought for freakish Uwe Hohn
THOSE in the front rows at the southern end of the MCG could have been strife last night during the men's javelin, were it not for a large East German named Uwe Hohn.
This was the bloke who, in 1984, single-handedly changed the rules of the sport and probably saved a few lives in the process.
He did this by chucking a javelin just a bit too far, 104.8 metres, to be precise.
These were the days when javelins were made differently, and athletes were, allegedly, more enhanced, performance-wise.
The authorities stopped this sort of carry-on before it got nasty. If they had not, an unsuspecting spectator could have ended up with a slender, body-length metal spear between the ribs.
Or the spear in question could have sailed clear of the stadium, or it could even have interrupted the upswing of a female pole-vaulter harmlessly engaged in her craft.
Last night at the G, Tatiana Gregorieva was, in fact, pole-vaulting just out of javelin range. She would have been well within Uwe's range, however. What carnage could so easily have come had she lived in another track-and-field era.
After Uwe went nuts in '84, they modified the javelin. They shifted the centre of gravity forward by about four centimetres, thus making it drop sooner. This took away the margin for grievous error. But watching the men's event last night, it became clear very quickly that this was an event where it could all go horribly wrong in the blink of an eye. More so, even, than the hammer throw.
There was a Pakistani javelin thrower in action, just a tiny slip of a guy, Irfan Hussein. He had never competed in the Commonwealth Games before, and he was chucking it all over the place, just within the marked boundaries. He was stuttering and edgy on his run-up, sometimes almost spritely but usually bounding like an elf with a weapon, and it all just seemed a little untrustworthy.
Then there was the Canadian Scott Russell, who had a mighty throw on him, but dressed himself in backwards baseball cap, wide leather belt, black tights and big athletes' boots: he looked like a wrestler not some nancy Graeco-Roman, but a real wrestler, a pro wrestler. He looked like Hulk Hogan. With a spear.
But it would kind of fit if these javelinists got around all oiled up in the nude like the ancient Romans and Greeks.
For that is where their noble sport originates. It's one of the few that remains from those times, with discus, the marathon and sprinting, and has a certain purity about it because of this. You can't say the same thing about the mountain bikes, for instance.
It became a sport for the ancient athletes because it was linked to their lives, to hunting and to war. They used to throw javelins with the aid of a leather strap around their wrists called a thong, a word now more readily associated with artistic gymnastics than anything on the track or field.
It was reintroduced as a sport in 1896, in the Olympics. Without the thong. But here's another twist. Around the 1950s, a Spanish athlete invented a style of throwing the javelin based on the way discus is done, but with an added extra: the javelin was lubricated. This, too, was outlawed as the results, and trajectory, became a little too unpredictable.
Luckily, at the G last night, on the final night of Games' competition, everything stayed within the boundaries.
You had to pity the competitors slightly, however. Their event stops as more glamorous theatre such as the 4 x 100 relays plays out around them.
Then there was last night's dramatic men's 1500-metre event, in which two runners, including Australia's Craig Mottram, fell. All this distracted somewhat from the men throwing the javelins.
Also, it is one of those Games events that goes on and on and on, like the long jump. There is a drawn-out qualification period within the actual final. Those who throw longest over several rounds then throw several times again.
Meantime, around the G, medals have been won elsewhere races run, jumps jumped, poles vaulted, lives lived.
In the end, Australia took silver and bronze. Sydney architect William Hamlyn-Harris would have been happy with second, as he just missed a medal at Manchester.
A monstrous, ogre-like Englishman called Nick Neiland, an equity analyst and, believe it or not, a doctor of chemistry, won gold.
He threw the javelin just over 80 metres. That was eight metres short of the Games record, and about 25 metres short of that dangerous East German freak Uwe Hohn.