World Athletics Championships

[Son of Mathonwy]

Bad luck has played it's part, no doubt, but there probably needs to be a little more investment as we see 2012 slip even further into the past.

Yes Cordery, Kerr, Hudson-Smith and possibly Mills failing through injury was a blow, but we seem short of elite talent atm.
Even Keeley H had a short build up to the champs.
Hunt showed determination to match her talent - good on her.
1st time no relay medal since 03 suggests something's not well.
Other nations have kicked on though - can't help but admire the Botswana boys seeing USA off in the 400 relay - the country gets a National Holiday as a result !

Yeah, it's been a bit of a perfect storm for most of our potential medallists (although Wightman was a nice surprise).

Only Hunt really bucked that trend with a solid run to pick up a silver, but with a time which would not have medalled in most years.
Anning was brilliant again, with a time which would have got gold in Beijing, but only 5th in this year's incredibly competitive field. The failure to make the final in the 400m relay was basically down to resting Anning.
You couldn't ask much more of our 800m girls but Moraa fucks with them again and Kenya produces yet another world-beater from their conveyor-belt.
The failure in the men's sprint relay was a split second mistake, arguably we shouldn't ever do this, but we are pretty well drilled so I'd put this down to the sort of thing that happens every few years.
Failure to medal - and particularly to run 4th behind Germany - in the 4x100m women's race was a bit embarrassing. Luckenkemper outran Neita in the semi and the final. That should not happen.
God knows what happened to Hudson-Smith. Did he have an injury? Or just a bad season? Dobson was also under-par, for reasons unknown. But when we scraped into the final and still had no Hudson-Smith, we had no chance of a medal.
Shame to see Lake back to her usually inconsistent self, after her best ever season. I hoped she could have got that third place.
And Bergin's form was worth a medal. Not to be as the event is super-hot right now.

Caudery and Sawyers getting nowhere in their events just highlighted how we have almost no one in the field events, particularly the men's side. Is this a failure of our schools? I would guess we just don't have enough people going into these events at a young age. If you can run, okay. If you want to do anything that requires technique, forget it.