The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 50

SPGHTSMONDAYATHLEITCS MONDAY 24 FEBRUARY 1997 THE AGE-L-L Picture: POPPERFOTOSPOP.TING PIX Melbourne hosts the centenary national track and field championships at Olympic Park this week. Len Johnson lists his 10 favorite moments in Australian athletics. Many Australians would reckon that athletics had its real start when Edwin Flack, an Australian accountant living and working in London, travelled to the revival of the ancient Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 and won two gold medals. So why is Athletics Australia celebrating its centenary in 1997? (This year's Australian track and field championships, which begin at Olympic Park on Friday, are billed as the centenary championships, preceded by a gala celebration dinner on Thursday). That is because this year marks the 100th anniversary nf h- national governing body.

In in Sydney, the Amateur Athletic Union of Australasia was formed. Many occasions could be represented as the hinh of athletics in Australia. Professional loot-running flourished on the goldlielils. The oldest, and most famous.iucc the Stawell Easter Gift was first staged in 1878. The first athletic club, the Adelaide Athletic Club, was formed in 1864; the first stale association, the Amateur Athletic Association of New South Wales, in 1887; Hack travelled to the Athens Olympics with fellow-members of the London Athletic Club in 1896.

There have been further significant landmarks over the years. In 1928, women's events were added to the Olympic athletics program for the first time and Edith Robinson became Australia's first female track and field athlete. It took until 1978, however, before the separate men's and women's national bodies amalgamated. Not long after that, in the early 1980s, the absurd distinction between amateur and professional athletics was abolished. Then there are the milestones of Aboriginal representation.

In 1962 in Perth, Percy Hobson won the Commonwealth Games high jump to become the first Aborigine to win a gold medal at that level. Hobson, from Bourke in NSW, -was asked by concerned officials to keep his ancestry a secret. Last year, Cathy Freeman and Kyle Vander-Kuyp -becames athletics' first Aboriginal Olympic finalists, and Freeman the first medallist. Choosing the outstanding performances over 100 years is no easy matter. The conundrums arise right from the start.

What to make of Flack, for example. The competitors at the first modern Olympics were not even representative of the best of their day, yet Flack's victories in the 800 and 1500 metres were Australia's first two Olympic gold medals. More importantly, Flack started an unbroken line of representation that continues to this day. Australia, along with Greece, is the only country to have competed in every modern Olympics. In looking at the greatest performances by Australian athletes over that time, who has a claim? Eleven athletes have won a total of 15 Olympic gold medals, and Australia won the women's sprint relay in Melbourne in 1956.

Robert de Casteila won Australia's only world championships gold medal in the marathon at the first championships in Helsinki in 1983. Yet only the bureaucrats at the Australian Sports Commission think that all gold medals are of equal worth. Looking at performances anywhere, als, right on the line. After several minutes' delay, the photo-finish gave the Australian the gold medal in Olympic record time. 8.

Robert de Casteila Marathon, 1982 Commonwealth Games. The race started at 6 am and, with his dramatic win over Tanzania's Junia Ikangaa, de Casteila was responsible for more spilt orange juice than any other Australian in history. The previously unknown Ikangaa built a huge lead, only for Deek to run him down and beat him in a memorable duel. The pair went on to become the world's best two marathoners of the 1980s. 9.

Ralph Doubell 800 metres, 1968 Olympic Games. Doubell followed in the footsteps of Flack and Elliott when he won the 800 from the pre-Games favorite, Wilson Kiprugut of Kenya, equalling the world record of the great Peter Snell. Few rated Doubell a chance until lie beat Kiprugut in the semi-final. 10. Derek Clayton World-best, 1967 Fukuoka marathon.

Clayton picked a prestigious venue for a magnificent performance, smashing the marathon world-best by more than two minutes. With a previous best of 2:19, Clayton won Fukuoka in two hours nine minutes 36.4 seconds, becoming the first man to run under 2:12, 2:11 and 2:10, all in the one race. B. i 1300 metre, -y1 1 MtJannatiMiA-A svn a 100 era 20 metres, WOT. Vfr u.

'441 fW, frWmn loo and zoo metres, 80 metres hurdles. 's 1956 Olympic Games." John Landy, i 4-021 mile, 1 Olympic Park, Melbourne, 1952.. BtM)M Rintoff-Kln 400 metres hurdles, 1988 Olympic Games. 1 -c i iv 4 mJi marathon. 1982 Commonivealth Games i if 800 metres, 5- 1968 OMhDlc 'X 'tin mulH hac 1367 Fukuoka marathon." anytime is probably a better guide.

The International Amateur Athletic Federation conducted a poll to mark its 75th anniversary in 1987 to try to find the 10 best athletes of all time in each event. Ten Australians made that list: Mar-jorie Jackson (the "Lithgow and Betty Cuthbert in the women's sprints; Lisa Ondieki, Derek Clayton and De Casteila in the marathon; Shirley Strickland, Pam Ryan (nee Kilborn) and Debbie Flintoff-King in the women's hurdles; Herb Elliott in the 1500 and Ron Clarke in men's track distance events. Elliott was the only one to rank No. 1 in an event. In a further selection of 100 golden moments to mark the IAAF anniversary, Herb Elliott's world record 1500 metres in Gothenburg in 1958 and Ron Clarke's 10,000 world record in Oslo in 1965 were the only Australian nominations.

My 10 favorite performances do not go far outside the IAAF poll results and represent a mix of gold medal triumphs and single, "thunderclap" performances. Here's the list: 1. Herb Elliott 1500 metres, 1960 Olympic Games. Elliott, then 22, smashed a field of the world's top middle-distance runners with a savage surge with 700 metres left to run. He set a world record of Australian Herb Elliott, then 22, streets the worlds top middle-distance runners to win the 1500 metres gold medal at the I960 Olympic Games in Rome, setting a world record that was to endure for almost seven years.

twice equalled the world record in winning the 100 and broke the 200 world record in both semi-final and final. 5. Shirley Strickland 80 metres hurdles, 1956 Olympic Games. Watched by her three-year-old son, Phillip, Shirley Strickland retained her Olympic title in the 80 metres hurdles. The 31-year-old became the first woman to win the same track event at successive Olympics.

She also ran in the winning relay, giving Strickland her seventh Olympic medal, the greatest number by a woman, lrena Szewinska and Merlene Ottey have since equalled that tally. 6. John Landy 4:02.1 mile, Olympic Park, Melbourne, 1952. Eliminated in the heats of the Helsinki Olympics, Landy astounded the world when, after several month's hard training, he ran a solo 4:02.1 mile in Melbourne. It was the fastest time in the world for seven years, and reignit-ed the chase for the sub-four-minute mile.

7. Debbie Fllntoff-KIng 400 metres hurdles, 1988 Olympic Games. Flintoff-King surged desperately off the final hurdle to catch the Soviet Union's Tatiana Ledovskaya, just as she had rehearsed it in the semi-fin three minutes 35.6 seconds, which lasted almost seven years, and his winning margin of 2.8 seconds was bettered only by Kip Keino of Kenya in Mexico City in 1968. Keino, of course, had a high-altitude advantage over his closest rival, Jim Ryun of the US. 2.

Betty Cuthbert 100 and 200 metres, 1956 Olympic Games. "The Golden Gfrl" of Melbourne's Games won the sprint double and brought the 4 100 metres relay team from behind to a win on the final leg. Head back, mouth open, the 18-year-old Cuthbert seemed the epitome of speed. Eight years later in Tokyo, she cemented her claim to Olympic greatness by winning the first women's 400 metres gold medal. 3.

Ron Clarke 10,000 metres world record, Oslo, 1965. In one run, Clarke slashed 37 seconds off the world record he had set in Melbourne 18 months earlier. Thirty years later, Clarke's world record was voted the best performance in the history of Oslo's fabled Bislett Games. 4. Marjorle Jackson 100 and 200 metres, 1952 Olympic Games.

Three years earlier "the Lithgow Flash" had first attracted attention by twice defeating 1948 Olympic champ-Ion, Fanny Blankers-Koen, over 100 yards in Sydney. In Helsinki, she.