This weekend Riga will stage its first worldwide athletics championship for nearly 1 / 4 of a century. In 1999 the Latvian capital held the European Junior Championships whereas on Sunday (Oct 1) it hosts the World Street Operating Championships. It’s truthful to say a lot has modified throughout these 24 years too.
Solely eight years after regaining independence from Russia, Latvia nonetheless resembled a bleak, archetypal Japanese bloc nation when it welcomed Europe’s high under-20 athletes in 1999. Town’s first McDonald’s had solely simply appeared and the medical car on the Daugava Stadium seemed like Del Boy’s van from Solely Fools and Horses with the phrase “Medicīniskā” emblazoned on the rusty bodywork in crumbling purple letters.
“As the driving force chugged his emergency car slowly off the observe,” I wrote in AW, “for a second you thought the injured athlete must get out and provides it a push,” including: “That is athletics is Riga. Loopy as hell. But proud as punch. And also you want a Tardis to get there.”
As we speak, Riga is a vibrant metropolis filled with picturesque parks and an ideal mix of contemporary buildings and historic castles and church buildings. A lingering sense of unease regarding the close by conflict in Ukraine acts as a stark reminder of the years spent below Soviet rule. Typically, although, the town is flourishing as a well-liked vacation spot for vacationers in search of a scenic brief break. This weekend many guests are combining sight-seeing with operating, too, as they participate within the mass races that complement the elite one mile, 5km and half-marathon occasions.
“Riga is making historical past,” stated Seb Coe on the pre-event press convention. “We haven’t had a brand new world championships since 2014 (world relays) and it’s the primary time we’ve actually introduced a singular world operating competition to market.”
Coe spent his 67th birthday on Friday (Sept 29) with a busy day of ambassadorial duties and he added: “We’re working with an excellent federation and an distinctive organising committee and it is a celebration of operating at its finest.
“From a private perspective I’m very happy we’ve been in a position to formally enshrine the mile in a championships too. Not solely is it one of the crucial accessible distances but it surely has a rare and lustrous historical past.”
Riga 2023
Coe’s final go to to Riga earlier than this weekend was in February when he agreed to check out the mile course. “We woke as much as a foot of snow, although,” he stated. “So it’s very good to have the ability to stroll round Riga in such beautiful climate now.”
The attraction of successful world medals together with the enchantment of Riga itself has helped draw a very world-class line-up of athletes. They embrace a number of world record-holder Religion Kipyegon plus athletes of the calibre of Peres Jepchirchir, Jacob Kiplimo and Yomif Kejelcha.
Jess Hull of Australia was among the many athletes on the pre-event press convention on Friday and he or she is one in every of a small variety of runners who’ve competed at world championships in Bathurst, Budapest and now Riga this yr. She defined: “When you’ve gotten alternative to put on inexperienced and gold colors thrice in a yr, I’m going to take it!”
Aigars Nords, head of the native organising committee, has achieved an excellent job together with his crew in getting Riga prepared for this weekend’s occasion. In addition to the races on Sunday there’s a world operating convention and youngsters’s occasions on Saturday. On the subject of the mass races on Sunday, in the meantime, Latvian locals will dominate the fields however Nords advised AW that the No.2 nationality in the case of entries might be Britain.
“There are a number of historic firsts,” Nords provides. “It’s the first World Athletics sequence occasion that has occurred within the Baltic nations. It’s the primary World Street Operating Championships (combining mile, 5km and half-marathon) and it’s the primary the place the mass race runners can run with the elite, which is exclusive. I’m proud our crew has been entrusted with with the ability to write a brand new web page in street operating.”
Riga 2023
Nords and Coe will hope that the championships create a robust legacy, including to the curiosity and pleasure that the town already has every Might when the Rimi Riga Marathon takes place.
Away from street operating, although, in the case of observe and subject athletics the town will not be precisely thriving. The Daugava Stadium – the venue of the European Juniors in 1999 – is in a sorry state, with the observe badly in want of restore. Hockey and basketball nonetheless rule because the No.1 sports activities in Latvia, though they are going to be briefly knocked off their perch on Sunday.
Jeļena Prokopčuka, the New York Metropolis Marathon winner in 2005 and 2006, is Latvia’s best-known runner and is an envoy for this weekend’s championships in Riga. She stated: “Latvia may be very wealthy in the case of good athletes and runners and we’ve gained lots of world and Olympic medals.”
Probably the best of all Latvian athletes is Jānis Lūsis, who gained Olympic gold within the javelin in 1968 (plus silver and bronze in 1972 and 1964) and 4 European titles, though he died three years in the past aged 80.
Agate Caune (Getty)
The brightest mild in Latvian athletics in 2023 is Agate Caune. The 19-year-old stormed to victories within the 3000m and 5000m on the European Underneath-20 Championships in Jerusalem this summer time and caught the attention in Budapest with a front-running efficiency in her 5000m warmth, though she later withdrew from the ultimate there, plus these championships, with damage.
“She is a tremendous woman,” says Prokopčuka. “She has an enormous future and I believe she will be able to beat my data.”
Caune is prodigiously gifted and the hope can be that she will be able to proceed her outcomes into 2024 and past. However as these 1999 European Underneath-20 Championships taught us, making a profitable leap from junior to senior ranks is fraught with difficulties.
Irina Latva from the host nation gained the ladies’s 800m at these championships in 1999 however didn’t progress as a senior. Sina Schielke, a German sprinter who gained gold within the girls’s 100m, 200m and 4x100m, was arguably the star of the championships however she struggled with accidents and partway via her senior profession grew to become higher identified for her modelling in Playboy than her athletics exploits on the observe.
After all some athletes did progress, although. Tosin Oke gained triple leap gold for Britain earlier than later successful the Commonwealth Video games crown for Nigeria. Different Brits in motion in 1999 included Jade Johnson, Mark Lewis-Francis, Nicola Sanders and Chris Baillie, with the latter sharing dash hurdles gold with Felipe Vivancos of Spain.
Who will etch their names into the historical past books this Sunday? Riga’s lengthy wait to stage a significant athletics championships is nearly over.
READ MORE: AW’s Riga 2023 protection
Timetable(native instances beneath; the UK is 2hr behind)11:50 Girls’s 5km12:15 – Males’s 5km13:00 – Girls’s mile13:10 – Males’s mile13:30 – Girls’s half marathon14:15 – Males’s half marathon
Riga 2023 medals
» BBC Sport has reside protection from 9:40 BST on BBC Crimson Button, iPlayer and BBC Sport web site, whereas World Athletics is streaming the occasion for a lot of different areas
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