Ivo Van Damme races Alberto Juantorena (© Getty Images)
In the poignant campaign movie for the 50th edition of the Royal Memorial Van Damme, as it is now fittingly titled, a computer-generated image of the late Ivo Van Damme comes vividly to life.
Stepping into the King Baudouin Stadium, he nods in approval at a video clip of the free-flowing Sebastian Coe notching the first world record at the Brussels meeting that honours the memory of the Belgian middle-distance prodigy who was cruelly cut down in his prime.
Coe raced at the inaugural Memorial Van Damme in August 1977, just eight months after the tall Belgian with the distinctive goatee-beard lost his life at the age of 22 in a car crash in the south of France.
And the World Athletics President will be among the great and good of track and field who gather in the King Baudouin Stadium to pay tribute to Van Damme at a meeting that doubles as the 2026 Wanda Diamond League Final over the course of Friday 4 and Saturday 5 September.
Van Damme’s death – on the way back from a training camp in Marseille in December 1976 – came just four months after he had claimed silver medals behind Alberto Juantorena at 800m and John Walker at 1500m at the Montreal Olympic Games.
The golden era of British middle-distance supremacy, spearheaded by Coe and Steve Ovett, might well have been very different had the 6ft 4in Van Damme lived to fulfil his huge potential.
After holding off the fast-finishing, hitherto boxed-in Van Damme to win the 1500m gold by 0.10 in Montreal, Walker was asked who might succeed him as holder of the world record for the mile. “I think Van Damme will be the greatest,” the New Zealander answered. “He has great speed.”
That speed was evident in the 800m in Montreal. As Juantorena powered to victory in 1:43.5, the young Belgian followed the mighty Cuban home in 1:43.9.
The Memorial Van Damme, which has been given regal approval and an official Royal title by King Philippe of Belgium in recognition of its 50th anniversary, should have been the Van Damme Classic, featuring the man himself.
The plan was hatched for a grand track meeting at what was then the Heysel Stadium, now the King Baudouin Stadium, at a get-together between Van Damme and Wilfried Meert, one of Belgium’s leading sports writers at the time. Instead, Meert and a group of journalistic colleagues staged the inaugural event in honour of their late friend.
A crowd of 40,000 packed into Heysel on 16 August 1977 and stars of the Montreal Olympics paid tribute to the young Belgian who had started his sporting life as a youth team striker with the Brussels football club Racing White – before joining the Daring Leuven Athletics Club and finishing a fighting fourth behind the victorious Ovett in the 800m final at the 1973 European U20 Championships in Duisburg (wearing a white cap in homage to his hero, Olympic two-lap champion Dave Wottle).
Walker attacked Filbert Bayi’s 1500m world record, finishing 0.5 shy with the fourth-fastest performance of all time, 3:32.7. Ivo’s father presented the winner’s gold medal to the Kiwi, who stepped down from the podium and touchingly handed it back to Van Damme senior, saying: “Sir, this is the medal of your son.”
The 21-year-old Coe finished third in the 800m with a PB of 1:46.31. He returned in 1978, improving his British 800m record to 1:44.3.
1978 Memorial Van Damme programme
In 1981, with the first of his two Olympic 1500m titles behind him, the future President of World Athletics gave the Royal Memorial Van Damme its maiden world record, regaining the global mile mark from his great rival Ovett with a blistering 3:47.33.
In all, there have been 14 world records and three world bests at the meeting – among them, Kenenisa Bekele’s 26:17.63 for 10,000m in 2005 and Aries Merritt’s 12.80 in the 110m hurdles in 2012.
Merritt and Coe are among those installed in the Memorial Van Damme Hall of Fame and this year’s inductees include nine-time Olympic gold medallist Carl Lewis, the US legend of the sport who has held the long jump meeting record of 8.65m since 1984.
The legacy of both Van Damme and the Brussels meeting was also formally recognised by World Athletics in November 2019, when World Athletics Heritage Plaques were awarded to Ivo Van Damme in the Legend category and to the Memorial Van Damme in the Competition category.
The half century celebrations also include the grand ‘From Ivo to Mondo Expo,’ featuring Ivo’s spikes, his 1976 Olympic outfit and training logs, together with items from the magnificent Museum of World Athletics collection generously donated by many of the greats who raced against Van Damme or who have graced the memorial meeting, including Lewis, Usain Bolt and Mondo Duplantis.
The exhibition is located on the first floor of the Lottery Shop on De Brouckère Square in the heart of Brussels, from 8 August to 6 September. Admission is free.
As the athletics world gathers in the Belgian capital to honour the memory of the late, great Ivo Van Damme, perhaps the final words should be those of one of his great rivals.
Ovett won the European U20 800m ahead of the young Belgian in 1973 and finished fifth, three places behind him, in the Olympic 800m final of 1976. He missed Coe’s 1500m world record by a 0.1 whisker with a time of 3:32.2 in the 1981 edition of the Memorial Van Damme.
“It was a terrible shock for me to hear of the tragic death of Ivo Van Damme,” the future Olympic 800m champion wrote in a letter to Athletics Weekly.
“To win two silver medals in any Olympics is a fabulous performance; to win them in only your first Games and at the age of 22 marks the greatness of the man, who must have surely gone on to greater honours.
“As a friend I will miss him at the beginning of races, when we used to worry and joke together, during them when we both raced hard, and then finally afterwards – the sharing of joy and disappointment we both recognised in each other.
“Now all I feel is a certain numbness at the loss of a friend and the emptiness that will be left when it goes.
“My sympathies go to his parents and friends.”
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
