Zulia Calatayud of Cuba wins the women's 800m final (© Getty Images)
The final meeting of this season’s TDK Golden League - ISTAF Berlin 2005 - will be held this coming Sunday 4 September in the German capital’s atmospheric Olympic stadium, and has attracted an impressive start list which accounts for ten individual gold medallists from the recent 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, Helsinki, Finland.
It is not uncommon post any major championship, that coming towards the end of a long season the elite performers of our sport, many who have been competing week in week out since mid-May, begin to cite fatigue, but ISTAF Berlin, Germany’s premier one-day meeting seems to have bucked this trend.
With the IAAF World Athletics Final nearly upon us, (Monaco on Friday 9 and Saturday 10 September 2005. NB. the Hammer Throw competitions, take place in Szombathely, Hungary on Saturday 3 September, due to technical constraints within Monaco’s Stade Louis II), events in the Olympic stadium this Sunday should offer a good form guide ahead of the season’s prestigious finale in the tiny Mediterranean Principality.
Berlin’s 1936 Olympic stadium, that boasts a deep blue track following major refurbishments to the venue which will play host to the 2009 World Championships, has according to the current provisional start-list brought together six male and four female gold medal winners from Helsinki for next weekend’s meeting.
One of the highlights will be Tatyana Lebedeva's struggle to win the One Million Dollars TDK Golden League Jackpot in the women's Triple Jump, an event in which she will be up against World champion Trecia Smith of Jamaica, but more of this in a few days time...
Men:
800m - Rashid Ramzi (Bahrain)
5000m - Benjamin Limo (Kenya)
110m Hurdles - Ladji Dourcouré (France)
High Jump - Yuriy Krymarenko (Ukraine)
Pole Vault - Rens Blom (The Netherlands)
Javelin Throw - Andrus Värnik (Estonia)
Women:
100m - Lauyrn Williams (USA)
800m - Zulia Calatayud (Cuba)
Triple Jump - Trecia Smith (Jamaica)
Discus Throw – Franka Dietzsch (Germany)
IAAF
