Carolina Kluft - the 21st Century Olympic dream

The Athens Olympic stadium, close to midnight on Saturday, after the 70,000 spectators had left for the trains back into town and the cleaning team had moved in, sweeping its way through the rows of seats. The vast arena, with floodlights still lighting the clammy night air, had a calmness to it, in contrast to just an hour earlier when the noise from the crowd acclaiming the latest Olympic champion, made it impossible to hear what was being said by the person in the seat beside you.

And then something odd happened. As if out of nowhere, Carolina Kluft appeared from the mixed zone in a deep well below the stands, her gold medal hanging over her Swedish-yellow tracksuit top to affirm the two days of brilliant athleticism that she had exhibited in winning the Olympic Heptathlon.

And as Kluft weaved her way between spectator seats and deserted TV commentary positions, there followed a procession of journalists and photographers, mostly men, 10, 20, maybe 30 of them, all in single file. Some of them looked anxious that they should keep pace with the bright new Olympic star in case they might miss a syllable of the interview she had promised them. The incongruity of this striking young woman, leading all these burly chaps on a conga around the stadium into the small hours, probably would have appealed to Kluft’s sense of fun.

Not a Star

“Just because I’ve got good results in the Heptathlon and journalists write articles about me doesn’t make me a star,” Kluft had said immediately prior to the Athens Games. Quite right, Carolina: it is because of those very results in the Heptathlon that she is a star and that the journalists, some looking as if they were still in awe at what they had witnessed, will write tens of thousands, if not millions of words about the fun-loving 21-year-old.

She looks like the perfect Swede. In appearance, the new Olympic champion’s blonde hair picks out the golden yellow of her medal and tracksuit; the blue of her eyes, sparkling with a glint of ice, match her national colours and the ribbon around her neck. A Hollywood stylist could not have done a better job.

And the perfection does not end there. Here is a ruthlessly determined champion who yet relishes the successes of her rivals. “It feels natural for me to cheer for my competitors, because we compete with each other — not against each other,” Kluft says.

Wants everyone to succeed

“Whether I clap or not, if they beat me, they are better than me. I have to go home and train harder. It is strange to wish someone not to succeed. When I am on the track, I try to be the best, I want to be the best, and I am sure others do too.

“I know what it means to beat your personal record because you are so happy and it is a great feeling. To see another girl have that happiness, I would like everyone in the world to feel that. Why shouldn’t I share that?” Baron de Coubertin - had he ever changed his mind about women competing at the Olympics - would have glowed with pride at Kluft.

Kluft expresses the Olympic dream for the 21st Century. For her, it is not the winning, but the fun. “It's been great,” Kluft said of her first taste of the Olympics. “The girls, the audience, the atmosphere. I've had a lot of fun.”

“I'm the type of person who needs to have fun to perform well. It's the feeling inside that allows me to perform well. I love to compete, but it must be fun.”

And, dare we utter it, there’s almost an idealistic, old-fashioned amateur aesthetic about Kluft, because as well as avoiding the fame that accompanies her athletic excellence, she eschews the fortune that accompanies it.

Money not that important

Unlike tennis stars Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg, who both came from Kluft’s home town, Boras, but left when large chunks of their sporting earnings had to be routed to Sweden’s taxman, she refuses to become an exile. “No way - I enjoy living in Sweden and I couldn’t leave all my friends behind.

“I don’t mean to criticise those who choose to move to Monaco,” she adds, keen not to offend the likes of team mates Kajsa Bergqvist and Christian Olsson, who have made that economic move, “but it is nothing for me. Money isn’t that important in my life.

“I see money as a means to an end: that of having a roof over my head and being able to live properly so that I am able to train without worry,” she says. What she is less public about is her own charity and compassion: when she turned down the chance of competing in Monte Carlo last year, and a chance to win $100,000, she was angered that the reason for her absence was leaked - that she was visiting a young child in Kenya whom she sponsors financially.

“She’s not Carolina Kluft’s sponsored child,” her steely blue eyes widen to stress the point. “She’s her own person with her own personality, hopes and aspirations. I spend a lot of time with her, but she doesn’t know what I do.” Kluft is creating new Olympic ideals.

Sydney Olympics on TV
 
Four years ago, Kluft watched the last Olympics in Sydney on television. Since then, she has won two IAAF World Junior titles, a European Championship gold and then the IAAF World title in Paris with 7001 points, the third best in history, recording five personal bests along the way.

If her latest, most famous victory, in Athens showed anything, it is that Kluft needs more competition. Only Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Olympic champion in 1984 and 1988, has ever managed to score more than Kluft’s 6952pt final tally. Now, it is the spirit of JJK, and the 16-year-old World record, that offers Kluft’s biggest challenge.

Kluft, however, has no intention of giving absolutely everything she’s got in an attempt to break it here, if at all. “I am a private person and I like it to stay that way. I have so much positive support from the people around me, and that is a good thing to have.

Not afraid to lose

“But the reason I don’t expect pressure is because I am not afraid not to succeed. If I don’t succeed, I will learn something from that. I have many years in front of me, I can take positives out of it and do it better next time.

“When I am competing, I don’t think about the World record or even winning a medal. If I don’t beat the World record, I will not keep going until I beat it. If I don’t find it is fun, then I will quit. But I see myself doing this for many years.”

400m Hurdles - the future for Kluft?

According to her coaches, Kluft might yet turn to other athletics challenges. She is, of course, already a world-class long jumper (her mother, Ingalill, was a Swedish international at the event), yet Ulf Karlsson, Sweden’s head coach, has said that he believes Kluft’s best talents lay in the 400 metres Hurdles. “She has the endurance and she has the technique,” he says. “She could easily be the best in the world in a couple of years.”

Kluft is even equipped, should it happen during the course of her career, to take on the women’s Decathlon. Her partner is Patrik Kristiansson, who won a bronze medal at the 2003 World championships, and last autumn Kluft worked out with his coach, Miro Zalar. Within a handful of sessions, she was clearing four metres. “She could jump a World record height if she gave it a chance and concentrated on the Pole Vault,” Zalar says.

But for now, for Kluft, it is the Heptathlon: what she likes, the event at which she has fun. Perhaps most importantly for this age where there is so much cynicism in so much sport, Kluft puts a smile back on our faces, revives the child-like enthusiasm for sport.

“My sisters and I were always outside playing with our dad, playing football, or something, or we were climbing trees, some sort of activity,” she says.

Fell in love with athletics at 11

“But we could do whatever we liked. If we wanted to play an instrument, then we could. It was not that we had to do sport, but it feels natural for me to move my body, to play around, to have fun.

“I always thought that I would end up being a footballer like my dad,” she says, explaining that Jonny, now a very busy man as her manager, was once a professional footballer with Osters and Sundsvall.

“But a visit to an athletics track at 11 made me change my mind. Athletics had always seemed a bit boring before then, but I went to a training session with my sister and saw just how much fun it can be.

“I was a girl who tried every single event, and I decided to have a go at the Heptathlon and discovered it was the one that went best for me.”

And best for sport, too.

Steven Downes for the IAAF