The finish of the women's 100m final in Bydgoszcz (© © Allsport)
MonteCarloIt is now established and recognised that the IAAF World Youth Championships which were introduced by the late IAAF President Primo Nebiolo in 1999, are a great platform on which teenage athletes can perform, gain invaluable experience and then move on to the bigger stages of junior and then senior championship competition.
The winner of the women’s Pole Vault at the inaugural edition of the World Youth Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, Russia’s Yelena Isinbayeva has since become an icon of the sport winning World Junior, World senior, European Indoor and outdoor and Olympic titles in addition to setting multiple World records.
Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell won the 100m at the same World Youth Championships and went on to win the 200m Olympic title in Athens 2004. Australia’s Jana Pittman won the World Youth 400m Hurdles title in 1999 and secured the World senior title in Paris 2003. The list is long…
However, winning gold at a World Youth Championships is not the only way for an athlete to reach stardom. Failing or not succeeding has often proved to be an extra motivational factor for Youth athletes to come back and excel in the senior ranks.
Uganda’s World 3000m Steeplechase champion Dorcus Inzikuru is one example. Who would have thought that the diminutive teenager would one day become her country’s first World champion when she finished a distant 8th in the 3000m at the 1999 World Youth Championships?
In that same race, a 15-year-old Ethiopian by the name of Meseret Defar was out-sprinted in the final stages of the event and had to be content with silver. Now the reigning Olympic champion, Defar hasn’t lost that many sprint finishes since and has recently set the latest of her World records in the opening leg of the IAAF Golden League in Oslo.
The reigning European Indoor 400m champion Nicola Sanders of Great Britain was out of the medals in Bydgoszcz 1999, finishing fourth in the 400m Hurdles. This winter Sanders set the three fastest indoor times of the season to prove that she has finally come off age.
Greece’s Louis Tsatoumas also ended his 1999 World Youth campaign in fourth position but is the current Long Jump world season leader with a new national record leap of 8.66m.
Sprint hurdler Virginia Powell of the USA came a very disappointing last in the final of the 100m Hurdles in Bydgoszcz but has since tremendously improved and is the current world season leader at 12.45.
More recently, Cuba’s Dayron Robles came sixth at the 2003 edition of the World Youth Championships in Sherbrooke, Canada, and his performance would have gone unnoticed if the prodigious talent hadn’t gone on to set an Area record of 13.00 when finishing second at last year’s IAAF World Athletics Final.
So keep your eyes open in Ostrava, it may well be that the next big name of our sport is to be found in the results, and he or she doesn’t necessarily have to win the World Youth title to achieve a successful career!
Laura Arcoleo for the IAAF
