Carolina Kluft celebrates winning the women's heptathlon (© Getty Images)
For Carolina Kluft, the Heptathlon is all about fun and games. And if she happens to win a World championship title by the second largest victory margin ever while becoming the third best performer ever, well, that's fine too. She's just having fun, afterall.
"I was just out there having fun, enjoying myself," she said as she tried to explain how she felt after becoming only the third woman to ever crack the mighty 7000 point barrier. "It's really hard to describe this day. I don't know what I feel. Everything feels upside down."
More often than not, the 20 year-old Swede describes her competitions as, well, just plain fun. Two World Junior Championships? Way cool. A European Championship? A blast. A World Indoor Championship? An absolute ball.
When watching her playful gestures and vivacious smiles, you can't help but laugh along with her, because you're having fun too. She's a competitor of the highest intensity yet possesses the joie de vivre of an excitable teenager. She growls, huffs, puffs and roars. When she pounds her fists into her thighs before a jump, the slap reverberates throughout the stadium. As do her celebratory howls of joy. And with an avalanche of personal bests the past few days, there was lots of howling in Paris en route to her 7001 point tally.
Even a near escape from disaster in the long jump, where she fouled on her first two attempts, didn't rain on Kluft's competitive parade.
"I was pretty nervous," she admitted, "but it was okay. I felt very focused and I just reminded myself that I do this for fun and that I do this for myself." Her uncomplicated strategy worked. She came through with a 6.68 leap, the farthest in the competition.
Even before she broke the 7000 point barrier, comparisons to world record holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee had already begun. Now, her assault on the American's world record tally of 7,291 points seems all but inevitable. But Kluft says she doesn't bother herself much with such trivialities. Doing so, afterall, wouldn't be much fun.
"I'm just 20 years old, so I don't think so much about the world record," she said. "I do this for fun and I'll do this until I think it's not fun anymore. And if I break the record, I do, if I don't, I don't. I don't put any thoughts about records in my head, I just try to have feelings. That's important for me. I will not think about the World record. I will just do my best and see how far I can go."
She says that she's aware of who Joyner-Kersee is, but doesn't remember ever having watched the two-time World and Olympic champion compete. Apparently, she was too busy having fun.
"I have no memories from back then or from the girls behind me. I was out playing around and climbing trees."
Sure, training sessions six or seven days a week, sometimes twice a day, can be a chore. But even those fit into Kluft's worldview.
"Mostly it's very fun, and when it's not," she says, "you have to think of something else that's fun. That's what life is about -- just having fun and enjoying life."
May her ride, and the laughs, continue. The rest of us are having fun too.
