Stephanie
Graf prepares her
revenge
Michael Butcher
for the IAAF
21 November 2001 - It is
going to be a winter of retrenchment for
Stephanie Graf as she goes back to the
drawing board to work out how to
eliminate arch-enemy Maria Mutola from
the 800-metre equation.
While athletics may thrive on head to head encounters, pity the poor person who is cast in the support role, for that has been Graf’s fate for the last three major championships: Olympics, World Indoors and the World Championships.
“It can’t go on like this,” was Graf’s simple assessment as she headed into a winter of training.
It looked as though she might have got it right in Edmonton. After preparing assiduously in Los Angeles before making tracks for Canada, Graf’s preparation seemed more dedicated than ever. But once again it was all to no avail as she came agonisingly close to her first big championship gold.
There was plenty of advice from the pundits about what she had done wrong. Some said she had made her bid too early and should have waited like her conqueror Mutola before hunting down front-runner Laetitia Vriesde. She had the gold in her grasp from 60 metres out only to have it snatched away in the last stride.
But Graf’s self-criticism took a totally different line: “I’ve been too preoccupied with money,” she said, implying that she had raced too much for her own good. “I didn’t have my heart in it.”
A key ingredient in the new Graf recipe is to put all other considerations aside and concentrate only on athletics, “because that is what it is all about. There’s only one thing: sport.”
In her quest for improvement she has listened to other athletes, chief amongst them world record holder for the 110 metres hurdles, Colin Jackson, who advised her to think seriously about improving her suppleness: “I’m more inflexible than a pensioner. Under pressure I stiffen up,” she agreed.
Apart from an improved stretching regime, Graf is also considering yoga to gain those vital hundredths of a second that separate her from the winning line. In Sydney it was 0.49sec. By Edmonton that gap had been slashed to a tantalising 0.03sec.
But fans can rest assured that Graf has no intention of changing her uncompromising do-or-die approach. If there is one suggestion she is loath to accept it is that she should run a more tactical race: “I’m proud I risked everything,” she said after the Edmonton final. “That I didn’t wait and fought to the last. I’m proud of the way I ran and what I’ve achieved. It was heartache, but I didn’t make any mistakes. Luck decided.”
She can be equally proud of what she has done for Austrian athletics. Not since Liese Prokop took pentathlon silver in 1968 has an Austrian stood on the Olympic podium. And in Edmonton Graf became the most successful Austrian in the history of the world championships, improving on high jumper Sigrid Kirchman’s bronze in Stuttgart 1993.
In Canada she became the first Austrian to win consecutive medals in a major championships, hence her “happy loser” claim when everyone expected her to be downhearted. She was building her own niche in Austrian athletics history.
Her importance to her country runs to more than just sentiment. Three years ago the Linz Gugl meeting attracted only 3,500spectators to watch such draws as Marion Jones and Donovan Bailey go though their paces. Bankruptcy stared the organisers in the face. But with the arrival of Graf as a serious championship contender all that has changed.
This year a packed house of 14,000 roared their idol to her third win in a row and instead of a depleted budget organiser Percy Hirsch is looking to increase it from 6.5m ($417,000) to 8m shillings ($513,000) for 2002.
Finances apart, Linz is as important to Graf she is to the meeting. After her frustrations on foreign soil she is the first to admit how good it is to win before a home crowd.
Which is why the European Indoors in Vienna in four months time has come to represent so much. Though she is defending her title from Gent last year, winning abroad is not the same as standing on top of the podium at home: “I want to feel the indescribable sensation of hearing the national anthem in my own country,” she asserts.
Between now and then there is a training stint on Gran Canaria and though there is a European outdoor as well as indoor championships to dispatch in 2002 there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the real battles lie next summer against Mutola. The only question is whether Graf can finally turn the tables.
