A day off from the World Championships...

If you're reading this just for the throwing/World Champs stuff, skip this entry. I wanted to go to see all the throwing finals. There were no throwing finals on Day 6 of the world champs, so I went to Potsdam, rented a bike, and rode around all day. (Yes this was my 2nd day in Potsdam, for those of you keeping track.)

Berlin, and Potsdam, as I found out, are very bike friendly cities. They actually have separate sidewalks for bikes, and even seperate traffic signals for bikes!

So after what was a series of wrong turns and long rides in the wrong direction, I finally got to one of the places I wanted to go, Park Sanssouci. Its a Central Park-type place, but instead of being a park built for the people of Potsdam, it was a backyard for King Ftiedrich II. Here are some pictures of things in the park:

A building in the "Chinese Tea garden", not sure of its significance...

and a sculpture on one of the buildings up close.

I continued walking and came across this garden...

where you could walk through a tunnel made of plants. Sweet.

Another side of the same garden.

Windmill.

Schloss Sansoucci is at the top of this hill. This was the King's summer home...yes, the guy built a summer home in the backyard of his regular home.

A close-up of the fountain from the last picture.

An outdoor bathtub! I guess the king was into that...

A cool shot of a bridge and a river running through the park. This is still someone's backyard, mind you...

and THIS is the palace! I was standing as far back as I possibly could and still couldn't fit the whole thing in one picture, so I took this video.

Tats where one guy and his family lived. Its good to be the king.

So I left the park and kept riding my bike until I came across the river that runs out of TieferSee (Lake Tiefer), and I just snapped some pictures.

The last one is a picture of some graffiti under a bridge...Germany is so punk rock!

So as you can see from the pictures, it was a beautiful day, but it was HOT. And, I had been riding a bike around all day, and hadn't drunk enough water, so at this point I was very dehydrated, and if you know me (and how much I hate the heat and hot weather) was not in a pleasant state of mind. However, riding along the river I saw many people just hanging out, some were sunbathing, and some were even swimming, despite the numerous "Swimming Forbidden" signs all along the river. I figured if those people were doing it, I could too. I chained my backpack to one of the wheels on my bike, and jumped in the river for about 5 minutes. That cooled me off, and my happy mood was restored for the day.
On my way back to drop the bike off at the rental place, I snapped this picture of a castle. I don't know what it was really, there were no informational signs or anything like that explaining when it had been built or who lived there. I guess thats Europe though...there are so many old castles spread around that people don't really think they're anything special.

So I went back to my hotel, tired from all the bike riding. I brought back a Turkish Pizza mit Donerfleisch (I seriously want to go back to Germany just so I can have some Turkish Pizza, its that good, my mouth is watering just thinking about it!!!), and of course, some bier. This is Rex Pils ("Pils" being short for Pilsner, which is what a lot of beers over there were), and Schwarzbier. I'm not beer-literate enough to describe how they tasted, but trust me, they were delicious.

So the last thing of my day away from the championships...I obviously didn't go to Germany to see what was on TV, but occasionally I turned it on and one night I came across this.
You'll have to turn the volume up to hear it, but not too loud because halfway through I start laughing. Can anyone tell me just what the HELL this is??? I came across many American TV shows and movies overdubbed in Germany which were funny to watch, but this was on a level of its own. Whatever this thing was, it was on for literally hours every single night. No commercials, no change of camera angles, nothing except this little loaf of bread (or whatever he is) looking at the camera and talking for hours straight. I guess some weird people have their say in TV programming in Germany...

Day 5, World Championships

This is the first image of Day 5 at the World Championships. Each day they handed out daily programs, you can obviously see whats on the cover of this one. As I would find out later, it was a BIG deal that Steffi Nerius won that gold medal, all over Germany.

The Women's Discus qualifying rounds were that morning. Here is a video of the USA's Becky Breisch:

Here is the USA's Stephanie Brown-Trafton, the Olympic champion from Beijing. The automatic qualifier for the finals was 61.50m/201'-9", and this throw was just behind the line at 61.23m/200'-10"! She just barely made it to the finals with this one!

The decathalon also got underway this morning. Here is the USA's Ashton Eaton, this year's NCAA champion, getting a personal best in the long jump:

Woo! 7.85m or a 25'-9" long jump for Ashton Eaton.

The men's high jump qualification rounds also started this morning, here's a jumper going over the bar:

Back to Group B of the women's discus qualifying. Here's Aretha Thurmond of the USA. This wasn't her best throw, but in the later rounds she would qualify for the final.

Here is Germany's 3-time World Champion Franka Dietzsch, who said she was going to retire after the 2004 Olympics. She did so poorly there that she decided she'd keep competing, and won the 2005 and 2007 world champs. Things did not go so well for her here.

As you can see, she threw it into the cage on this one.
Here she is picking the disc up. Unfortunately, her other throws wouldn't be good enough to advance her to the final.

Meanwhile, Terrence Trammell was one of the Americans to advance beyond the first heats of the men's 110 Hurdles:

Song Aimin of China and Irina Yatchenko of Belarus, both former Olympic medallists, competed in the women's disc as well. Aimin would advance, Yatchenko would not.

The competition was run very smoothly at the stadium. As soon as the women's discus qualifying was over, the cage came down and they began setting up the shot put circles for the decathalon competition...

...and the disci (the plural of "discus") were wheeled off the field!

Since there were a ton of empty seats over in the end of the stadium where the decath shot put was, I went over there to get a better view of the two shot circles they had going on at once. On the way I got myself a beer and a Boulette...
Apparently, its a fried meatball. I'm not sure what makes it a meatball since it's clearly in patty form, but I don't really care, because it was, of course, delicious. Very moist, and I guess you'd say greasy, and it didn't taste like a meatball we'd have with pasta in America. Still very good though.

Here are some pictures from the decath shot put. America's Jake Arnold:

World record holder Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic:

A picture of the two shot put circles with two competitions going on at once:

And just some cool pictures of the shot still in the air right after the thrower released it:

In between the morning and evening sessions I went to and from my hotel once again, and at the train station I took pictures of these newspapers:
Remember how I said it was a big deal Steffi Nerius had won the javelin? Here's your proof. There wasn't a little sidebar blurb about it on page 3A of the sports section, it was FRONT PAGE news on these and a few other newspapers I saw. I'm willing to bet my degree that would NEVER happen if any American won a gold medal at a World Champs that were held in America.

Evening Session

Things started off with some medal ceremonies, including the ceremony for the men's 400m hurdles, where Bershawn Jackson and Kerron Clement won bronze and gold for the USA, respectively.

Then the competitors came out for the Men's Discus final.

Jarred Rome takes a warm-up.

Virjilius Alekna stretching. He's about 6'7", 285 lbs, and as strong and powerful as they come, yet as you can see, still pretty flexible. There's no point in being that big and powerful if you can't hit the right positions...and believe me, he certainly does!

Here is Piotr Malachowski of Poland taking his first throw at 68.77m/225'-7". It would lead the whole competition through four rounds.

Jarred Rome taking his first throw:

Robert Harting of Germany takes his first throw at 68.25m/223'-11", putting him second behind Malachowski.

Here's Casey Malone, the other American taking his first throw. My camera died right after he released the disc. He would end up finishing 5th.

So as I said, Malachowski would lead with his first throw through four rounds. In the 5th round, Malachowski improved again with a massive personal best to 69.15m/226'-10". Harting couldn't answer. So in the 6th round, Harting was the second to last thrower of the competition. With the German crowd cheering and hollering like no crowd I've heard before, Harting unleashed a MASSIVE lifetime best throw of 69.43m/227'-9" to take the lead back from Malachowski (its been nearly a month, yet I'm getting goosebumps as I write about it now.) Malachowski couldn't answer with his last throw, and Robert Harting won the second gold medal of the Championships for Germany! It was one of the coolest things I've seen in my life, and a great competition. Gerd Kanter, last year's Olympic champion and the favorite coming in, finished 3rd.

My camera came back to life for a few seconds to capture a little bit of the celebration after Harting's win. The video is pretty blurry but what happened was Harting ran onto the track, and lifted Berlino (the bear/mascot of the championships) onto his shoulders.

On the way out of the stadium, a large group of German fans marched out, waving German flags and chanting "RO-BERT HAR-TING", and they did that from the stadium all the way to the train station. Not for a soccer player, but for a thrower. Pretty freaking cool.

Day 4, World Champs in Berlin

For each day of the World Champs, you could purchase a day ticket...one ticket that would give you admission to the morning and evening sessions. On Tuesday, however, it was a separate ticket for the morning and the evening. The morning session tickets were incredibly cheap, since no finals were held in the mornings. Which meant for 11 euros, I was sitting in the second row, down on the field, right next to the discus cage for men's disc qualifying!

This was the view from my seat, not zoomed in at all.

Piotr Malachowski of Poland on the left (last year's Olympic Silver Medallist), Virjilius Alekna of Lithuania in the middle (he's just damn good!), Frantz Kruger of Finland on the right (2000 Olympic Bronze medallist, then representing South Africa).

Jarred Rome of the USA in the red jacket. On the right in the orange is Markus Munch of Germany. He's my age (23), but he looks like he's about 14. Except for being about 6' 6".

Zoltan Kovago of Hungary taking a warm-up.
Jarred Rome of the USA taking a warm-up. He'd make the finals.
I didn't get any pictures of the first round of the men's discus (don't worry, I got video that will soon be sent in to macthrowvideo), but clearly, thats alright. I was in the 2nd row next to the discus circle...Gerd Kanter's coach was sitting in the 1st row, right in front of me. Gerd came down to talk to his coach after automatically qualifying for the finals with one throw...and obviously I wasn't letting him get away without a picture. Gerd is the defending world champion from 2007 and the Olympic Champion from last year.
Piotr Malachowski of Poland taking a warm-up.
The starting line for the women's 1500m was also right in front of me and, as you can see, sometimes obstructed the view of the discus. Christin Wurth-Thomas of the USA is third from the left.
They didn't use a real gun to start the races...notice the wire coming down from the official's hand. Even though I was right near the gun, I couldn't see any smoke come out, and the only sound I heard was through the PA of the stadium.
A view of the discus sector after the competition was over.
For lunch this day was some African food...Couscous and chicken with (a lot of) peanut sauce. The little pastry looking thing in the upper left of the plate is an African donut...I have no idea what makes it a donut. It was all pretty good too.
"The biggest postcard in the world!" From afar, it looks like the body of a hammer thrower, but if you click it to zoom in you can see its a composite of lots of smaller pictures of Track and Field and the World Championships.
Toyota was one of the sponsors that had a big exhibit outside of the stadium. This is an engine from one of the hybrid cars they had on display.

EVENING SESSION PICTURES

Before I made my way to my seat for the evening session, I caught the medal carriers before they brought out the medals for the women's triple jump medal ceremony.

It was kind of funny, for all the women's medal ceremonies, young men dressed in suits would bring the medals out to be presented. For all the men's medal ceremonies, some rather good looking young German women wearing skirts would be the ones to bring the medals out.

The headline that night (for me at least) was the women's javelin. Some other things happened before that though, including the final of the Men's triple jump. Here's a jumper in action...

Maybe there's a jumper out there that can tell me...why do jumpers always rock back and forth a bunch of times before they actually start their approach? Jumpers are weird :) anyway...

The Women's Javelin throw was finished in the first round. Steffi Nerius of Germany threw 67.30m/220'-9" on her first throw, which would hold up through the whole competition to be the winning throw.

While the javelin was going on, on the track, Sanya Richards won the women's 400m for the USA!
Men's steeplechase was going on as well...this is a picture of them going over the water jump that was on the big screen.

Kerron Clement and Bershawn Jackson went 1 and 3 for the USA, respectively, in the men's 400m hurdles! As you can see, a lot goes on at once at track meets.

So back to the women's javelin. With one throw left, and a contingent of Czech fans cheering,

Barbora Spotakova of the Czech Republic, defending World and Olympic champion, and world record holder, had one more chance to take the gold medal away from Steffi Nerius. If Spotakova's throw wasn't far enough, then Nerius, the next thrower in the order, would automatically be World Champion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZGgJWRxX-k

I tried to put this video right in my blog like all the others, but it wouldn't load for some reason. Anyway, there's the youtube link.

The video says it all. Feel free to ignore the commentary at the beginning. And sorry the video is out of focus. The main thing is the sound - the roar of the crowd as they reacted to the first gold medal of the Championships won by a German athlete. This shows you how big of a deal track and field is in Germany, and it shows you how some countries, no matter how big or small, or what the event, will always get behind and go wild for the athletes on their national teams. I really wonder if every American athlete who won a medal would get this kind of reaction if the World Champs were held in America.
The celebration just kept on going! People must have been on their feet cheering for Steffi for over 10 minutes. Even during the Men's 10,000m medal ceremony, Steffi kept taking her victory lap, and people kept cheering for her.

After that night I decided to back to the Kulturstadion to see if anything was going on there at night. It turned out nothing was, but I did get some Polish food and beer.
This is a turkey-bacon-onion kebab, though the turkey was pink-ish, more like ham. I didn't really care, because it was incredibly delicious. It came with a plain slice of bread, and I also got 1 liter of Tyskie, the beer that the guy working the stand said was the best they had. It was a very good meal, I'm interested to see what other Polish food/beer is like.

The guy working the stand was speaking English to everyone he encountered. More countries in Europe seem to be getting more and more connected to one another, yet each country still speaks its own language. So English seems to be the universal language over there - if you don't speak the language of a country where someone is from, you just converse in English. On top of the Polish people speaking English to everyone, I remember being in a bar one night, and two people who were working for the Russian team walked into the bar. One of the Russians walked right up to the bartender and said "Do you speak English here?", and they proceeded to have a conversation in English. I suppose everyone learning one second language is easier than every European trying to learn a whole bunch of other languages.
To close off the night, I got a view of the Brandenburg Gate at night. The picture doesn't really do it justice. The lighting was really cool and seeing the gate at night compared to during the day was worth the second trip all by itself.