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.