Athletics: Great ideals mirrored in Greene's visit to Gents

THE WORLD Athletics Championships, which get under way in Seville today, are being billed by the organisers as the last great sporting event of the 20th century. And as with every other sporting event of the century, it aspires towards "the triumph of sporting ideals and the progress towards living together, tolerance and integration." Other than that, it has no great ambition.

Sadly, such lofty aims appear not to be shared by the vast, scrambling battalion of media folk currently billeted in the Andalusian capital in the expectation of plenty. They march to the beat of a different drum. Hear how it plays...

The midday sun dazzled on the waters of the Rio Guadalquivir on Thursday as the sportswear manufacturers Nike displayed their expensive array of wearers to an outdoor audience of scribblers and cameramen.

Hicham El Guerrouj was there, perched on a stool with a microphone, looking like a soulful entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest. Shortly after an American journalist had asked him to give details of the illness which had interrupted his season - it was a bad case of haemorrhoids, and the details were mercifully sketchy - the world mile record holder was allowed to quit the stage.

Next came the world 100 metres record holder Maurice Greene, bowling on to the podium with a jaunty little walk that put you in mind of Norman Wisdom and reminded you of the fact that some athletes only make physical sense on the track. Interestingly, Maurice was asked by the master of ceremonies how it felt to be the fastest man in the world, and his reply, in a sense, summed it all up. "Great". With that information stored, the media representatives squashed under the awning which shielded them from the fierce heat were presented with the Olympic 200m and 400m champion, Michael Johnson.

By way of introduction our MC read out a couple of items he found "very interesting" which had been gleaned from a statistical survey of Johnson's performances throughout the Nineties. As I understood it, the burden of his message was this: The percentage of 200m races through 1990-1998 in which Johnson had been first or second highest-ranked runner was 50 per cent. And the percentage of 400m races through 1990-1998 in which Johnson had been first or second highest-ranked runner was 60 per cent. "Michael," he asked, "Do those statistics have any meaning for you?" Michael said they were "something he was very proud of." This is all normal behaviour for Americans.

The waters got choppier for Johnson when a British journalist asked him why he had appeared so grumpy while competing in Europe this season, and why he had refused to sign autographs for a group of children at one of the meetings. Johnson replied that he hated all children and anything he could do to make their little lives miserable had to be looked on as a bonus. Or something like that.

All too soon, our riverside show was over and the athletes, after posing for photo opportunities to north, south, east and west of the podium, made gratefully for the sanctuary of the nearby hotel. For those who remained, there was nothing left to do but to finish off the coffee and sweet pastries which remained on the trestle tables, file away the multitudinous statistical information provided by American Track and Field - I estimate that 74 per cent of those present did so - and make double sure that they had got the correct size of freebie T-shirt provided by the hosts. And depart.

As the media throng made its slow progress through the lobby and onwards to the nearest taxi rank and the next sportswear-sponsored press conference, I spotted Johnson coming out of the Gents with a curious look on his face. The reason for his bafflement was immediately obvious. Standing by the urinals was a tall, fair-haired young woman with a television camera trained on a figure sprawled in a corner under the washbasins. The figure turned out to be an Australian journo who, given the 10-hour time difference, was on a deadline and typing madly on to a lap-top computer plugged into the one available electricity socket.

Standing to the right of the young woman, next to the toilet cubicles, was a photographer. He was taking pictures of the camerawoman taking pictures of the man typing a story about the man who had just walked into the Gents and walked very swiftly out again. An odd tableau, you may think. But perhaps, for all its apparent insanity, it could be seen as a contribution to the grand ideals of the event - a small progress towards living together, tolerance and integration.

I shall try to think of it like that. It will help.