Last time I wrote about track and field, I started improbably with a cute hammer thrower. I'd like to continue that trend by starting with a cute shot putter who also happens to be a world champion: Valerie Adams.
Now, I'm no schmoe, but check out those guns. She's real cute, too. Shame she's not likely to break any all-time records, given that almost all of them were set in the '70s or '80s, by women from the Eastern bloc. Yeah.
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The 100m sprint is a particular favorite. Norway's Ezinne Okparaebo put in a brave performance in the semifinals:
The gold medal, however, went to the equally beautiful Carmelita Jeter.
She also came second in the 200m, and looked stunning throughout.
And, finally, anchored the US to a gold medal in the 4*100m relay.
In the 1500 metres, Norway's Ingvill Måkestad Bovim impressed us by coming in sixth and being cute.
The most impressive track performance, however, came from Russia's Maria Savinova, who beat South Africa's Caster Semenya for the gold medal in the 800m with a fantastic final sprint.
She was awesome. By the way, I have to admit that Caster Semenya does look kind of like a dude. However, that's absolutely no justification for the disgraceful way she was treated in the whole ridiculous gender controversy that arose in 2009. It was absolutely disgusting, and showed a total lack of respect for both her as an athlete and as a human being. I'm glad she's competing again. I'll have to get back to all this "gender testing" nonsense later, but for now, here's one more picture of Maria:
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In the heptathlon, our favorite Jessica Ennis ended up taking home a silver medal after, as the Finnish media put it, tripping over the javelin.
The gold went to Russia's Tatyana Chernova.
The women's javelin throw turned into an unbelievable event. South Africa's Sunette Viljoen took the bronze after setting an African record, and the gold medal was decided in the last round when Barbora Špotáková broke the championship record to take the lead, only for Maria Abakumova to beat her with a new Russian and championship record of 71.99m. Awesome.
I think I'm a fan.
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My favorite event, as always, is the pole vault. I'm a huge Yelena Isinbayeva fan, so it was a real shame to see her fall short of the medals in her comeback championships.
After all, she pretty much single-handedly took women's pole vaulting past the five meter mark. I believe she's still the only woman to ever have cleared 5m, but I don't know that for a fact. She's awesome.
At Daegu, though, Jelena only narrowly beat the gorgeously buff Jiřina Ptáčníková for sixth place.
The undeniably cute Silke Spiegelburg, who I previously dubbed the Emma Watson of the pole vault, also struggled to a ninth-place finish.
Our congratulations to the medalists: Brazil's Fabiana Murer, Russian veteran Svetlana Feofanova and Germany's Martina Strutz, who took home a silver medal after setting a German record with a jump of 4.80 meters.
Gold medalist Fabiana Murer is also the indoor world champion, but this is her first outdoor world champs medal.
I'm already looking forward to the pole vault at London!
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It was a heck of a championship, and I really enjoyed watching it. As a dedicated anti-patriot, I'd also like to point out that these were Finland's worst athletics world championships ever, with no medals and no points finishes.
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