How good were the 12th IAAF World Championships?
Very, very good. Looking back to all the others I’ve competed in and watched, Berlin is right up there. The first Worlds in Helsinki were special for the number of world records broken and the context, in an era of Olympic boycotts, and 1993 in Stuttgart was a fantastic championships, but the last nine days are without doubt are the best in the last 16 years. You need the combination of great atmosphere and big crowds that we’ve had here, but primarily you need good athletics – you need your big-name favourites to deliver on their talent and break records, and you also need surprise results to add to the mix. We’ve had all that and more in Berlin. The big names like Usain Bolt and Kenenisa Bekele produced wonderful performances across the board. There were the unpredictable defeats for Yelena Isinbayeva, Dayron Robles and Meseret Defar, and great stories like Steve Hooker winning the pole vault despite a leg injury. Hooker’s achievement was remarkable. He was playing a game of poker wi
