Blue as an orange

Saturday was the day off, so Stefan Back and I (Peter Ventura) took the chance to experience the Championships in the shadow of ours, the 9th edition of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, which began at the Stade de France, Paris, on 23 August and are set to be the biggest ever.

9th World Athletics Championships - Opening Ceremony

Stefan tried to get rid of me immediately, when he jumped into the metro leaving me behind! Very rude, but what to expect from a German. Though he thought the situation over again and came back with the next train. The Opening Ceremony at Stade de France started at 2 pm so we had time in the morning to visit Notre Dame. Yes, the German and the Swede climbed all the stairs to reach the very top!

After a Golden Menu at McDonalds we were ready for the stadium. Ah, the joys of an opening ceremony - two hours of needless employment for some of the least-talented entertainers a country can produce.

The Parisians, never ones to want to appear unfashionable, went for the usual combination of high camp and costumes from the sick subconscious of a deranged designer. Their one nod at unorthodoxy came with the timing of the ceremony - after the heats of several events.

They formed sinuous shapes on the infield, shapes that were meaningless from the stands but to passing seagulls or hovering television helicopters gradually became outlines of sportsmen in various poses. To gasps of wonder from the easily-impressed locals, the stars then broke away, jogged around a bit and reformed to make a giant map of the world.

All very nice - except there were some glaring geographical errors on display. There was Tasmania alright, a single star adrift off the south coast of Australia. But where was New Zealand?

More to the point, where was Britain? In fact Europe was a mess. If Tasmania’s World Championship pedigree is poor but it was worthy of inclusion, why was Britain - home of such athletics greats as Linford Christie, Steve Cram and, erm, Carl Myerscough - not even on the map? It was hard not to suspect that the French were using the cover of the Opening Ceremony to cock a snook at their old rivals. Not that the map was without purpose. As athletes from various countries paraded round the track, they were shuttled off to stand inside the appropriate continents. A lovely notion, you thought - until you realised with a jolt that, in the heat of battle, several countries' athletes were being sent to the wrong continent.

Surely that wasn't the Germans heading for East Africa? This was a political disaster! And where were most of the South Africans going? London? At least that made sense. The Bulgarian athletes were completely forgotten. The introduction of countries just kept on going letter by letter so somewhere between letter E and H Bulgaria just walked into some of the continents without any attention. I wonder what all the Bulgarians back home thought when they did not even get a glimpse of their medal hopes on TV.

	Carolina Kluft

At the heart of every decent Opening Ceremony should lie a pretentious message, one ideally bringing together vague elements of spiritualism and bad poetry. Much to the cynics' delight, Jean Dussourd, president of the Paris 2003 organising committee, dived in without a second thought.

“The Earth is blue like an orange - never an error, words never lie”, wrote Paul Eluard," quoted the bespectacled Dussord. "Those words do not lie either, and make a fitting prelude to this ceremony and the sporting exploits to come."

Hard to argue with, except on the basis that oranges are one of the least blue things in the entire world - but never mind.

In the competitions Sweden’s Carolina Kluft, the European champion had a remarkable first day setting personal bests in all four disciplines of the women’s Heptathlon -13.18 sec Hurdles; 1.94m High Jump; 14.19m Shot ; 22.98 sec 200m - and looks set to deny France’s 1999 World champion Eunice Barber any chance of golden glory on home turf.

In company with Marc van Beijsterveldt we hold out until the very end, i.e. seeing all Berhane Adere’s 25 laps before crossing the line to win the World Championship 10,000 metres in the third fastest time ever.

We close this report giving some gossip: one of the men of the law in this Championship – Tournament Director Marc van Beijsterveldt – when we left from Stade de France revealed himself as a cheater when he jumped over the turnstile at the train station! I wonder what law he broke.

A three course dinner at a restaurant close to Sacre Coeur was the end of this breathtaking day, just enough to get the last metro from La Defence.