Track’s Aging Elite Feel Heat World Championships Give Many A Chance For Last Hurrah

For some of track and field’s biggest stars, the World Championships could be a case of going, going, gone.

The thirtysomething crowd of Carl Lewis, Linford Christie, Sergei Bubka, Merlene Ottey and Jackie Joyner-Kersee has been mostly permanent fixtures since the World Championships started in 1983.

Christie, a grandfather, already has announced his retirement after the championships, which begin today.

Others have shown the burden of age and lost their halo of invincibility. Two years before the next championships in Athens might be too big a gap to bridge.

Lewis, 34, the most successful athlete at the world championships with eight gold medals and 10 overall in four editions, is limping towards Goteborg on a sore left hamstring in one of his worst seasons.

“He intends to compete but we’ll take it one event at a time,” U.S. coach Harry Groves said. He is considered an outsider in the long jump event behind Cuban Ivan Pedroso and Mike Powell.

But there could be a record 11th medal if Lewis is fit enough to run the 400 relay on the final day.

That could provide a final clash with Britain’s Christie.

The defending 100-meter champion and reigning Olympic champion has said he will retire at the end of the year after a lackluster start to the season marred by several losses.

“Goteborg will be my last major championship,” said Christie, 35, happy to be finally relieved from the pressure of the British media. He still has a realistic chance for gold in the 100 even though his time is only the fifth fastest this year.

Ottey, 35, will also go for gold in the sprint events. The Jamaican is tied with Lewis as the most decorated athlete at the World Championships.

But only two of her 10 medals have been gold. This year, however, she is fastest so far in the 100 and third in the 200.

Joyner-Kersee has four medals, but they are all gold, a feat unmatched in the women’s competition.

But her form has been lacking. Struggling with injury, she has not jumped well and is coming off her worst heptathlon performance in 11 years.

She has long said this will be her last World Championships and she will quit after the Games in Atlanta next year when she will be 34.

Bubka is going for the most amazing feat of all, five straight world championship gold medals. But the 31-year-old Ukrainian, who has reigned over the pole vault for a dozen years, is under threat.

After setting 35 world records with amazing regularity, he has hit a dry spell the past year. And even his No. 1 status is being challenged.

Okkert Brits dominated the early season and Bubka only restored a semblance of order in Sestriere last week, edging the South African in a high-level competition in which both cleared 6 meters.