Episode 23: The World Athletics Championships - Every Second, SUGOI

"It feels good to be one of the greatest sprinters. You can’t explain what it feels like to get up in the morning knowing you’re one of the best ever."

Usain St. Leo Bolt, 11-time World Championship Gold Medallist and Men's 100m World Record Holder

It’s easy to be cynical about athletics, as you watch human beings push the boundaries of what should be possible. The World Athletics Championships have always been a stage for both the sublime and the suspect - moments of breathtaking performance, shadowed by questions of fairness, corruption, and doping. And when the organisers themselves - once the IAAF, now World Athletics - can’t always be trusted with the integrity of the sport, does the competition we lay our eyes upon truly deserve our awe and respect?

Here, enjoyment and doubt spring from the same place - sugoi, the extraordinary. When what you witness defies description, it can also defy belief. But if we allow ourselves to be lost only in doubt, we risk denying the joy of the extraordinary - the joy of watching legend unfold in front of us.

When Mike Powell broke an unbreakable record to defeat Carl Lewis in Tokyo, 1991 - that was incredible. When Jonathan Edwards hopped, stepped and jumped his way to Gothenburg glory in 1995 - that was astonishing. When Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce swept every sprint gold in 2013 - that was sensational. And when Usain Bolt shattered his own world record on the blue track of Berlin in 2009 - that was legendary.

The World Athletics Championships doesn’t do ordinary. One way or another, it always delivers. So join us for this week’s Sporting Almanac as we explore the good, the bad, and the downright beautiful, as athletics takes centre stage.