Looking back at the Tokyo 1991 world championships a couple of years ago, I wrote that If I had to pick one abiding memory it would be the humidity which descended on your shoulders like a heavy cloak the moment you stepped outside.
As we return to Tokyo 34 years later, timing of the championships – 13-21 September this time versus 23 August-1 September back then – will offer less extreme heat and humidity. Really? It’s just three weeks. Maybe this time the humidity will be more overcoat than heavy cloak?
Anyway, Tokyo will now join Helsinki, host of the inaugural world championships back in 1983 and the tenth in 2005, in having staged the championships twice. And just as Helsinki’s summer offered the same atmospheric conditions both times – clear blue skies and sunshine broken midway by an apocalyptic mid-summer storm – you would be wise to plan on same, same when it comes to Tokyo’s weather.
And if it’s same, same when it comes to the athletics, too, fans will have little to complain about. Australian supporters might want at least one thing to change: despite the advantage of geographical proximity, Tokyo91 was the first world championships from which Australia failed to take home a single medal. Despite a couple of high-profile absentees, we should do better second-time around.
Like its first, Tokyo’s second world championships will be staged at the Japan National Stadium. The venue hosted the 1964 Olympic Games and was not much changed in 1991. Similarly, the 2025 version of the national stadium is not much changed from the 2020 Olympics, but a complete remodelling took place for those Games.
The 1991 world championships were promoted, if not built, around Carl Lewis. Four gold medals (100 metres, 200 and long jump individually, plus the 4×100 relay) in Los Angeles in 1984, another two (100/long jump) in Seoul in 1988, numerous world championships golds had made him the best-known athlete on the planet. Lewis – or his management people – had made a significant push into the Japanese market, too, through sponsorship deals with Mizuno, Pocari Sweat (a sports drink) and others. You couldn’t ride the metro without coming face-to-face with advertising posters featuring King Carl.
Performance-wise was another thing. Lewis seemed in relative decline. He lost the USA 100 metres title that year to his Santa Monica Track Club teammate Leroy Burrell who subsequently succeeded him as world record holder too. He remained undisputed master of the long jump but his performances there were a little less majestic.
Come Tokyo, however, it was another matter. You can’t win the 100 metres in the second round but Lewis gave a hint of what was to come when he won his heat in a wind-aided 9.80. In the following day’s final, he beat Burrell and reclaimed the world record in 9.86. Six men ran under 10 seconds in what was proclaimed the greatest 100 ever.
Lewis’s last 20 metres proved irresistible. “Carl’s attribute is his ability to stay relaxed at the end and maintain speed,” his coach Tom Tellez said. The defeated Burrell was more to the point: “He just takes a deep breath, relaxes his jaw and everything else, and carries his momentum across the finish.
“He’s been doing it for 10 years,” Leroy added.
Lewis was almost as great in the long jump. Mike Powell was simply greater. For almost a decade Lewis had been pursuing Bob Beamon’s world record 8.90 metres set at high altitude in winning at the Mexico City Olympics. He got it in Tokyo, sort of. His last four jumps of the final were 8.83, 8.91 (both windy), 8.87 and 8.84 (both legal). But Powell ruined it all with an 8.95 fifth-round winner.
The loss broke a 65-competition winning streak for Lewis. Lewis and Beamon both beaten in a day. What more could Powell do?
Normal service was resumed in the relay where the Lewis-anchored US quartet won with a world record 37.50. Despite the defeat at the hands of Mike Powell, Tokyo was very much the restoration of King Carl.
It took a whole squadron of Kenyans to create a similar impact on the men’s track distances. The emerging superstar Noureddine Morceli took out the men’s 1500 for Algeria but everything else from 800 to 10,000 went the way of a Kenyan. Billy Konchellah repeated as 800 champion, Yobes Ondieki simply ran away with the 5000, Moses Kiptanui the steeple and Moses Tanui, a cornerstone of Kenya’s track and cross-country teams through the 1990s, won the 10,000.
Cordner Nelson, one of the two brothers who founded Track & Field News, wrote lucidly: “Out of Africa they came, running with swift light strides and awesome endurance.”
The weather was a determining factor in both marathons. The humidity levels produced overcast conditions most days but the marathons – run on the two Sundays – took place under clear, sunny skies. Both were won by tough runners, “tough as an old boot,” as some of our mothers were wont to say.
Wanda Panfil of Poland took out the women’s race in which the biggest story was the ‘dnf’ of reigning Olympic and (three-time) European champion Rosa Mota. Panfil won by just four seconds from local favourite Sachiko Yamashita, 2:29:53 to 2:29:57. Germany’s Katrin Dorre, third in 2:30:10, put it simply, and accurately: “the sun was against all of us.”
And it only got sunnier for the men’s race a week later, just two days after the tail-end of a cyclone had blown all the clouds away. Steve Moneghetti started favourite. He probably did himself no favours by taking on the aggressor’s role in the leading pack. He finished eleventh. The winner, to huge local acclaim, was Hiromi Taniguchi. The time – 2:14:57 – wouldn’t impress anyone in the shoe era, but this day, with its 26 degrees and 73 percent humidity at the 6am start, was no normal day. Not even for championship marathons.
Finally, in the ‘old boot’ category was Liz McColgan. The dour Scot was in danger of ending her career as an aggressive front-runner who was inevitably blown away by superior finishers. But in the low-pressure cauldron of Japan National Stadium as we waited for the typhoon to break, McColgan found the perfect occasion for the toughest of runners to thrive.
Not surprisingly, she led from the start. More surprisingly, she still led when Derartu Tulu mounted a challenge with 3000 to run. Amazingly, she pulled decisively clear a little later, winning by over 20 seconds in 31:14.31.
“I was waiting for someone to pass me, but nobody did.” Not this time, Liz. Not this time.
Tokyo91 set a high standard for Tokyo25. If these championships can live up to their predecessor we have a lot to look forward to.