On Athletics: Not everything totally clear at Baku’s Crystal Hall

Some sporting venues have to be seen to be believed. Others are simply unbelievable. And then there’s Crystal Hall. It appears like something of a mirage in Baku, in more ways than one – on a peninsula, all to itself, sitting just off the city’s heaving density in the splendid calmness of the Caspian Sea. Not for the first time this week I can’t believe this is Azerbaijan.

Strictly speaking it’s not even a sporting venue – although it is now: built for Baku’s staging of the Eurovision Song Contest, in 2012, it’s 25,000 seats have been divided up to stage five events at these European Games (Boxing, fencing, karate, taekwondo and volleyball, although not all at the same time.).

If, like me, you don’t remember much about that Eurovision Song Contest, it was another of Azerbaijan’s great introductory parties to Europe. Completed in just eight months, at a cost of €120 million, Crystal Hall had to stand out and it does, the exterior facade layered in sheets of shiny steel intended to resemble neatly cut crystal. Originally designed to be a temporary facility, Baku quickly realised they’d created a modern masterpiece, so they poured in a lot more concrete and cancelled the demolition crew.

Of course this was too bad for the hundreds of residents forcibly evicted from in and around the peninsula itself, although you won’t hear their voices around here these days.

Unbelieveable effort

There’s no doubt that Baku is making an unbelievable effort to ensure these games run as smoothly and peacefully as possible, in every sense. When even the media shuttle buses are given a police escort to each of the venues it’s clear they’re leaving nothing to chance on that front.

The security is certainly tight, although not when it comes to its budget. There must be dozens of guards at each media entrance point, and they’re extremely efficient. If it wasn’t for the very slight delay entering Crystal Hall yesterday morning the warning sign of “No Demonstration Material” could have been easily missed, just under the usual warning of “No Liquids” and “No Explosives”.

That doesn't mean there aren't other ways to demonstrate. In the bout immediately after our own Brendan Irvine defeated Tinko Banabakov from Bulgaria, David Alaverdian from Israel faced the Armenian fighter Artyom Aleksanyan, also at light flyweight, and all hell broke loose. Now, Azerbaijan may not be best friends with Israel, but they definitely hate Armenia, so every time Alaverdian landed a punch on Aleksanyan, everyone inside the boxing arena roared in approval.

This is easily explained by the fact Azerbaijan and Armenia are technically still at war, and literally were, too – from 1918 to 1921 and again from 1988 to 1994 – due to the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Things are more peaceful now, although Azerbaijan still claims ownership of this landlocked region, about 200km southwest of Baku, even though the population is 95 per cent Armenian. It’s a bitter dispute, with no end in sight, and currently no one from Armenia is allowed enter Azerbaijan. If they come in from the Nagorno-Karabakh region they’re likely to be jailed.

They've made an exception for these games – thanks in part to the insistence of Pat Hickey, president of the European Olympic Committee, that all eligible nations be allowed compete.

Anyway, back to the sport. What Crystal Hall is also likely to stage is the first Irish medal presentation of these games, unless someone else gets in there first. Everything about the style and substance of the Irish boxers on the opening few days of competition suggests they will win medals, and that's before Katie Taylor has stepped into the ring. It's just not entirely clear yet what those medals will represent in the greater scheme of sporting achievement.

That’s because one of the problems with these European Games is that the medals mean different things to the different events. In the swimming, for example, they only represent a junior achievement, given that’s their level of competition. In athletics, the medals here only represent a division four of a league team championships (And indeed any Irish medals won at the division two championships, in Crete this weekend, are actually a higher achievement.).

So for now at least, they're a long way off the sense of achievement that comes with winning an Olympic medal and there was a touching reminder of that, this week, with the passing of Australia distance runner Ron Clarke, aged 78.

Clarke never won Olympic gold, although not through lack of effort. In 1964, he finished third in a 10,000m, then placed ninth over the 5,000m and marathon. Four years later, in the high altitude of Mexico City, he was fifth in the 5,000m and sixth in the 10,000m.

World records

This was the same athlete who in 1965 set 12 world records in 44 days, his many admirers including the great Czechoslovakian distance runner,

Emil Zatopek

. Not long after Clarke’s disappointment in Mexico, Zatopek invited Clarke to Prague, then just before his departure, handed him a small package. “Look after this, you deserve it,” he said, and shortly after take-off, Clarke opened the package to find Zatopek’s 10,000m gold from 1952, with an added inscription: To Ron Clarke. “No one cherishes any gift more than I do, my only Olympic gold medal,” Clarke later said, “and not because of what it is, but because of the man whose spirit it represents.”

It shouldn’t be too long now until Ireland wins its first gold medal at these European Games, although it’s too early to tell what sense of achievement should come with that, or indeed the spirit it represents.