Seoul sister Mutola brings us tracking back the years

OLYMPIC TV VIEW:Seeing Maria on screen was one of the high points of these Games.

INEVITABLY EXCITEMENT and surprise are part and parcel of Olympic track issues. But those notions didn't prepare us for the unmistakable figure of Maria Mutola qualifying for the next round of the 800 metres yesterday. Long before her training partner Britain's Kelly Holmes won her two gold medals and retired, Mutola was running records and collecting medals.

She ran in the Seoul Olympics in 1988, for goodness sake, and there she was again in Beijing winning her heat in about two seconds under two minutes, which, we were told by Eurosport, is a very respectable time.

Mutola is still running when others of almost 36 years old have taken refuge behind the microphone. Seeing her in spikes was a little like seeing Steve Redgrave gearing up for the heavyweight four rather than at lakeside as a BBC analyst.

Redgrave's knowledge of rowing is bettered by none but like many drawn in to serve the Olympic monster, he is unpolished as a broadcaster and occasionally unguarded. That's what makes him interesting.

Steve, like RTÉ's rowing analyst Neville Maxwell and swimming analyst Gary O'Toole, still thinks like a sportsmen rather than a performing pony. He and they tend not to stray too far away from straight talking.

Yesterday that became apparent after the Irish failed to qualify for the final in the lightweight fours and the performance was put under the microscope. One of the exotic fruits from the Olympic tree is that sports never seen on television between Games are analysed to death in the same way rugby, soccer and Gaelic games are every week.

Maxwell was first asked to peer into his crystal ball before the race began.

"What's going to happen is the Danish crew will go off. The French will go with them. The British will go with them. What's important is that by the halfway stage the Irish haven't dropped out of the system," said the former Olympian.

So it was. One Denmark, two France, three GB - and Ireland falling out the back.

"They didn't have a good row," said Maxwell dispassionately, who place fourth at the 1996 Games.

"It looked very flat out there. The race went wrong for them and unfortunately it's the biggest race they could have been in.

"The Irish guys looked sluggish. Maybe it was tension. That can sap your energy. They should not have been way back there where they were. The B final is the last place they want to be. I know they just want to walk off."

Pressure, the enemy of every competitive athlete, can do anyone down and the Chinese are under more pressure than most despite the protests that they are not counting medals.

"If you don't win a gold medal you are off to the mines," offered Maxwell. Grins all round in the studio. And what can these four do next?

"Gearóid (Towey) might row across the Atlantic again," he added, lightening the mood.

Redgrave was taking no prisoners either. While Maxwell's remark was a throwaway, Redgrave's establishment status did not prevent him taking a pot shot at the Chinese police when it emerged it took the Germans an hour and a half through Beijing traffic to get out to the rowing venue from their city base.

"They were given a police escort the other day," snorted Redgrave in disbelief. "But the bus ended up going slower."

Pesky traffic lights and speed limits.

There was a great deal of action at the rowing venue, not least of all reaction to one of the Dutch crew holding up a string of weed before the start of the women's lightweight double sculls.

The organisers immediately stopped proceedings and despatched a swimmer into the lake to check the underside of the boat for any other extraneous matter.

It was seen by all as a very welcome step forward from the previous day, when another boat had a similar problem.

The difference was that on the first day the overly enthusiastic volunteer who dived into the water couldn't swim and had to be rescued in an episode we were told was "quite frightening to watch". It was captured on camera so eyes peeled to You Tube for a drowning Chinese at the Olympic rowing venue.

There appear to be people out there who would like to throw Bernard Lagat into the lake. The middle-distance runner arrived in Beijing just recently and gave his first press conference yesterday.

Lagat, who won the 1,500 metres and 5,000 metres at last year's World Championships in Osaka, was a Kenyan at the time of the Athens Games but in Beijing he is an American. That switch has not gone down well.

"I'm proud of American culture," he protested. "I'm proud of the American revolution in middle-distance running. I understand other people's frustrations when they see the American flag being raised and not the Kenyan flag."

Doubtlessly Lagat was attracted to the US because of its rich culture and love of middle-distance running.

Doubtless too he was offered no financial or other inducement to repair what is quite a sizeable hole in America's 1,500-metre history. They have not won a medal over that distance since the 1908 London Games.

And Mutola? Yes, she's still with Mozambique.