Foster fumes as Cherono fast tracks way to financial reward

TV ViewThe BBC take a proprietorial view of athletics, tennis and the other sporting events they have not lost to rival commercial stations. The approach is occasionally twee but rarely less than comprehensive.

In the case of the start of this week's World Athletic Championships from Paris the BBC arrived match fit and well armoured with a typically full-on coverage. Svetlana Gnezdilov, Werknesh Kidane, Yvonne Buschbaum - your names will be pronounced correctly.

There are probably an infinite number of ways to screen an event that runs all day, has dozens of heats, unrecognisable names and multiple disciplines taking place simultaneously. For that the BBC provide their own world-class team, largely made up of former World and Olympic champions.

Sally Gunnell is stationed trackside to grab the athletes for soundbites when they come off the track; Steve Cram and Brendan Foster break down the lap times so you know half way through a race whether it is going to a sprint finish or a championship record.

The man with the golden shoes and the fastest 400-metre runner, America's Michael Johnson, dissects sprinters alongside former 110-metre hurdles champion Colin Jackson and former 400-metre champion Roger Black. That calibre of in crowd tends to ensure the Stade de France studio is a spoofer-free zone.

When Johnson says the USA's 100m diva Kelli White looks "in the right condition technically and mentally" for the gold medal, you put your house on it. When Gunnell observes that a hurdler is untidy in her straddling and lacks strength down the back straight, you strike her off your winners' list.

Foster, whose traditional fondness for Sonia O'Sullivan is more easily digestible than the obsequiousness of some Irish commentators, is never short of opinion. On day one he provided a possible solution to Ireland's problems with medal winning at big events.

Pointing to the two Cherono brothers taking part in the heats of the men's steeplechase, Foster was beside himself with rage.

"I feel strongly that this shouldn't happen. The rules governing this type of thing are a complete joke," he said before honourably pointing the finger at Britain. "But we mustn't forget we were the first ones to do it with Zola Budd, who was South African."

Abraham Cherono was racing for the country in which he was born, Kenya, while his brother Stephen was running for the Middle Eastern state of Qatar. Cherono had, over the course of a year, become thoroughly Arab and was now called Said Shaheen.

The point Foster was fulminating against was the rule that allows athletes who have not competed for their country for a year to declare for another country. The immensely talented Stephen Cherono saw the riches available to him if he were to run in a different vest so he switched allegiance to Qatar and became Shaheen. Shaheen will be permitted to run in next year's Olympic Games for Qatar.

"It means that you could assemble an athletics team once you had the money," said Foster, pointing to Roman Abramovich's expensive football team assembled at Chelsea. It would also be a lot cheaper to buy an athletics team, argued the former distance runner, driving home the absurdity of the rule.

An Irish shopping basket could include long-distance runners from Kenya, middle-distance runners from Morocco, shot putters from Lithuania and female sprinters from Russia. Male sprinters from the US might break the budget but in the name of Irish Olympic glory, sod the expense. Good thinking, Brendan.

The BBC were all over the stadium with angles and stories pushing along the more soporific television, the legions of heats for the sprint events. And the constant theme through it all and giving shape to the farrago of disciplines was the effort of Olympic gold medallist Denise Lewis in the heptathlon.

Critically, they didn't once ask the darling of British athletics about her coach Ekkart Arbeit, the former Stasi operator. The BBC don't do morality very well at World Championships unless it's spontaneous and clothed in outrage and directed at another country. They don't cross-examine their heroes for fear of poisoning the mood.

The debate around Lewis could have been not about her below-average performance in the heptathlon but the motive for taking on a reviled East German doctor who once organised state-sponsored athletes to take drugs without their knowledge.

Foster bravely tackled the Budd issue. Sticking a foot in the Lewis affair would have ensured BBC coverage was sharp as well as comprehensive.