Athletics: Time stands still on the field of dreams

By PETER CALDER

At last, only 13 hours shy of a week after the torch passed into Cathy Freeman's trembling hand, the Games that the ancient Greeks might have recognised had begun.

Stadium Australia wasn't full to capacity - it was, after all, meant to be a working morning for Sydneysiders - but empty seats were few and far between when, at 10 am, the track and field programme got under way.

Everywhere at the Olympics - even in the table-tennis hall, even at the poolside - they refer to the place of competition as the field of play.

But this was the real field, the stadium of contest where an original Olympian would have felt half-way at home. They had rolled up the faux red desert and the imitation tarmac of the opening ceremony. It was time for the first of the athletes - a record 2400 in 46 events - whose exertions rhyme perfectly with the Olympic motto: faster, higher and stronger.

An ancient contender, spirited by time machine from Athens, would have marvelled, as even modern eyes do, at the sparkling, polished modernity of it all. And he would certainly not have kept pace with the achievements of those who practise his ancient arts now. But he would have had a pretty fair idea of what was going on.

He would have known how to put a shot. He would have understood what the javelin throwers were up to, even if the equipment in use would have startled him with its perfectly balanced synthetic sleekness.

And he would have been able to take part without instruction in that most primeval of athletic endeavours - the one we learned way back when we decided as cave men that the sabre-toothed tiger was in better fighting form than we were: he would have known how to run.

Qualifying rounds in men's shot put and javelin, women's 800m, men's 400m and women and men's 100m took up the first session of competition and gave us the first glimpse of the stars getting ready to shine in Sydney.

And the crowd loved it. Loud applause moved in waves around the stadium as they passed on their way to starts or stretched their legs after the brief furious burst that was their morning's racing. Australians applauded their own most warmly, of course (although the local rallying cry "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oy, oy, oy" which has worn out its welcome with even the most well-disposed visitor, was mercifully rare) but they went mad when the javelin landed beyond the blue line set at 83m which marked certain qualification and they erupted when the big names - Bailey, Greene, Boldon, Jones, Ottey - scorched along the track in the warm morning air.

The first heats for two of track's glamour events make for an odd kind of theatre. A place in the first three guarantees a promotion to the next round but the big hitters judge it finely. They hold back - partly out of a desire to conserve energy for when it matters, but also because, now that competition has actually begun, showing all your cards is bad form. Moderate achievement and modesty become tactical weapons.

Trinidadian fast man Ato Boldon, the quickest qualifier for the 100m in 10.04s, was pouring it on, but made quite a show of coasting the last few metres.

"I wanted to win my heat," he said, but immediately talked himself down by adding that he had felt he was the worst in his group during warmup.

As some Olympic dreams were taking shape in the stadium, others were falling apart. Fernando Arlete, of Guinea Bissau, running in heat 3, pulled up lame after 70m and collapsed in evident agony. It seemed an age until anyone came to his aid. He crossed the finish line in a wheelchair.

By a late lunch the first track and field medals had been decided - in the men's 20km walk. Now that's an event that might have puzzled our Athenian visitor. He may have laughed outright, as we have trained ourselves not to do, at the walkers' comical gait, arms pumping, pelvis rolling, legs bowing as they push the ground back underneath them.

The 48 walkers covered five laps of the track in a tight pack before heading out on to the course. Yet before they had even left the stadium, Frenchman Anthony Gillet was in last, lonely place almost 50m behind the rest. It earned him his own roar from the crowd as he went into the tunnel, though it must have stung as much as it cheered him.

Less than 80 minutes later, the leaders were back. After 20 long kilometres, only four seconds separated the eventual winner (after a disqualification) Robert Korzeniowski of Poland, from the runner-up, Mexico's Noe Hernandez.

And life was looking up for M. Gillet. He had rolled and pumped and pushed his way up to 33rd of the 44 who finished. It gladdened the heart and underlined the fact that we should all know by now - this is the Olympics, the improbable occurs often.