Heptathlon: Fun and Games for Kluft

By DAVID LEGGAT

The Olympic track and field programme kicks off at the main stadium tonight and watch for one woman to dominate the first two days.

Swedish allrounder Carolina Kluft is the hottest of favourites for the heptathlon, the women's equivalent of the men's 10-event decathlon.

The heptathlon, seven events spread over two days, has drawn 40 entries, but pencil it in as Kluft versus The Rest. She is that good.

Only three women have ever accumulated more than 7000 points in a heptathlon, the now-retired double Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee of the US, who did it six times, Russian Larisa Turchinskaya in 1989 and the 21-year-old blonde from the small southern town of Vaxjo, which also produced tennis aces Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg.

Consider that none of the Games field is within 400 points of Kluft this season. She has the two highest totals of the year. Russian Svetlana Sokolova is next best with a 6591. Kluft is almost 200 points clear of another Russian, Yelena Prokhorova, in the world rankings.

But it is Kluft's personality, allied to her talents, which are her point of difference in the athletic arena. To put it bluntly, she's a touch wacky.

During her events she pulls faces at the camera, does funny walks and generally behaves like someone several years younger.

She's not arrogant. Far from it. Rather she insists she just wants to enjoy herself.

She takes a small stuffed toy, Eeyore, with her to events "not because I think he gives me good luck but because he reminds me this is for fun".

Two years ago, Kluft signalled her promise by winning a second world junior title in Jamaica with a world record points haul. A few weeks later she landed the senior European title, beating Britain's Sydney Olympic champion, Denise Lewis, in the process.

Last year she cleaned up at the world championships in Paris, where she bagged 7001 points.

To achieve that mark, she had to produce personal bests in four events. Joyner-Kersee's world mark is 7291 points, set at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Kluft has it in her sights, but don't mistake her for a single-minded, driven athlete with nothing in her life but total domination of her sporting field.

"When I am competing I don't think about the world record or even winning a medal," she said.

"That's not why I do this. I do it because I enjoy it.

"If I don't beat the world record I will not keep going until I beat it.

"I don't feel like the world is going to end if Carolina Kluft does not succeed in the Olympics. I think the world has bigger problems to worry about. If I don't succeed I will be deeply disappointed. But life goes on."

Consider this is a woman who spurned the chance for a potential US$100,000 ($150,000) payday at an athletics meeting in Monte Carlo last September to be with a child she has sponsored in Kenya.

Her parents, Ingalill and Johnny, were respectively a leading long jumper in the 1960s and a professional soccer player. She lives with Swedish pole vaulter Patrik Kristiansson and one of her three siblings, 19-year-old Sofia, is a Swedish junior international at the heptathlon, long jump and hurdles.

Kluft will also contest the long jump in Athens. Five competitors, led by controversial American Marion Jones, have superior best marks this year to her 6.97m. But she's right in the hunt for a second medal.

Don't be surprised to see Kluft cheering for her rivals over the next two days. She can't understand why that would seem odd.

"It feels natural for me to cheer for my competitors, because we compete with each other - not against each other.

"If they succeed then they will inspire me to succeed."

She will be a popular champion here. The mix of considerable skill plus engaging, if slightly loopy persona, is a winning one.

As she puts it, the Olympics "is a big adventure for me".

INSIDE TRACK

Name: Carolina Kluft.

Born: Boras, Sweden, February 2, 1983.

Height: 1.78m.

Weight: 64kg.

Olympic events: Heptathlon and long jump.

Titles: World junior heptathlon champion 2000 and 2002; European champion 2002; world champion 2003.

Milestone: Just the third woman to have scored more than 7000 points, accumulating 7001 at the world championships in Paris last year.

The heptathlon: 100m hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200m, long jump, javelin and ends with the 800m.