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World Athletics Championships Day Eight: Beware or Believe?

Athletics RSS / / 02 September 2011 /

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Chicherova: needs to prove her 2.07m was no fluke

Chicherova: needs to prove her 2.07m was no fluke

"Given that Chicherova has always found at least one too good when competing for international titles, and given that she’s been beaten already this year by two of those she will face here, she’s an odds-on shot to be against."

Athletics championships pose punters a problem. With a plethora of short-priced favourites, it's always hard to separate the genuine sporting titan from the overhyped chancer. During the nine days of World Championship action in Daegu, Jack Houghton tells us which skinny ones to believe in, and which to beware of.

Women's High Jump - Anna Chicherova - Beware
Given the nervy nature of the discipline, if I were forced to back a high jumper at odds-on in a major championship, I would want to know that they had a proven track record of delivering when the pressure was at its highest, and that they had consistently dominated their competitors in recent events. Given that Chicherova has always found at least one too good when competing for international titles, and given that she's been beaten already this year by two of those she will face here, she's an odds-on shot to be against. Chicherova is favourite in Daegu on the back of one jump of 2.07 in the Russian Championships this July, which put her joint-third on the women's high jump all-time list. It's worth noting though that, prior to that monster jump, the last time she went higher than 2.00m was in 2008, making her world leading height of this season seem incongruous against her career record. There are any number of athletes who could take this title on the day - chief among them Vlasic, Di Martino and Shkolina - and so a straightforward lay of Chicherova seems the best strategy.

Men's 1500m - Silas Kiplagat - Believe and Beware
I believe in Silas Kiplagat in much the same way that Pascal believed in God: in the unlikely event that the Commonwealth champion and I should ever meet, he will be able to accept me as a friend; but deep down I will always know that I had my reservations. The 22-year-old is undoubtedly incredibly talented - he's already the tenth-fastest athlete in history - but he is also inexperienced at major championships, where slowly run races can cause problems for those not used to it. Kiplagat managed to extricate himself from a last-lap, back-straight tussle on his way to winning a slowly run Commonwealth final last October, showing lots of fight in the process; but I can't help thinking that he shouldn't have got himself in to that position in the first place and, whilst I want him to demonstrate his talent on the international stage, I'm not sure I can back him to do so at the price.

Recommendations:
4pts lay of Anna Chicherova at [1.50] in women's high jump.
Cheer for Silas Kiplagat. He may be a new middle-distance sensation to back in the future.

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