This 1985 Track and Field World Championship Competition was the 4th IAAF World Cup in Athletics….which was an international track and field sporting event sponsored by the International Association of Athletics Federations….and was held on October 4 – 6, 1985, at the Bruce Stadium in Canberra, Australia.
This event was lelecasted live on ABC’s Wide World of Sports and featured Jim Lampley and Marty Liquori as the sportscasters….which leads off with the womens 100m dash….in which East Germany’s Mariles Gohr garnerd 1st place with a time of 11.1 seconds…..as Jamaica Grace Jackson took 2nd place at 11.31 seconds….with Soviet Union’s Marina Zhirova capturing 3rd at 11.31 seconds.
Next came the womens 4 x 400m relay….which East Germany won gold with a time of 3:19.49….as the Soviet Union took silver with a time of 3:20.99…..and Europe came in 3rd with a time of 3:28.47. This was followed by the womens 800m race….wherein Christine Wachtel of East Germany was the winner in a time of 2:01.57….as legendary Czech runner Jamila Kratochvilova captured 2nd in a time of 2:01.99 at the ripe young age of 36 years old….and the Soviet Union’s Nadezhda Olizarenko took 3rd with a time of 2:02.1.
ABC’s Lampley and Liquori then turn their attention to the mens 110m hurdles….and the comeback story of USA Tonie Campbell after a devastating injury the year prior….when he destroys the field in the finals to win the event in a time of 13.35 seconds….as Sergey Usov of the Soviet Union grabbed silver in a 13.62 seconds…..and Jorg Naumann of East Germany took bronze with a time of 13.76 seconds.
The final track event covered in this video was the mens 800m….which was won by Sammy Koskei of Kenya in the time of 1:45.14…..with Viktor Kalinkin of the Soviet Union capturing 2nd with a time of 1:45.72…..followed in 3rd place by Agberto Guimaraes of Brazil with a time of 1:45.80.
It is important to point out that this was a time in the universe of global track and field competition that many of the Eastern Bloc countries like East Germany and the USSR were already into performance enhancing drugs and steroids….which was long before the Western Bloc countries had moved into that direction…..as many pundits believed this gave the East Germans and Russians a significant edge over the rest of the world….which makes this video a piece of significant history of the start of the PEDS generation that flourished throughout the world by the time of the turn of the Century.
