40 years of Jarmila's record in 800 meters, the unbeatable mark

40th anniversary of the oldest record in athletics. On July 26, 1983, the Czechoslovakian Jarmila Kratochvilova ran the 800 meters in 1:53.28 in Munich.

Jarmila was above all a formidable 400 meter runner. At the Moscow Olympics in 1980, she had obtained silver behind an unattainable Marita Koch, the most outstanding representative of the powerful female athletics of the German Democratic Republic.. He also bowed to Koch in the 1982 European Championship, held in Athens. The German, with 48.16, beat her own world record (48.60), while the Czech performed 48.85. In her indisputable relevance, Kratochvilova was something of a second runner-up to Koch's blue-and-white shadow.

But that July 26, 1983, a few days before the first World Championship, to be held in Helsinki, it was tested in Munich in the 800. I had reason to think of a great record. She was a fast and resistant athlete, capable of running the 100 meters in just over 11 seconds and the 200 in just under 22.. But the attempt ended with an exceptional mark. Until today immutable.

The success encouraged her to participate in Helsinki in the 400 and 800. And in the Finnish capital he rounded off his career with gold in both tests. And, in addition, with the world record of the 400. Her 47.99 made her the first woman to drop below 48 seconds. It is still the second best mark of all time, because Marita Koch, in Canberra, in 1985, would perform, 47.60. Another record that stands.

Controversy and controversy always accompanied Kratochvilova. Heavily muscled and “unladylike” looking, she embodied more than any other athlete, and certainly more than any other woman, the “triumph of doping” in the “kingdom of hormones and anabolic drugs.”. Another characteristic of the Cold War, when the socialist countries, led by the USSR and the GDR, made sport a reason for international prestige and the “demonstration” of the ideological superiority of one system over the other.. On a planet of warring blocs, anything counted, everything added up propagandistically.

Jarmila in a file photo.

The debate about the possibility, of the ethical obligation to annul this and other primates, has always been a sterile effort.. Be that as it may, not a few of them survive there. Kratochvilova's is not even threatened. His 1:53.28 surpassed at the time the 1:53.43 that the Soviet (Ukrainian) Nadezhda Olizarenko had set at the Moscow Games on July 27, 1980. Tomorrow it will be 43 years.

Both records have not been improved by subsequent generations. Kenyan Pamela Jelimo stopped in 1:54.01 in 2008. The South African Caster Semenya, in the current legal fight to return to compete in the women's field despite her excessive testosterone levels, in 1:54.25 in 2016. The Cuban Ana Fidelia Quirot, in 1:54.44 in 1989, etc.

The boycott of the Soviet Union and its allies at the Los Angeles Games in 1984 prevented Kratochvilova from being an Olympic champion.. And Jarmila retired after the World Cup in Rome, in 1987, being fifth with 1:57.81. Since then, many things have happened, including the disappearance of the USSR, East Germany and Czechoslovakia as geopolitical constructs.. The world back then no longer exists. Records, yes, as an archaeological vestige of an extinct reality.