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The sport of athletics provides its participants with many ups and
downs, but it could never be said to be cruel, although Mexican walker
Bernard Segura would probably dispute this statement after his
experience at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Segura had made a mark
for himself on the international walking scene well before his
misfortune in Sydney, having set a 20km world record on the track of 1hr
17min 25.5sec at Fana, Norway on 7 May 1994. He followed this with a
third place finish in the 20km at the 1995 World Race Walking Cup in
Beijing on 29 April 1995. On 11 May 1996, he recorded his career best
time over 20km on the road, when he finished 5th amongst a world-class
field at Eisenhuttenstadt in a time of 1hr 19min 5sec.
Later that year,
at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Bernardo won the bronze medal in the
20km walk. Segura's best year was 1999, when he won the 20km at the
World Cup on May 1 in Mezidon-Canon, and then won the Pan-American 20km
walk title at Winnipeg on 26 July. His only blemish was at the World
Championships in Seville where he failed to finish, repeating his result
from the 1995 Championships in Gothenburg. At the Sydney Olympic
Games, on 22 September 2000, Segura and Robert Korzeniowski (Poland)
were well below Olympic record pace when they entered the stadium, where
Segura (see photo above, at centre) just managed to hold off a
determined Korzeniowski to cross the line in first place. Not
unexpectedly, Segura started to celebrate wildly, completing a lap of
honour, and he was actually receiving a congratulatory telephone call
from Mexico's President, when the news was announced that he had been
disqualified, 15 minutes after he crossed the finish line. (Ron Casey)
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