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tv   Michael Johnson  BBC News  August 6, 2017 12:30am-1:01am BST

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this is bbc news. the headlines: the un security council has voted unanimously to impose tough new sanctions against north korea. the resolution was drafted by the us and is a response to two long—range ballistic missile tests last month. venezuela's new constituent assembly has sacked the country's chief prosecutor, luisa ortega, is an outspoken government critic. earlier, her office was surrounded by the military. he may be the greatest—ever sprinter, but usain bolt has been beaten in his last individual 100—metre race before he retires. the eight—time olympic champion came third at the world athletics championships. italian police are investigating the kidnapping of a british model in milan. detectives say she was drugged and held captive. attempts were made to sell her on the internet. a polish man has been arrested. now on bbc news, as the london 2017 world athletics championships are taking place, the four—time olympic champion, michaeljohnson, looks back on london 2012.
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this summer, the greatest athletes on the planet will return to the scene of the 2012 olympics as they compete to be crowned world champions. london has been here before. and is well versed on how to rise to the occasion. five years have passed since london 2012. but the memory of those golden moments shines brightly still. it was britain's most successful olympics for more than a century. day after day of trial is almost blurring into one. above all others, one saturday would come to be remembered. jessica ennis won heptathlon gold. greg rutherford won gold in the long jump and mo farah won 10,000 metres gold, all in the space of 44 minutes. every games needs a home medal at its olympic stadium to give it life, a night to remember it by.
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this was that defining moment. the great wins ofjess, mo and greg made the super saturday the best night in british sport. since then, they have all faced challenges in their own unique way. challenges i've faced as a world—class athlete. staying on top, defending your title, and family life. in this programme, they will reflect on theirjourneys since that unforgettable night in the olympic stadium. and consider what the future holds as london prepares to welcome the world once again. five years have passed since super saturday. since then, jess, mo and greg have all followed their own unique paths as athletes. i am keen to see how my experiences in the sport compared to theirs. during my own career, i competed in three olympic games and five world championships. i dealt with the highs and lows that come with striving to stay
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at the top. greg rutherford, the long jump star of super saturday, trains to be the best in the world with the coach who led him to olympic glory. that means spending much of the year in arizona. i am keen to see how he and his family are getting on out there. greg, how are you? good to see you. i'm good. however you? i'm good. this is not london. definitely. nice to meet you. pleasure. how long have you been coming here? 2013 was the first year. one of the best coaches in the world. why not stick with it? really are. it has been good. we spent quite a lot of time here. last year, nearly six months leading into the olympics. this year, another couple of months. i will keep going as long as i keep going. we need greg to miss. if he gets in, we are going to get married. this sounds like a part i should not be involved with.
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i'm going to go over here. as a result of his incredible achievements on the track, mo farah has become a global star. the pursuit of this dominance means his training also takes on an international dimension. pyrenees 2000, gb training camp. for distance guys. one of the reasons we spend a lot of time here is because the elevation. good facilities. this is what people need in terms of high altitude. back in the days, the kenyans and ethiopians beating everyone. one of the reasons was because they spend so much time at high altitudes. when they come back to sea level, things are easier. i do average 120 miles per week. spending six months of the year away from my family, not being able to see my family, racing, training camps. it is difficult, but if you want to be a champion, stay on top, that is what it takes. eat, sleep, train —
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nothing more to it. forjessica ennis—hill, the best place to be has always been at home in sheffield in the north of england. herjourney since super saturday has been nothing short of eventful. this is sheffield, your hometown? yes. born here, studied here, did all my training here. when you were a kid growing up here, did you ever think that you would be olympic champion? no. when i started athletics, learning about championships and the olympics, i always had that dream of wanting to be there. standing on the podium. i never imagined that i would have had the journey that i have had. sat here in this position, chatting to you. with lots of gold medals and an olympic gold medal is unbelievable. going into 2012, you became the face of the games.
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talk about how that affected you in the year leading up to the games. the fact that it was in london, it brought a lot more pressure and expectation. i think for me the most important thing at that time was did not change anything — i stayed where i trained for the past however many years. the same coach, same family support. and team who had worked around me. that kept me really grounded, really sane in what i was doing. i do think, gosh, that was a hell of a lot of pressure. i thought, honestly, can this all come together and can i do this? jess‘ quest for heptathlon gold began on friday, 3rd of august. it will conclude with the 800m final underneath the spotlight of the packed olympic stadium. the stadium was incredible, the bars, fans, british flags.
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having an olympics in your hometown is once in a lifetime. as soon as you walk into the stadium, you get goose bumps. it was just like nothing i had ever experienced. everybody in there wanted you to do well. and was excited about the prospect of doing well. they had no idea who i was, theyjust saw a british jersey. that morning, i was about five o'clock. the night before, i could not switch off. i was telling myself there is so much more to do, i couldn't help thinking, i am so close. i remember waiting and nerves building. the way she controlled the pressure she had — everyone already hung a olympic gold—medal around her neck before she done it. we know how much can go wrong in athletics. she dealt with that pressure incredibly well. crossing the line was one of the most amazing moments of my career. when she crossed the line,
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arms aloft, the feeling of pride and felt for her for winning was massive. then, it has switched to myself and my thought process of, i want to feel what she just felt. i want to have the crowd going mad for me. because i have won. it ended up being the next jump was the longest of the competition for me. i went from the 3rd of august, nobody having any idea who i was, to the 4th of august, becoming olympic champion on a night which was truly spectacular for british sport. to be sandwiched betweenjess and mo is very special for me. going into the race, i knew if i could go with one lap to go in the position i was, i should hopefully do well. i normally start at the back
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and work my way through. as i was working my way through, getting louder and louder. and i was thinking, concentrate, and the last lap, the stadium was going nuts. i had the best seat in the house. watching mo farah standing under the olympic flame. he was cheering on the side of the track. go, mo. i remember him cheering for me. it is amazing. i saw rhianna coming on the track. i got emotional, lifted her. that moment was beautiful as a family. the 45 minutes withjess, greg and then me. it was incredible. after london, describe the change in your life. everything changed. you have people wanting you to appear at this, talk about it. on tv, do all these other things. people stop me on the street. if you look back to super saturday, jess, mo, all three
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of you guys, fantastic performances. did you ever look at them or reach out to one of them and say, how has it gone for you because i am having a hard time with this? no. for me, probably because i always saness and mo as superstars. i get on really well with both of them. lovely, lovely people. for me, i see myself as different. probably never quite them, if that make sense. they are two of the greatest in british history and i have never been able to put myself with them. the 2013 world championships offered greg the chance to prove that his london gold was more than just a one off. in moscow, he went out of the competition in the early stages. failing to qualify for the final. i made a very bad decision in 2013. i should not have gone to the world championships. i had a ruptured hamstring, could not run fast. could not jump far. i hoped and believed i could do something. possibly you had to prove people wrong. i ignored the fact that i was in no shape to do so. i wish i never did it. mo farah's london olympics did not
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end on super saturday. immediately after becoming the 10,000 champ, his attention turned to his pursuit of the 5000 metres gold. i wanted to come out and try to win the 5k. at that point, i was recovering from the 10k. resting up, getting ready. not get distracted. then i ran the heat three days later and felt tired. moving too much. i can't be doing what i am doing. i need to focus was at it, i thought, oh, i did it again. it was beautiful. a year on from super saturday, the 2013 world championships would be a opportunity for mo farah to continue his global domination on the track. if he could add to the world 10,000 meter and 5000 metres title to his olympic golds, it would be a historic double double. i had the hunger, the drive.
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great memories from london 2012. for me, i didn't want people to think it was a fluke. let's see what i can do. when you win championships, it gives you a boost, confidence. feel like you can do it. which sometimes gets difficult because most people know what you do, you have a target on your back. gives me confidence, a boost. ifeel like i have been in this situation before. i can take care of it. going into beijing, i was in great shape. i had won a lot of races. it was just about thinking, dealing with it the same as moscow. going into the heat in the 5000 metres, i slightly twitched my hamstring and nearly went down. i could feel it in the final. i had to smoothly stride it up and come away with two wins was pretty good. this is where it all goes down, used to go down?
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this is where i would come every day, pretty much, spending a lot of life here. so when reggie comes he is like mummy. you were competing at an early age? i was probably about this big. yes. i started when i was ten, a little older. these are some of the girls who train with toni now. hello. how is it going? it is good to see you. i have missed you. of course. how long did you guys work together? it in years. 18 years. do i have to call you dame? yes, please.
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thank you. toni minichiello has worked asjess‘ coach throughout his whole career. guiding her progress from promising schoolkids sprinted to multi event champion. jess is expecting her second child. herfirst, reggie, was born two years after super saturday. having won gold in london and facing the prospect of becoming a parent for the first time, many would have decided to call it a day. having a son, having to balance life more, how did that change your life? everything had changed. i had all those emotions of not wanting to leave my son and going back into training and not being at the same athlete i was before. i think in my mind i felt like i was going to step back in and it might take a few weeks to get back to where i was but i will still be the same athlete. actually, when i got back into training, i was tired, upset. it was one of the most challenging
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things i have ever done. but in my mind, you want to do it, you want to get back to full elite competition. why? why get back out there, you have a beautiful son? olympic champion? my huge motivator was reggie because, you know, iwanted him to be a part of that last uniquejourney i had been on for all those years. not many people get to experience. i want him to look back and see what i had achieved, and achieved it with him. the beijing world championships took place one year after the birth ofjess‘ son, reggie. no heptathlete had ever come back from childbirth to win a world championship title. i knew i was in a much better position than a few months ago but still knew i was not where i was a couple of years ago. her presence, the fact she made the decision and turned up, regardless of the shape she had been
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in, applies pressure to the other athletes because they are going, that isjess. she has turned up. ijust kept thinking, don't make any major mistakes. let the other girls make mistakes around you. just be solid, not amazing, spectacular, just solid. if i can keep doing that throughout the events, maybe i could be in with a chance of medalling and it became a gold medal. for it also come together and to win that was definitely one of my proudest moments. injury has denied greg rutherford a chance of the 2013 world championships. he recovered for the 2014 season and finished the year as european and commonwealth champion. he arrived in beijing in good form. winning two majors made me realise, yeah, you can still do it. my focus became, let us gets a world title. i thought it was my competition to lose, even though there were exceptional jumpers there.
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guys jumping bigger than me. i still believed on the day i would win it, and that i think is what got me through to do what i did. my motivation has always been winning. that stems from being a kid, often people told me it would never be me. never the good sports person. my entire athletic career has basically been belligerently winning to prove everybody else that's doubted that i do have the ability to do it. at the rio olympics, jess, mo and greg all once again compete together on the same night and britain could not help but hope for another super saturday. but from experience, i know how hard it is to retain an olympic title and perhaps toughest of all is being in perfect
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condition when it really counts. the unique challenges of the long jump meant that once again greg was unlucky with injury. he got a really bad landing in some bad sand. the pit had not managed well. an extreme whiplash injury. lost hearing. vertigo. we were just against the clock, making progress, but we ran out of time. i had this moment where we were saying, what are you going to do? pull outjump, give it a go? i decided to go. things did not pan out in the final. it seems that everything went wrong. probably about two thirds of the way through my warm up. did one of my drills. all of a sudden felt the sharp pain in my groin again. in that moment, i realised my opportunity of winning was diminishing very quickly. just because i was in a position i had not experienced in a very long time.
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i had to muster every ounce of energy and is pretty much begged my body to let me have one more jump. i managed to somehow pull out eight .29 in round six i don't want to make any excuses for finishing third. the guys who beat me were better than me on the day. jess and her team hoped she could continue to build on her unexpected world championship gold. but with seven events to competing, defending her olympic title but with seven events to compete in, defending her olympic title would depend on training as effectively as possible. that year was so up and down. i kept picking up achilles injuries. i picked up injuries on my left achilles, problems with that. weeks off training. and the other achilles would start hurting. despite her various setbacks, she found form just
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in time to travel to rio. the challenge ahead of her was significant. no british woman had ever retained an olympic track and field title. after 2015, i knew the year after the olympic year, everyone raises the game. i was getting older, having injuries. the rest of the world, there were young athletes coming through and performing well. you look at her rivals, she was having good performances, accumulating points. jess last points in the shot and the long jump. going into the 800 meters, we knew it would be difficult. she ran her heart out. the smallest winning margin in modern heptathlon history, 35 or 36. people asked if i was disappointed, but no, there was just a feeling, i have got here through the year i have had and the challenges i have had.
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i knew that i had done what i set out to achieve in my career and i was happy, content. i wasn't going to walk away and feel disappointed, thinking i wished i had pushed on longer. their careers remind us that it is no small thing to do this. it's demand everything you have to give. mo farah's ambition in the rio would be to defend an olympic double in gruelling long—distance events, which had only been achieved by one athlete in history. i felt tired. but four years of solid training, so no setbacks where i was missing one or two months. all pretty good. mo farah became the first ever british track and field athlete
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to win three olympic gold medals. his attention now turns to the 5000 metres. i don't think he thought anything different than, i will win the 10,000, then the 5000. only ever one result. five years after super saturday, the greatest night of british athletics, the best athletes in the world will return to london. ahead of any major competition, as an athlete you want to feel prepared, ready to compete. with just a few weeks to go before the championships start, greg is faced with one of the toughest decisions of his career. i have not had a season with these kind of injuries since 2007. i tore two ligaments in my left ankle. at that point, i realised my world championship bid over. forjess, a new challenge.
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being a spectator. it will be completely different for me. not only not there as an athlete performing, there as a heavily pregnant spectator. my life could not be more different. i am really looking forward to it. there's no place like home. london is where it happened, where my life change. when my children were born. i need to do london. i want it more than any other year and i am excited to be able to complete one last time and hang my spikes up afterwards. the journeys thatjess, mo farah and greg have been on since that unforgettable night in london tell the truth about what it takes to be the best in the world. this london, london 2017, will offer another opportunity for us to appreciate the world's greatest athletes and, in the knowledge that the journey to get there is never straightforward. london, here we come. for more on london 2017, go to the bbc website.
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hello there. saturday brought with it some intense downpours, shows with hail and thunder. equally, we had some stunning photos. this is my favourite, a double rainbow in aberdeenshire. this was through the afternoon from kent. all those showers just about died out through the night, and it is chilly. 10—11 in towns and cities, single figures to start the morning in rural areas, some frost if you are up early enough. that high—pressure hanging on in the east today, that will start to bring some rain into northern ireland fairly quickly through the morning hours. a brisk south—westerly wind driving that rain eastwards into western scotland, in the afternoon, pushing across the irish sea into england
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and wales. the east will be best as we go through sunday. come the afternoon, the rain should have blown away from northern ireland. a few showers, but the sun will come out. we may not see that many showers east of the grampians, certainly not in northeastern scotland and the northern isles until later in the day. a fairly damp afternoon for parts of north—western england and wales. cloud in the south—west, possibly a few showers. by and large, for central and eastern parts of england, it should stay dry, bright and warm with some hazy sunshine. very usable weather, looks to stay dry for the world athletics championships in london. because the football is taking place at wembley, the community shield should be dry as well. however, it won't always be driest in the east through the week. through sunday evening, that rain staggers to a halt as you can see across
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central parts of the uk. that weather front weakening, behind it, brisk wind and some showers. tied in with low pressure, generating some heavy showers at times. quite dreary stuck underneath that weather front, but to the south—east of that, still dry and reasonably warm, if not cloudy. brighter with showers to the north and west. then things starting to change. low pressure moving out of the north sea, picking up low pressure. in the south, heavy and thundery rain. dragging our winds down from the north. a strong wind, look at those tightly packed isoba rs. it looks as if by the middle part of the week, it could be the west that is best. for many of us, heavy rain and showers, strong wind at times which will make it feel quite cool. this is bbc news. i'm gavin grey. our top stories: the un security council imposes $1 billion worth of sanctions on north korea over its nuclear and missile programmes. these sanctions will cut deep and in
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doing so will give the north korean leadership a taste of the deprivation they have chosen to inflict on the north korean people. venezuela's chief prosecutor is fired by the new constituent assembly. she says it wants to stop her investigating corruption. italian police have arrested a 30—year—old polish man accused of drugging and kidnapping a british model in milan, to sell in an online auction. also in the programme, a shock result at the world athletics championships as usain bolt takes bronze in his last individual 100m race before retirement.
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