Wake Forest's Bennett learned plenty in Berlin

By: By John Dell | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: August 27, 2009

Annie Bennett called it an experience she won't soon forget.

Bennett, the track & field and cross-country coach at Wake Forest, was an assistant on Team USA's coaching staff for the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, which ended Sunday.

Bennett had been involved in the world championships in cross country before and has been a coach at other international meets, but this was her first time working with the U.S. track team at such a high-profile meet.

"It was an incredible experience working with the athletes of different events," said Bennett, who helped coach the U.S. women's team.

"I worked with athletes from everything from the 800 to the marathon. I was at the track every day working with the best athletes from all over the United States."

Bennett said she learned some things from those top-level athletes that she hopes will help in coaching the Deacons.

"I saw their workouts, saw their work habits, and reinforced what I do well and what I could add to my coaching," she said.

"It's amazing to be around that level of an athlete because you realize they have big goals and big desires, but they have issues like everybody with confidence and things like that."

Bennett also helped her athletes in preparations for their races during the nine-day meet.

"It was just a wonderful experience, and I worked with a good group where we actually had a finalist in every event except the 800," Bennett said. "We had a lot of personal bests, so I felt like I helped pretty well."

She also had a chance to watch one of her former athletes, sprinter Michael Bingham, reach the 400-meter finals and end up with a seventh-place finish.

Bingham, a recent Wake Forest graduate who ran for Britain, had a career-best time of 44.74 seconds in the 400 and also ran on Britain's second-place 4x400 relay team.

"It was fun to see Michael and we had lunch a couple of times," Bennett said. "It was great to see him run the 44.74 in the 400 because he's been wanting to go under 45 seconds."

One of the biggest issues at the championships surrounded 18-year-old Caster Semenya of South Africa, the winner of the women's 800 meters.

Her deep voice and muscular build sparked a lot of debate, and the International Amateur Athletic Federation, citing dramatic improvement in her times, has initiated gender testing to determine if she is eligible to compete as a female.

"If you saw this person -- walked like a man, looked like a man," Bennett said. "And there was a lot of information from where she was from that they have some abnormalities.

"But I don't question was she is a man. The South African Federation takes responsibility for that. I'm concerned about the precedent it sets.

"You get $60,000 for winning the race, that money goes to your town or country or whatever, and that's a lot of money."

Bennett said that the controversy took away from other successes.

"I think it took away from what the woman from Great Britain (Jennifer Meadows) who finished third in that event did," Bennett said. "She was in eighth place and then finished third because she had a marvelous race, but nobody knew that because of it."

All in all, Bennett said she had a great time.

"It's the greatest track meet in the world and the Americans won the most medals and had the most points," she said, "so we couldn't ask for anything more because we are the best track team in the world."

■ John Dell can be reached at 727-4081 or at jdell@wsjournal.com