How would you like to run a marathon at midnight? What about in 32-degree heat? The women marathoners at the World Athletic Championships in Doha, Qatar had to contend with both
Hi everyone, welcome back, I’m Jeff; JR is the producer. JR is still basking in the glow of his appearance on Episode 200, so if you haven’t heard that one, and you’re wondering what our famous producer sounds like, go back one episode and you can hear him. He did a nice job right? That’s our JR. Anyway, this is episode 201, so you can find all the episode resources at PlainEnglish.com/201.
Coming up today, oh boy, running a marathon in the desert. Running a marathon without anyone to cheer you on. Running a marathon in 70 percent humidity. Running a marathon at midnight. Where do we begin? These were the conditions the women marathoners had to face at the world track and field championships in Qatar. We’ll talk about that, and we’ll talk about the phrase “to come under fire.” And we have a song of the week, too.
Before diving in, I wanted to make sure you know about our e-mail list, at PlainEnglish.com/mail . JR sends out an email with the episode summary, the song of the week is included, links to extra bonus reading is included, and we also highlight one English phrase for you to learn. All for free, every Monday and Thursday, and it can be yours by visiting PlainEnglish.com/mail.
Marathoning at midnight: the athletics championships in Qatar
It was a surreal scene in the desert. World champion and two-time Olympic gold medal winner Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce stepped onto the track for the women’s 100-meter dash at the world’s biggest competition in track and field. The gun went off, she sprinted to the end, and 10.71 seconds later she became the fastest woman in the world. Her time was the second-best 100-meter time ever recorded in world history; she beat her opponent by a record 0.22 seconds. And the crowd went… mild?
In fact, “crowd” might be overstating things.
Here’s what happened. The IAFF is the international body that governs the sport of “athletics,” what we commonly call track and field. Other than the Olympics, the major event in track and field is the World Athletic Championships, which are held at a different location each time. This year, the location was Doha, Qatar.
Doha is the world’s richest city, but it is a terrible place to hold a sporting event. Let us count the ways. First, the nation of Qatar is tiny and it doesn’t have a rich tradition in sporting events like athletics or football. Second, the heat is beastly: temperatures routinely exceed 30 degrees Celsius and humidity is often 70 percent or higher. Third, Qatar is culturally very different from many countries that celebrate sports. A man can be sentenced to 40 lashes for drinking alcohol, for example.
However, Qatar is looking to raise its international profile, and hosting major sporting events has been a part of this strategy. Unfortunately, its first foray into major international sports did not go well.
The athletics championships were held in the 40,000-seat Khalifa International Stadium. Sounds impressive—until you consider that the stadium was largely empty for most of the competitions. They covered up about half the seats, and were still unable to fill even half of the remaining seats. Photographs of wide swathes of empty seats were such an embarrassment that they passed out free tickets to migrant workers just to fill the seats and make it appear as if there were more fans in the stadium. Event winners found themselves taking a victory lap in front of their friends and family, press, and almost no other cheering spectators. They only sold 50,000 tickets to legitimate customers; compare this to the last championship held in London in 2017 where 660,000 tickets were sold.
It wasn’t just the seats that were empty: the streets were too. The marathon is an event that takes place outside the stadium, usually on a picturesque route lined by cheering fans. This time, it was six loops of 7 kilometers—at midnight. Few fans were watching. The temperature outside was 32 degrees Celsius in the middle of the night. Forty percent of the runners dropped out of the race after it started, which is not typical. The winning time was the slowest winning time on record. One athlete said someone could have died on the course.
The athletes inside the temperature-controlled stadium fared better. You heard that right: the open-air stadium was kept at a relatively comfortable temperature. Engineers figured out a way to re-circulate chilled air to keep athletes and fans comfortable. Air-conditioning an outdoor stadium: only in an oil-producing country, right?
The air-conditioned stadium might be an engineering marvel, but it came at a cost. Qatar doesn’t have the population to build new stadiums and infrastructure, and the oil-rich nation fills its labor shortage by importing migrant workers from abroad. Unfortunately, the working conditions for these migrants has come under fire. The migrants make very low wages and work in difficult conditions. The system used by Qatar and several neighboring countries to import labor is called the kafala system. Under this system, the sponsoring employer has a lot of control over the lives of migrant workers. In many cases, the employer can deny permission to leave the country or switch jobs. A lot of workers have claimed that they’ve gone unpaid, been denied water and food, and had their passports confiscated. On their one day off, they can move around, but places like markets and malls are designated “family zones” in which migrant workers can’t enter.
Workers are recruited from poor countries like Bangaldesh, India, and Nepal; they’re brought to Qatar to work six days a week in the baking heat; and much of their wages are used to pay back the “fees” they had to pay to get the job in the first place. The company holds their passports and they get paid barely enough to live on, when they get paid at all. They literally cannot quit their jobs and go home.
So to summarize: we had athletes running around a track in front of almost nobody, in an air-conditioned outdoor stadium built by migrant workers under terrible working conditions compared to modern-day slavery. At least the event is over, right?
Not exactly. Qatar is now building—or shall I say the migrant workers in Qatar are now building or renovating eight more stadiums around the small country in preparation for … drumroll please … the World Cup in 2022. What could possibly go wrong?
We’ll do another episode in the next few weeks about the preparations for the World Cup, but I would have to say the situation would be comical if it weren’t so sad for so many people work there on those stadiums.
The marathon outside was surreal. I couldn’t imagine running a marathon in the middle of the night—how do you prepare your body for that? I’ve run three marathons before, believe it or not. The first two were almost cheating—they were in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In fact, if you’ve watched the TV show “The Office,” it takes place in Scranton. So I ran the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton twice when I was in college. And the way that race works is, it’s a net drop in elevation. The area is pretty hilly and they bus you to the starting line, and you finish in downtown Scranton and the course is a net drop in elevation of about 300 meters. It’s not technically cheating, but if you have to run a first marathon, that’s a good one because it’s mostly downhill!
I want to say hi to a few listeners. Srikanth from Hyderabad, India is listening, hoping to improve his speech by paying attention to the grammar on Plain English. Great to have you with us Srikanth. Miriam from Mexico is living in LA and loves it—except for the traffic. I also want to say hi to Juan from Antioquia, Colombia; and Carlos from Rio.
Great stories make learning English fun
