HERE BEFORE YOU — in your hands if you’re a print subscriber — stands the info-packed 77th T&FN Annual Edition. It marks the 76th incarnation of our World Rankings; as a year virtually without a season, and literally without one for most athletes, pandemic-2020’s honors took a different form.
The Annual is in huge measure the work — quite literally a labor of love… or the conviction such things should be done right — of our dedicated World Rankings panel and the equally committed crew that compiles the U.S. Rankings. Don’t miss learning at least the names of these valuable spotlight-disinterested contributors here.
We thank them from the bottom of our hearts as we also send deep gratitude the way of our somewhat larger panel of expert Athlete Of The Year/Performance Of The Year voters. Trust us, the yearly barrage of ballot e-mails for all categories that rains on this latter group is certainly at least as much a chore as a welcome exercise in field & track nuttiness. The December holiday period, after all, often presents more like a 4-week sprint — broken up into what might more comfortably be scheduled as 5 or 6 weeks’ worth of “split points” — than an easy stretch of quiet family evenings before a cozy hearth.
So we’re grateful to the souls who begin worrying Rankings orders months before Thanksgiving.
It is worth repeating that ’23 was a season of impeccable quality and captivating storylines for our sport. We’d like to think this Annual distills and catalogs its many highlights. Don’t forget, either, that your T&FN back issues for the year now qualify as a trip down Memory Lane.
As the annual calendar page turns, we like to think of our AOY honors as the Rose Bowl of the species, granddaddy of them all. Yet unlike that gridiron contest, our format hasn’t changed.
Ryan Crouser has captured the 64th men’s AOY vote, Faith Kipyegon is the winner in the 49th woman’s balloting.
Their honors, richly deserved, rolled in as World Athletics’ new-kid-on-the-block AOY selections (they’ve been at it since ’88) gave way through a without-warning and confusing for most expansion to several categories.
I’m not here to judge the global federation’s conduct of its affairs in this arena (glass houses and all that), other than to say WA’s spring-it-on-‘em rollout met with controversy. And wasn’t that predictable?
Seeing as everyone else did that ’23 was a banner campaign with a cupboard full of worthies at the top, WA nominee Noah Lyles tweeted in October, “I feel like there should be more awards given than just athlete of the year. What about: Performance of the year, Athlete of the year for jumps, throws, distance, and sprints, most improved athlete.”
WA listened. But in the blindside offing in early December a sense of confusion nearly overwhelmed the celebration.
You had newly named WA Men’s Track Athlete of the Year Lyles confessing, “It’s not what I expected to feel like. That word ‘track’ threw me and a lot of other people off. Nobody was prepared for what happened tonight. Everybody was caught off guard, especially when we heard our names being called one after another. It was a little confusing as to what was actually happening.
“On the one hand, I agree with the idea of the format,” Lyles acknowledged. “I just wish we knew that this was what was going to happen… that there were different categories. It was very shocking. A big plot twist for sure.”
Admitting my bias, I stand by our “if it ain’t broke” tradition. T&FN’s transparent voting points system automatically breaks out categories across our wide, rich pageant of a sport’s diverse disciplines.
And ’23’s POY efforts by Crouser and Kipyegon add to a decades-long history in this category.
Quibble away, if you’d like. Our guiding principle is to celebrate the sport. Debate and disagreement is grist for the mill of fanhood. News flash not.
Perhaps readers’ reactions will unleash more scattered thoughts from my noggin next month. Enjoy the Annual.
On a personal note many friends are rightly sounding, I mourn the November passing of my pal in track-mania Mike Fanelli. Running on head-over-heels enthusiasm plus an astounding 115,000+ lifetime running miles put on one can only guess how many pairs of shoes, Mike was one of a kind. He left an insightful, quirky legacy in my local San Francisco Bay area’s milieu, around the wider track world, on the internet and in our pages.
Miss ya, Mike. May we jog a few miles, trade trivia and lift an adult beverage on the other side some day.
