COUNT MONDO DUPLANTIS among those disappointed that WA’s AOY honor was split into three categories: “Now that three got it, it’s like nobody got it.”…
Sudden-fame alert: the OT Marathon was very good for the Instgram numbers of Fiona O’Keeffe. At the start of the race, she had fewer than 4000. Within a few days she was over 30,000…
Japan Running News has published its report on the top marathoning countries, as determined by averaging the best times of their 10 fastest runners of the year. On the women’s side, Ethiopia (2:17:01) led Kenya (2:18:13) and Japan (2:22:32), with the United States No. 4 at 2:23:34. On the men’s side, Kenya (2:03:11) and Ethiopia (2:04:12) led, and the U.S. did not make the top 5…
Marathoner Teshome Mekonen (eligible for U.S. teams since ’22) has signed with On AC…
World Indoor 60H champ Cyréna Samba-Mayela of France is now training alongside Olympic champ Jasmine Camacho-Quinn under the coaching of John Coghlan in Orlando…
Kirani James is now being coached by Chris Lawrence, who was assistant to Auburn head Harvey Glance. James was coached to three Olympic medals by Glance…
With her sponsor Nike’s blessing, Courtney Frerichs has announced that she is now being coached by Alistair Cragg and Amy Hastings Cragg and training with their Puma Elite squad…
Irina Privalova, the ’00 Olympic 400H gold medalist, has been named senior coach of the Russian national team…
Vijay Saxena has been named the new director of track and cross country at UCSB…
Odessa JC is bringing back its track and cross country programs that had been suspended since ’21, and Chris Beene has been hired to direct them…
Forget Sandra Perković. The discus great will now be going by the name Sandra Elkasević, having married her longtime partner and coach, Edis Elkasević. He was an NCAA shot champ while at Auburn…
Following a divorce, the long jumper recently known as Ivana Vuleta is now back to her maiden name of Španović…
With her wedding in January, the former Chase Ealey will now be competing under the name Chase Jackson…
The British runner recently known as Amy-Eloise Markovc has also chosen to go back to her maiden name, Neale…
The NCAA high jump champion last year now competing for Kentucky, Charity Griffiths, is now using her married name of Hufnagel…
Busy weekend: Vincent Ciattei sometimes can’t get enough racing. On the first Saturday of February, he won the mile at BU’s Scarlet & White meet in a PR 3:52.07. The next day, he made it across town for the New Balance GP, where he placed 5th in the 1500 in a PR 3:37.33…
Over the years some have speculated that the super-fast Boston U indoor oval is short. The survey of the track following its recent resurfacing showed that it’s actually 1.4cm long per lap, or a little more than 8 inches for a 5000. “We apologize for making everyone run that little bit extra,” tweeted the folks in charge…
Greater Boston is going to be hyper-busy on the second weekend of March. Brighton will be hosting the NCAA Indoor on March 08–09; meanwhile a few miles down the road in Roxbury Crossing, the New Balance Indoor Nationals will be staged March 07–10…
Usain Bolt says he is considering going into coaching, and wants to discuss it more with his own coach, Glen Mills. “I need to pick his brain to find out how his mind works, how I can be like him, or be as good or even better than him.”…
Dwain Chambers is back. Britain’s ’10 World Indoor champ in the 60 hadn’t raced in 2 years, but recently at age 45 he slashed a 10th off the M45 age group WR with his 6.81 for 60…
The ’27 Pan-Am Games have been withdrawn from Barranquilla, Colombia, after organizers missed key financial deadlines. A new host will be decided on March 12; candidates are Lima, Peru, and Asunción, Paraguay…
The ’21 SEC shot champ, Alabama’s Isaac Odugbesan no longer competes in the event. Now, under the name of Oba Femi, he is a major name in pro wrestling, honored as the NXT Breakout Champion for ’24…
Denise Lewis, the Sydney gold medalist in the heptathlon, has been named president of UK Athletics. She faces a continuing budget crisis…
Femke Bol’s coach Laurent Meuly feels she is stronger now than when she set the 400 World Indoor Record last year. “She has gotten even better, but only if she runs almost perfectly again can she improve that record,” he says. “The focus now is not on that record, but on winning the world title in Glasgow.”…
The USATF Marathon Race Walk Mixed Relay featured an unexpected amount of slime on the roads, as torrential rains led to a huge movement of the area snail population…
WA and Sony have announced a new 3-year agreement, with Sony sponsoring World Athletic Series events through ’26…
World 800 champ Marco Arop says he is done with the indoor season after two races in which he set Canadian Records in the 800 and 1000. “I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. It’s a big year this year, and I want to become the Olympic champion and chase World Records, including the 800m World Record.”…
Andre De Grasse has invested in a pro women’s soccer team, part of a Canadian grassroots league to be launched in ’25…
Videos of prize frosh Simeon Birnbaum and other Oregon athletes ice skating at Hayward field after it froze over got plenty of play in social media. But apparently not all were amused. The team got a warning from an assistant AD: “Hey Team – although clever, no ice skating on the track. Remember to stay off the grass when frozen too.”…
Al McDaniels, who coached 40 All-Americas at UNLV in the decades he coached there, died in December 9 at age 83…
One of the oldest collegiate bests on the books fell at Texas Tech’s Corky Classic, when Michaela Rose of LSU covered 600 yards in 1:16.76 to beat the old best for the rarely-run distance, the 1:17.38 that Delisa Floyd of Tennessee ran in ’82…
Frank O’Mara, an NCAA 1500 champion for Arkansas and later a 3-time Olympian for Ireland, has published, Bend, Don’t Break — A Memoir of Endurance, which covers not only his track career but his life in business and his current struggle with Parkinson’s Disease…
The 2-year war in Ethiopia’s Tigray province had a devastating effect on the sport, says the president of the Tigray Athletics Federation. Among the thousands of dead were 76 athletes, 2 coaches and 2 officials. He also noted that the region’s primary athletic facility was destroyed. Tigray has produced some of Ethiopia’s best runners, including world champions Goytatom Gebreselassie, Hagos Gebrhiwet, Letesenbet Gidey and Gudaf Tsegay…
Vaulter Sandi Morris, well known for her love of snakes, has revealed that as a child her parents placed a limit of no more than 15 pets at a time for her…
Plenty of track coaches have had tracks named after them. George Williams, the coach at St. Augustine’s for over four decades and the 2004 Olympics USA men’s head, may be the first to have a freeway interchange named in his honor. The Raleigh city council has asked that the state’s department of transportation name the intersection of I-440 and New Bern Avenue after Williams…
Jake Wightman, the ’22 world champ in the 1500, recently talked to The Guardian about rival Jakob Ingebrigtsen: “He is very good at time trialing. But probably not as good in championships as he thought… In theory, if he goes as hard as he can, he might run 3:26 or 3:27 from the front and we wouldn’t be able to live with that. But the chances of it going wrong are far higher than Josh and I getting burnt off.”…
ESPN and the NCAA have inked an 8-year agreement worth $920 million. The deal includes both indoor and outdoor championships…
The breakup of the Pac-12 Conference means that the cross country teams of both Oregon State and Washington State will be competing next fall in the West Coast Conference. The WCC does not sponsor track…
Indiana University at Columbus, an NAIA school, is adding track & field in ’25…
Ezra Frech has been signed by USC. The 6-4 high jumper will compete in his second Paralympics, and has already been named to the Paris squad. According to Team USA, he is the first-ever above-the-knee amputee to sign with a Div. I program…
What price gold? For Bob Beamon, apparently, it’s $441,000. That’s the amount Christie’s was able to auction the fabled ’68 Olympic medal for. Now 77, Beamon says “It’s time for me to pass it on.” …
In other Beamon news, the long jump legend is now sharing his passion for drumming. He has performed publicly last fall and recently recorded an album called “Olympik Soul.”…
An indoor multi-event competition in England took the concept of premeet publicity in an unexpected direction. It was only at the awards ceremony that many of the athletes found out they had actually competed for the UK title…
South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius, who murdered his girlfriend in 2013, has been paroled from prison after serving nearly 9 years of his 13-year sentence. He is now 37…
The ’23 World Championships, for all its triumphs, also saw an increase in social media abuse of athletes. A WA study looked at nearly 450,000 social media posts in 16 languages and found the incidents of abuse had greatly increased from ’22. Nearly 90% of the abuse came on X (formerly Twitter), where there was a 500% increase over the previous year…
Numbers freak “Davidokun,” a frequent poster on our message boards, notes that versatile Anna Hall had no fewer than 27 PRs (including ties) last year: 1 in the 200, 3 in the 400, 1 in the 800, 4 in the 60H, 3 in the 100H, 2 in the 400H, 2 in the HJ, 2 in the LJ, 7 in the SP, 1 in the pentathlon and 1 in the heptathlon…
European Athletics has announced that for the first time it will be offering cash prizes at the European Championships this summer. Ten $53,000 bonuses will be doled out to the 10 athletes who score the highest on WA’s performance tables…
Italy will be issuing a commemorative 10-Euro coin to honor Pietro Mennea, who won the 200 at the ’80 Olympics and held the WR for 17 years. The coin will come put as part of the promotion of the European Championships…
Despite some financial bumps at the last-minute, Birmingham, England, has been confirmed as the host of the ’26 European Championships…
Some 16 of the WA Indoor Tour meets of the silver and bronze levels (some already have passed) will be streamed this season on the European Athletics YouTube channel…
Mexico City has decided to withdraw its bid to host the ’36 Olympics, citing the “tough competition.”…
Eager to join that competition is Madrid. “We’re working on it,” said one local leader. The Spanish capital had been among the favorites to host the ’20 Olympics, only to lose to Tokyo…
The Paris medals will have a novel ingredient — a piece of the Eiffel Tower itself. The hexagonal pieces, stamped with the a design that includes the Olympic flame, the rings and “PARIS 2024,” will be set in the center of each medal like a gemstone. The metal came from the warehouse of the company that operates the Tower, where it had been saved after various renovations over the years…
The invaluable website Olympedia, a wealth of information on the Olympic Games and its competitors, is no longer being updated following the decision of the IOC to not renew its contract with the group of historians known as the OlyMADMen…
The LA28 organization, little more than four years before the Games, needs a new CEO. The previous one, Kathy Carter, left the position in December. The goal is to have someone new hired before the Paris Games…
Penn’s track programs now have an extra $3 million to work with, thanks to an alumni donation. H. Elliott Rogers, Jr. and Gail Underwood Rogers had previously paid for a new track installation at Franklin Field…
New Balance has made another big investment at the University of Maine, donating $7 million for a new track and soccer complex. In 2011, the shoe giant had donated $5 million to renovate the field house and develop a student recreation center…
A USATF Foundation maternity grant of $5000 has been awarded to ’16 Olympian Abby Cooper, who gave birth to a daughter in January of 2023…
For the past two years, Nike ran an unpublicized program called Project Dreamweaver which provided to a group of 120 women both scientific support and mentorship from marathon legends and Olympians. More than half of the women ran PRs at the half marathon or marathon, and 15 eventually qualified for the Trials race…
Former international sprinters O’Neil Wright (Liberia) and Dewayne Barrett (Jamaica) have been charged by federal prosecutors in a drug-trafficking scheme related to banned Nigerian dasher Blessing Okagbare…
The organizers of the Valencia Marathon have announced they will no longer contract with the Spanish anti-doping agency for testing, after news emerged of conspicuous irregularities in the agency’s practices…
A re-analysis of London ’12 doping samples by the International Testing Agency (ITA) led to the withdrawal of 31 — and the reallocation of 46 — Olympic medals in four sports. Work on the next Games is now underway. Testing of samples from still-active athletes will be completed before Paris…
Seb Coe took a pessimistic view of drugs in a recent podcast, saying, “Will we ever get to the utopia of a sport that is drug-free? No, of course not, it’s human nature, risk versus reward. If you’re a street kid, in some countries the risk versus reward is huge and if you get caught and are returned to the street then that’s nothing ventured nothing gained, so it is a challenge.”