A PAIN IN THE FOOT: Aussie sprint sensation Gout Gout (20.04 at age 16) was the subject of much online discussion early in the year about the right way to say his name. His father kept insisting the traditional Sudanese pronunciation of Gwot Gwot was proper but the kid says he will use Gowt Gowt…
New sponsors: Asics—Drew Hunter; Brooks—Emily Infeld; Nike—Nia Akins, Sadie Sargent Mitchell; Oiselle—Allie Ostrander…
NAZ Elite has dropped 8 of its 20 athletes, including Stephanie Bruce, Lauren Hagans, Aliphine Tuliamuk and Kellyn Taylor. Says Taylor, “It’s basically everybody that’s old, if we want to put it bluntly. It’s literally, there’s nobody older than 28 on the team now. And it’s not necessarily based off of performance.”…
Krissy Gear, 25, remains a HOKA athlete, but has left the NAZ Elite…
Ben Rosario, who founded the NAZ, has left the team to concentrate on a revival of the Marathon Project, an elite-only race that broke records in the first year of the pandemic…
France’s hurdle silver medalist Cyréna Samba-Mayela is training in Austin with coach Tonja Buford-Bailey…
British sprinter Darryl Neita has been working in Florida with Lance Brauman…
Tobi Amusan, WR holder in the 100H, is working in Jamaica with coach Glen Mills, who mentored Usain Bolt…
Raevyn Rogers, the Tokyo 800 bronze medalist, is now training with Joanna Hayes in Los Angeles…
Britain’s Laura Muir is now being coached by Laura Weightman and Steve Cram…
Isaiah Jewett is now training with Canada’s world 800 champion, Marco Arop…
Arkansas alum Taylor Werner is now living and training in Australia…
Keni Harrison has left Bobby Kersee and is now working with Andreas Behm at ALTIS…
Talitha Diggs is being coached by Gary Evans…
Dani Jones has left Team Boss and is training in Ann Arbor with the Very Nice TC under Ron Warhurst and Sierra Willis…
Pete Julian has left Nike, and he has taken his training group, the Union Athletics Club, with him to Colorado…
Harry Marra, decathlon coach for Olympic champion Ashton Eaton and many others, signed on to work with soccer powerhouse Manchester United on biomechanics for several weeks…
Sandi Morris is now a volunteer assistant at Louisville, where she will be coached by Brooke Rasnick…
Nike has launched the Swoosh TC Distance Running Network, which will feature clubs based in Eugene (coached by Jerry Schumacher), Provo (Diljeet Taylor) and Flagstaff (Mike Smith)…
The new president of the Ethiopian federation is former marathoner Yemane Tsegay, who won silver at the ’15 Worlds and has a PR of 2:04:48…
Sebastian Chmara has taken over the reigns of the Polish federation. The ’99 World Indoor heptathlon champion still holds the national record in the decathlon at 8566…
Neil Gardner, a ’96 Olympian in the 400 hurdles, is now the head of the Jamaican federation…
Retired triple jump great Christian Taylor will be sharing the job of sports director with his wife, hurdler Beate Taylor, for the Austrian federation, charged with increasing the international impact of Austrian athletes…
Olympic champions Rai Benjamin, Grant Holloway and Noah Lyles have teamed up to do a podcast called “Beyond The Records.”…
Former decathlon World Record holder Jürgen Hingsen has signed to star in a German reality show called “Jungle Camp,” in which celebrities battle for the audience’s favor for two weeks in the jungle…
Yaimé Pérez, the ’19 World discus champion for Cuba, has been patiently waiting to be cleared to represent the United States. That hasn’t stopped her from competing on a Spanish-language reality show on Telemundo called Exatlón Estados Unidos All Stars. In the show, if she and her teammate win a series of mental and physical challenges, they score $200K…
A book by Keira D’Amato will be released in September: Don’t Call It a Comeback: What Happened When I Stopped Chasing PRs and Started Chasing Happiness…
Norwegian papers are reporting that Gjert Ingebrigtsen will stand open trial in March on charges that he abused his children, including top miler Jakob…
French hurdler Wilfred Happio has been accused of violence and sexual assault before, with charges dismissed twice by the French federation. Now he faces a third complaint (in addition to a provisional suspension for whereabouts)…
Several throwers are at the center of a Title IX investigation at Penn, charging inappropriate remarks and comments from former volunteer assistant Vlad Pavlenko. Another has charged instances of inappropriate touching by former assistant Fletcher Brooks as well as an ineffective response by head coach Steve Dolan…
A trial is set to begin in late February as UK Athletics faces corporate manslaughter charges for the death of Paralympian Abdullah Hayayei in ’17 when a throwing cage fell on him…
Athletics Kenya says it is investigating about 30 possible cases of age cheating. Said one official, “It is even worse compared to doping, which is an individual affair. Age cheating involves a system, and that is why we have involved AIU for thorough vetting.” Most of the cases involve athletes participating in the World Juniors…
Nigerian sprinter Divine Oduduru, currently serving a 6-year ban, says that Puma forced him into a coaching arrangement with controversial Rana Reider. “From the onset, I always had issues with him. He told me he was going to stab and kill me and that nothing is going to happen.” The Texas Tech alum says that Reider undermined his training to favor other members of his stable…
The AIU has announced that increased levels of testing meant that only 11% of Olympic track competitors had no out-of-competition tests last summer. That compares favorably with the last two Worlds — Budapest had a figure of 27% and Eugene 33%…
Chinese putter Gong Lijao, the ’21 Olympic champion, made history with her 5th place finish in Paris, reports Olympic stat expert Bill Mallon. In ’08 she won bronze, ’12 was silver, ’16 was 4th, the ’21 gold and this year’s 5th. That makes her the only Olympic athlete in track & field to be able to claim 1-2-3-4-5 finishes in an individual event…
Going for longevity records, Croatian discus thrower Sandra Elkasević says she is aiming at the ’28, ’32 and ’36 Olympics, which would give her a string of 7-straight. The 2-time Olympic champion will be 46 in ’36. Her streak includes a 3 and a 4 in addition to her 1s…
In Cossé-le-Vivien, a small village southwest of Paris, a local artist was commissioned to honor a visit by ’96 Olympic 400 champ Marie-José Pérec by painting a fresco of her winning performance. The locals, however, were not pleased with the result, saying it “looks like a man.” The artist has promised to correct the painting…
Italy’s Larissa Iapichino withdrew from the Düsseldorf WIT upon learning with 8 days’ notice that organizers were going to experiment with the new takeoff-zone rule. “We had already informed the organizers that I am working with a new runup, and expecting precise accuracy in these conditions would not be wise. I’m strongly against this format. Long jump is defined by its technical demands, if this change is implemented, long jump will lose its essence and become an entirely different sport.”…
Former marathon great Dick Beardsley is struggling with an antibiotic resistant infection in his knee. He has had 10 surgeries as a result. An online fundraising campaign has raised $47,000 to help with his medical expenses…
Lefty Martin, the former coach at Dayton, and longtime age-group coach and organizer in Ohio, died at 84 in January…
A parent was killed at a high school indoor meet at Colorado–Colorado Springs when a 25lb weight cleared the barricades and landed in a spectator area…
The Commonwealth Games will be replacing the 1500 with the mile. The Glasgow event, set for ’26, is the first edition since ’66 to race the imperial distance. A mixed 4×4 will also be on the schedule…
The WA Council has approved a switch in distances for walkers, to take effect in ’26: the 20K will be replaced with a half-marathon, the 35K with a marathon (42.195K). At the U20 level, the 10K will be replaced with a 5K…
Argentina had been expecting to host two Continental Tour meets in March, one bronze and the other a “challenger.” They have both been canceled because of the cutoff of state funding due to the nation’s economic crisis…
Paris scored a profit, according to Olympic organizers, who say they have closed their books with a $28.1 million surplus…
Tickets for the USATF Indoor at Ocean Breeze in Staten Island range from $20 to $65, unless you want VIP treatment. The platinum VIP pass gives you two days of trackside seating, a hot buffet with beer and wine, a souvenir and meet-and-greet opportunities with top athletes, all for only $1000…
Two-time Olympic heptathlon medalist (and Kansas State alum) Austra Skujytė, now 45, has emerged from a 7-year retirement to win a local shot put in Lithuania at 48-7½ (14.82)…
Former 1500 great Hicham El Guerrouj, still the WR holder at the distance, says that he would have run notably faster with today’s spikes. “Frankly, without arrogance, I’m not saying this to show off but I ran 3:26 with PVC shoes and PVC is not carbon. It’s another story. And I think I had the ability, the mental and physical strength, to have done 3:24 then… If I had had this technology then, I would have run 3:24 or 3:23…I would have done it easily.”…
Apparently, Kenyan Dorcas Ewoi had no plans to run professionally after placing 5th in the NCAA 800 for Campbell. But Puma Elite coach Alistair Cragg saw her running and asked her to train with his team. A year later, she had run 1:58.19 as well as 4:19.71 for the mile…
USATF has announced a partnership with PrimeTime Timing to be the official timing company for its indoor and outdoor championships…
The 110H gold won by American Fred Schule at St. Louis in 1904 was auctioned off recently for $545,371…
Tickets are now on sale for September’s World Championships. With Tokyo prices ranging from $16 to $320, they are an increase over Budapest ’23, but still cheaper than Eugene ’22…
Through the ’24 season, Wisconsin’s teams were able to train in their indoor Camp Randall facility. With the loss of that, coaches and alumni scrambled to find a practice facility. The answer was a warehouse in the county to the north. With a track and equipment installed to the tune of $400,000, athletes started using the facility in January, only to get a stop-order from the county, which said that permits need to be granted, a process that could take months…
Missouri will be getting a new track/soccer stadium, thanks to a large gift from Audrey Walton, one of the heirs of the family that owns Walmart…
The Camel City Track Foundation is raising funds to replace its 200 flat track in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a permanently-banked track with Mondo surfaces. It will debut for the ’26 season…
Cole Hocker has had the 9th floor of the 10-story Bowerman Tower at Hayward Field named in his honor. Floors 2-8 are already named for Olympic champions. ◻︎
