USAIN BOLT wants to play a role in reviving the sport, reports CNN, quoting the Jamaican speedster as saying, “I’m still waiting on a position from [WA]. I’ve reached out to them and let them know I would love to make a bigger impact in sports, as long as they want me to. We’ve been in talks, but we’ll have to wait and see what comes around.”…
WR holder Eliud Kipchoge has tipped Kenyan countryman Kelvin Kiptum as the leading candidate to break the marathon’s next landmark, saying, “The 2-hour barrier is there for someone to run under and I have always shown people the way and it can be done. I always say records are meant to be broken and I hope Kiptum does that in the near future. He is a man with a big heart.”…
With the retirement of longtime Gamecock coach Curtis Frye, South Carolina has hired Tim Hall as its new head. Hall has spent the last 5 years coaching the sprinters at Kentucky…
Joe Franklin, who guided New Mexico to two NCAA XC crowns and a pair of runner-up finishes in his 16 years there, is now the director of the Louisville program…
Laurie Henes has been promoted to director of the NC State program, with Hall Of Famer Rollie Geiger staying on as senior associate director and men’s XC coach…
Hall Of Fame coach Fred Samara has announced his retirement from Princeton after being with the program in various roles since ’77…
Will we see Russian athletes in Paris? The IOC is in no rush to pull the trigger. “You want a time frame and we said we will take a decision when the time is right,” IOC rep Mark Adams said in mid-June. “That is the right thing to do and see how things are developing. I think it needs to be flexible because it is a moving situation. We will take a decision regarding Paris when the time is fit and there remains plenty of time for that decision to be taken.”….
Now that South Sudan’s Dominic Lobalu has signed a pro contract, he is no longer eligible to compete on WA’s Refugee Team. The 12:52.15 performer is currently stateless and cannot compete in the Worlds or Olympics. He has applied for a nationality switch to Switzerland…
College recruiters scratched a good one off their list of potentials when Jamaican teen Alana Reid opted to sign a pro deal with Nike. She ran her 100 best of 10.92 in March…
Jamaican sprinter Mario Heslop, a New Jersey state champion as a prep who last year ran PRs of 10.15 and 20.44 was killed in a car crash…
Former Southeast Missouri coach Joey Haines died on June 13 at age 76. His teams produced more than 100 Ohio Valley Conference champions…
Longtime British track journalist David Martin has died at age 75…
USATF has announced its rosters for the World Championships marathon: women—Keira D’Amato, Lindsay Flanagan, Susanna Sullivan; men—Elkanah Kibet, Nico Montanez, Zach Panning. For the women’s 35K walk (no men have made standard), it’s Stephanie Casey, Miranda Melville, Maria Michta-Coffey…
Nathan Martin’s 2:10:45 for 4th at the Grandma’s Marathon is the fastest ever at the distance for a native-born Black American…
Insidethegames.biz has reported that the pay for the IOC’s top management has gone up 50% over the last 4 years, “at a time when other entities plugged into the Olympic ecosystem are finding themselves squeezed as a consequence of the sluggish recent rise in Olympic broadcasting rights revenues and other factors.”…
Mongolia’s Ser-Od Bat-Ochir has been selected to run in his 11th straight World Championship marathon at age 41…
East Tennessee has cut men’s indoor track for the coming season, citing costs and the need to comply with Title IX…
The Bowerman Awards finalists have been named: Women—Julien Alfred, Jasmine Moore, Britton Wilson. Men—Kyle Garland, Jaydon Hibbert, Leo Neugebauer…
British sprinter Eugene Amo-Dadzie, who recently went 9.93 for 100, only started training seriously 4 years ago at age 26, and still works full-time. He calls himself “the world’s fastest accountant.”…
Thomas Bach has criticized Ukraine for barring athletes from competing in some Paris qualifying events. “It is really hard to understand why the Ukrainian government is depriving their own athletes from their chance to qualify for the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and to make the Ukrainian people proud,” said the IOC head…
Olympic champion pole vaulters Katerína Stefanídi and Thiago Braz are now training together under coach Mitchell Krier (Stefanídi’s husband)…
A tweet from Joe Kovacs’ agent, Karen Locke, “Joe messed up a knife wielding fool on a train to Pisa!”
Aussie teen phenom Cameron Myers, a 3:36 performer who just turned 17, has signed what he describes as “an NIL deal” with Nike, leading to speculation that he is keeping his options open for a possible stint in the NCAA…
The acting president of the Ukrainian federation is a familiar name, Olha Saladukha, the ’11 world champ in the triple jump…
The NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports has indicated that it is in favor of dropping marijuana from the banned list. Final action would come in the fall. WADA and USADA aren’t likely to change marijuana’s status anytime soon, so any collegians tested outside of the NCAA system would face problems if they test positive…
Cash-strapped UK Athletics got a boost of $188,000 from UK Sport lottery monies to help the organization put on its London DL meet July 23…
Tax troubles could be looming for boosters who have donated to nonprofit NIL collectives that funnel that money to NCAA athletes. The collectives have labeled those donations tax-deductible and many even have 501(c)(3) status. However, a recent memo released from the IRS Chief Counsel says that such donations are not tax exempt after all…
In a race that went viral on social media, 12-time Belgian national shot champion Jolien Boumkwo volunteered to run the hurdles in the Euro Team Champs so that her country would not be DQed. As a result of her 32.81 performance, she’s gotten more publicity than she ever has for throwing, with videos of the race garnering nearly 500,000 views…
Emmanuel Wanyonyi, 4th in the Worlds 800 last year, may be a favorite for the Budapest 800 with his Rabat and Paris DL wins, but he says, “It’s not lost on me that making Team Kenya will not be a walk in the park.”…
Officials of the Tokyo firm that designed the Olympic mascots for the ’21 Games and produced the merchandise have been convicted of bribing the Olympic officials involved in the decision-making process…
The late Roberto Quercetani, long the historical editor of Track & Field News as well as a member of the World Rankings panel, has been honored by WA with a Heritage Plaque that commemorates his work, as well as his role in the ’50 founding of the Association of Track & Field Statisticians (ATFS)…
Whoops department: false starts are not uncommon in short events, but they are in the 5000. That’s the event at the NCAA Div. III meet where officials bounced Ethan Gregg of Wisconsin-La Crosse, who had earlier taken 2nd in the 10,000. Gregg took a half-step before the gun and then stepped back. The crowd loudly booed the officials…
The Div. II 5000 had other problems, as officials rang the bell a lap early. Most of the runners sprinted early, and on having to add on an unexpected lap afterwards, it was clear the final results as well as the team score were affected. The NCAA overruled a protest in a statement that said, in part, “This scenario is regrettable for all involved but resulted in the fairest outcome.”…
Dentsu, implicated in various corruption charges in relation to the Tokyo Olympics, has gotten the boot as the IOC’s broadcast rights holder in Asia. A contract for the four Olympics from 2026 to 2032 has been awarded to the Chinese firm Infront…
The first European Road Championships has been set for Brussels–Leuven in April ’25…
NAIA 800/1500 champion Addy Wiley, who has now run 4:03.22, explains her decision to stay home in Huntington, Indiana: “I have uniquely high goals which I believe require taking a unique route to success. Such as neither the current men’s or women’s world record holders in the 1500m, Jakob Ingebrigtsen or Faith Kipyegon, ran in the typical college system. Also, Jakob never moved away from his home since he had a system that worked for him.”…
Don’t expect another triple in Budapest, warns Sifan Hassan: “With the training I am doing, I will focus on 5000 and the 10,000m, no marathon. I am in good shape but I am in totally different shape than I was before Tokyo.”…
One of the keys to a successful Los Angeles Olympics in ’28 is that a good portion of the crowds can be transported by LA’s Metro system. The original list of 209 projects for the bus/light rail system to enhance the Games experience is now down to 15 priority items…
In a recent column, Irish great Sonia O’Sullivan had some advice for Texas/Irish 400 star Rhasidat Adeleke, who may be thinking of going pro: “To me, it just seems simpler to stay where you are and gradually add things in, like dabbling on the international circuit and the world stage, while continuing to represent your university.”…
Among the 14 nominees for 6 open seats on the WA Athletes’ Commission is one American, Jasmine Todd, a 5-time U.S. Ranker in the long jump…
WA also published a list of 31 candidates for 18 open positions on the World Athletics Council. The only American on the list is current Council member Willie Banks, who is seeking another term…
The NCAA Championships pumped an estimated $38 million into the Austin economy, according to a local economic development firm…
Caster Semenya has joined the list of athletes-turned-authors. The South African Olympic and world champion has published The Race To Be Myself…
Team Boss got a boost with a $75,000 multiyear grant (totaling $300,000) from the Burgess Family Foundation in partnership with the USATF Foundation…
Seiko is making 4000 special watches for the World Championships in Budapest. The “Seiko Prospex Speedtimer Solar Chronograph World Athletics Championship Budapest 23 Limited Edition SFJ007” will go for $950, which is probably a bargain considering the length of the name. ◻︎