WEDDING BELLS: it’s official. Noah Lyles joined with Junelle Bromfield on April 04 in Trenton, Georgia. Lyles has been named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential people of 2026…
Anna Hall got married April 11 to NFL player Darius Slayton…
Roisin Willis has joined New Balance Boston, with Mark Coogan to handle her coaching…
Veteran sprinter Jenna Prandini has signed with On…
Arkansas’s Sydney Vaught (née Thorvaldson) has signed with Nike…
Ellery Lincoln, the Portland high schooler who recently ran a 4:30.00 mile, is the daughter of 4-time NCAA champion Daniel Lincoln, who won the OT steeple in ’04…
Olympic javelin champ Haruka Kitaguchi is now being coached by spear legend Jan Zelezný…
UT Arlington coach John Sauerhage will be retiring after the season. He has coached the team to 33 conference championships since ’95…
Another June retiree will be Wisconsin’s Mick Byrne, who led the Badgers to 14 Big 10 titles in cross country in the last 18 years…
With the coming retirement in June of longtime coach Ray Treacy, Providence has named Tim Brock director of the program. The women’s cross country program will be headed by Catarina Rocha, and the women’s track program by Sinead Delahunty Evans.
Graycen Vargo, 21, of Texas A&M-Texarkana collapsed while competing in the 3000 in his conference championships in April and later died…
The misuse of the word “marathon” bothers a lot of purists in the sport. Perhaps it’s time for the Indian government to get involved? “Please stop calling any distance as a marathon. Marathon means 42km,” read a social media post from Avny Lavasa, a government transportation secretary in Jammu & Kashmir provinces who is also a runner…
Top American talent entered Australia’s Stawell Gift handicap races. Both Christian Coleman and Sha’Carri Richardson had to run the full 120m on grass from scratch. Coleman clocked an official 12.48 and was eliminated in the semis. The winner had a 5-meter head start. Richardson took the win in 13.08, becoming only the third woman in history to win from scratch…
Aaron Gruen, the first Austrian to break 2:10 in the marathon with his 2:09:53 in March, faced a tough double in April. He was expected to be one of the top runners in the Vienna City Marathon the day after playing the cello with the Vienna Symphony. The concert went well. The race, not so much, as he DNFed…
Berlin Marathon organizers have revealed that they are trying hard to get recent marathon World Record setter Sabastian Sawe in this fall’s race. “It won’t be easy, but we’re in talks,” said the director. “Sabastian has had Berlin close to his heart since last year; he knows that fast times are possible here. I think our chances aren’t bad. Even though his appearance fee will probably triple now.”…
Kenyan Sports Personality Of The Year awards went to Beatrice Chebet and Emmanuel Wanyonyi…
Distance legend Henry Rono was recently honored with a bronze statue on the campus of his alma mater, Washington State…
Paavo Nurmi was honored with a plaque at Franklin Field in honor of his ’29 Penn Relays wins in the 2M and 5000…
With her win in Vienna, Ethiopian Tigist Gezahegn possibly became the first Paralympic champion to win a major city marathon. The 2:20:06 marathoner is visually impaired…
Boston Marathon champions Sharon Lokedi and John Korir got to throw out first pitches at Fenway Park for a Red Sox/Yankees baseball game…
Melissa Jefferson-Wooden will be featured in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue this year…
Sabastian Sawe was not only given cash ($62,000) and a car by the Kenyan government after his barrier-breaking marathon, he got personalized license plates that read “1:59:30”…
Call it the “Freddie Crittenden Rule.” The WA Council has approved a new format for the repechage events at the ’28 Olympics and will only allow athletes to advance if they meet standards for “bona fide effort” using the WA scoring tables. Recall that Crittenden used that then-loophole to jog through his opening heat in Paris in 18.27…
The French federation is currently under investigation, as the newest president, Jean Gracia, reported to police that 3-4 million Euros are missing. The complaint uses the terms “breach of trust” and “receiving stolen goods.”…
Olympic and world javelin champ Neeraj Chopra is among the athletes alleging verbal harassment by coach Naval Singh in a written complain to the Sports Authority of India…
Athletes from Botswana have joined those from Cuba and Peru as “second-tier risks,” so classified by the AIU. They now must give at least three no-notice samples before being eligible to compete in major events…
Virginia Tech coach Ben Thomas is on a 1-year NCAA probation and his school had to pay a $30,000 fine after the NCAA ruled that he and incoming assistant Timothy Sykes from Akron impermissibly coordinated the transfer of athletes from Akron prior to their entering the portal…
A high school track meet in Charleston, West Virginia, was cancelled abruptly when shots were fired from a passing vehicle. No one was injured, and police arrested a suspect the next day…
UK Athletics has submitted its official bid to host the ’29 Worlds in London, although the stadium dispute with the West Ham United soccer team has not yet been resolved. Athletics officials are hoping the British government will help smooth that one out should London be selected…
Italy is also interested in hosting the ’29 WC — or perhaps ’31 — and there also is a German bid for those years (Munich). The Italians still need a letter of financial guarantee from their government before they can officially apply. WA anticipates making the decision for ’29 on September 19…
An Olympic bid is also being studied by Italy, with tentative hopes to host the ’26 or ’40 Games in a shared effort among Turin, Milan and Genoa…
A potential German Olympic bid from the North Rhine-Westphalia region received roughly two-thirds support in a recent referendum that saw 1.4 million voters participate. The aim is for the ’36, ’40, or ’44 Games…
Three candidates to host the ’29 Pan-Am U20 Championships: Rosario, Mexico; Guatemala City, Guatemala; and Panama City, Panama…
Chorzów, Poland, has been confirmed as host of the ’28 European Championships…
Glasgow, Scotland, will host the ’27 European XC Champs…
Phoenix and St. Louis are reportedly the two contenders to host the ’28 Olympic Trials Marathon…
Mutaz Barshim’s “What Gravity?” high jump meet, set for Doha on May 5, has been canceled because of the Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran. Other WG competitions set for Monaco and Heilbronn, Germany, will go ahead…
At the European Championships in Birmingham this summer, all four walks will start at the same time, but at two different starting points…
London Marathon organizers say they may consider moving to an earlier weekend in the spring should temperatures for the race keep rising. Says CEO Hugh Brasher, “Absolutely, the world is heating up, and people go, well, would you move the London Marathon? Of course we would move it.”
Another installment in Ryan Crouser’s World Shot Put Series will take place July 12 at the Ed Murphey Classic in Memphis…
Both Georgia and Nebraska showed off new track facilities in April…
The president of Ethiopia officially opened the new Addis Sports Park in the nation’s capital. It features statues of all 15 of Ethiopia’s Olympic gold medalists…
Plans to build an indoor track on the grounds of Letzigrund Stadium in Zürich have been halted by the city’s parliament. A $26 million investment had been planned; it was stopped by a 1-vote margin…
WA has launched a Kids Athletics app, designed for coaches and teachers. It offers activities, videos and lesson plans to get kids moving. English is one of the six languages available…
The Indian federation recently made the claim that 90% of its track facilities are substandard in materials, laying and marking, and said that it would be working to improve the situation…
Linden Hall won a race in Australia around a well-known gravel 2.4M running loop in 11:31.42, faster than Jessica Hull’s course record 11:31.53. However, organizers round the times up to the next second, and Hall’s tie didn’t qualify for the course record bonus, costing her $7100…
There’s been blowback to LA28 organizers adding a 24% service charge to some of its ticket packages. They defended the practice in a statement pointing out that 75% of the tickets are under $400, and “Tickets are comparable to – or well under in many cases – professional sporting and major entertainment events in the U.S.”…
The IOC’s move into the realm of e-sports, with an Olympic E-Sports Games set to open in ’27, looks like it’s been mothballed. After the cancellation of a sponsorship agreement with Saudi Arabia, the IOC has reportedly put the E-sports commission on hiatus as it reviews its options…
In the stats-we-didn’t-know-anyone-kept-track-of department, when Oregon’s Simeon Birnbaum made the Bowerman Watch List at the end of April, that made him athlete #500 to receive that honor. Since the lists debuted in ’10, 253 men and 247 women have been named by the advisory boards…
100 miles on a treadmill? It’s got to be more fun than it sounds, because 44-year-old Ashley Paulson did it for 12 hours-plus (12:47:05), a new record, in front of spectators at the Boston Marathon Expo. After a day of rest, she opted not to run the marathon itself…
Records are good for the sport’s bottom line, one would think. Perhaps it is with that in mind that Seb Coe said that WA will not be trying to rein in new shoe changes: “I don’t think any society, any civilization, any sector of the economy has been served well if you try to strangle innovation.”
