IN THE you-are-getting-sleepy department, ’17 world 800 champ Pierre-Ambroise Bosse has been informed that he will not face sanctions from the French federation after inviting an unauthorized hypnotist to the team hotel in Doha…
Hostings: Belgrade, Serbia, will stage the ’22 World Indoor and Yangzhou, China, the ’22 World Half-Marathon…
Nairobi has officially submitted its bid for the ’25 World Championships. It’s safe to say that the credibility of the Kenyan federation will be riding on whether it can pull off a successful World Junior (U20) Championship next summer…
Munich has been chosen to host the ’22 European Championships…
The British Olympic Trials will be held in Manchester next June will be well attended: all tickets were sold in the first week of availability…
Another sellout: the public race to be held with the World Half-Marathon Championships in Poland in March. All 20,000 entries have been taken.
Hurdler Dalilah Muhammad revealed she had a bad fall 10 days before her World Record at USATF: “I just took a bad step, and stubbed my foot into the track, and fell head first. I hit my head pretty hard, but I got up right away and went into a bathroom to look at my face in the mirror.”…
Mondo Duplantis can breathe easily for the Olympics. He has already been pre-selected for the Swedish team…
One of Jesse Owens’ ’36 gold medals will go on auction in December, with a starting bid of $250,000. In ’13, another of his medals sold for a record $1.4 million. However, the whereabouts of Owens’ remaining two golds are unknown…
Nine marathons have been promoted to WA’s new “Platinum” status: Berlin, Bogotá, Boston, Chicago, London, Nagoya, New York, Seoul & Tokyo…
November’s Beirut Marathon has been postponed until further notice because of political unrest in Lebanon…
The results of the Doha men’s shot were closer than thought… or were they? The EDM measuring system showed 4mm separating the medalists: Kovacs 22.911, Walsh 22.908, Crouser 22.907. Says Shaun Pickering, British throws coach and commentator: “When you consider that the EDM relies upon a stake being placed vertically… at the rearmost mark in the ground, by a guy running in from the side of the sector, you can see that we may have an issue here with $60,000 at stake for the winner!”…
Organizers of the ’21 Worlds are planning to host a major fan festival in Eugene. It won’t be at Hayward Field, but rather at the new redevelopment site along the Willamette River…
Construction on the 60,000-seat National Stadium in Tokyo, home of the Olympic track & field events, has been completed at a cost of $1.4 billion…
British athletes Eilish McColgan and Michael Rimmer dodged injury when the Uber they were using in Delhi was involved in a serious crash that flipped the other car…
North Korea can now claim a sub-10-second sprinter, sort of. At the national championships in Pyongyang (where we did not offer a TAFNOT tour), Jo Kum Ryong sprinted 9.9, hand-timed, no wind information..
Dutch marathoner Andrea Deelstra (2:26:46 PR) lost her funding from her national federation, so has had to sell her home to fund her Olympic bid…
Marathon man Eliud Kipchoge missed awards night at the WA Gala so that he could follow through on his pledge to start a library and school in his home village of Kapsisiywa. He accepted a $970,000 check from the president of Kenya to get the project rolling…
Turin is nowhere near Venice and its well-publicized flooding in November, but high water in the River Po caused the cancellation of its annual marathon…
German sprinter Gina Lückenkemper is now working with Florida-based coach Lance Brauman…
Sara Hyde Peters lost her job as head of UK Athletics days before it even started. It was part of the fallout from the revelation that her husband continued as a coach despite being banned from teaching because of an “inappropriate relationship” with a 15-year-old…
A 6th-century B.C. Greek wine cup that has been identified as the one given to Spyros Louis, the Greek winner of the first modern Olympic marathon in 1896, has been returned to Athens. The cup was part of a collection bought by the University of Münster in Germany in ’86. Only recently have scholars determined it was the famed Olympic cup…
World Athletics has ruled that Ohio State thrower Sade Olatoye jumped the gun in her nationality switch to Nigeria. She was only eligible to compete for her new nation on September 17, in time for the Worlds. However, she has to forfeit her shot and hammer medals from August’s African Games…
Nike has not abandoned Caster Semenya. The shoe company has released a documentary, The Birthplace Of Dreams, on the life and achievements of the controversial South African star, who is prohibited from running in her flagship event, the 800…
Anthony Famiglietti, an Olympic steepler in ’04 and ’08, now owns a North Carolina running store, where he recently put on a display of impressive 41-year-old running: a sub-4:00 mile on a treadmill…
A medical examiner’s report revealed that 2-time discus Olympian Jarred Rome, who passed away in September at age 42 (Landmarks, October), was a victim of a Fentanyl overdose…
Trinidad’s discus recordholder Quincy Wilson is suing his federation for allegedly using the “wrong substance”: to cover the throwing circle at the national championships, causing him to fall…
Canadian vaulter Alysha Newman has dropped domestic violence charges against her former partner, NFL player Anthony Chickillo, saying she wants to focus on the Olympics…
Those “free” Nike national team uniforms? Not so much in Britain, where the federation is looking at a $643,000 unpaid bill for failing to pay taxes on the value of the gift for several years. The news comes as the federation is already reeling from a $2 million loss on the staging of the Athletics World Cup.
Jim Thorpe revisited: New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland and 20 cosigners have introduced a U.S. House resolution asking that the IOC correct its official record and recognize the multi-sport star as the sole gold medalist of the 1912 decathlon and pentathlon…
Stuck at a record 97 races under 10-seconds, Asafa Powell says he is putting his chase to 100 on hold so that he can focus on being healthy for the Olympics at age 37. “Once I’m healthy, the sub-10s will follow,” he says…
Former world-class long jumper Mikese Morse has been ruled incompetent to stand trial in the death of a man who was riding bikes with his sons when Morse ran them over with a car. Morse will be hospitalized until doctors rule he is fit to stand trial…
The longrunning $65,000 discrepancy between World Athletics and the Nigerian federation has finally been resolved, with WA confirming receipt of the full amount…
Mizuki Noguchi, the ’04 Olympic marathon champ, has been chosen to be the first to carry the Olympic torch after it is lit at Olympia and carried by a Greek runner.
Double Olympic sprint champion Elaine Thompson of Jamaica married 400 hurdler Derron Herah in November.
The Russian boxing federation gave World champions Mariya Lasitskene and Anzhelika Sidorova $156,000 in bonuses after Doha; the two decided to share the money with their teammates. Lasitskene was also awarded a car, which she gave to her coach. Yes, boxing federation: the ceremony was folded in as part of Russia’s hosting of the World Women’s Boxing Championships…
Laura Muir has once again set her sights on Maria Mutola’s World Indoor Record of 2:30.94 for the kilometer, set in ’99. She hopes to tag the mark at Glasgow’s Grand Prix in February…
World Athletics has rejected the following potential World Records: Lonah Chemtai Salpeter’s 30:05 for 10K in a women-only race (no doping control), the 5K split times (13:23/14:46) at the Prague 10K (elevation drop), Brigid Kosgei’s 64:28 half-marathon (elevation drop/start-finish separation) and Eliud Kipchoge’s 1:59:41 marathon time trial (myriad reasons)…
World 400 champ Salwa Eid Naser says her Doha 48.16 might have been faster: “I slowed down a bit over the last 10m. I celebrated too early. I think if I had someone to push me to the finishline, I was going to run off with a 47.9 or a 48.0.”…
Natasha Cockram set a Welsh Record of 2:30:50 in the marathon in late October despite being kicked and bruised by a horse just 4 days earlier. “It didn’t hurt during the race,” she said. “My leg went numb in mile 19, but I pushed through.” ◻︎
