MAYBE INEOS was the winner. How many people watched Eliud Kipchoge’s 1:59 marathon? 779,000 reportedly watched the stream live, and 5 million in the week after that…
USATF Interim President Michael Conley was one who was thrilled by the election of Willie Banks to the IAAF Council: “With this election, the USA will continue in its role as an influential figure in the international arena and remain diligent moving toward the 2021 IAAF World Championships on U.S. soil.”…
Mississippi will be putting in a new $2 million team facility next to its track…
UCLA’s Drake Stadium will retain its name, but the track it hosts will be named after Olympic legend Rafer Johnson and his wife Betsy…
Penn has kicked off a $44 million fundraising drive to build a 63,000 square-foot indoor facility that will include a banked 200 track. It would be the first such collegiate facility in the Philadelphia area…
Nebraska’s track program will be moving from Ed Weir Track to a new $11.5 million facility in ’21 as part of the university’s renovation of most of its athletic facilities…
The Russian federation has fired three of its walk coaches—Sergey Aparin, Vyacheslav Golovin & Sergey Nikitin—for mentoring walkers who have tested positive…
George Williams, the longtime coach at St. Augustine’s who was the ’04 Olympic head , was involved in a car crash while in Doha and spent several weeks in a hospital there. According to his family, “He has serious injuries but is alert, responsive and expected to fully recover.”…
Noted Irish trackwriter Cathal Dennehy, whose work has appeared in our pages, is blunt in his assessment of Nike’s controversial Vaporfly shoes. “It’s technological doping, really,” he told offtheball.com…
In that small chunk of a Venn diagram where gambling and track intersect, now that the marathon’s 2-hour barrier has fallen, what’s next? According to one bookmaker, it’s the men’s high jump record, at 2:1 odds. Next on the list, surprisingly, is the men’s long jump standard…
WADA has inked a deal with a number of organizations, including USADA to start using dried-blood-spot testing (DBS) before the Olympics. The method requires only a prick of the finger and may replace conventional blood and urine samples…
The appearance of all three of Norway’s Ingebrigtsen brothers—Filip, Henrik, Jakob—in the Doha 5000 final not surprisingly marked the first time that three brothers had competed in the same global track final…
Speaking of all things Ingebrigtsen, miler Jakob’s road 10K of 27:54 in mid-October set a European Junior (U20) best…
On National Coming Out Day, reigning Olympic 400H gold medalist Kerron Clement did just that, saying, “When they said things behind my back it made me have a tough skin and a backbone, and it made me work hard on the track. And I performed because I had something to prove. That’s what made me become an Olympic champion.”…
The ’25 Universiade is looking more like a Budapest thing after Germany, the erstwhile host, missed a deadline to name a city and provide government guarantees…
In addition to the gold medal and various cash bonuses, World hammer champ DeAnna Price also earned a Bernese Mountain puppy after hitting the standard set by husband/coach J.C. Lambert…
Katarina Johnson-Thompson is downplaying the thought that she’s the Tokyo heptathlon favorite: “I know that I’m capable of winning now… but I know what it’s like to come 2nd. I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve under-performed. So I’m fully expecting Nafi [Thiam] to go away and have an amazing winter and come back with a different sort of motivation.”…
WC 1500/10,000 doubler Sifan Hassan has indicated a 5/10 pairing is likely for her in Tokyo…
A statue has been erected in Melbourne in honor of the late Australian sprinter Peter Norman, 2nd in the 200 at the ’68 Games…
With the passing of hurdle great Martin Lauer, does anyone remember his hit country song that sold nearly 6 million records? Taxi Nach Texas (Taxi to Texas) can still be readily found on YouTube…
A longevity award to walker Jesús Ángel García—the ’93 gold medalist at 50K—who competed in his 13th World Champs at Doha, a record. The 49-year-old Spaniard is now aiming for Tokyo, which would be a record 8th Olympic appearance…
Newcomer Daniel Simiyu, who won the Kenyan 5000 title but was denied a spot on the Doha squad by the IAAF because he had not yet been out-of-competition tested the required amount of times, says, “I want to quit track and concentrate on road running. I was so confident of reclaiming the 5000m title for Kenya but it’s not possible now. It is so sad.”…
Nebraska triple jumper Angela Mercurio has been named the ’19 NCAA Woman of the Year; the award is decided based on athletics, academics, service and leadership…
Saved by the tweet: The cross country team from New Jersey’s Ocean City High found itself stranded at the Philadelphia airport on what looked like a doomed trip to a Florida meet. But Delta Airlines noticed a desperate tweet from one of the runners and chartered a private plane to get the kids to the race on time (the boys won, the girls were 2nd)…
Tokyo ’20 organizers have voided nearly 7000 tickets after they were found to have been bought with fake IDs through the online lottery. Over 7.5 million Japanese had tried to get tickets through the lottery, with fewer than half succeeding…
It may have been more than a century since his record-setting exploits, but Purdue has proven that its multiple Olympic gold medalist has not been forgotten. The university recently dedicated the Ray Ewry Sports Engineering Center. Ewry won 10 golds in the standing long jump, high jump and triple jump in the Games from 1900 to 1908…
Melvin Nyaira ran a 1:15:35 in the Toronto Half-Marathon dressed as a banana, reported a “World Record” by some 4:00 for a fruit 13.1M. No word on what shoes the Chiquita-sponsored athlete was wearing. Fruitflys perhaps? ◻︎
