IT’S TRACK, KIND OF: A post-Olympic NASCAR event in Daytona featured Parker Valby as an honorary event official…
Nia Akins has left the Brooks Beasts in mid-season…
Paris was big for marriage proposals. Dakotah Lindwurm got hers after the marathon. Both steepler Alice Finot of France and triple jumper Almir dos Santos of Brazil proposed to their intendeds trackside, and shot putter Payton Otterdahl proposed to his intended at the Eiffel Tower. Shortly after the Games, discus winner Valarie Allman got engaged to coach Zeb Sion…
High jumper Gianmarco Tamberi, on the other hand lost his engagement ring during the Opening Ceremony on the River Seine. He later posted: “But if I really had to lose it, I couldn’t imagine a better place. It will remain forever in the riverbed of the City of Love.”…
Letsile Tebogo got a hero’s welcome in Gabarone, Botswana, as over 30,000 fans turned out to celebrate the return of the Olympic 200 champion…
Rai Benjamin is lobbying the New York Giants for an NFL contract, even if it’s just a 1-day deal. “That’s it — one day. I don’t need anything else… I’ll play on offense, come on. That’s easy. Listen, if you guys need me, I’m telling you right now just let me know. I’ve got some cleats in my closet at home.”…
As a Nevada high schooler back in ’12, Gabby Williams, then 15, placed 5th in the OT with her high jump best of 6-2¼ (1.89). This Olympics, the pro basketballer won silver as part of the French team…
Ryan Crouser, on his issues with overtraining: “As a self-coached athlete, I have had a bit of difficulty recognizing that I am getting older. This is a difficult pill to swallow.”…
No Wild Cards to the ’25 Worlds for this year’s Diamond League winners. Next year the protocol is shifting so that the free passes go to the winners of the current year’s DL titles…
The orphaned ’26 Commonwealth Games has hopes that Glasgow might be interested. Officials are now in talks with Commonwealth organizers…
Grant Holloway and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone were selected U.S. team captains for Paris…
It’s on. A planned 100m match between Karsten Warholm and Mondo Duplantis will take place on September 04 in Zürich, the day before the Weltklasse DL…
The Chorzów DL offered an MVP bonus of $10,000 to whomever produced the highest-scoring performance on the WA tables. Mondo Duplantis won it with his vault WR, which scored 1339 points to beat Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s 3000 WR (1320)…
Poland is throwing its hat in the ring to host the Olympics in ’40 or ’44…
Add Chile to the list of countries interested in hosting the ’36 Olympics…
The Solomon Islands was granted one of the IOC’s universality places in the 100, and the country’s Olympic committee entered Sharon Firisua without consulting the track federation. Firisua, a marathoner, had never run the 100 before. She clocked 14.31 for last in her heat…
Great Britain claimed the distinction of being the only county to win medals in all 5 track relays in Paris…
Of the 73 athletes who contested the Olympic repechage rounds, only 2 made it to the finals: Freddie Crittenden (110H) and Agueda Marques (1500)…
With the U.S. win in the men’s 4×4, Quincy Wilson became the youngest track & field gold medalist ever, edging ’48 decathlon winner Bob Mathias in that department…
Valarie Allman’s gold medal was the 1200th ever won by a U.S. athlete, counting both Winter and Summer Olympics, according to Olympic statistician Bill Mallon…
Mallon also points out that Ryan Crouser’s third shot gold is the twelfth three-peat in Olympic history in an individual track & field event. Two of those, however, come from the 1906 Games that don’t technically count. And note that Ray Ewry, Carl Lewis, and Al Oerter went on to make it four-straight…
How rare was it that for three straight Games, the same two athletes — Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs in this case— were the top two steps on a podium in track & field? Not counting 1906, it never happened before…
A recent update of the WA Agents Directory shows 294 registered agents, with the U.S. having the most at 69. Worldwide, 82% of agents are male…
The winningest agent on the Paris track was Paul Doyle, whose charges earned 6 gold medals…
Mongolia’s Ser-Od Bat-Ochirmight have been the last-place finisher in the marathon at 2:42:33, but he is the first in history to compete in 6 Olympic marathons…
Helalia Johannes of Namibia became the first woman to complete 5 Olympic marathons; she was 68th in 2:38:36…
Alexandra Burghardt was on Germany’s medal-winning 4×1 team. Two years earlier she won bobsleigh silver in the Winter Olympics. She became the seventh athlete to win medals in both Winter and Summer Olympics…
Spanish Walker Jesús Ángel García participated in his 8th Games, a record. French discus thrower Mélina Robert-Michon, at 7 appearances, tied Merlene Ottey’s record for women…
Keeping up with the competition: U.S. decathlete Harrison Williams scored 8500 at the WC last year for the highest 7th-place total ever. In Paris he improved to 8538. Again for the best 7th ever…
Of the 211 track & field medals given out at these Olympic games, 79 of those were from athletes that were NCAA athletes at one point in their careers, or 37.4%…
Jim Spier reports that four U.S. high schools put two athletes each on the Olympic track: Mount de Sales Academy (Catonsville, MD)—Bella & Juliette Whittaker; Oxford (MS)—Sam Kendricks & Shelby McEwen; Bullis (Potomac, MD)—Masai Russell & Quincy Wilson; and Northwestern (Miami)—Aaliyah Butler & TeeTee Terry…
The rooms of Algerian 800 runner Djamel Sedjati and his coach were searched two days before the 800 final by French anti-doping investigators, apparently acting on a tip. “Thank God it was only a small inconvenience. I was quickly able to get back to normal,” said the bronze-winning Sedjati…
Coach Rana Reider had his Olympic accreditation taken away after news emerged that he is being sued by three female athletes for sexual and emotional abuse. Reider had been accredited by the Canadian Olympic Committee and was coaching Andre De Grasse in addition to Italy’s Marcel Jacobs. The lawsuits also name USATF, Reider’s Tumbleweed TC and shoe companies Puma and adidas. Reider had previously been investigated by SafeSport and UK Athletics for an affair he ha with a teenage British athlete…
WA has slapped Bahrain with sanctions following an 18-month investigation that uncovered serious doping violations, including two athletes at the ’21 Olympics getting homologous blood transfusions and the employment of a coach who had been banned for prior violations. The ban, dated to June 1, 2024, allowed the federation to have athletes at the Olympics and the ’25 Worlds, but no other WA events for a year. In addition, team size is limited to 10—a number the country hasn’t hit recently…
The AIU is currently investigating age cheating in Kenya, with the allegation of a rising number of cases of athlete being entered in U18 or U20 events fraudulently. Athletics Kenya has disclosed that it is looking into 26 cases at this point…
Khalid Tighazouine died recently at age 47. The Moroccan was 7th in the ’01 Worlds 800…
Fordham assistant coach Marisa Galloway, 45, was murdered by her former mother-in-law in New York in July in the tragic culmination of a child custody dispute…
“Ingebrigtsen: Born To Run” will be released on Netflix September 20…
On the music front, Jakob Ingebrigtsen released a music video with brothers Filip and Henrik. It’s on YouTube under the titles “Ingebritz – No One Does It Better.”…
“SPRINT” season 2 is set to go live on Netflix on November 13…
Katarina Johnson-Thompson has an autobiography coming out in November, called Unbroken…
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has launched her own line of hair products, called AFIMI…
Art may be in the eye of the beholder, but recent statues of star athletes Faith Kipyegon and Eliud Kipchoge erected in Eldoret, Kenya, were so badly done as to create a public outcry. The statues were taken down, with a former cabinet minister saying, “Those who approved millions of shillings on this nonsense should be answerable to the Anti-Corruption Committee.”…
Said Eliud Kipchoge after his first-ever DNF: “It is a difficult time for me. This is my worst marathon. I have never done a DNF. That’s life. Like a boxer, I have been knocked down, I have won, I have come 2nd, 8th, 10th, 5th – now I did not finish. That’s life. I don’t know what next. I need to go back, sit down, try to figure my 21 years of running at high level. I need to evolve and feature in other things.”…
Not a fan? Sandi Morris tweeted during a mechanical delay of the women’s vault final in Paris, “All hail the ridiculously expensive yet unreliable electronic standards that always manage to break during championships!”…
WA has hired Nielsen (the poll people) as its official supplier of consumer market research services…
The IOC, meanwhile, has expanded its technology partnership with Deloitte, which is set to go through ’32…
The New York AC, founded in 1868, has been honored with a WA World Heritage Plaque. The ceremony marked the beginning of a 4-year heritage agreement between the club and the Museum of World Athletics to explore the potential of both of their collections of athletics memorabilia…
The bell that gold medalists rang in the Stade de France will be installed in the Cathédrale Notre Dame in time for the church’s reopening in December, four years after the famed church was damaged by fire…
What’s gold worth? For Arshad Nadeem, Pakistan’s first gold medalist, about a million dollars and a buffalo. A half million came from the prime minister, $350K from the chief minister of his province, and the buffalo from his father-in-law. Add to that a couple cars, free fuel for life, an apartment and a golden crown…
Nia Ali, who won 100H silver in ’16, tweeted about being married to Andre De Grasse, who now has won 7 Olympic medals for Canada: “I am down bad in my household on medals now. Next year gotta be mine.”…
Kendall Ellis, who got stuck in a portapotty prior to her OT 400 win, now has a sponsorship deal with Charmin. ◻︎