Running News Daily

Emmanuel Korir reveals when he will make long-awaited return

Olympic 800m champion Emmanuel Korir has announced when he will return to action as he seeks to return to shape ahead of his title defense in Paris after a poor 2023 campaign.

Olympic 800m champion Emmanuel Korir will make his long return to action at the Marrakech Diamond League in Morocco on May 27.

Korir has not been in competitive action since his disappointing outing at the 2023 World Championships when he was eliminated at the heats and subsequently failed to defend his title.

The 28-year-old was just returning after a long injury layoff but found the going tough after which he went downlow perhaps to tune up for his Olympic title defense.

Nine months on and Korir will be hoping for a good outing in Marrakech where he will run in the 800m but faces stiff competition from compatriots Emmanuel Wanyonyi and Wycliffe Kinyamal.

World 800m silver medalist Wanyonyi is the man of the moment and will head into the race on confidence having shown no signs of rustiness at the Kip Keino Classic last month, when he ran a world leading time of 1:43.57 to win what was his first race of the season.

Another extra motivation for Korir will be the need to hit the Olympic qualifying time given his 1:46.78, clocked at the World Championship was out of the set standard of 1:44:70.

Korir is hoping to get back to the heights of 2022 when he won the world title in 1:43.71 which will also get him closer to his rivals ahead of the Olympics.

With new runners emerging, such as world champion Marco Arop of Canada and Wanyonyi in his absence, the 28-year-old has a lot of work on his hands to regain his old form.

Korir, who has had to deal with a calf injury, also opened his 2023 season in Morocco, starting in Rabat, where he finished eighth, before proceeding to Paris, France, only to finish 10th.

He followed that up with another eighth-place finish in Stockholm, Sweden before his poor showing at the World Championships.

Jepkorir ready to shake off rivals as she seeks to defend Copenhagen title

Rodah Jepkorir is gearing up to defend her Copenhagen Marathon crown against top-tier competition on May 5 in Denmark’s capital.

Last year, Jepkorir blazed through the course in 2:23:14 to claim victory, setting a new personal best (PB) in the process.

Valentina Mateiko secured second place in 2:25:05, while Britain’s Philippa Bowden completed the podium with a time of 2:29:16.

The 33-year-old is no stranger to success, boasting three Buenos Aires Marathon titles under her belt.

In 2019, she clocked 2:25:46, followed by 2:26:53 in 2022, and completed a hat trick in 2023 with a time of 2:24:52. 

Jepkorir also clocked 2:27:10 to seal the Gold Coast Marathon title in Australia last year as well as the 2019 title in 2:27:56.

However, she'll face fierce competition from Ethiopia’s Derartu Hailu, who holds a PB of 2:23:18 from the Sevilla Marathon, where she finished fourth.

Hailu also holds the Xuzhou Marathon title with a time of 2:27:27.

Joining the fray is 2022 Kosice Marathon champion Margaret Agai, who aims to challenge Jepkorir for the title. Agai has a personal best of 2:23:28 from the 2013 Daegu Marathon.

In the men’s elite race, Castellon Marathon silver medallist James Kiplagat and 2018 Paris Marathon bronze medallist Ernest Ngeno will be among the contenders.

Kiplagat holds a PB of 2:09:08 from the 2023 Zurich Barcelona Marathon and also secured a runners-up spot at the 2021 Stockholm Marathon with a time of 2:12:26. Ngeno boasts a personal best of 2:06:41 from the 2018 Paris Marathon.

The duo will be joined by 2023 Durban Marathon bronze medallists Cornelius Yego and Benson Tunyo.

Ethiopia’s Gadisa Birhanu will prove a tough test for the Kenyans as he boosts a 2:04:59 PB set in 2023 at the Sevilla Marathon, where he clinched the title.

Abdi Gelelchu of Bahrain is also in the elite list with a PB of 2:07:15 set at the 2022 Sevilla Marathon and so will be Japan’s Tsubasa Ichiyama with a a PB of 2:07:41.

Kipyego, Langat headline Madrid Marathon start list

The 2022 Rotterdam Marathon bronze medalist Reuben Kipyego will flex his muscles against 2022 French Riviera Marathon champion John Langat at the  Madrid Marathon on Sunday.

The marathon will feature a full marathon, half marathon and 10km race with the event organizers noting a huge turnout in the half marathon.

“The biggest race will be the half marathon with 20,000 participants, followed by the full marathon with 11,000 and the 10km with 9,000,” a statement from the organizers read.

Kipyego holds a personal best of 2:03:55 set while winning the 2021 Generali Milano Marathon in Italy.

The 28-year-old is also the 2019 Abu Dhabi Marathon champion where he clocked 2:04:40. Also in that year, he won silver at the South American Marathon Championships in Buenos Aires, Argentina, clocking 2:05:18.

Langat holds a personal best of 2:07:11 set at the Eindhoven Marathon in the Netherlands in 2019, where he placed third.

In 2016, he clocked 2:10:49 to finish second at the Daegu Marathon in South Korea. The 30-year-old is also a bronze medallist at the Adidas Stockholm Marathon in Sweden clocking 2:12:39.

Joining the fray is Bernard Kimani, a bronze medalist at the 2020 Loop Den Haag Half Marathon.

The Ethiopian duo of Mumbai Marathon champion Haymanot Alew and 2022 Rome Marathon champion Fikre Bekele will prove a tough test for the Kenyans.

Also in the lineup is Taiyuan Marathon bronze medalist Hicham Laqouahi of Morocco.

Laura Muir returns to defend wanamaker mile title at 2024 Millrose Games

Great Britain’s Laura Muir, the Olympic 1500m silver medalist and three-time 1500m world championship medalist, will return to the 116th Millrose Games at The Armory on Feb. 11 to defend her NYRR Wanamaker Mile title.

Here’s what you need to know:

– Last year, Muir closed the race with a 30.99s final lap to win in 4:20.15 over Josette Andrews, who will also be returning after back-to-back runner-up finishes. Muir made her Millrose Games debut last year after a stunning 4:14.8 victory at the 2022 Fifth Avenue Mile. Muir is keeping a tight indoor schedule as she gets ready for the 3000m at the 2024 World Indoor Championships in Glasgow. She just ran 8:34.39 for 3000m at the Cardiff Metropolitan University Christmas Classic on Dec. 19.

– The Wanamaker Mile event record is the 4:16.85 American record set by Elinor Purrier St. Pierre in the 2020 edition of the meet. She will return to The Armory after missing last year’s indoor season while being pregnant with her son, Ivan. She gave birth in March and then returned to racing at the 5th Avenue Mile in September with a 4:23 for seventh place. Purrier -St. Pierre also won the 2019 2022 edition of the Wanamaker Mile with a 4:19.30 victory.

– The field will also include 2023 World Championship 1500m finalists: Jessica Hull (7th in Budapest) and Katie Snowden (8th in Budapest).

– Ethiopia’s Axumawit Embaye, a two-time World Indoor silver medalist in the 1500m, will make her Millrose Games debut. Last year, she ran season’s bests of 4:00.98 for 1500m and 4:24.01 for the mile. She notched a personal best of 15:04.41 for 5000m at the Stockholm Diamond League.

Kebebe and Gudeta triumph in Xiamen

Ethiopian duo Asefa Boki Kebebe and Bekelech Gudeta were victorious at the C&D Xiamen Marathon on Sunday (7), winning the World Athletics Platinum Label road race in 2:06:46 and 2:22:54 respectively.

Kebebe upset a quality field that contained three sub-2:05 runners, outracing Kenya’s Felix Kirwa in the final seven kilometres to take the men’s title, falling just 27 seconds shy of the course record.

A leading group of more than 10 runners passed through 10km in 29:28 and 15km in 44:20. After the leaders hit the 20km mark in 59:08, defending champion Philimon Kiptoo Kipchumba and fellow Kenyan Kibiwott Kandie, the fastest entrant with a personal best of 2:04:48, both withdrew.

The pace decreased slightly after 20km but the leading group continued to shrink. At 25km there were only five runners left in the leading pack: Kebebe, Kirwa, Solomon Kirwa Yego of Kenya, Ethiopai’s Adane Kebede Gebre and Moroccan record-holder Othmane El Goumri.

Gebre dropped out of contention just before 30km, which the leaders reached in 1:29:13. After another kilometre, 31-year-old El Goumri tried to make a move. Although the Moroccan’s attempt went in vain, Yego failed to keep up. After the leading trio hit 35km in 1:44:43, El Goumri gradually faded away as well.

Kirwa stayed in the pole position as Kebebe followed closely behind. Kebede’s patience paid off as the Ethiopian made a decisive surge in the final kilometre to pass Kirwa, notching his third marathon title in China following victories in Changchun and Tianjin last year.

Kirwa – who has marathon titles in Yichang, Stockholm, Macao, Singapore and Antwerp – took second place in 2:06:52. El Goumri finished third in 2:07:18.

Like Kebebe, 26-year-old Gudeta also emerged victorious from a stacked field, but her victory was more comfortable.

An Ethiopian trio of Gudeta, Aberu Ayana Mulisa and Ftaw Zeray led the women’s race to 15km in 55:09 with the closest chaser, Morocco’s world bronze medallist Fatima Ezzahra Gardadi, lagging more than 40 seconds behind.

Zeray soon fell behind before the leading duo passed 20km and Mulisa, who achieved her PB of 2:21:54 last year in Seville, also failed to keep up with Gudeta near the halfway point.

Gudeta continued to extend her lead and went on to win in 2:22:54, shaving two seconds from the PB she set when winning in Prague two years ago.

Gardadi finished second in 2:24:12 taking almost a minute off her PB in what was her second race in Xiamen in five weeks following a 1:11:14 victory at the Xiamen Half Marathon.

China’s Zhang Deshun was third in 2:26:53.

Two Istanbul champions target the Turkish allcomers’ marathon record

The current champion and a former winner will clash in Sunday’s Türkiye Is Bankasi Istanbul Marathon when the men’s elite runners target the Turkish allcomers’ record of 2:09:27.

Defending champion Robert Kipkemboi will be up against fellow Kenyan Benard Sang who took Turkey’s most prestigious marathon in 2020. However Abraraw Misganaw of Ethiopia is the fastest runner on the final start with a personal best of 2:06:39. Kenya’s Beatrice Cheptoo heads the women’s elite list with a PB of 2:22:28.

Around 4,500 athletes will run the classic distance on the unique course which starts on the Asian side of Istanbul and then finishes in Europe on Sultanahmet Square in the city’s historic center. Including races at shorter distances organisers expect a total of 45,000 runners to compete in the event, which is a World Athletics Gold Label Road Race. The Türkiye Is Bankasi Istanbul Marathon starts at 9 am on Sunday and will be shown in a live stream with an English commentary available worldwide at: https://maraton.istanbul

“We are proud to have assembled a strong international field for Turkey’s premier marathon event once again. Hopefully weather conditions will be fine so that there is a chance of establishing the fastest time ever run on Turkish soil. It is great to see another very big mass race with 45,000 runners. This confirms our significant position for the development of our sport in Turkey. We are of course the only marathon in the world that offers the experience of crossing from one continent to another during the race,“ said Race Director Renay Onur, who also pointed out that the race was held annually without any interruptions. „Even during the pandemic we managed to stage the race, which was one of only very few in the world that went ahead.“

“I am ready for a good race. If the weather is suitable and the pacemakers are doing their job then I think the course record could be possible for me,“ said Abraraw Misganaw. Daniel Kibet of Kenya holds the record with his winning time of 2:09:44 from 2019. This mark is just 17 seconds away from the Turkish allcomers’ record. Abraraw Misganaw improved his former PB of 2:09:47 by over three minutes in Dubai this February. He clocked 2:06:39 and was fifth in this competitive race. “I am in the same shape as before the Dubai Marathon,“ said the 35 year-old from Addis Ababa.

Robert Kipkemboi will be looking to become the first man to achieve back to back wins in Istanbul since fellow-Kenyan Vincent Kiplagat defended his title in 2011. 35 year old Kipkemboi clocked 2:10:18 a year ago. His personal best stands a 2:07:09. Earlier this year he showed very promising form when he won the Nairobi Marathon in 2:07:38. This is quite a remarkable performance in high altitude. While a total of seven runners feature personal bests of sub 2:10 on Istanbul’s start list organisers had to cope with some late withdrawals. Among them are Kenyans Reuben Kipyego and Moses Koech as well as Gadise Shumie of Ethiopia.

Early this year Beatrice Cheptoo ran a fine personal best of 2:22:28 when she was third in Doha. The 30 year-old Kenyan improved by almost two minutes. “I have prepared for the race in Istanbul since June and my training went really well. So I am hoping for a good time and will try to win the race,“ said Beatrice Cheptoo, who lives in the village of Nandhliis near Eldoret and trains in an altitude of around 2,000 metres. “I have got my own pacemaker and only train with him,“ said Beatrice Cheptoo, whose husband is a maize farmer and looks after their two children if his wife is away for races.

With a personal best of 2:23:49 Sifan Melaku of Ethiopia is the second fastest on the start list. The 23 year-old ran this time three years ago in Sevilla. In her most recent race she took the Stockholm Marathon with 2:30:44 in May. In the same month this year Valentina Mateiko ran a fine marathon debut in Copenhagen. The Kenyan was second with 2:25:05. It will be interesting to see what she can do in much more competitive field in Istanbul. While four women feature personal bests of sub 2:24 another four on the start list have run below 2:27. Another Kenyan who might do well on Sunday is Linah Cheruto. She was very unfortunate when she suffered of a broken foot during her debut marathon in Copenhagen in 2023 around the 30k mark. After fully recovering Linah Cheruto now starts a second attempt in Istanbul. Turkey’s national record holder Sultan Haydar withdrew from the race at short notice.

Kenyan duo headlines strong fields for Istanbul Marathon

The Kenyan duo is bound to face tough opposition from opponents who will also be searching for glory in the streets of Istanbul.

The duo of Reuben Kipyego and Beatrice Cheptoo headline strong fields for the Istanbul Marathon scheduled for Sunday, November 5.

Kipyego is the fastest in the men’s field with a Personal Best time of 2:03:55. The Kenyan is also the fastest runner ever entered into the Istanbul Marathon.

The 27-year-old Kenyan achieved his personal best in Milan where he was runner-up in 2021. He finished third at the Rotterdam Marathon with 2:05:12 in 2022. It will be the first time the Kenyan competes in Istanbul and he will face a tough field.

Ethiopia’s Gadise Shumie currently is the second fastest runner on the start list with a PB time of 2:04:59. With this time he won the Sevilla Marathon earlier this year, improving his former personal best by well over four minutes.

Although already 31 years old his international career only began two years ago, when Shumie won his debut marathon in Montreal with 2:09:25. He will travel to Istanbul unbeaten in the marathon so far.

On his part, Robert Kipkemboi will enjoy the mastery of the course since it was in Istanbul where he dropped his last remaining rival a year ago and went on to win the race in 2:10:18.

He will be returning as the defending champion joined by compatriot Moses Koech who looks promising among a number of debutants.

With regard to her international career, Beatrice Cheptoo can still be considered a newcomer. She ran her first race outside Kenya less than 24 months ago when she finished third in Malaga with 2:25:20.

A year ago, she took the Melbourne marathon in January and then improved significantly to 2:22:28 when she was third in Doha.

With this time the Kenyan currently is the fastest woman in the field. 23-year-old Sifan Melaku will be looking to challenge the 30-year-old Kenyan.

When the Ethiopian clocked her PB of 2:23:49 in Seville over three years ago she had just turned 20. This summer Melaku showed fine form when she won the Stockholm Marathon.

Meanwhile, including races at shorter distances, a total of 45,000 runners are expected to take part in the 45th edition of the Türkiye Is Bankasi Istanbul Marathon.

Around 4,500 of them will run the classic distance. Turkey’s major marathon race features a unique course over two continents, starting in Asia and finishing in Europe.

How unleashed dog robbed Kenyan marathoner Ksh 1 million in Argentina

Robert Kimutai Ngeno went into the race with ambitious goals which were halted by a dog.

Robert Kimutai Ngeno headed to the Buenos Aires Marathon in Argentina on Sunday with one goal in mind, to win the race and walk away with more than Ksh 1.1 million  ($7900US). 

However, things did not turn out as expected for the 29-year-old who was looking very comfortable leading the pack at the 21km mark.

An unleashed dog emerged and suddenly began pursuing him and he was unable to keep the focus. As reported by Sports and Lifestyle Africa, a small crowd of spectators came to Ngeno’s aid, chasing away the dog that had interrupted his race.

The Kenyan was primed to win but the disruption from the dog forced him to settle for third place.

His compatriots, Cornelius Kibet Kiplagat and Paul Kipngetich Tanui finished first and second in respective times of 2:08.29 and 2:09.57.

He had opened his season with the 42km debut at the Stockholm Marathon earlier this year with an impressive fourth-place finish and was hoping for a good outing in Argentina but he leaves the country in heartbreak.

Ethiopia’s Derara Hurisa targets victory at TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon

Derara Hurisa is the latest in a long list of Ethiopian greats to commit to the 2023 TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon scheduled for October 15th.Once again, the event is a World Athletics Elite Label race. The 26-year-old has had an extraordinary marathon career to date ever since winning his debut at the 2020 Mumbai Marathon. There he ran 2:08:09 which remains his personal bestdespite a few other memorable outings.Two years ago Hurisa won the Guadalajara Marathon at 1,600m altitude in Mexico eight months after achieving notoriety for all the wrong reasons in Vienna.

Hurisa, then still relatively young at 23 years of age, crossed the finish line first at the Vienna Marathon. He clocked a time of 2:09:22 three seconds ahead of Kenya’s Leonard Langat. No sooner had Hurisa crossed the finish then officials approached him and within minutes he was disqualified.

World Athletics has instigated strict rules to limit the thickness of racing shoes. It was found that Hurisa had worn a different pair of shoes to those he submitted in the pre-race inspection. They were one centimeter too thick. It is believed this was the first time a marathoner had been disqualified under these rules.

“My preparation for Vienna marathon was very good,” he says looking back on the incident. “I had to switch my shoes because it was my very first time putting on those shoes. It wasn’t the shoes I wore when I was in training. So I decided to switch and use them without knowing it was different. The color was similar.”

Not only did he run himself to exhaustion over the 42.2 kilometers but the €10,000 first-place prize money went to Langat. He admits he was very angry to learn of his mistake.

“I was shocked by that news when (Eritrean runner) Tadesse Abraham told me that I was disqualified,” he remembers, “because it wasn’t something I was expecting. Yes, I was angry, definitely.”

As an indication of Hurisa’s potential Langat returned to Vienna a year later and finished second in 2:06:59. The Ethiopian believes he is capable of times quicker than this.

Since then he has put the disappointment behind him. Earlier this year he finished second in the Stockholm Marathon. The race features many of the sites of the Swedish capital. But can also be challenging due to its numerous turns and warm June weather. His time there was a modest 2:11:01 on a hot day. Toronto Waterfront Marathon has far fewer turns and with a course record of 2:05:00 (Philemon Rono of Kenya) is far more inviting. He is optimistic of a great run in Toronto after some good early training sessions.

“It’s going great and yes, I’m pleased with my fitness level more than ever,” he reports. “I have been training for six or seven days in a week. Compared to previous marathon buildups it has been much better.”

Asked to reveal his goal for Toronto he is concise and to the point: “I would like to achieve a victory with a good time.”

Hurisa grew up in Ambo in western Ethiopia. Kenenisa Bekele was inspired by him winning the three-time Olympic titles and setting world 5,000m and 10,000m records. Hurisa was recruited by the Bahrain Athletics Federation after a cross-country race in Oromia. He was still in his teens.

For three years he lived in the oil-rich country earning a salary to run.  At the 2015 World Cross Country Championships in Guiyang, China he placed 22nd in the Under-20 race helping Bahrain to a 4th place finish. A year later though he went back to Ethiopia and now travels on an Ethiopian passport.

These days he is focused on the marathon under the watchful eye of coach Gemedu Dedefo and enjoys spending time with his wife and two children.

“I like to spend my time with my family – I’m married and I have one boy and one girl – and I like going to church,” he explains. “I do return to my birth village whenever there is holiday.”

Conditions are likely to be cooler in Toronto compared to what he experienced in Mumbai. Clearly, he will be prepared to run with the leaders. And he is certainly due some good luck.

Derara Hurisa is the latest in a long list of Ethiopian greats to commit to the 2023 TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon

Derara Hurisa is the latest in a long list of Ethiopian greats to commit to the 2023 TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon scheduled for October 15th. Once again, the event is a World Athletics Elite Label race.

The 26-year-old has had an extraordinary marathon career to date ever since winning in his debut at the 2020 Mumbai Marathon. There he ran 2:08:09 which remains his personal best despite a few other memorable outings.

Two years ago Hurisa won the Guadalajara Marathon at 1,600m altitude in Mexico eight months after achieving notoriety for all the wrong reasons in Vienna. Hurisa, then still relatively young at 23 years of age, crossed the finish line first at the Vienna Marathon with a time of 2:09:22 three seconds ahead of Kenya’s Leonard Langat. No sooner had Hurisa crossed the finish then officials approached him and within minutes he was disqualified.

World Athletics has instigated strict rules to limit the thickness of racing shoes and it was found that Hurisa had worn a different pair of shoes to those he submitted in the pre-race inspection. They were one centimetre too thick. It is believed this was the first time a marathoner had been disqualified under these rules.

“My preparation for Vienna marathon was very good,” he says looking back on the incident. “I had to switch my shoes because it was my very first time putting on those shoes. It wasn't the shoes I wear when I was in training. So I decided to switch and use them without knowing it was different. The colour was similar.”

Not only did he run himself to exhaustion over the 42.2 kilometres but the €10,000 first place prize money went to Langat and not himself. He admits he was very angry to learn of his mistake.

“I was shocked by that news when (Eritrean runner) Tadesse Abraham told me that I was disqualified,” he remembers, “because it wasn't something I was expecting. Yes, I was angry, definitely.”

As an indication of Hurisa’s potential Langat returned to Vienna a year later and finished second in 2:06:59. The Ethiopian believes he is capable of times quicker than this. Since then he has put the disappointment behind him. Earlier this year he finished 2nd in the Stockholm Marathon which features many of the sites of the Swedish capital but can also be challenging due to its numerous turns and warm June weather. His time there was a modest 2:11:01 on a hot day. Toronto Waterfront Marathon has far less turns and with a course record of 2:05:00 (Philemon Rono of Kenya) is far more inviting. He is optimistic of a great run in Toronto after some good early training sessions.

“It’s going great and yes, I'm pleased with my fitness level more than ever,” he reports. “I have been training for six or seven days in a week. Compared to previous marathon buildups it has been much better.”

Asked to reveal his goal for Toronto he is concise and to the point: “I would like to achieve a victory with a good time.” Hurisa grew up in Ambo in western Ethiopia and was inspired by the exploits of Kenenisa Bekele the three-time Olympic champion and former world 5,000m and 10,000m record holder.

After a good result at a championship cross-country race in Oromia he was recruited by the Bahrain athletics federation while in his teens.

For three years he lived in the oil rich country earning a salary to run. At the 2015 World Cross Country Championships in Guiyang, China he placed 22nd in the Under-20 race helping Bahrain to a 4th place finish. A year later though he went back to Ethiopia and now travels on an Ethiopian passport.

These days he is focused on the marathon under the watchful eye of coach Gemedu Dedefo and enjoys spending time with his wife and two children.

"I like to spend my time with my family - I'm married and I have one boy and one girl - and I like going to church,” he explains. “I do return to my birth village whenever there is holiday.” Conditions are likely to be much cooler in Toronto compared to what he experienced in Mumbai in his victorious debut. Clearly, he will be prepared to run with the leaders. And he is certainly due some good luck.

About the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon

The TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon is Canada’s premier running event and the grand finale of the Canada Running Series (CRS). Since 2017, the race has served as the Athletics Canada national marathon championship race and has doubled as the Olympic trials. Using innovation and organization as guiding principles, Canada Running Series stages great experiences for runners of all levels, from Canadian Olympians to recreational and charity runners. With a mission of “building community through the sport of running,” CRS is committed to making sport part of sustainable communities and the city-building process.

To learn more about the TCS Toronto Waterfront Marathon, visit TorontoWaterFrontMarathon.com.

Florence Kiplagat will make her return into competitive athletics at the Stockholm Marathon

Her last competition was during the 2019 Outdoor Meeting in Israel where she competed over the 10,000m and finished third.

The 2009 World Cross-Country champion Florence Kiplagat will make her return into competitive athletics at the Stockholm Marathon 0n Saturday, 3rd June 2023.

She has been out of competition for four years since her last competition was during the 2019 Outdoor Meeting in Israel where she competed over the 10,000m and finished third. The Sirgoech Secondary School alumnus is one of the leading entrants to the event.

She will be lining up with a Personal Best time of 2:19:44, a time she clocked while winning the 2011 Berlin Marathon. She is the fastest in the field that has also attracted the Ethiopian duo of Tadelech Bekele and Sifan Melaku.

Kiplagat will be testing if she still has the mileage in her against the duo who unlike her, have been competing. Melaku opened her season with an impressive fifth-place finish at the Mumbai Marathon and she will be keen to improve on that as she takes on her opponents.

On her part, Tadelech will be opening her season in Stockholm. The last time she was in competition was during the Zurich Marathon in May 2022 where she also finished fifth.

Kiplagat has a decorated career owing to the fact that she ruled the track and road races before taking the break.

She is a former world half marathon record holder, status she achieved after winning the Barcelona Half Marathon in 2015. Winning the cross-country senior race title in 2009 also saw her become the second Kenyan to achieve the gong after Hellen Chepngeno who won in 1994.

Kiplagat also boasts of two Berlin Marathon titles, one in 2011 when she was debuting and the other one during the 2013 edition. She is also a two-time Chicago Marathon champion.

Injury-plagued Emmanuel Korir ready to 'fight' to defend his world title

Korir has failed to impress since the start of the 2023 season due to his injury.

Despite an injury setback that has seen him struggle to make an impact since the 2023 season started, reigning World and Olympic 800m champion Emmanuel Korir is ready to fight as he seeks to defend his title at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

The US-based athlete insisted that he cannot just sit and watch the title being snatched from him and he has promised to bring back something better.

“I’m going there for it (the title) …I’m very hungry. I am not going to let it go to someone else. We shall fight and definitely bring something better back home…that’s for sure,” Korir told Nation Sport.

Korir started off his outdoor season with an eight-place finish at the Diamond League Meeting in Rabat, Morocco where he fizzled out to finish eighth.

He then proceeded to the Diamond League Meeting in Paris, France where he also failed to impress by finishing 10th. Korir’s most recent race was at the Diamond League Meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, where he also finished a distant eighth.

As he heads to Budapest, he is bound to face a stern test from the upcoming duo of Djamel Sedjati and Slimane Moula who have done pretty well in the Diamond League Meetings this season.

Canada’s Marco Arop will also be in the mix seeking to improve on his third-place finish during last year’s World Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

Korir will enjoy the company of youngsters Emmanuel Wanyonyi and Kipng’etich Ngeno who will also be seeking to make a statement on the global stage.

Kenya's Emmanuel Korir seeks to find form in Hungary and Monaco ahead of World Championships

World and Olympic 800m champion Emmanuel Korir will be hoping to hit form at the Gyulai Istvan Memorial Hungarian Grand Prix on July 18.

Korir has been in poor form, finishing eighth at the Rabat Diamond League in May in a time of 1:48.42; 10th in Paris in June in 1:47.71 and eighth in Stockholm after clocking 1:48.96.

He will use the event in Hungary to test his speed ahead of the Monaco Diamond League three days later on July 21.

"I have not had a good season so far but I hope to find a form with the upcoming race. If all goes well with the events in Hungary and Monaco, then I can hit good form and defend my world title in Budapest in August," he noted.

The race organisers have already announced a host of World and Olympic champions for the event.

Three winners of global titles will clash in the women’s 100m hurdles as world champion and record-holder Tobi Amusan lines up against Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn and 2019 world champion Nia Ali.

USA’s Alaysha Johnson and Poland’s European champion Pia Skrzyszowska are also in the high-quality field.

The men’s discus is similarly stacked. World champion Kristjan Ceh takes on Olympic champion Daniel Stahl, 2017 world champion Andrius Gudzius, his fellow Lithuanian Mykolas Alekna, and Olympic silver medallist Simon Pettersson.

The three men who filled the hammer podium at the 2022 World Championships and Tokyo Olympics—Wojciech Nowicki, Pawel Fajdek, and Eivind Henriksen— will face Hungary’s 2019 world bronze medallist Bence Halasz.

Three other global champions will be in action on the track. World 200m champion Shericka Jackson will contest her specialist distance, while Olympic 400m champion Steven Gardiner will line up against Hungarian record-holder Attila Molnar over one lap of the track.

In the jumps, Olympic champion Miltiadis Tentoglou will clash with 2019 world champion Tajay Gayle in the men’s long jump. Commonwealth champion Ese Brume, meanwhile, headlines the women’s event.

Other confirmed athletes include Marie-Josee Ta Lou and Marvin Bracy-Williams, who will both compete over 100m.

Kenyan Beatrice Chebet eyes podium finish in Budapest after Stockholm victory

The world cross country champion Beatrice Chebet has her eyes trained at setting a personal best and a podium finish in the 5000m race in world championships in Budapest, Hungary next month.

Chebet's sentiments come on the back of winning the Diamond League meet in Stockholm on Sunday where she cut the tape in a time of 14:36.52. 

"My main goal now is the new PB at 5000m, so maybe in London, if the conditions are good, I can try to do it. My body is in perfect shape so anything is possible,” said Chebet in a post-race interview.

The world silver medalist turned up the heat in the final lap beating the Ethiopian duo of world indoor 3000m champion Lemlem Hailu (14:38.06) and 18-year-old Medina Eisa (14:40.02) to second and third respectively.

This was the second consecutive Diamond League victory for Chebet following her 3000m triumph in Oslo, Norway on June 15.  

The 23-year-old said she was undeterred by the wet weather conditions at the Olympic Stadium.

‘The first thing was to get the win. The second was to fight the tough conditions. Yes, the weather was not really good but you need to run in any conditions. It was not easy to finish the race,” she added.

On the World Championships she said: "I am already thinking about Budapest where my main target is to get on the podium in my specialty."

The Fastest Man Without a Country 

Refugee Dominic Lobalu has proven that he can beat the best runners in the world. But will that be enough to get him to the World Championships? 

In May 2019, a 20-year-old runner named Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu, from what is now South Sudan, won a 10K road race in Geneva, Switzerland. Lobalu, who was separated from his parents as a child during the second Sudanese civil war, was competing for the Athlete Refugee Team—a World Athletics-backed initiative that recruits talented individuals from refugee camps and helps get them into prestigious events around the world. A rising star in the ART ranks, Lobalu was living in Kenya at the time and training under the former marathon great Tegla Loroupe. As a teenager, he’d competed in the 1,500-meters at the 2017 World Championships. The 2020 Olympics seemed like an attainable goal. But after that race in Geneva, Lobalu made a decision that would radically alter the trajectory of his young athletic career: early the next morning, he absconded from his hotel with the intent of seeking asylum in Switzerland.

What happened next sounds like the stuff of sports fiction. A few months after he defected from the ART, a Swiss refugee center put Lobalu in touch with Markus Hagmann, a schoolteacher in Saint Gallen, who coached at a local track club called LC Brühl. Hagmann had been a competitive amateur in his day and still held the club’s record in the 3,000-meters—a formidable eight minutes and nine seconds. As soon as he saw Lobalu run, Hagmann recognized the young man’s stupendous talent and began entering him in local races to get a sense of just how fast he could run. It quickly became apparent that the Swiss national-level road racing circuit wasn’t going to cut it. Initially, Lobalu’s asylum-seeker status meant that he couldn’t leave the country. But in June 2022 he finally got a short-term residency permit, allowing him to travel. In his first international race, Lobalu outkicked Jacob Kiplimo, the reigning half marathon world record-holder from Uganda, to win the 3,000-meters in a world-leading 7:29:40 at a Diamond League meet in Stockholm.

“When we first met, it was not about getting a Diamond League win or creating a champion,” Hagmann says of his relationship to Lobalu. “It was just that there was a guy who had suffered and who needed help. And the thing that connected us was running.”

His breakthrough performance in Sweden last June has established Lobalu not only as a world-class athlete, but as someone capable of medaling at a global championship. Subsequent results have only affirmed his incredible potential. In the span of two weeks last September, Lobalu ran a 12:52 5K and a 59:12 half marathon; both among the fastest times in the world. According to Hagmann, Lobalu produced these results on a paltry 40 to 50 miles a week—less than half the training load of your typical world-class distance runner—as his body was still adjusting to the demands of high-volume training.

But the principal obstacle preventing Lobalu from having a shot at a glittering career on the international stage is perhaps more bureaucratic than physical. He currently has a short term, self-employed work permit in Switzerland and is in the process of applying for permanent residency, but acquiring full Swiss citizenship usually takes more than a decade. This means that Lobalu is technically ineligible to represent Switzerland at the Olympics or the World Championships. Meanwhile, since he chose to leave the ART to seek asylum in Switzerland, World Athletics says that he has forfeited the right to compete for the program. When I asked Lobalu if there was a way for him to represent South Sudan, he responded that that was “never an option.” As he put it to me:  “Could you run for a country that took everything in your life? A country you’ve had no connection with for the last 16 years. A country that has one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world?” What’s more, when he left the country as a nine-year-old, South Sudan, which only became a republic in 2011, didn’t yet exist.

Earlier this year, the Swiss athletics federation put in a request with World Athletics asking the sport’s global governing body if there was any way for Lobalu to get out of his legal limbo in time to compete at the World Championships in Budapest in August. In an email, World Athletics confirmed that the Swiss had put in a request for a “transfer of allegiance” and the application was currently going through the “appropriate review process.”

The resulting uncertainty is the subject of “The Right to Race,” a mini documentary that was released today. (You can watch it here.) The film was produced by the Swiss running shoe company On, which began sponsoring Lobalu after its co-founder Oliver Bernhard happened to witness him eviscerate the competition in a Swiss road race in December 2019. It’s rife with gorgeous footage of Lobalu striding through alpine landscapes (and buying milk from a Swiss farmer) but the film smooths over some of the rougher edges of Lobalu’s story—most notably his reasons for defecting from the ART and his extreme ambivalence towards his country of birth.

In a 2021 article in Time, Lobalu is quoted as saying that while he was at Loroupe’s training camp, he was deprived of prize money that he had earned and generally treated as a second-class citizen of nowhere. When I asked Lobalu about this on a recent phone call, however, he demurred and simply said that the situation in Kenya “wasn’t working for him.” (On has also had sponsorship arrangements with the Athlete Refugee Team.) While one can hardly blame Lobalu for not wanting to ruffle any more feathers, his disenchantment with the ART program seems like crucial context that is noticeably absent from “The Right to Race.”

To be fair, the film does a good job of portraying the conundrum for World Athletics.

“We can’t continue to persuade countries to give visas to refugees who may abscond and seek refugee status in their country,” World Athletics official Jackie Brock-Doyle says in the film. “From where we sit, he couldn’t continue to be part of the Athlete Refugee Team because, if so, the message to every other refugee is: Look, isn’t he a hero? Why don’t you do the same?”

Brock-Doyle reiterated this to me via email, but said that World Athletics was working to find a solution for Lobalu: “We would like to stress that there is a huge amount of sympathy for Mr Lobalu’s situation given his terrible experience as a child fleeing civil war in South Sudan. He is undoubtedly a talented athlete, and if we were able to find a way to include him in the ART programme without seriously compromising the programme—or possibly damaging it irreparably—we would have done so.”

For his part, Hagmann told me that while he understands the predicament for World Athletics, he feels that a runner’s refugee status ultimately shouldn’t be contingent on where he happens to be seeking asylum.

Of course, the amount of attention Lobalu is getting—and any prospective “hero” status—has been amplified by his success on the track. Hagmann is adamant that their relationship is first and foremost about friendship, but it’s hardly a stretch to suggest that his star athlete would be less likely to have the backing of a foreign athletics federation and a global corporation if he were just another semi-pro. “The Right to Race” includes an interview with one of Hagmann’s friends, who explicitly argues that finding a way for Lobalu to compete isn’t a matter of humanitarian goodwill, but of athletic integrity. “There must be a way for him to compete as a neutral person. Not because he is a nice guy, but because he is the best. The fastest person, or if he’s the second- or third-fastest, needs to have the possibility to start at the World Championships and the Olympic Games.”

I asked Lobalu whether this had been on his mind when he made the fateful decision, four years ago, to remain in Geneva.

“I think, in running, there is nothing that you are sure about—where you can say that, This is going to happen in this way. It was just my decision. I took it without knowing what would happen. So I just took a risk. I said: Let me try.”

Ethiopians Ashenafi Moges and Sifan Melaku runs away with titles at 2023 Stockholm Marathon

Ethiopia’s dominated the 2023 Stockholm Marathon, a World Athletics Label Road Race event, took place on Saturday, June 3. The following are top 20 results from 2023 Stockholm Marathon with Ashenafi Moges and Sifan Melaku running away with the tiles.

On the men’s, Moges away late to win with a time of 2:10:32 pulling away from his countryman Derara Hurisa (Ethiopia) who finished second in a time 2:11:01 ahead of Tsegaye Mekonnen (Ethiopia) who ran 2:12:32 for third place.

The Sweden National Senior Marathon Championships went to Samuel Tsegay after finishing fifth overall with a time of 2:14:28.

On the women’s side, Ethiopian athletes swept the competition with Sifan Melaku running 2:30:39 for the victory. Her compatriot Sorome Negash (Ethiopia) clocked 02:33:26 for second place with Yenenesh Dinkesa (Ethiopia) getting third in 2:36:39.

The Sweden national title went to Carolina Wikström (Sweden), who finished fourth overall with a time of 2:36:52.

Edwin Kimaiyo to lead Kenyan trio at Stockholm Marathon

The 2011 Berlin Marathon bronze medalist Edwin Kimaiyo will be hoping to debut the 2023 season on a high with a win at the 44th edition of the Stockholm Marathon, Sweden on June 3.

Kimaiyo will be joined by fellow countrymen Robert Kipkemboi and Shadrack Kimining in the Scandinavian nation. 

Kimaiyo last raced in October last year at the Munich Marathon where he finished fifth in 2:11:02 a race won by compatriot Philemon Kipchumba in 2:07:28. 

The 37-year-old will be aiming to lower his personal best of 2:09:12 that he set at the Shanghai Marathon, China in November 2017.

The Kenyan trio will face stiff competition from an Ethiopian quintet led by the world junior record holder Tsegaye Mekonnen.

Mekonnen caused a major upset in the world of athletics when he won the Dubai Marathon in 2014 aged just 19 years old in a time of 2:04:32 to set the the unofficial world junior record.

Others who will pose a threat to the Kenyans include; Ethiopia's Ashenafi Moges, Zewdu Hailu, Derara Hurisa and Fikre Workneh, Eritrea's Berhane Tesfay and Mao Ako from Tanzania.

The course record is held by Ethiopia's Nigussie Sahlesilassie 2:10:10 a time he set in 2019.

Florence Jebet Kiplagat is set to run in Gold Coast after four year break

Double Berlin Marathon champion Florence Jebet Kiplagat returns to action in July after four years out of competition due to an injury and prolonged illness.

The former World Half Marathon record holder will compete at the Gold Coast Marathon on July 2 and she can't wait. 

“It has been long since I completed and my return into action after four years in the cold is a sign that God loves me. I want my return to be better than before,” said Kiplagat.

Kiplagat was initially entered to compete at the Stockholm Marathon on June 2 but changed her plans after failing to secure vital travel documents on time.

She will be hoping to lower the course record currently held by Lindsay Flanagan at 2:24.43. Kiplagat’s best time stands at 2:19.44 set in 2011 at the Berlin Marathon on her second victory.

“I entered the Stockholm Marathon late and failed to secure a visa. That made me change my mind to compete at the Gold Coast Marathon in Australia,” she said.

The Iten-based runner had three incidents that kept her from running. First, the nagging injury, followed by the coronavirus then sickness. She says after the injury in 2019, she was to return to action but the world was hit by the  Coronavirus pandemic. "When the pandemic was over and planning to return, I fell sick," she explained. 

The mother of two has sweet memories of her World Half Marathon record feat, which she lowered twice; posting a new high of 1:05:12 in 2014 and 1:05:09 in 2015 during the Barcelona Half Marathon.

Under the tutelage of Italian marathon coach Renato Canova, Kiplagat says she is on top of her game and optimistic her performance in Gold Coast will be good despite the long period on the sidelines.

“Right now, I am coaching myself because my coach is currently unwell.  However, he has been sending me a training programme, which I follow religiously in a bid to make a successful return," she says.

She is well remembered to have ended Kenya’s 16-year-old gold drought at the 2009 World Cross-Country Championships in Amman, Jordan before winning the World Half Marathon title in Nanning, China in 2011. Kiplagat is a former footballer, who played at the national school games.

Standard Chartered Marathon extends partnership with Athletics Kenya

Standard Chartered Bank has entered a new five-year partnership deal with Athletics Kenya to deliver the Standard Chartered Nairobi Marathon on October 29.

The partnership, which ends in 2027, will see the athletics body assist the organisers to ensure efficient running and coordination of the event. 

The event's Local Organizing Committee (LOC) chairman Peter Gitau said, “For nearly 20 years, the event has provided a stage for national and international athletes' stardom.

"This has only been achieved through the support of our partners, key among them, Athletics Kenya.

"Today, we are proud to extend our partnership with the athletics body and look forward to progressing our goal to deliver a collaborative, inclusive, sustainable, and premium marathon in the region."

Gitau cited the likes of former world marathon record holder Dennis Kimetto, Irene Jerotich, Chemutai Rionotukei, Fridah Chepkite Lodepa, and Elisha Kiprop among others as some of the products of StanChart Marathon.

He said AK have linked athletes to the Standard Chartered Marathon since 2003 and helped launch their careers.

Besides, the association has helped to design the race specificities including timings, and running tracks, and catered for athletes' welfare checks.

 Athletics Kenya (AK) president, Lt Gen (Rtd)  Jackson Tuwei said he is proud to extend the partnership with Standard Chartered Marathon for the next five years.

He said over the past 20 years, the event has not only nurtured sporting talent but also helped create a benchmark for other marathons in the region.

"We are excited to continue working with the Stan Chart Marathon LOC to deliver a top-notch and unmatched event experience. We are also excited to see more athletic careers being launched and nurtured through the marathon.”

He further thanked United Nations Environment Programme and the Stockholm Environment Institute for their efforts and revealed that they will use the platform to conduct real-time air quality monitoring. 

This year's event targets to register 25,000 runners and will start at the Uhuru Garden. The satellite marathons will start a week earlier prior to the main event  (October 22).

The event will feature seven race categories thus; 42km (men and women), 21km (men and women), 21km wheelchair (men and women), 10km (men and women), 10km CEO challenge, 5km Family Fun Run race and the Corporate Relay Challenge.

The registration portal is now open on www.nairobimarathon.com at a fee of Sh2000 and individual and corporate participants are encouraged to register early.

Last year, Elias Chelimo and Sheila Chepkech won the 42km individual men and women categories.

Ethiopian duo Mengesha and Teshome secure Ethiopian double in Copenhagen

Milkesa Mengesha and Tadu Teshome took top honors at the Copenhagen Half Marathon on Sunday (18). And with 15 men finishing inside an hour at the World Athletics Elite Label road race, the event witnessed record depth.

Mengesha, the 2019 world U20 cross-country champion, beat a quality field to notch up his second half marathon victory of the year, winning in a PB of 58:58. Teshome, meanwhile, smashed her PB to lead an Ethiopian 1-2-3, winning in 1:06:13.

After a steady opening 5km of 14:02, the pace dropped slightly in the following few kilometers of the men’s race as the large lead pack reached 10km in 28:10. The leading contenders – which included Mengesha and his compatriots Amedework Walelegn and Chala Regasa, Kenya’s Felix Kipkoech, Vincent Kipkemoi and Edmund Kipngetich, and South Sudan’s Dominic Lobalu – then started to increase the pace.

By the time of the 15km checkpoint, reached in 42:06, the lead pack was down to 12. They remained bunched together for a few more kilometers before Mengesha started to ease away, carving out a small lead before going on to win in 58:58. Compatriot Walelegn followed him home in 59:05, two seconds ahead of Kipkoech.

Lobalu, winner of the 3000m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm earlier this year, was fifth in a national record of 59:12. Further back, Switzerland’s 40-year-old Tadesse Abraham became the oldest man in history to finish inside 60 minutes for a half marathon, clocking 59:53.

In contrast to the men’s race, which increased in pace as it went on, the women’s race started off remarkably quick but soon became a war of attrition as athletes tried to hold on as best they could.

When the first 5km was covered in a swift 15:19, most of the lead pack decided to ease off the pace, but Teshome and Tsigie Gebreselama maintained that tempo for another 5km, reaching 10km in 30:40 – inside both of their PBs for 10km.

Gebreselama then broke away from Teshome and opened up a gap of 30 seconds by 15km, reached in 46:39, but it didn’t last. Teshome came back over the next few kilometers and caught her compatriot with about two kilometers to go.

Once she was in the lead, Teshome continued to pull away and she went on to win in 1:06:13, 22 seconds ahead of Gebreselama, who was making her half marathon debut. Ethiopia’s Tiruye Mesfin almost caught Gebreselama, eventually finishing third in 1:06:42.

Leading results

Women

1 Tadu Teshome (ETH) 1:06:13

2 Tsigie Gebreselama (ETH) 1:06:35

3 Tiruye Mesfin (ETH) 1:06:42

4 Magdalena Shauri (TAN) 1:06:52

5 Eunice Chumba (BRN) 1:07:34

6 Sintayehu Tilahun (ETH) 1:07:41

7 Janet Ruguru (KEN) 1:07:51

8 Anchalem Haymanot (ETH) 1:08:09

9 Vicoty Chepngeno (KEN) 1:08:22

10 Betelihem Afenigus (ETH) 1:08:35

Men

1 Milkesa Mengesha (ETH) 58:58

2 Amedework Walelegn (ETH) 59:05

3 Felix Kipkoech (KEN) 59:07

4 Vincent Kipkemoi (KEN) 59:09

5 Dominic Lobalu (SSD) 59:12

6 Chala Regasa (ETH) 59:13

7 Edmund Kipngetich (KEN) 59:25

8 Matthew Kimeli (KEN) 59:39

9 Titus Kimutai (KEN) 59:44

10 Ronald Kirui (KEN) 59:51

Ethiopia Has Changed Its Team Again for the 2022 Worlds

On Tuesday, the Ethiopian Athletics Federation announced its team for the 2022 World Athletics Championships in Eugene. If this sounds familiar, that’s because Ethiopia already named its team on June 13…and then updated it four days later to sub in Dawit Seyaum after she ran 14:25 to win the Oslo Diamond League.

Tuesday’s list — which the federation says is the final roster (it pretty much has to be, since entries were due to World Athletics on Monday) — features even more changes, which will have a major impact on Worlds, which begin on July 15 at Hayward Field. Remember, at World Indoor Championships earlier this year in Belgrade, Ethiopian athletes won eight of the 12 available medals across the 1500 and 3000 meters — including all four golds and a 1-2-3 sweep in the women’s 1500. The country is a distance powerhouse.

Here is the full roster, with changes, followed by some analysis on what it all means.

Men’s 800 (no changes)Ermiyas GirmaTolosa Bodena

Women’s 800Habitam AlemuDiribe WeltejiHirut Meshesha (1:58.54 sb) replacing Freweyni Hailu (1:59.39 sb)

Men’s 1500Samuel TeferaTaddese Lemi (3:37.06 sb) replacing Melese Nberet (no races this year)Samuel Abate

Women’s 1500Gudaf Tsegay (3:54.21 sb) replacing Axumawit Embaye (3:58.80 sb)Freweyni Hailu (3:58.18 sb, 4th in Olympics) replacing Ayal Dagnachew (3:59.87 sb)Hirut Meshesha

Men’s 3000 steeple (no changes)Lamecha GirmaHailemariyam AmareGetnet Wale

Women’s 3000 steepleMekides AbebeWorkua GetachewSimbo Alemayehu (9:09.17 sb at age 18) replacing Zerfe Wondemagegn (9:27.75 sb)

Men’s 5,000Muktar EdrisBerihu AregawiYomif KejelchaSelemon Barega replacing Telahun Bekele

Women’s 5,000Ejgayehu TayeLetesenbet Gidey (14:24.59 sb) replacing Gudaf Tsegay (14:26.69 sb)Dawit Seyaum (14:25.84 sb) replacing Fantu Worku (14:47.37 sb)

Men’s 10,000Selemon BaregaTadese WorkuBerihu Aregawi (26:46.13 sb) replacing Milkesa Mengesha (27:00.24 sb)

Women’s 10,000Letesenbet GideyEjgayehu Taye (30:44.68 sb) replacing Girmawit Gebrzihair (30:47.72 sb)Bosena Mulate

Men’s marathonLelisa DesisaTamirat TolaMosinet GeremewSeifu Tura

Women’s marathonGotytom GebreslaseAbabel YeshanehAshete Bekere

Quick Takes

1) Ethiopia’s team just got A LOT stronger and Ethiopia went from no one doubling to a lot of doublers

In recent years, Ethiopia has been reluctant to allow its stars to double at global championships. Last year in Tokyo, Ethiopia had two huge 5,000m medal threats in Selemon Barega (Olympic 10,000 champ) and Berihu Aregawi (the 10,000 4th placer who would go on to win the Diamond League 5,000 title) but neglected to enter either in the 5,000 meters. Of the three men Ethiopia did enter, two failed to even make the final and the third, Milkesa Mengesha, wound up 10th.

The federation took criticism after that misstep and it looked as if it would double down in 2022 as the initial team named in June featured no doublers. But the final squad features five athletes double-entered: World Indoor bronze medalist Hirut Meshesha (800/1500) and Ejgayehu Taye (14:12 pb, #5 woman all-time), Letesenbet Gidey (women’s 5k/10k world record holder), Barega and Aregawi, all of whom are running the 5,000 and 10,000.

2) The meet is more interesting with the Ethiopians doubling; the men’s 5,000 final is now totally stacked

The World Championships are meant to be about the best against the best. When a world final is over, we don’t want to be asking ourselves, “What would have happened if Athlete X was in the race?” But that’s absolutely what we were thinking after the 2021 Olympic 5000 final without Barega. And it’s been an issue for a lot longer than that. Only once in his career did Haile Gebrselassie attempt the 5,000/10,000 double at a global champs (1993), in part because there were still prelims in the 10,000 in those days and in part because he didn’t want to tire himself for the lucrative post-championship meets in Europe.

That shouldn’t be an issue in 2022 (and if it is, it won’t have been the fault of the Ethiopian federation) as the distance finals are much stronger with Taye, Gidey, Barega, and Aregawi doubling up. The men’s 5,000 could be an all-timer. Not only do you have Olympic 5,000 champion Joshua Cheptegei of Uganda, but now we have Olympic 10,000 champ Barega stepping down and Olympic 1500 champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen stepping up. It’s reminiscent of one of the most famous races in track history, the 2003 World Championship 5,000 final in Paris which featured Hicham El Guerrouj stepping up from the 1500 and Kenenisa Bekele stepping down from the 10,000 only for both of them to be defeated by an 18-year-old Eliud Kipchoge.

Having Aregawi in the 10,000 makes for a stronger race as well as he was 3rd at the Ethiopian trials in that event and set a Diamond League record for margin for victory when he ran 12:50 to win the Pre Classic 5,000 by 16 seconds.

3) Gudaf Tsegay’s medal odds went up but her gold medal odds went down

Tsegay is pretty clearly the #2 women’s 1500 runner in the world. She won World Indoors by 5+ seconds and is 3+ seconds faster than the #3 1500 woman in the world right now. But she’s also not close to double Olympic champ Faith Kipyegon, who beat her convincingly at Pre, 3:52.59 to 3:54.21.

Initially, Tsegay was entered in the 5,000 at Worlds (she ran the 5,000 only at the Olympics last year, earning the bronze medal) and while there’s no overwhelming favorite in that event like Kipyegon (well at least until we see how Sifan Hassan looks this weekend), Tsegay is not as good at the 5,000 as the 1500 (as evidenced by her defeat to countrywoman Dawit Seyaum in the 5,000 in Oslo). By running the 1500, Tsegay has a better shot at a medal but her odds at gold are worse.

4) It just got a WHOLE LOT harder for the Americans to medal

An American medal in the women’s 5,000 or 10,000 was already unlikely, so the Ethiopian roster changes didn’t make a huge impact on the chances of Karissa Schweizer or Elise Cranny. But the medal odds of Grant Fisher, who finished 5th in the Olympic 10,000 last year, are way lower today than they were a week ago (a statement also true for his US teammates Woody Kincaid and Joe Klecker).

Last Wednesday, two of the four men who finished ahead of Fisher in the 10,000 in Tokyo were major question marks. Bronze medalist Jacob Kiplimo hadn’t raced on the track all year, while Aregawi, the 4th placer, was named to Ethiopia’s team in the 5,000 only. Since then, Kiplimo ran 7:29 for 3,000 in Stockholm to show he’s very fit right now and Aregawi was added to Ethiopia’s 10,000 squad. Plus Barega was added to the 5,000.

Those developments will make it significantly harder for Fisher (or any American man in the 5,000 or 10,000) to earn a medal. That said, if an American can somehow medal, it will go down as a monumental achievement since no one can accuse these fields of being watered down.

Sinclaire Johnson‘s medal hopes in the 1500 also took a BIG hit. With Tsegay now in the 1500, two medals seem to be spoken for and new addition Freweyni Hailu, who was 4th in the Olympics last year at age 20, is better than Ayal Dagnachew (who is no slouch herself, world junior 800 champ last year and 3:59 this year).

5) Ethiopia needs to figure out a better way to do this

One of the most important jobs an athletics federation has is selecting national teams. And for countries that don’t use a “top 3 at the trials” model — which is to say, every country except for the US — things can get prickly as someone, inevitably, is going to be upset they’re missing out on the team.

There are ways to limit the outrage. The simplest solution is the one USATF has already discovered: hold a trials and just pick the top three finishers. Ethiopia actually did this ahead of the Olympics last year. The problem was, they held all the races on the same day, making it impossible for athletes to try out for both the 5,000 and 10,000 teams.

But even if you don’t want to stage a trials, a federation can avoid much of the backlash by announcing a clear criteria ahead of time and sticking to it. You want to pick the team based off season’s bests? Fine. Just let everyone know before the season starts and let them plan their races accordingly. Transparency and consistency are the keys.

Heck, even if you want to be subjective and use a selection panel, you can at least cut down on some of the drama by letting the athletes know in advance that they’ll have to run a few performances to impress the selectors.

What you don’t want to do is announce a team well before the entry deadline (and three days before two key Diamond League meets featuring most of your athletes) only to drastically change it three weeks later. Which is exactly what happened in Ethiopia, leaving athletes like Telahun Bekele (winner of the 5,000 in Oslo) to think they’re on the team only to yank it away less than a month later.

In the end, Ethiopia ended up picking the team by season’s best except in the 10,000, where it staged a trial race (and the top 3 there were the fastest 3 on the year). If it had just used that criteria throughout the year and stuck to it, there would be fewer angry people right now. The athletes deserve better.

Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo puts speed shift for Oregon Worlds

Jacob Kiplimo has his priorities set. His main goal is a medal over the 10000m at the World Athletics Championships which come in Oregon, US, in under a fortnight.The 21-year-old could have done the long-distance double on the West Coast but just one will do.Kiplimo feels he is in a good place after posting seven minutes and 29.55 seconds for second place over the 3000m at the Stockholm Diamond League (DL) in Sweden on Thursday night.

“Yes, I’m happy about it,” the reigning world half-marathon champion and record holder told this publication before returning home at the weekend. “I came to Stockholm because I needed to test my body. I had to withdraw from the Pre Classic (Eugene DL) and it was important to run one race before the world championships.”

Despite doing one race on track all year, Kiplimo is confident ahead of the 25-lap final set for July 17 at the Hayward Field in Eugene.“I’m 99 percent satisfied, the one percent is because I missed the victory in the last 15 meters but it’s part of the job,” Kiplimo posted on Instagram.

Leading at the bell, Kiplimo could have won his first track race in 11 months but it was Athlete Refugee Team’s Domnic Lobalu who beat him to the tape with about 30 metres left.Lobalu, who hails from South Sudan, posted 7:29.48 not only for the world lead time over the distance but also slashed his personal best by 20 seconds.

Prior, middle-distance runner Ronald Musagala continued to improve with another season best of 3:36.90 in third place over the 1500m.“According the way I was struggling with my body in Uganda, it’s a good progress,” noted Musagala, currently based at the Global Sports Communication camp in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Meanwhile, world 800m champion Halimah Nakaayi will need maximum concentration to perfect her craft before flying to Oregon. In the Swedish capital, she lost some seconds and energy trying to get space on the outside before finishing fourth in 1:58.85.The two-lap race was won by in-form Kenyan Mary Moraa in 1:57.68, beating Olympic silver medallist Briton Keely Hodgkinson (1:58.18) and Australian Catriona Bisset in third with 1:58.54.

Athletics Kenya issues strict rules for athletes at pre-worlds Champ

Athletics Kenya (AK) has warned that no athlete will leave the World Athletics Championships and Commonwealth Games training camp at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani without permission.

AK Chief Administrative Officer Susan Kamau said that AK, the team management and the National Olympic Committee of Kenya (NOC-K) will decide whether to allow some athletes to compete in the Diamond League.

The Stockholm Diamond League is on Thursday in Sweden with events like the 800m, men’s 3,000m and women’s 3,000m steeplechase on the program.

The World Athletics Championships will run from July 15 to 24 in Oregon, United States followed by the Commonwealth Games on July 28 to August 8 in Birmingham, England.

After Stockholm, the next Diamond League is on August 6 in Silesia, Poland.

However, there are close to 15 events in the World Athletics Continental Tour before the start of the world event.

Kamau noted that it will be wise for the athletes in camp to concentrate on their preparations.

“Nevertheless, we shall make a decision on whom to release if possible,” said Kamau, adding that members of the athletics team selected on Saturday are already in camp at Kasarani.

“We have been working on their documentation and all is well. We are ready for the world event and Commonwealth Games. We shall be giving updates on the progress of the team,” said Kamau.

Kenya finished second with 11 medals; five gold, two silver and four bronze during the 2019 Doha World Athletics Championships.

Team Kenya collected 16 medals in athletes at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games; four gold, seven silver and five bronze, a performance that saw them finish fifth overall in athletics.

The country finished 14th overall with the only other medal coming from boxing through Christine Ongare who won bronze.

Athletics Kenya selected a team of 47 athletes for the World Athletics Championships and a similar number for the “Club” Games. There are several athletes who will double up in the two competitions.

The trials witnessed the return to form of some athletes, for instance World 3,000m steeplechase champion Conselsus Kipruto and Commonwealth Games 800m champion Wycliffe Kinyamal.

Others are the 2015 World Military Games 1,500m champion Selah Jepleting and World Half Marathon silver Kibiwott Kandie.

It also witnessed the continuous rise of some like Amos Serem, World Under-20 3,000m steeplechase champion Jackline Chepkoech and Abel Kipsang in 1,500m.

While Kipruto and Kinyamal will be heading to Oregon, Serem, Jepleting and Kandie could only settle for places in the Commonwealth Games team due to varying reasons.

Kipruto, who has been struggling with form, something that saw him fail to defend his Olympic title in Tokyo last year, eased off at the home-straight allowing World Under-20 champion Amos Serem to win.

Jepleting was the surprise winner of the women’s 5,000m, having scaled the distance event from 1,500m.

It was her second 5,000m race this year, having finished fifth at the Kip Keino Classic, but the anti-doping rules locked her out of the world event team.

Jepleting has not repented Kenya since the 2016 Durban Africa Senior Athletics Championships.

Kenyans athletes must go through three out-of-competition tests to qualify for the world event. Jepleting and Serem didn't meet this requirement.

Dina Asher-Smith will launch the defence of her 200m title at world championships

Dina Asher-Smith set for 200m defence as part of GB’s World Championships squad. 

The 26-year-old, Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Keely Hodgkinson headline the 64-strong team for the competition in Eugene, Oregon, in July.

Asher-Smith won gold in Doha three years ago, having collected 100m silver, before going on to also secure silver in the 4x100m relay, and will look to improve on that haul in the United States.

She is expected to run at the Stockholm Diamond League meet on Thursday in her final race before the World Championships, which were rescheduled from last year after the postponement of the Tokyo Olympics to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Outgoing Olympic head coach Christian Malcolm said: “We’ve seen a number of athletes step up on the global circuit so far this season, which has been really encouraging.

“We are confident that we’ve selected a team that optimises medal success and that have the ability to progress through rounds to reach finals.

“The World Championships is the start of a very busy summer of Championships and Games, so there are a number of opportunities for athletes to represent their country this summer.

“For those who have been selected for the team for Oregon, I wish the athletes and their coaches the best over the next week or so and to keep focus to achieve your goals.”

Daryll Neita, who reached last year’s Olympic 100m final and beat Asher-Smith in Manchester at the weekend to become British 100m champion, is also included for the 100m and 4x100m.

Despite winning the 200m at the British Championships on Sunday, however, 25-year-old Neita does not have the time for 200m qualification, with Asher-Smith joined by Beth Dobbin.

Johnson-Thompson missed the Manchester championships at the weekend but will look to defend the heptathlon world title she won in 2019.

The 29-year-old has been dogged by injury for 18 months since rupturing her Achilles in late 2020 and pulled out of the Olympics having suffered a calf problem in the heptathlon’s 200m.

Hodgkinson, who is expected to challenge American Athing Mu for 800m gold, is included along with Laura Muir, with the Scot aiming for her first World Championships outdoor medal after claiming 1500m silver in Tokyo last year.

Hodgkinson is joined in the 800m by Alex Bell and Jemma Reekie while Holly Bradshaw, who won Olympic bronze last year, will contest the pole vault.

Zharnel Hughes and Reece Prescod are Britain’s hopes in the men’s 100m with Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake and Adam Gemili in the 200m.

Prescod ran 9.93 seconds in Ostrava last month to leave him 11th fastest in the world this year but he remains well behind world lead Fred Kerley, who posted 9.76 seconds at the US trials at the weekend.

All four are in the men’s 4x100m relay squad, with Hughes and Mitchell-Blake aiming to ease their heartbreak having been stripped of their Olympic relay silver after CJ Ujah’s positive drugs test.

They are joined by Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, new British 100m champion Jeremiah Azu and Jona Efoloko.

Asher-Smith, Dobbin, Neita, Imani-Lara Lansiquot, Ashleigh Nelson, Asha Philip and Bianca Williams make up the women’s 4x100m squad.

Max Burgin, the fastest man in the world over 800m this year, won the British title on Sunday to seal his place.

World Athletics will publish its final world rankings ahead of the Championships on Wednesday, meaning there are likely to be a number of additions to the squad based on rankings.

The World Championships sparks a frantic summer with the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham starting days after the end of competition in Eugene and then the European Championships in Munich in August.

Remembering Kusocinski's athletics feats and heroic struggle

It was 90 years ago today that Janusz Kusocinski ran his way into the world record book.

Already a prolific national champion in his homeland, at distances ranging from 800m to 10,000m, the 25-year-old Pole made a name for himself at a global level when he crossed the line in an international 3000m race in Antwerp, Belgium, ahead of John Fellowes of the USA in 8:18.8.

“Kusy,” as the popular Warsaw gardener was known to friends and the wider public in Poland, eclipsed one of the enduring global marks set by the finest of all the formidable Flying Finns.

The world record for 3000m had belonged to the peerless Paavo Nurmi for six years. The nine-time Olympic gold medallist had clocked 8:20.4 in Stockholm in 1926.

To prove it had been no fluke, 10 days later – on 29 June 1932 – Kusocinski claimed another of Nurmi’s world records. On that occasion, he smashed it by 13 seconds, his 19:02.6 for 4 miles obliterating Nurmi’s 1924 figures of 19:15.6.

First non-Finnish winner

A month later, Kusocinski enjoyed his finest half an hour in track and field.

Running for his country in the Los Angeles Coliseum on 31 July, he fought a nip and tuck battle with Finn Volmari Iso-Hollo for 24 laps of the 1932 Olympic 10,000m final.

Iso-Hollo led by a metre going into the final lap but then Kusocinski sprinted clear before slowing to a jog and still winning by 1.1 seconds. His time, 30:11.4, shattered the Olympic record Nurmi had established in Amsterdam four years previously: 30:18.8.

In succeeding Nurmi, Kusocinski became the first non-Finnish winner of the Olympic 10,000m crown. He was the only non-Finn to win the coveted Blue Riband of distance running until Emil Zatopek in London in 1948.

For Iso-Hollo, compensation came seven days later in the form of the 3000m steeplechase gold medal. The Finnish typesetter would have claimed the world best too had the stand-in trackside lap-counter not been distracted by the decathlon pole vault, allowing the field to complete an extra circuit of the track.

Iso-Hollo went on to win another steeplechase gold, plus a 10,000m bronze medal, in front of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Resistance hero

Kusocinski proceeded to etch his name into national folklore as a fearless fighter against the Nazi occupation of his homeland.

When Hitler’s troops invaded Poland in September 1939, Kusocinski volunteered for the Polish Army and was drafted into the machine gun company as a corporal in the Second Battalion of the 360 Infantry Regiment. In the fight to defend Warsaw, he was wounded twice and was awarded the Cross of Valour.

After the country fell to Nazi Germany, he worked ostensibly as a waiter at the Red Rooster Bar in Warsaw while secretly operating as a member of the underground resistance movement known as the Wolves, using the pseudonym Prawdzic.

Kusocinski was arrested by Gestapo officers at the gate of his house in Warsaw on 28 March, 1940. He was interrogated and tortured at Gestapo headquarters but refused to reveal the names of fellow resistance members.

On the night of 20-21 June, he was transported to Palmiry on the outskirts of Warsaw and executed in Kampinos Forest as part of what the Nazis called Operation AB, an attempt to exterminate all Polish intelligence operatives.

Nine decades on, the name of Janusz Kusocinski, world record-breaker, Olympic champion and national hero lives proudly on in Poland.

Scores of streets and primary schools throughout the country carry his name. So does the Janusz Kusocinski Memorial meeting, which celebrated its 68th edition in Chrozow on 5 June this year and is part of the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold series.

Vladimir Kuts took part in the inaugural event in 1954 and meeting records dating back to the 1970s are held by greats such as Alberto Juantorena (1:43.66 for 800m), Irena Szewinska (49.75 for 400m) and Bronislaw Malinowski (8:21.2 for the 3000m steeplechase).

An athlete by chance

Kusocinski was born in Warsaw in 1907, the son of a railway clerk. Armed conflict took its toll on his family when he was a child. His eldest brother, Zygmunt, was killed in France in World War I. Another brother, Tedeusz, was a casualty of the Polish-Bolshevik War in 1920.

In his youth, Janusz’s first sporting love was football. He played as a dashing forward for various clubs in Warsaw.

He became an athlete by accident. In 1925, his sports club RKS Sarmata was a relay runner short for a workers’ holiday meeting. Kusocinski agreed to stand in and helped the Sarmata team to victory.

The following year he started competing as an 800m and 1500m runner and came under the wing of the club’s celebrated track and field coach: one Aleksander Klumberg.

Klumberg became Poland’s national athletics coach between 1927 and 1932. Back in 1922, the native Estonian had become the first official holder of the decathlon world record after posting 7485.61 points in Helsinki. In 1924 he had taken the decathlon bronze medal at the Paris Olympics, behind Harold Osborn and Emerson Norton of the USA.

The young Kusocinski thrived under Klumberg’s regime of intense interval training, winning the Polish 5000m and cross country titles in 1928. His running career was interrupted by a year of national service in the Polish Army but he was stronger upon his return, capturing national titles at 800m, 1500m, 5000m and cross country leading up to his annus mirabilis in 1932.

He represented Poland at the inaugural European Championships in Turin in 1934, placing fifth in the 1500m and taking silver in the 5000m behind Roger Richard of France.

Kusocinski hung up his racing spikes after returning from Italy but dusted them off to win the Polish 10,000m title in 1939.

By that time, he had moved on from gardening to become a PE teacher, coach and then a successful journalist, rising to editor-in-chief of Kurier Sportowy.

Then came the Nazi invasion, and the heroic struggle and tragedy that followed.

In 2009, Kusocinski was posthumously awarded the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta - “for outstanding contribution to the independence of the Polish Republic, and for sporting achievements in the field of athletics.”

Felix Kirwa sent the wrong way at Stockholm Marathon, still wins race

The leaders of Saturday’s Stockholm Marathon were in confusion and disbelief after being sent the wrong way for an extra kilometer.Felix Kirwa, Tesfaye Lencho Anbesa, and Merhawi Keste were pointed in the wrong direction by race officials around the 30 km mark of the marathon.

They ran for a full minute before realizing the mistake, which cost them the lead in the race. Kirwa, 26, managed to come back and win the event in a time of 2:11:07, only one minute off the course record of 2:10:10, despite having to run an extra kilometer.

Kirwa spoke to Stockholm’s TV4 in a post-race interview: “I am very happy to win the Stockholm marathon but we ran wrong and I missed the record because of it.”

The event organizers blamed the error on motorcycle police officers who drove in the wrong direction.

Kesete, from Eritrea, hung onto second place in 2:11:45, while Tesfay, also from Eritrea, lost out on a podium spot to finish fourth. John Langat of Kenya, who wasn’t led the wrong way, finished third in 2:12:39.

Kirwa’s win in Stockholm puts him on three marathon wins, winning the 2016 Singapore Marathon and the 2016 Antwerp Marathon. Kirwa was banned from competing in 2019, after failing a drug test for the banned substance strychnine, commonly known as rat poison.

Strychnine is on the anti-doping list due to its effects as a stimulant and can give an athlete the ability to go for longer without feeling tired. Kirwa was stripped of his second-place finish at the 2018 Singapore Marathon as a result of the suspension.

Olympic 1500m silver medalist Laura Muir is set to attack world 1000m record in Birmingham

Next month’s Müller Indoor Grand Prix will see the Olympic 1500m silver medalist target the long-standing global mark of 2:30.94 held by Maria Mutola

Laura Muir will attempt to break the 1000m world indoor record at the Müller Indoor Grand Prix at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham on Saturday February 19

Muir holds the European indoor 1000m record after having clocked 2:31.93 in Birmingham in 2017, whereas the world record is held by Maria Mutola, the Olympic 800m champion in Sydney 2000, who ran 2:30.94 in Stockholm in 1999.

With a packed athletics calendar over the next 12 months featuring two global championships – in addition to the European Championships and Commonwealth Games – Scotland’s Muir, a multiple European indoor champion, is determined to get her year off to a strong start at the Birmingham meeting, which takes place in exactly one month’s time and which forms part of the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold series.

“I’m currently out in South Africa continuing my preparations for the 2022 season, so it will be exciting to get a chance to race indoors and I’m looking forward to testing myself over 1000m at the Müller Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham,” said the 28-year-old, who also holds the European indoor record over 3000m.

“I had an incredible year in 2021 and it was fun to finish it off by racing in Scotland over cross country, but it’s time to get back to running fast times on the track. Birmingham holds many fond memories for me winning two medals at the World Indoor Championships and breaking a number of national records.

“I ran the British and European record of 2:31.93 on this track in 2017 which made me the second fastest of all time over the distance, so I would love to try and go one better and break the world indoor record.

“It won’t be an easy record to break – it has stood since 1999 – but the track is fast and the crowd in Birmingham are great, so hopefully I can run it close.”

The Müller Indoor Grand Prix is the fifth meeting of the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Tour (Gold). There are seven ‘Gold’ level meetings across the series, starting with Karlsruhe on January 28 and culminating in Madrid on March 2.

Throughout the series, each athlete’s best three results will count towards their overall points score. The athlete with the most points in each scoring discipline at the end of the tour will be declared the winner and will be awarded a USD$10,000 bonus along with a wild card entry for the World Athletics Indoor Championships Belgrade in March.

In addition to Muir, athletes set to compete in Birmingham include pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, 800m star Keely Hodgkinson and sprint hurdlers Andy Pozzi and Grant Holloway.

Athletics Kenya joins UNEP, in fight against air pollution

Concerned by the state of changing environment that is already affecting the sport, Athletics Kenya has joined environmentalists and policy makers in addressing the problem of air pollution.

Athletics Kenya President Lieutenant General (Rtd) Jackson Tuwei says AK has already drawn a strategy to address pollution and climate change.

One of the critical issues to be addressed is how climate change and air pollution have affected the sporting environment.

The athletics umbrella body is doing it in conformity with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has come up with the Sports for Climate Action Framework as the strategy to address sporting activities and climate effects.

“Over the last few decades, the athletics world has been experiencing side effects of global warming which in turn is affecting the weather patterns in different parts of the country as well as the world. The increasing hot temperatures affect the sport because athletes biologically perform optimally within a certain environment,” said Tuwei.

“If there is a rise in temperatures, it can only mean, either to postpone until the right temperatures recommended for a given sport is realised or to move it to another location. Any above decisions will mean re-strategising, and if that were to be done every time there was a world sporting event, then you can read where the mark is going about sports budgets in future.”

Besides rising temperatures, athletes are prone to lung infections if they happen to be racing within an area whose ambient air (open ground-air) is polluted.

This lowers their mobility (kinesis) as they are not able to breathe freely, something that affects their end performance.

To a great extent, air quality is interlinked with environmental and forestry destruction, alongside changing weather patterns within highlands where athletes have long been known to practise to optimise their stardom internationally.

“Some of you who followed the 2021 Olympics Games in Tokyo may recall that even as we celebrated the endurance and resilience of our athletes Peres Jepchirchir and Brigid Kosgei, who dominated the women’s marathon and brought glory and honour to Kenya by bagging gold and silver medals, they had to endure unusually high temperatures in Sapporo that even forced the organisers to change the start time of the race. Other adverse weather conditions were witnessed during the World Championships in 2019 and Beijing Olympics in 2008,” explains Tuwei.  

It is due to this concern that different players drawn from environmental, health and policy sectors have been meeting to deliberate on the way forward.

“Clean air is very important to a runner. As you run, you need to exhale used air and for the lungs to get in fresher air so as to facilitate the running activity. It comes as no surprise that all around us we are witnessing deteriorating air quality due to an increase in air pollution, which is made worse by the impacts of climate change,” added Tuwei.

During a meeting held in Nairobi to address air pollution and its effect on athletics, that brought together UNEP, WHO, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) – Africa Centre and the Nairobi Metropolitan Services, a concern was raised on the risk that morning joggers could be exposing themselves to during heavy traffic as people rush to work.

“The carbon emission cumulatively by heavy traffic in the morning as people rush to work gets to be concentrated within one area and particularly along the roads where people jog. This happens because, in the morning, the air is usually still with little or no breeze to whirl it,” explains Dr Njogu Mbarua, an expert on climate and environment with Joint Environment and Climate Action, a non-governmental organisation.  

“Precipitation is not enough to keep our ambient air clean and going. We must devise actionable ways, policy and regulatory, of ensuring that the air we are breathing and our children are going to be breathing is well within the international safety standards. As we get concerned with protecting children who are already born, we must bear similar concern for the unborn children as research is indicating of a possibility of mother-to-foetus air pollution transmission,” said Dr Andriannah Mbandi, an air quality researcher and UNEP Technical Coordinator, Regional Office for Africa.  

The meeting recommended more studies to be conducted to ascertain the level of pollution in various parts of cities and towns.

Kenyan Vibian Chepkirui: From sleeping on the floor in Doha to triumph in Vienna City Marathon

The 38th edition of the Vienna City Marathon delivered a great comeback for major international city marathon running during the pandemic. One of the stories of the day written in Austria’s capital was that of Vibian Chepkirui, who won her debut marathon in 2:24:29.

The 27 year-old Kenyan was clearly not among the hot favorites when she arrived in Vienna. She had never run a marathon before and in the past twelve months Vibian Chepkirui was only able to compete in a single international race due to the corona pandemic. It was a 10,000 m track event in Stockholm, where she finished eighth with a personal best of 31:09.42.

„It was a tough time because of Corona. I tried to qualify for the Olympics in Stockholm, but I did not manage. After that I decided to concentrate on a marathon,“ said Vibian Chepkirui, whose half marathon PB of 69:09 did not indicate either that something spectacular might be on the cards for her in Vienna.

Additionally she had to cope with a major obstacle on her way to Vienna. Flying via Doha from Nairobi Vibian Chepkirui and a group of Kenyan runners - among them Vienna’s men’s winner Leonard Langat as well - missed their connecting flight. The plane from Kenya had been delayed. „They were stuck in Doha and the airline did not care. So they had to sleep on the floor,“ explained Vibian Chepkirui’s coach Julien di Maria. „Obviously this is not ideal two days before a marathon.“

Despite all this Vibian Chepkirui ran a brilliant marathon debut and dominated a strong field. At 30 k she was well in the lead and her split time of 1:40:37 pointed towards a 2:21:30 finish, well inside the course record of 2:22:12. „I was surprised to win the race, but I started to believe by the half way mark. Of course this is the biggest win in my career,“ said Vibian Chepkirui, whose husband Wesley Kangogo was her pacemaker. „The heat was a problem though. In cooler conditions I could have run at least two minutes faster. Additionally I got problems with a calf muscle with around four kilometres to go.“ She finally finished in 2:24:29.

It was only in 2020 when Vibian Chepkirui ran her first international races. She clocked her half marathon PB in Prague, the home of her management group Ikaika. In Kenya she trains in Iten and one of her training partners is the three-time winner of the Vienna City Marathon and course record holder Nancy Kiprop. Vienna’s record winner could not return to the race due to a back injury. „Nancy gave me advice on Vienna. I was trying to break her course record,“ said Vibian Chepkirui, hoping that both of them will be on the start line at the next Vienna City Marathon on 24 April 2022. One thing is sure: They will avoid flying to Vienna via Doha.

Exercisers and elites mingled at Tjejmilen

Finally, Tjejmilen could be completed. In honor of the day, we had perfect running weather with sun and around 14 degrees. Extra fun was that Finnkampen's 10,000 meters for women was decided during Tjejmilen.

After having to cancel last year's race due to covid-19, about 8000 girls who wanted to run were registered for this year's Tjejmilen. The classic setting with thousands of girls on site at the same time at Gärdet was different this year due to the restrictions where a maximum of 900 participants can be in the event area at the same time.

First out was Lilla Tjejmilen starting at 9.30 - almost 400 girls were registered.

At 10.00 it was time for the premiere of Tjejmilen Trail. More than 800 girls were registered for the race, which took place on small winding paths in the forest around Kaknästornet.

At 12.00, the starting shot was fired for Tjejmilen. At the front of the starting field were the six participants from Finnkampen with Meraf Bahta, Sarah Lahti and Carolina Wikström in the Swedish team. Bahta and Lahti together with Hanna Lindholm were first at a kilometer. After three kilometers, Bahta and Lahti pulled, they were then followed to the finish where Meraf Bahta came out of the sprint duel winning.

The race then continued with starts every 30 minutes, to avoid congestion. In a normal year, the different groups start at five-minute intervals. It was a long and wonderful day at Gärdet, at 18.25 the last runners finished.

We are incredibly happy that we have managed to arrange Tjejmilen this year with all adaptations to the restrictions that apply. We had to rethink, but I'm really happy with the result - and it was noticed that the participants on site appreciated being able to run races again. Next year we hope to be on the track again after the pandemic. It would of course be fun if we could approach the 2019 number of participants of 20,000 registered runners, says Malin Aho, project manager at the Marathon Group that arranges the Girl Mile.

In addition to the participants on site, many chose to run Tjejmilen virtually again this year.

Topp 5 Tjejmilen 20211. Meraf Bahta, Hälle IF, 32:412. Sarah Lahti, Hässelby SK, 32:423. Carolina Wikström, LK Roslagen, 33:284. Hanna Lindholm, Huddinge AIS, 33:375. Johanna Peiponen, Rovaniemen Lappi, 34:00Här finns alla resultat i Tjejmilen 2021.

Resultat Finnkampen, damernas 10 000 meter1. Meraf Bahta, Sverige/Hälle IF, 32:412. Sarah Lahti, Sverige/Hässelby SK, 32:423. Carolina Wikström, Sverige/LK Roslagen, 33:284. Johanna Peiponen, Finland/Rovaniemen Lappi, 34:005. Nina Chydenius, Finland/Gamlakarleby IF, 34:046. Laura Manninen, Finland/Kenttäurheilijat -58, 34:34

Topp 5 Tjejmilen Trail 20211. Helena Wallin, Älvsjö, 42:912. Olivia Grahn, Stockholm, 42:413. Rebecca Källström, Stockholm, 43:284. Sofia Kingstedt von Corswant, Skarpnäck, 43:475. Alicia Sjöö Ekelöf, Spånga, 44:02

A new generation of champions set to emerge in Tokyo

While some reigning Olympic and world champions might be missing from the Games in Tokyo, the extra year as a result of the postponement in 2020 has allowed a number of new talents to emerge.

For some it means a debut Olympic experience which may not originally have been expected until at least 2024, while for others it is a realistic opportunity to win medals and titles.

Of the 43 individual events contested at the Rio 2016 Olympics, the winners from just 18 of those will defend their titles in Tokyo.

The likes of world 800m champion Donavan Brazier and Olympic 110m hurdles champion Omar McLeod missed out on being selected for their national team, while other stars, such as world and Olympic triple jump champion Christian Taylor, are currently sidelined with injury.

But while those global champions won't be able to contend for top honours in Tokyo, here are some of the new generation of stars who are set to emerge.

Selemon Barega, 10,000m

After winning world U18 and U20 titles in 2017 and 2016 respectively, Ethiopia’s Barega stepped up to secure senior 5000m silver at the World Athletics Championships in 2019. Still aged just 21, he is now preparing for his debut Olympics, where he will race the 10,000m.

Barega started the season with intent, running an Ethiopian all-comers’ record of 27:58.5 at altitude in Addis Ababa in January. He then went even faster at the Ethiopian Trials in Hengelo in June, clocking 26:49.51 on the same track on which he ran his 26:49.46 PB in 2019. That, together with the speed he demonstrated by running PBs of 3:32.97 for 1500m and 7:26.10 for 3000m during the indoor season, means he is set to be a strong force in Tokyo

Jasmine Camacho-Quinn, 100m hurdles

Medal success in Tokyo would see Camacho-Quinn become the first Puerto Rican woman to secure an Olympic podium place in athletics and this season she has certainly demonstrated her ability to achieve that feat.

The 24-year-old improved her own national 100m hurdles record to 12.32 to move to equal seventh on the world 100m hurdles all-time list in Eugene in April and hasn’t been beaten since. She clocked 12.38 to win at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Florence and 12.34 for success in Szekesfehervar, meaning she has the three fastest times in the world so far this year. “I'm looking forward to the Olympics this year - it will be like redemption from my fall in 2016,” she said after her Florence run as she reflected on missing out on the final in Rio. “I'm really excited. Training really hard, working really hard, but really looking forward to it.”

Tara Davis, long jump

Davis leapt into the seven-metre club in March, breaking the US collegiate long jump record with 7.14m at the Texas Relays. The longest jump in the world since the 2019 World Athletics Championships final, that mark moved the 22-year-old to fifth on the US all-time list.

The world U20 bronze medallist had also broken the collegiate indoor record with 6.93m at the NCAA Indoor Championships earlier in the year and finished second at the US Olympic Trials, going beyond seven metres again with a best of 7.04m. “I’m shocked still because seven metres as a jumper is the biggest thing ever. Hitting it in the Olympic Trials is unreal,” she said after her performance in Eugene, where she finished second to four-time world gold medallist and 2012 Olympic champion Brittney Reese. “I’m freaking jumping with my idol, Brittney Reese. Being with her and competing with her in 2016 I was so starstruck. I was like, ‘I see her on TV and now I’m jumping with her’.”

Alison Dos Santos, 400m hurdles

After running in the lane next to Karsten Warholm during his world record in Oslo, improving his South American record to 47.38 to finish second, Brazil’s Dos Santos went even quicker to win three days later in Stockholm, taking another 0.04 off that mark.

This season has seen the 21-year-old build on his 2019 breakthrough, having that year improved his PB and the South American U20 record seven times, eventually clocking 48.28 to finish seventh at the World Athletics Championships in Doha. Also a key member of Brazil’s relay team, he ran the fastest split of the mixed 4x400m final at the World Athletics Relays in Silesia, recording a 44.62 anchor leg. “I'm looking forward to the Olympics, and yes, I think I can get a medal,” he said with a smile after his run in Stockholm.

Mondo Duplantis, pole vault

While some may argue that a world record (or two) rules an athlete out from being considered part of a ‘new generation’, pole vault star Duplantis is still aged only 21 and has much more he hopes to accomplish during his career, including winning Olympic gold.

This season he has cleared six metres or higher in four competitions, capped by his 6.10m in Hengelo - a height only he, Renaud Lavillenie and Sergey Bubka have ever achieved. After winning 2019 world silver behind Sam Kendricks - who ended Duplantis’ 23-competition win streak in challenging conditions in Gateshead in May - Duplantis will be looking to go one better in Tokyo. He also believes he can go higher than his 6.18m world record this season and after attempting 6.19m in Oslo, he said: “I really think I can get that record soon. But for now I feel good, a month away from the most important meet of my life. I am in good shape, I am running well on the runway and keeping up the rhythm well.”

JuVaughn Harrison, long jump and high jump

Harrison secured his two Olympic spots in style at the US Trials, soaring over 2.33m and then leaping a PB of 8.47m to improve his own best-ever single-day high jump and long jump double. As a result, he will become the first male athlete to represent the USA in both events at the Olympics since Jim Thorpe in 1912. No other athlete has ever achieved both a 2.30m high jump and 8.40m-plus long jump.

The 22-year-old is no stranger to juggling both events on the same day and in March he cleared 2.30m and jumped 8.45m at the NCAA Indoor Championships. In Tokyo, the high jump final is on the evening of day three and the long jump final is on the morning of day four. He is expecting to rise to the challenge. “It will be harder competition which will make me push harder and jump farther,” he said.

Erriyon Knighton, 200m

Running 19.88 at the age of just 17, Knighton broke not one but two world 200m age-group bests which had previously been held by a certain Usain Bolt. At the US Olympic Trials, the former American football player ran 20.04 in the heats to improve Bolt’s world U18 best before taking 0.16 off that mark in the semifinals to break the world U20 record of 19.93 set by Bolt in 2004. In the final he went quicker still, clocking 19.84 to finish third and become the youngest man to represent the USA in athletics at the Olympics since Jim Ryun in 1964, also in Tokyo.

Racing outside of the USA for the first time, Knighton then placed third at the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Szekesfehervar, running 20.03. “It hasn't sunk in, it’ll probably sink in when I get home,” he said after claiming his Olympic place. “I'm happy. I feel it's a really big achievement.”

Nicola McDermott, high jump

As an eight-year-old, McDermott dreamt of becoming a consistent two-metre-plus international high jumper and having already achieved the latter, this year her two-metre aim was accomplished, too. Clearing 2.00m at the Australian Championships in April, the 24-year-old broke Eleanor Patterson’s Oceanian record and then added another centimetre to the mark in Stockholm earlier this month, despite not feeling 100 percent.

McDermott didn’t manage to register a height when she made her World Athletics Championships debut in London and two years later the Commonwealth bronze medallist finished 15th in qualifying. This time, as she makes her Olympic debut, her mind is on medals. “I’m not going to say it’s impossible to get a medal,” she said. “I’ll be aiming and I think 2.01m will maybe get me in the medals so I am aiming and training for that and believing that I can do it.”

Sydney McLaughlin, 400m hurdles

Like Duplantis, McLaughlin is already a world record-breaker having taken the 400m hurdles to another level with her time of 51.90 at the US Olympic Trials. She also was no stranger to making history before that, with world U18 best and world U20 record times among her age-group accomplishments.

Now aged 21, she made her first Olympic team at just 16, finishing fifth in her semifinal nine days after her 17th birthday, and then secured silver at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, a race won by her compatriot Dalilah Muhammad in a world record of 52.16. It was that mark McLaughlin improved in Eugene. “So many amazing women have come before me and will come after me,” she said after her world record. “I'm excited for what the future holds. I just want to leave my mark and be part of such an amazing sport, because the glory isn't forever.”

Athing Mu, 800m

Mu is another athlete to have risen impressively through the ranks, having stormed into the spotlight in 2019 when as a 16-year-old she ran the second-fastest ever indoor 600m time of 1:23.57. This year she has broken the world U20 indoor 800m record with 1:58.40 and then dominated the two-lap final at the US Olympic Trials, running a world-leading 1:56.07 to improve her own North American U20 record.

The 19-year-old also ran an area U20 record in the 400m with 49.57 to win the NCAA title earlier in the month. “This is my first year coming out here running to my potential,” she said after her trials win. “I wouldn't want to say I'm dominant at it yet. My confidence takes a lot from it. In 2019, I wasn't confident, but I was good enough. Gaining confidence has contributed to my dominance thus far in the 800m. Being good at it, knowing it's my event.”

Great experience

While some reigning global champions may be missing out on Tokyo, there are a number of vastly experienced stars who will be adding another Olympics to their impressive tally of major events. The USA’s Allyson Felix has already won six Olympic gold medals and 13 world titles, while shot put star Valerie Adams has claimed two Olympic and four world titles for New Zealand, with Tokyo being a fifth Olympic Games for both athletes.

Spain’s 51-year-old Jesus Angel Garcia, meanwhile, will compete at his eighth Olympics – the most ever for a track and field athlete. Who knows whether some of this new generation of stars will still be in action come the Olympic Games in 2048!

No barriers for record-breaker Bol

To break a national record once in a career is an amazing achievement. To set 12 of them in one year alone is something else. But that’s exactly what Dutch star Femke Bol has done so far in 2021, during a year in which her specialist event – the 400m hurdles – has been launched to another level.

The 52.37 Bol ran to win at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm earlier this month made her the fourth-fastest ever in the history of the women’s 400m hurdles, but such is the strength in the event, she is not the quickest this year. The top spot is of course filled by Sydney McLaughlin thanks to her remarkable world record of 51.90 at the US Olympic Trials, while Bol is one of four women to have gone sub-52.50 this season.

“We have such an amazing field,” Bol said. “I mean, the world record for women and men was broken in one week for both – it’s amazing to see the level of the 400m hurdles keep going up and that with my time I am now second in the world this year, not even first. Of course, you want to be first, but when the level in your event is so high, I think that is the best.”

It certainly makes things exciting, and it is that level of competition which the 21-year-old partly has to thank for her progress. After running 53.33 in Oslo, Bol said she was “curious” to find out what she might be capable of when really being pushed and she didn’t have to wait long to find out. Her 52.37 in Stockholm came just three days later as she narrowly held off the USA’s 2015 world silver medallist Shamier Little, whose PB of 52.39 in that race moved her to fifth on the world all-time list.

“When you have someone that you compete against, it always helps to push each other and I think that’s what makes it so beautiful, when competitors are really going against each other,” Bol had said before her race in Stockholm. “Like at the (US) trials, you see amazing times come from that. It is nice if you can be really competitive in the last metres, when you are full of lactic.”

The next day, after taking almost a second off her PB, a delighted Bol added: “I knew I was running against a really strong field and my coach and I said to each other: ‘Okay, I’m going to show that I can also do it under this pressure and when we push each other’. Shamier was coming so close, and I don’t think I have ever pushed as much in the last few metres. I am extremely happy and also that I did a good dip to win it.

“When I run these times, I am in the mix against the real good girls and I didn’t expect it, to be honest. I hoped I could do 52.9 maybe this year and I felt I was getting close to that, and now I have run one second faster (than her previous PB). It’s not yet making sense in my head!”

Until 2019, Bol’s focus had been on the 400m flat – the event in which she made the semifinals of the 2017 European U20 Championships. But in that first year of taking on the 400m hurdles the communication sciences student won the European U20 title and competed at her first World Athletics Championships, having started her senior international career by forming part of the Dutch team for the 2019 World Athletics Relays in Yokohama. Much has changed since then and she has the benefit of major event experience as she prepares to make her Olympic debut in Tokyo.

“Dafne once said to me: ‘Everywhere you go, it’s a track and you do your 400m hurdles’ and that’s really something I always keep in mind,” Bol revealed. “Okay, I’m at the Olympics, but it’s again just the 400m hurdles I have to do and do my best race. That’s mostly what I think, and having that experience of knowing how to recover between the heats, semis and final.”

So what is her focus during these final few weeks? “Just to keep cool, do my own thing and focus on the things I have to do, to do well at the Olympics,” Bol replied with a smile.

"I couldn't have had a better preparation for Tokyo and I cannot wait now."

With the Tokyo Olympics less than two weeks away Bromell, Thompson-Herah and Vetter headline last Diamond League

With the Tokyo Olympics less than two weeks away, many of the world’s top athletes will get a last chance to test their competitive form when they line up in the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Gateshead, England, on Tuesday (13).

US sprinter Trayvon Bromell, German javelin thrower Johannes Vetter, Jamaican sprint star Elaine Thompson-Herah and British heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson are among the top names entered in the Muller Grand Prix.

Despite the late withdrawals of British world 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith and Dutch middle-distance star Sifan Hassan, the meet features an array of world and Olympic champions and will serve as a crucial tune-up ahead of Tokyo.

The seventh Diamond League meeting of the season – and second in Gateshead – comes just 10 days before the 23 July opening of the Tokyo Games and 17 days before the start of the Olympic athletics competition on 30 July.

Many athletes are returning to the venue in northeast England for the second time this season. Gateshead hosted the Diamond League opener in May after the meeting was moved from Rabat, Morocco. Tuesday’s meeting was originally scheduled to take place at the Olympic Stadium in London but was switched to Gateshead due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

World 100m leader Bromell will be looking to bounce back after a disappointing performance in last Friday’s Herculis EBS Diamond League meeting in Monaco, where he clocked 10.01 and finished fifth in a race won by American teammate Ronnie Baker in 9.91. It was Bromell’s first 100m defeat since 2019, having won four races in 2020 and 10 this year.

Bromell, who ran 9.77 in June for the fastest time in the world this year and won the 100m in 9.80 at the US Olympic Trials in Eugene last month, will be determined to regain the form that made him the favourite for gold in Tokyo.

Bromell will go up against Fred Kerley, who qualified for Tokyo by finishing third in 9.86 at the US trials, and Canada’s Andre De Grasse, the Olympic and world 100m bronze medallist. Isiah Young, who has clocked 9.89 this season, is also in the 100m line-up, along with British sprinters Adam Gemili and Chijindu Ujah.

About 40 members of Team GB’s athletics team for Tokyo – more than half the entire squad – will be in action in Gateshead. Missing, however, will be Asher-Smith, who pulled out citing a tight hamstring. She opted not to take any risks ahead of the Olympics.

“As you all know, I love running in front of a home crowd but I have to make smart decisions for myself and my body ahead of Tokyo,’’ Asher-Smith said in a statement on Twitter. “I’m sorry to those who were hoping to see me run this week but I’m looking forward to making you all proud in a few weeks’ time.”

Asher-Smith had been scheduled to run the 200m in a marquee matchup against Thompson-Herah, the reigning Olympic 100m and 200m champion. The Jamaican will now be the favourite in a field that also includes American Tamara Clark, who finished fourth in the US Olympic Trials in a personal best of 21.98.

Hassan, the women’s world champion at 1500m and 10,000m, also withdrew due to a tight hamstring and preferring not to take any chances before Tokyo, where she looks set to contest the 5000m-10,000m double. Hasan had been scheduled to run the mile, in which she holds the world record of 4:12.33. Winnie Nanyondo of Uganda, who has a season’s best of 4:00.84 in the 1500m, and American Kate Grace, who clocked 1:57.36 for the 800m in Stockholm, now start as favourites.

The men’s mile has past winner Jake Wightman of Britain in the field along with European indoor 800m record-breaker Elliot Giles, who will be running the 800m in Tokyo.

If conditions are good, Vetter could challenge Jan Zelezny’s 25-year-old javelin world record of 98.48m. The German came close last year with a throw of 97.76m and threw 96.29m to win his event at the European Team Championships in May. Vetter has been successful competing in Britain, winning the world title in London in 2017.

Javelin records have been set in the UK before, with Zelezny throwing 95.66m in Sheffield in 1993 and Britain’s Steve Backley setting a mark of 90.98m at London’s Crystal Palace in 1990. Also in the javelin field in Gateshead are world champion Anderson Peters of Grenada and 2012 Olympic gold medallist Keshorn Walcott of Trinidad & Tobago.

Still making her way back to full fitness after an Achilles injury, Johnson-Thompson is entered in the women’s long jump, where she will take on world champion Malaika Mihambo of Germany. In Stockholm, Mihambo produced the best jump of 7.02m in the third round but settled for second place in the new final-three format when her final effort of 6.77m was bettered by the 6.88m of Ivana Spanovic of Serbia.

In the women’s 400m hurdles, 21-year-old Dutch star Femke Bol will resume her rivalry with US athlete Shamier Little for the third time this season.

History of track and field at the Olympics

Track & field events at the Olympics make use of some of the most basic physical maneuvers that human beings perform, so it’s no surprise that it has a long and storied past. Every event uses running, jumping, and throwing, simple and necessary movements used by early humans to survive, hunt, make war and have fun. Let’s take a look at the origins of track & field events, from their inclusion in the ancient Olympics to today.

If you’re interested in betting on track & field today, you should check out sportsbooks that take wagers on those events, like Fanduel.

Origin At The Ancient Olympics

As we said, the origin of track & field is thought to come from human prehistory. Where the Olympics is concerned, however, we can point to the Ancient Olympic Games. While the first Olympic games used the stadion, a simplistic footrace. It was the pentathlon years later that created what we could call the first track & field events. This combined the stadion event with the javelin throw, the discus throw, and the long jump, before a finale where athletes wrestled one another. The first pentathlon was held at the 18th Ancient Olympics, which took place in 708 B.C. That’s 2,700 years ago!

Track & field events were also performed at the Panhellenic Games, where they then eventually spread to Italy and then into Northern Europe throughout the Middle Ages (500 – 1500 A.D.) These events kept track & field activities alive till the revival of the Olympic Games.

Revival At The Olympic Games

The Olympic Games as we know it today returned in 1896 with the Athens Summer Olympics. Bringing together fourteen nations who fielded over two hundred athletes, they competed across forty events. One of those events combined track & field activities with the marathon as part of their athletics program.

It is thought that its inclusion was because of numerous athletic clubs in Britain and America during the 1800s, where public schools and military academies started using track & field training which then developed followings from those who wanted to engage in those activities for leisure purposes.

The Olympics struggled for its next gatherings after 1896. This changed in 1912 with the so-called Swedish Masterpiece, where the fifth Olympic Games went off without a hitch in Stockholm and attracted massive appeal. It was also the last event to use solid gold medals and the first time they welcomed an Asian nation, Japan, to join the games.

At these games, the track & field event wasn’t without controversy. Pentathlon winner Jim Thorpe was revealed to have played baseball for money in the past, technically breaking the amateurism rules enforced at the Olympics, and so his track & field medals were stripped. They were reinstated 29 years after his death.

The International Amateur Athletic Federation, the IAAF, then became the governing body for track & field events.

From The ‘60s To Now

Over the course of the century, the Olympic Games steadily became the most popular and prestigious athletic event, and track & field was along for the ride. Multi-sport events like track & field inspired similar activities in the Commonwealth Games and the Pan-American Games. As televisions became more mainstream in the 60s, worldwide audiences could now view and become fans of specific track & field runners. This gradually overthrew their amateurism rule as Olympic performers became professional athletes.

Something else was also going on in the world during the 60s, the Cold War. While the war was silently raging in the background, the Olympics became a battleground where athletes from the USA and the USSR clashed across multiple sports, including track & field.

From the 90s onward, the popularity of the sport would only improve as the IAAF grew. The IAAF now hold their own events too, where track & field athletes test their mettle outside of the Olympics. At the last Olympic Games, in Rio de Janeiro, track & field events were hosted.

Australia selects 64 squad for Tokyo Olympics

Australia has named a team of 64 athletes for the Tokyo Games, which will be the nation’s biggest ever athletics squad for an overseas Olympics.

Further to those athletes already announced, the second wave of selections includes Jeff Riseley making his fourth Olympics and Kathryn Mitchell, Dave McNeill and Henry Frayne returning for their third Games.

Riseley joins previously selected Tokyo 2020 teammates Dani Stevens and Lisa Weightman in equalling the most Olympics by Australian athletics representatives.

Dane Bird-Smith is joined by Kyle Swan and Declan Tingay in the 20km race walk, five years after he claimed bronze in Rio.

Nicola McDermott, who improved her Oceania record to 2.01m in Stockholm, is joined in the high jump by Eleanor Patterson, while Linden Hall, Jessica Hull, Ollie Hoare and Stewart McSweyn are among the 1500m team members.

Patrick Tiernan is set to double in the 5000m and 10,000m.

Australian team for Tokyo

WOMEN

100m: Hana Basic200m: Riley Day400m: Bendere Oboya800m: Catriona Bisset, Morgan Mitchell1500m: Georgia Griffith, Linden Hall, Jessica Hull5000m: Isobel Batt-Doyle, Jenny Blundell, Rose DaviesMarathon: Sinead Diver, Ellie Pashley, Lisa Weightman3000m steeplechase: Amy Cashin, Genevieve Gregson, Georgia Winkcup

100m hurdles: Liz Clay400m hurdles: Sarah CarliHigh jump: Nicola McDermott, Eleanor PattersonPole vault: Nina Kennedy, Elizaveta ParnovaLong jump: Brooke StrattonDiscus: Dani StevensJavelin: Kelsey-Lee Barber, Mackenzie Little, Kathryn Mitchell20km race walk: Katie Hayward, Bec Henderson, Jemima Montag4x400m: Ellie Beer, Angeline Blackburn, Kendra Hubbard, Bendere Oboya, Anneliese Rubie-Renshaw 

MEN

100m: Rohan Browning400m: Alex Beck, Steven Solomon800m: Peter Bol, Charlie Hunter, Jeff Riseley1500m: Jye Edwards, Ollie Hoare, Stewart McSweyn5000m: Morgan McDonald, Dave McNeill, Patrick Tiernan10,000m: Patrick TiernanMarathon: Liam Adams, Jack Rayner, Brett Robinson3000m steeplechase: Ben Buckingham, Matthew Clarke, Edward Trippas

110m hurdles: Nick HoughHigh jump: Brandon StarcPole vault: Kurtis MarschallLong jump: Henry FrayneDiscus: Matthew Denny20km race walk: Dane Bird-Smith, Kyle Swan, Declan Tingay50km race walk: Rhydian Cowley

Decathlon: Cedric Dubler, Ashley Moloney

Kenyan´s Timothy Cheruiyot bounces back in Sweden after missing out on Tokyo Olympics

World 1,500m champion Timothy Cheruiyot put behind the disappointment of missing a ticket to the Tokyo Olympics when he clocked 3:32.30 his speciality at the Stockholm Diamond League on Sunday evening. 

Cheruiyot crossed the finish line ahead of Spaniard Ignacio Fontes (3:33.27) and countryman Ronald Kwemoi (3:33.53) in second and third respectively. 

The win in the Swedish capital continues the rich vein of form for the Bomet-born runner whose disappointing fourth-place finish at the national trials for the Tokyo Olympics remains the only blot to a sensational season so far.

In late-May, he set a world lead of 3:30.48 at the Doha Diamond League during the men's 1500m. 

Another Kenyan, Ferguson Rotich, lay down a marker for the Olympics when he set a season lead of 1:43:84 in the men's 800m to finish first ahead of Canadian Marco Arop (1:44:00) and Briton Elliot Gilles (1:44:05) in second and third. 

The world 800m bronze medalist recovered from a slow start to stamp his authority on the race and carry on from his impressive performance at the Doha Diamond League where he timed 1:44.45 to finish second behind compatriot, Commonwealth 800m champion Wycliffe Kinyamal. 

In the women's 3000m steeplechase, former world champion Hyvin Kiyeng added momentum to her bid for an Olympic gold when she clocked  9:04.34 to finish first ahead of German Gesa Felicitas Krause (9:09.13) and countrywoman — and record holder — Beatrice Chepkoech (9:10.52) in second and third. 

Other Kenyans, Purity Kirui (9:16.91) and Rosefline Chepngetich (9:22.30) finished in fourth and sixth respectively. 

The exploits on Sunday followed those of Nicholas Kimeli, Jacop Krop and world 5000m champion Hellen Obiri who posted excellent results at the Oslo Diamond League on Friday. 

Krop and Kimeli timed 7:30.07 and 7:31.33 respectively to finish second and third behind winner Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia who timed 7:26.25. 

Another Kenyan — and Olympics debutant — Charles Simotwo finished fourth in the men's 1500m, clocking 3:49.40. 

American track and field athlete Jordan Gray has launched a campaign for a women's decathlon event to be included at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games

Gray is the holder of the American record for women's decathlon, scoring 7,921 points at an event sanctioned by USA Track and Field (USATF) in 2019. 

The score was all the third highest of all time. 

The 25-year-old has now launched "Let Women Decathlon" in a bid to have the event included at Paris 2024, despite the International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirming the programme for the Games in December. 

A petition supporting the campaign has garnered more than 3,100 signatures. 

"Today, hundreds of dedicated women decathletes around the globe are tirelessly training for their shot to make history at the 2024 Olympic Games," the petition description reads. 

"Jordan Gray is one of them. 

"She holds the highest decathlon score of any woman currently active in the sport, the American record, and the third highest score ever for women in the world. 

"On behalf of all female decathletes, all she wants is an equal chance to compete.

"Women’s decathlon is already in place at the highest levels of sport, including the USATF and World Athletics. 

"Like many of her peers, Jordan is prepared to represent her country in the heptathlon at the 2024 Olympics. 

"But she has a simple question for the IOC - 'If we’re succeeding in the 10 events of the decathlon, why aren’t we allowed to compete at the Olympics?'"

Gray's campaign for Paris is unlikely to be successful with the Paris 2024 programme already confirmed, but Los Angeles 2028 may be a more realistic target. 

She told NBC she hoped women's decathlon would have achieved Olympic inclusion by then.

"Hopefully in 2028, I’ll be 32 and rocking it at the US Championships in the decathlon," Gray said. 

The Paris 2024 Olympics Games will have an equal number of men and women competing for the first time.

A decathlon for men first appeared on the Olympic programme at Stockholm 1912. 

It is one of the few events not contested by both men and women at the Games.

Pentathlon was then added for female competitors at Tokyo 1964, before it was replaced by the heptathlon at Los Angeles 1984. 

Diamond League meets were postponed due to the pandemic and all 14 meets are set to return in 2021

The 2021 Diamond League program is officially set, and all 14 meets are scheduled to return after many were forced toward cancellation this year due to COVID-19. The season will kick off on May 23 in Rabat, Morocco, and it will continue in full force until September 8 and 9 at the Diamond League Final in Zurich.

While it will be exciting to see any and all events next year after so few meets in 2020, one that many track fans will be looking forward to will be the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., which will be the first major international meet held at the University of Oregon’s newly renovated Hayward Field. 

2021 event programs 

After cutting the 200m and any event longer than 3,000m from many 2020 Diamond League events (including the final), World Athletics recently announced they will be reversing this decision in 2021. There are now 32 disciplines (16 for men and 16 for women) that will be held at the various Diamond League events.

As it stands now, there will be either 3,000m or 5,000m races (which are counted on the Diamond League schedule as one discipline) at all but two Diamond League events next year. Only the Stockholm and Monaco will not feature these longer runs.

As for the 3,000m steeplechase, the Oslo, London and Lausanne meets are the only three that will not include this event. The 200m will be held at every meet other than the two separate events in China. The two-day Diamond League Final in Zurich will see all 32 disciplines contested. 

Hayward field was prepared for competition this year, but events were, of course, unable to run as planned due to the pandemic. Everything is ready to go for 2021, though, and there are two meets scheduled to be held at Hayward before the Prefontaine Classic: the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships and the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.

Both of these meets are set for June, and while they’re certainly major events, they don’t compare to the Pre Classic, which will attract top athletes from all over the world. The Pre is a one-day affair slated for August 21, and it will feature a number of exciting events. For running fans, the main competitions to look forward to at Hayward will be the men’s and women’s 100m and 200m races and the men’s and women’s 1,500m.

Diamond League unveils 14-meet schedule for 2021 track and field season

The Diamond League on Tuesday released its provisional calendar for the 2021 season, which will consist of 14 athletics meetings beginning in Rabat in May and ending in Zurich in September.

Doha will stage a meeting on May 28 after which Rome will host the first European event of the season on June 4, with Oslo hosting a week later. Meetings in Stockholm, Monaco and London are scheduled for the first two weeks of July.

"The calendar is strictly provisional at this stage and remains subject to changes depending on the global health situation in 2021," organizers said in a statement.

After a one-month break for the rearranged Tokyo Olympics, action will resume in Shanghai on Aug. 14.

Eugene will host its first Diamond League meeting on Aug. 21, with China to hold its second event of the season the following day.

The final leg will take place in Europe with meetings in Lausanne, Paris and Brussels before the season finale in Zurich from Sept. 8-9.

 The calendar remains provisional and is subject to changes depending on the global health situation, the Diamond League said.

The 2020 calendar was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with several events cancelled and others rescheduled.

2021 Diamond League calendar

Rabat — May 23

Doha — May 28

Rome — June 4

Oslo — June 10

Stockholm — July 4

Monaco — July 9

London — July 13

Shanghai — Aug. 14

Eugene — Aug. 21

China — Aug. 22

Lausanne — Aug. 26

Paris — Aug. 28

Brussels — Sept. 3

Zurich — Sept. 8-9

Modern pentathlon set for new format for Paris 2024 Olympics

The Executive Board of the International Modern Pentathlon Union (UIPM) has approved a new format for the Paris 2024 Olympics, which will now feature a 90-minute event.

This 90-minute modern pentathlon will have an elimination system designed to reduce the overall length of the competition and create a more dynamic approach to the sport.

All five disciplines will take place in 90 minutes within a compact field of play.

Equestrian would feature first for 20 minutes, before a 15-minute fencing event, ten minutes of swimming and 15 minutes of the laser run. 

Breaks are accounted for in between events too.

This new format also intends to be more broadcast-friendly, making it easier for viewers and spectators to understand the event in one sitting.

There is also a focus on making the Games more sustainable and efficient in future, making it compatible with the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Olympic Agenda 2020.

Modern pentathlon was first introduced into the Olympic Games in 1912 in Stockholm by the co-founder of the IOC, Pierre de Coubertin.

Now, the IOC Executive Board will decide on December 7 whether to approve this new format proposed by the UIPM, as well as a proposal to add the mixed relay as an event for Paris 2024 too.

"We stand once again on the brink of a momentous landmark in the long history of our beloved core Olympic sport," said UIPM President Klaus Schormann.

"The modern pentathlon was originally a five-day competition at the Olympic Games. 

"In Atlanta 1996 it was condensed into one day, and in London 2012 we combined laser shooting with running to produce a more exciting climax. 

"At Tokyo 2020 we will have all five disciplines within one pentathlon stadium.

"Now, after two years of detailed exploration and discussion between all parts of our community, the IOC and Paris 2024 and Olympic Broadcast Services, we are ready to present something very special: a modern pentathlon lasting 90 minutes.

"We have presented our global community with a summary of the exciting new Modern Pentathlon format, which we hope will have a transformative effect on the profile and popularity of our Olympic sport.

"As UIPM President I am grateful to all parts of our global community for buying into this vision. 

"The UIPM Executive Board has again demonstrated its commitment to innovation and we greatly look forward to presenting the IOC with our application for a new modern pentathlon competition format and an additional mixed relay category for the Paris 2024 Olympics."

The UIPM Executive Board made this decision following a vote in January in support of the format.

In September 2020, test events took place in Budapest in Hungary and Cairo in Egypt and received positive feedback.

Joshua Cheptegei and Karsten Warholm headline nominees for Male World Athlete of the Year

World Athletics released its list of 10 nominees for Male World Athlete of the Year on Monday, and six of the finalists are runners. The list consists of 10 incredible athletes, each of whom have had amazing 2020 seasons despite having limited opportunities to compete, and it includes the likes of Joshua Cheptegei and Karsten Warholm.

Here are the six runners who have been nominated, along with their accomplishments in 2020 and why they deserve to win Male World Athlete of the Year. 

Noah Lyles only raced a handful of times this year, all in July and August, but he finished his season undefeated. He had one second-place finish in a 100m race in Florida, but that was in a preliminary heat. Later that day, he ran 9.93 seconds in the finals to take the win. He also has the world-leading 200m time of 19.76, which he ran at the Monaco Diamond League. 

Donavan Brazier, Like Lyles, Brazier went undefeated this year. He kicked the season off by setting an American 800m indoor record with a 1:44.22, and he also ran the outdoor 800m world-leading time in Monaco, where he won the race in 1:43.15. Racing in 600m, 800m and 1,500m events throughout the season, Brazier showed off his speed and endurance, often cruising to wins. On top of all that, after his final race of the year, news came out that he had been dealing with plantar fasciitis during these races, although he certainly didn’t let it slow him down too much.

Karsten Warholm, Once again, we have an undefeated athlete nominated. Warholm not only won all six of his 400mH races this year, but he also ran the six fastest times in the event in 2020. He’s the only athlete who ran sub-48 seconds this year (a feat which he accomplished five times), and he also ran the second-fastest 400mH time in history with a 46.87 in Stockholm in August. This was just 0.09 seconds off the world record of 46.78, which has stood since 1992. Finally, he also set the 300mH world record at a meet in Oslo, where he ran 33.78 seconds.

Timothy Cheruiyot, didn’t have an undefeated season, but he did remain perfect in his preferred event of 1,500m. He won each of his three 1,500m races in 2020, and he also set the world-leading time of 3:28.45, which he ran in Monaco. He also stepped out of his comfort zone with a 5,000m run in March. He recorded a time of 13:47.2, and while this result doesn’t even put him in the top 700 all-time among Kenyan runners, it’s still cool to see him broadening his horizons. We don’t expect to see him making the jump to longer races anytime soon, but if a 5,000m every now and then helps him with his endurance for the 1,500m, then all power to him. 

Joshua Cheptegei, has had the year of his life. He raced four times in 2020 and broke three world records. He opened the year with a 5K road world record in Monaco, where he ran 12:51, but before he could continue his season, COVID-19 hit and put everything on hold. His time away from racing didn’t seem to faze him, though, because in his return to competition, he set the 5,000m world record (once again in Monaco) with a time of 12:35.36. Two months later, he followed that up with a 10,000m record of 26:11.00. He ran his season finale at the World Half-Marathon Championships in Poland, and while he didn’t win (he finished in fourth in 59:21), it was his debut at the distance, and he still has plenty of time to chase that world record in the coming years. 

Jacob Kiplimo, only raced three times in 2020, but he won each event, and he showed impressive range as he performed well across three different distances. He opened his season with a 5,000m, which he ran in 12:48.63 (the second-fastest time in Ugandan history, behind only Cheptegei). A little over a week later, he ran a 3,000m in 7:26.64 to set the Ugandan national record and world-leading time in the event. Finally, he won his first world title when he ran to victory in 58:49 at the World Half-Marathon Championships, setting another Ugandan record along the way. 

Canada’s Marco Arop sets sights on Tokyo

Canada tallied five medals at the World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, so it was not surprising that Marco Arop’s excellent seventh-place finish in the 800m would be somewhat buried in the team’s performance review.

Just 21 years old at the time, the tall Sudan-born runner had earned the Pan American title two months earlier, running a then personal best of 1:44.25. But few expected him to survive the harsh preliminary rounds in Doha which required tactical nuance, stamina and most importantly experience at the highest level. Clearly the young man was up to the challenge and has immense potential.

Despite the uncertainty caused by a world pandemic, Arop has continued to make progress this year, setting a new personal best of 1:44.14 while finishing third at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Monaco last month. That extraordinary result was followed by two second-place finishes in Bydgoszcz and Stockholm. In the latter he led down the home straight but couldn’t hold off world champion Donavan Brazier. Still, he ran a very good 1:44.67.

But it was the Monaco result which stoked his confidence, particularly since it was three seconds faster than his season opener in Atlanta, a four-and-a-half hour drive from his apartment in Starkville, Mississippi.

“I ended up running 1:47 high in Atlanta and I could feel there was so much more left in the tank,” he remembers. “Coming into Monaco I wanted to run fast and I was just lucky enough to be able to travel there and have that calibre of competition there. It was the perfect set up, the perfect race for me.”

Shortly after his brief European excursion, he returned to his training base in Starkville where he voluntarily quarantined for 14 days. Although he has a year and a half of academic studies in business information systems to complete, he chose to forego his eligibility at Mississippi State University to accept a contract from Adidas. Now, with a positive frame of mind, he believes an Olympic podium finish is attainable.

“Definitely! That’s just the way I have to look at it if I want to succeed,” he says. “It’s a long way from (now until) Tokyo 2021 and I am just hoping that I will be ready come the day and I am doing whatever I can to stay healthy, stay fit and become stronger.

“My goal is to win the Olympics. I know there are some really great competitors out there and I respect them all. But, at the end of the day, I want to win just as much as anybody else.”

That might be construed as youthful naïveté especially since he only became serious about athletics in his senior year at Edmonton’s St Oscar Romero Catholic High School – barely three years ago. Nevertheless, under the tutelage of Voleo Athletics Club coach Ron Thompson, Arop has become a quick study in 800-metre running, latching on to heroes from the past whose physical size equals his own 1.93m height.

“I have met (1984 Olympic 800m champion) Joaquim Cruz and I have watched him race in a couple of YouTube videos,” Arop says. “Guys like him and David Rudisha are huge role models and inspiration for me and I try to race like them. Front running is my strength.

“Coach Ron would say I can’t run the same as some of the other guys because I am not the same size. If I am in the front, it helps me stay out of trouble and control the race. That’s one thing I like to do – take the pace and decide when and where I should kick.”

“You can’t really take anything for granted,” Arop now says. “You never know who is going to come out on top.

“That’s one thing I want to take into Tokyo: not leaving anything to chance. Prelims and the semifinals and then, in the final – it’s who is having a good day.”

Paul Chelimo: “Go Hard Or Suffer The Rest Of Your Life”

THE WILD CARD of the U.S. distance scene? That would be Paul Chelimo. He’s unpredictable on the track: witness his blistering 57-second opening at last year’s USATF 5000, his brutal pace for half the race, then a switch to slowish sit-and-kick tactics for the second half of what turned out to be a runner-up performance.

Chelimo can also be unpredictable—as well as funny—off the track. He had plenty of people going this spring with his social media demonstration of how to use a bathtub as a treadmill.

Then there’s his April training account via Twitter: “I drank liquid bleach and went for a tempo run, now I’m seated somewhere on the trail breathing fire… KABOMMMM!!!”

In jest? Of course. Much of the time that’s how the 29-year-old Chelimo operates. But he’s dead serious about where he’s going in this sport. It shows in his oft-repeated mantra: “Go hard or suffer the rest of your life.”

He tells us, “I’m not a perfectionist, but I like being close to perfection in everything I try to do. If I feel like I’m tying up in a workout or in a race, if I don’t go hard, then I’m definitely going to suffer. If I don’t go hard at the Olympics next year, it’s going to be tough for the sponsors to believe in me.”

Still, he has to laugh often, he says, because “I have funny things going on.” He describes one workout that happened the day after he raced at one of Winston-Salem’s Camel City events:

“I went for a long run and it was pouring rain that day, it was crazy. Luckily, I can swim, you know? I ran from the hotel because I missed the shuttle. I was running to where we usually begin our long runs. I got to like, mile 2, and I figured out, ‘Wow, there’s a reason why this year they said they were going with a shuttle.’ It turns out that where we used to cross the water, there was a lot of water, and nothing like a bridge.

“I couldn’t even jump; over the years we used to just jump over the water. And I was like, ‘Man, I’m not going to miss a long run today.’ Because if I decided to go back, that would mean I’m not going to do the long run. And by the side I saw a tree that fell across the water. And I figured I can just jump on this tree and cross. Trust me, it wasn’t a good idea.

“The next thing I saw was just red—it was dirty water. I fell in the water. My whole body. It’s a good thing I can swim. It was like 10-feet deep. I had headphones on and long-run gear and I was drowned, I was drained. I just crossed through and kept going. I met the guys and they were like, ‘How did you get here? Why are you sweating like this?’ I told them what happened and they started laughing at me. They were like, ‘Man, you’re crazy!’ When I am running, there’s a lot of stories happening.”

Chelimo always has been an interesting story himself. He came to the U.S. from Kenya 10 years ago as a recruit for NAIA school Shorter in Arkansas. After winning several national titles, he transferred to UNC Greensboro, where he was twice a runner-up in the NCAA 5000.

In ’14 he entered the Army’s World Class Athletic Program where he found an accelerated path to U.S. citizenship and started to emerge as world class. Two years later his 3rd in the Trials 5000 led to his impressive silver medal performance in Rio, with a then-PR 13:03.90. He landed on the podium again at the London Worlds with his bronze. In ’18, he ran his lifetime best 12:57.55, a mark that makes him the No. 4 American ever.

Last season, however, he didn’t run as well as he had hoped. No longer in the Army, he was competing for Nike but still working with WCAP coach Scott Simmons.

“It was a different thing,” he says, noting that the biggest change came when his wife, Brenda, gave birth to their daughter, Arianna, at the end of ’18. “She has to eat, she has to dress well, she has to get some nice stories, she has to go to school. I had to step up and properly care for my daughter.”

Arianna makes her appearance in the interview, running to her father but tumbling en route and erupting in tears. “She fell down, but she’s OK,” assures Chelimo. “When she sees me, every time she wants all the attention.” He adds, “But definitely, I was able to pick up fitness as the season went by.”

That led him to Doha, where everything went perfectly in the 5000 final, until it didn’t. “I really don’t know what happened to me,” he explains. “When we got to 400 to go, I felt like, ‘Yeah, I think I’ve got the gold this time.’ And just after that, at 300 to go, my legs started tying up; 200 to go I’m in 3rd place and I can’t even move anymore. I mean, [normally] no one can match me in the last 200m.”

Instead, he struggled to 7th in 13:04.60, more than 3 seconds away from a podium spot. “It told me I have an issue with strength,” he says. “If it gets to the point where my legs just give up, it’s time to do it a different way.” So he and Simmons revamped his training to focus on that deficit.

With almost no races this season—2 XC meets in January, 2 indoor affairs in February—Chelimo got frustrated at first, tweeting in May, “Someone find me a race before I lose my mind.” He included a photo of plants growing in his spikes.

“It got to a point.” He acknowledges the frustration, but says he got past it: “I just made up my mind. It doesn’t do any good stressing about racing. The only thing is to stay positive. When you panic, bad things happen. When I stay consistent, that’s the best thing. And trust me, I never, never go to the starting line unless I am really ready to run a race.”

His only “competition” of 2020 after winning the USATF Indoor 3000 was, yes, a triathlon of sorts, where he and his training partners battled in the long jump, shot and discus. For the record, he probably won’t be lured away from the distances after hitting PRs of 13-9½ (4.20) for the long jump, 23-8¾ (7.23) for the shot and 55-9¼ (17.00) for the discus. 

He explains that the impromptu field event competition followed a 20M (32K) long run at 9500ft (2895m) of altitude. “I’m a very competitive guy. It was good for me mentally. At first I thought it was going to be easy. When you’re on the runway, you think you’re going to jump really far, but then once you’re in the air, you start worrying about getting injured and breaking your leg.”

He says that if ’21 goes according to plan, he hopes to hit the Olympic 10K standard of 27:28.00 in the early season and tackle both of the long track races at the OT: “I’ll definitely double. The 5K comes first, which is perfect for me, because the 10K is not my main goal.”

Recall that in May ’19 he ran his first 10,000 in 8 years, scoring a PR 27:43.89 in Stockholm. That came two months after his debut half-marathon (62:19) in New York.

“At this point, I’m trying to move up in distance,” he says. “A few years down the line, I might be dropping into marathons, that is my big goal. I mean, in 2028 in LA, I’m going to be in the marathon hopefully.”

Chelimo sums up his career ambition by saying that for him, medals mean much more than records. “I feel like I was built for championship races. I have a tough mentality. It wouldn’t do me any good to break the American Record and not medal at the Olympics. My big goal is I want to peak really well for the Olympic Games. I don’t want to get distracted.

“I want to be smart and I want to be patient.”

Impressive victories by Jacob Kiplimo, Christian Taylor and Faith Kipyegon at the Golden Spike, a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Ostrava

Kiplimo’s track break-out:

In the men’s 5000m, the 19-year-old Kiplimo fought off Selemon Barega in a fierce homestraight brawl to take the win in 12:48.63, one of seven meeting records to fall on a clear night in this eastern Czech city where 3000 spectators were allowed entry to Mestsky Stadium to help celebrate the meeting’s 59th edition.

Just 3:30 into the race it was Barega, running behind pacer Lamecha Girma, who looked to be in control. With four laps to go he was already all alone and well ahead of the sprawled out pack.

“I wanted the fast time so I kept on pushing,” said Kiplimo, the silver medallist in the senior race at last year’s World Cross Country Championships. “It was a fight in the home straight. And it was wonderulf.”

It was also the first big-meet victory for the teenager. More are likely on their way.

Strong, solo Kipyegon:

Faith Kipyegon produced a powerful performance to take the 1500m in convincing fashion.

Controlling the tempo from the 800m point, the Olympic champion pulled away for good with some 250 metres remaining, with Laura Weightman briefly giving chase. Kipyegon clocked 3:59.05, a season's best and another meeting record.

Weightman, who was briefly passed by Jemma Reekie as they approached the final bend, overtook the Scot in the homestretch to finish second in 4:01.96 with Reekie further back in 4:03.25.

Taylor triples 17.42m world lead:

In typical fashion, Christian Taylor produced the goods in the final round to win the triple jump, reaching a world-leading 17.46 in the final round to steal the win from Hugues Fabrice Zango, who controlled the competition since the second round when he jumped 17.42m. 

Taylor needed time to find his rhythm, shaking off a pair of back-to-back modest efforts with a 17.12m jump in round three. He didn’t produce another measured jump until his last. 

Warholm dominates:

Two-time world 400m hurdles champion Karsten Warholm extended his unbeaten streak to ten with a convincing 47.62 victory, another meeting record.

It wasn’t quite the follow-up he was expecting after his stunning 46.87 European record in Stockholm where a clip of the final hurdle dashed his world record ambitions there. This time, he chopped his stride badly as he approached the ninth barrier, but if he was disappointed, he hid it well.

“It’s always nice to get a win, but I was a little surprised by the time to be honest,” said Warholm, who was flown to Ostrava on Sunday on a private jet.

“I had a little stutter step, I had to switch (lead legs). There was nothing dramatic about it, I just had to do a switch. But that probably affected my time. Everything that breaks your rhythm is going to impact your finish time.”

Ludvy Vaillant of France was second in 49.14, a season’s best.

Hassan out-sprints Chelangat:

Sifan Hassan, Sheila Chelangat and Yasemin Can waged a strong battle in the women’s 5000m, but through it all, Hassan, the world 1500m and 10,000m champion, was just biding her time. That came, she decided, with about 300 metres to go, when she pulled past Chelangat and ran off down the backstretch and eventually to a convincing 14:37.85 victory. 

Chelangat, who took care of much of the pacesetting chores, was second, passing Can in the waning stages to clock in 14:40.51, a career best for the 22-year-old Kenyan. Can, running in her first race on the track this year, was next in 14:40.70.

800m wins for Muir and Wightman:

Laura Muir was again the class of the field in her event, this time the 800m, turning in a solid 1:58.84 victory. Poland’s Sofia Ennaoui, who was second to the Scot in the Silesia 1500m on Sunday, was second again in 2:00.82.

Jake Wightman took down a solid field in the men’s race in 1:44.18, a career best for the 26-year-old who's better known for his 1500m exploits. The performance lopped a hefty sum from his previous best of 1:44.61 set two years ago.

Elaine Thompson-Herah, two-time world 200m champion Dafne Schippers and multiple world medalist Marie-Josée Ta Lou, will go head to head over 100m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Doha

Double Olympic sprint champion Elaine Thompson-Herah, two-time world 200m champion Dafne Schippers and multiple world medalist Marie-Josée Ta Lou, will go head to head over 100m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Doha on Friday September 25 2020.

The three women have met at this meeting on two previous occasions. Thompson-Herah triumphed over 200m in 2017, clocking 22.19 into a -2.3m/s headwind with Schippers finishing second and Ta Lou placing third.

They clashed again one year later, this time over 100m, and Ta Lou came out on top, running 10.85. Thompson-Herah was third on that occasion and Schippers was sixth.

But the last time they were in the Khalifa Stadium was for last year’s World Championships, where Ta Lou took 100m bronze, just 0.03 ahead of Thompson-Herah. Schippers, meanwhile, was forced to withdraw from the final through injury.

Thompson-Herah’s season’s best of 10.88 set in Kingston on 8 August is the second fastest of the year to date.

“I’ve been fortunate to be able to race at home over the summer, but nothing beats the thrill of lining up in an overseas, international meet,” said the Jamaican. “I can’t wait to get back on the circuit, especially as part of a quality field in Doha where I’ve really enjoyed competing in the past.”

Ta Lou will be looking to build on her Wanda Diamond League performances in Monaco and Stockholm where she finished fourth (11.39) and third (11.32) respectively, while Schippers will make her season’s debut over 100m in Doha.

Doha’s Qatar Sports Club will host the revised 12-event programme – the final competitive meeting of the truncated 2020 Wanda Diamond League season – which includes sprint hurdles and 800m for both men and women; 100m, 3000m and long jump for women; and 200m, 400m, 1500m and pole vault for men.

Donavan Brazier pulls plug on 2020 season due to nagging plantar fasciitis

The 800m world champion went undefeated in his fractured 2020 season

According to a report from The Oregonian, 800m world champion Donavan Brazier is bringing his 2020 outdoor season to a premature close following persistent issues caused by plantar fasciitis. As his coach Pete Julian told The Oregonian, Brazier’s right foot has been bugging him for a while now, and they finally agreed it was time to take a break. Despite this issue, Brazier has had a stellar 2020 season. He went undefeated this year, and he has a 10-race winning streak that extends back into 2019.

As has been the case with all athletes, the 2020 season was a strange one for Brazier. He opened the year with a couple of indoor meets (including a win in the 800m at the Millrose Games in New York City). Then the season came to an abrupt halt, and he wasn’t able to race until the summer. He resumed his season in early July and has been on fire since, winning every race that he has entered. The first few events were smaller runs with limited fields, but in recent weeks he has raced in Europe against a number of the world’s best athletes.

In just nine days, he won three big meets, including two Diamond League races. On August 14, he won the 800m at the Monaco Diamond League event. A few days later, he won the 600m at the Continental Tour Gold meet in Hungary. Later that week, he was back on the Diamond League stage in Stockholm, where he wrapped up his season with another big win in the 800m.

Julian told The Oregonian that he was happy to let Brazier continue racing through the summer with the plantar fasciitis, which is “one of those types of injuries that most runners can relate to,” he said. “[It’s] not bad enough to stop but not good enough to bring fuzzy happiness. It’s all always about finding the right combination of what you can and cannot do.” When it came to what he could do, Brazier managed pretty well. With all of his wins and his undefeated record this year, he has shown the world that he’s still the runner to beat heading into the next summer, by which time he should be in peak shape to take on the world’s best in Tokyo.

After dealing with a plantar fasciitis problem in Europe, Donavan Brazier ends his season

Donavan Brazier’s 2020 outdoor season is over.

The reigning outdoor champion and U.S. record-holder in the 800 meters has been dealing with nagging plantar fasciitis problem in his right foot according to Pete Julian, Brazier’s coach.

Not that anybody could tell from his performances. Brazier won his 10th consecutive race -- a streak that dates to 2019 -- Sunday in the Stockholm Diamond League meet, taking the 800 in 1 minute 43.76 seconds with a late charge on the home straight.

And, for Brazier, that was that.

In a text message, Julian said Brazier’s has been dealing with “one of those types of injuries that most runners can relate to. Not bad enough to stop but not good enough to bring fuzzy happiness. It’s all always about finding the right combination of what you can and cannot do.

“As long as he was getting through the training and making a little bit of progress from week to week, and with the support of his doctor, I welcomed the adversity as a teaching tool. He did a great job keeping his head straight and focusing on winning stead of whining. By Stockholm, his foot was feeling better and you could tell in the way he raced.”

Just the same, Brazier and Julian decided enough was enough.

“He was fishing on the banks of Stockholm the next day,” Julian said.

Julian said the runners in his training group will go different directions soon. Craig Engels, Jessica Hull, Raevyn Rogers and Shannon Rowbury are entered in a meet in Goteborg, Sweden on Saturday. After that, Julian and some of his athletes will head home.

Engels is penciled into the 1,500 at the Diamond League in Brussels on Sept. 4. Hull and Rowbury are scheduled for the 1,500 in Berlin on Sept. 13.

“Shann and Jessica want to stay in Europe and keep racing any willing participants,” Julian said.

World 1,500m champion Timothy Cheruiyot unstoppable in the Stockholm Diamond League on Sunday

World 1,500m champion Timothy Cheruiyot stamped his authority to seal his season’s double with an emphatic front-running victory in the Stockholm Diamond League on Sunday.

World 800m bronze medallist Ferguson Rotich might not have been lucky yet, but staged an improved performance to finish fourth as compatriots, Continental Cup 1,500m champion Winny Chebet and World 5,000m title holder Hellen Obiri failed to click in their respective races.

Nine days after clocking a world lead of three minutes and 28.45 seconds in Monaco, missing a personal best by four seconds, Cheruiyot timed 3:30.25 this time around in the Swedish capital.

Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen once again played second fiddle, finishing second in 3:30.74 as Australian Stewart Mcsweyn dug in for third in personal best 3:31.48.

“It was a bit windy, but the pace was good and I am pleased with my win today. We are travelling around many countries but we are following all precautions and wearing masks so I am happy to be racing,” said Cheruiyot.

Ingebrigtsen noted that his target was to get close to Cheruiyot and see if he could beat him, but the Kenyan still looked stronger.

“I didn't have the great legs that I had in Monaco, it was a tough race, it wasn't too easy today, “said Ingebrigtsen

“I am closing in on him though, and it’s just a matter of time before I beat him.”

The Norwegian, who set a new European record and personal best 3:28.68 in Monaco, explained that his goal to get a fast race this season and he did that in Monaco.

In the men's 800m, Rotich clocked 1:45.11 to lose the battle to World champion American Donovan Brazier, who sealed his second win in 1:43.76.

Marco Arop from Canada and Swede Andreas Kramer settled second and third in 1:44.67 and 1:45.04 respectively.

Laura Muir from Britain, who finished second behind Kenya’s World 1,500m champion Faith Chepng’etich in 1,000m race in Monaco, cashed in on Chepng’etich's absence to win the metric mile race in Stockholm.

Muir returned a world lead of 3:57.86 in a race where Chebet settled fourth in 4:02.58 as Obiri, the Olympic 5,000m silver medallist, who won the 5,000m in Monaco, came in 12th in 4:10.53.

Norway`s Karsten Warholm powered to the second fastest 400m hurdles performance of all time to highlight the Bauhaus Galan Wanda Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on Sunday

Running in lane eight, Warholm went out in his typically rampaging style, building a visible lead by the third hurdle. He then added to it with each stride, powering off the final bend and into the home straight very much alone, showing no signs of slowing down. For some moments, Kevin Young’s 46.78 world record, set at the Barcelona Olympic Games 28 years ago, looked to be under serious threat. 

But it didn’t come to pass after the 24-year-old Norwegian clipped the final barrier, costing him valuable ticks of the clock. He nonetheless did claw his way closer to Young’s venerable performance, clocking 46.87 to break his own European record by 0.05 seconds and solidify his No.2 position on the world all-time list. 

“I hit that last hurdle because I went really hard for the first nine, and stuff like this happens,” said Warholm, who sped to a 47.10 performance in his season’s opener in Monaco just over one week ago.

“But I think I was rewarded by just going all in at the end and I got a great time. It's a great lesson for me to always run until the finish line.” 

Frenchman Wilfried Happio was second in 49.14, just ahead of compatriot Ludvy Vaillant who clocked 49.18. 

But he wasn’t finished. Warholm chose to double back 94 minutes later in the 400m and won big there as well, clocking 45.05, well clear of Slovenia’s Luka Janezic who clocked 45.85. 

Moroccan steeplechaser Soufiane El Bakkali has huge admiration for Kenyan athletes.

In fact, as the delayed elite season opened with the Monaco Diamond League meeting last week, El Bakkali was excited upon seeing the Kenyan contingent at the Stade Loius II in the heart of the principality.

“The men from Africa!” he screamed and then posed for selfies with the Kenyan delegation headed by coach Bernard Ouma.

“He actually asked for the group photo on our way out of the track,” Ouma added, describing the Moroccan as an “amiable character.”

“We had our last breakfast together in Monaco on Sunday on his way to Paris,” Ouma added on Thursday.

First-placed Morocco's Soufiane El Bakkali competed in the men's 3,000 metres steeplechase event during the Diamond League Athletics Meeting at The Louis II Stadium in Monaco on August 14, 2020.

The 24-year-old Moroccan has now expressed his interest in running with the Kenyans at the October 3 Kip Keino Classic leg of the World Athletics Continental Tour at the Nyayo National Stadium.

This sets up a potentially mouthwatering race given that El Bakkali ran the season’s best (world lead) time of eight minutes, 8.04 seconds to win in Monaco ahead of Kenya’s Leonard Bett (8:08.78).

Morocco's Soufiane El Bakkali (top photo) celebrates after winning the men's 3,000 metres steeplechase event as second-placed Leonard Bett of Kenya looks on during the Diamond League Athletics Meeting at The Louis II Stadium in Monaco on August 14, 2020.

Down with Covid-19, Kenya’s world and Olympic champion Conseslus Kipruto should be fit by then to set up a classic from 4.23pm at Nyayo National Stadium on October 3, according to the draft programme of events. “El Bakkali’s management say he wants to fly from the Doha Diamond League meeting (September 25) direct to Nairobi,” Kip Keino Classic meet director Barnaba Korir confirmed on Thursday. “We are finalising the arrangements for him and this (steeplechase) definitely should be one of the highlights of the Kip Keino Classic.”

With, bizzarrely, Morocco having failed to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games since the legend Hicham El Guerrouj struck a 1,500, and 5,000m double in Athents 16 years ago, the north African nation is banking on El Bakkali to pan the elusive medal at the Tokyo Games, now shifted to next summer.

Olympics 3,000m steeplechase champion Conseslus Kipruto (right), and another athlete during training at St Francis Cheptarit High School in Mosoriot, Nandi County on August 06. 

El Bakkali (PB 7:58.15) won silver at the 2017 World Championships in London and followed up with bronze in Doha last year, finishing behind Kipruto and Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma whom he could face at the Kip Keino Classic on October 3.

He was fourth at the 2016 Rio Games and was the only Moroccan athlete signed up by Visa (credit card) in its promotions for Tokyo 2020.

On Thursday, Ouma, who is preparing his athletes for this weekend’s second Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, said there could also be a possibility of bigger names coming to Nairobi in October.

“It (Kip Keino Classic) will be a very entertaining meet,” he summed it up.