Every now and again an athlete’s name will pop in my head that will leave me wondering: “where the hell did they go?” The very nature of track and field – ‘a sport of many sports’ – means that, across all the events, there are hundreds of athletes within the ranks of world class in any given season. Of course not every athlete is expected to become another Merlene Ottey with an international career spanning ...
Question – when does a winner of a race receive less attention than the athletes they beat? Answer – when the winner is African and there are Western athletes in the field who set a PB or finish in the top three. (more…)
That the launch of the 2012 Olympic mascots would cause controversy was about as much of a given as a traffic jam in inner city London during rush hour. The 2012 logo went down like Peter Kay jumping off a diving board – it looked ridiculous, hit the bottom hard, but produced a lot of laughs. So it’s no surprise that, when faced with the tough audience that is the British media, the mascots were ...
I know I’m in the minority on this subject. Some people will read this blog post, shrug their shoulders and say: “he just doesn’t get it.” And in a way, they would be correct – I don’t get it. I don’t understand why so much praise is disproportionately heaped on a sub-four-minute run in the mile while performances of an equal (or even greater) standard often fly under the radar. (more…)
I am always pleased when cheats get caught, but that’s not to say that I’m never disappointed by drug busts. The latest news about LaShawn Merritt is particularly gutting, because of all the current leading sprinters, his profile didn’t seem to fit that of a doper. Merritt was a talented junior (winning the ’04 World Juniors, setting a world junior indoor best of 44.93 and clocking 44.66 outdoors at the age of 18), had progressed steadily ...
