After more than 20 years of writing and editing athletics copy, I’ve developed opinions about things that no well-adjusted person should have opinions about.
Some are matters of accuracy. Some are about clarity. Some are simply unnecessary words that have attached themselves to athletics writing over the years and apparently cannot now be removed without specialist equipment.
None of them will change the world. Most readers probably glide past them without noticing. I, however, do not. I notice every single one.
So, in descending order of irritation, here are 10 pieces of athletics terminology and writing that make some small part of me die whenever I encounter them.
This ranking is, obviously, entirely subjective. There is no World Athletics scoring table for editorial annoyance. Yet.
10. Speculative rhetorical questions
These are particularly common in previews, usually when the writer wants to manufacture intrigue without actually saying anything.
Can Noah Lyles win the 100m?
Yes. Next question.
Can Duplantis break the world record again?
Yes. He demonstrably can. Whether he will is the reason we’re watching.
Could Masai Russell win gold?
Again, yes. If she had literally no chance of doing so, there probably wouldn’t be much point previewing her prospects.
If there is an interesting uncertainty, tell me what it is. Explain the rivalry, the form, the tactics, the injury doubt, the statistics. Don’t pose a question whose only logically correct answer is “possibly”.
9. “London champion”
Or Tokyo champion. Paris medallist. Budapest champion.
Champion of what?
This gets particularly messy when the same city hosts multiple major competitions within a relatively short period.
“London champion” could mean the winner of the London Marathon. It could mean the 2017 world champion. Depending on the athlete and context, it could even mean the 2012 Olympic champion.
Dates and competitions exist precisely to solve this problem. Just say “2017 world champion” or “2024 Olympic medallist”.
Beautiful. Unambiguous. Future-proof.
Nobody needs to remember which championship happened in which city before they can understand the sentence.
8. “Fast” times
This one is relatively harmless, admittedly. But the word “fast” contributes precisely nothing.
9.78 for 100m is fast. That information has already been supplied by the numbers 9, 7 and 8. Same goes for a 9.85 or a 9.92. Or anything below 10 seconds.
You cannot run a “slow” 9.78, so you don’t need to describe it as “fast”.
There isn’t some alternative 9.78 in which the athlete ambles out of the blocks, stops for a Cornetto at 60 metres and still somehow gets there in under ten seconds.
“He won in 9.78” – there you go. Four letters saved. Spend them wisely.
7. A “new” record
“She set a new world record.”
What kind of world record were you expecting her to set? An old one?
If an athlete sets a record, the newness is inherent.
“She set a world record of 50.37.” That’s the whole sentence. Nothing is missing.
There are circumstances in which “new” is perfectly legitimate – the new world record-holder, for example – but attached directly to a record that has just been set, it is usually excess luggage.
And athletics writing already travels with enough baggage.
6. World record / world best
Anyone who knows me has probably reached this point and thought: “Sixth?! SIXTH for your world record/best bugbear?!”
Yes. Sixth. We’ve got worse to come.
But this remains one of the great athletics terminology hills on which I am prepared to become extremely tedious.
A world record is an officially recognised record in an event eligible for world-record purposes.
If the event or conditions aren’t eligible for an official world record, the best performance achieved is a world best.
They are not interchangeable terms. If in doubt as to whether a particular discipline has a world record or world best assigned to it, simply head to the stats section of the World Athletics website and check if it exists in the ‘records’ or ‘bests’ list.
Calling every globally superior performance a world record might sound harmless, but athletics is a sport unusually dependent on technical definitions. Wind readings matter. Course eligibility matters. Ratification matters. Event recognition matters.
If we have two different terms, with two different meanings, there is really no excuse for repeatedly using the wrong one.
And yes, I appreciate the irony that this only makes No.6.
5. “Reigning” and “former” champions
These are two sides of the same unnecessarily vague coin.
Most of the time, a reigning world champion is simply the world champion. If someone won the title in 2025 and nobody has subsequently won it from them, adding the word “reigning” doesn’t add anything. We know how championships work.
At the other end, “former world champion” tells me almost nothing.
Now, calling someone a ‘former world champion’ isn’t technically wrong if their reign as champion has ended. Same with ‘former Olympic champion’. There is a defined period in which that athlete is the current champion, and eventually somebody else wins the title.
I still wouldn’t usually write it that way, though. “Former world champion” is too vague. Former when? “2015 world champion” tells me exactly what I need to know and usually reads better too.
Where “former” becomes much more irritating is when it is attached to something that doesn’t expire.
A ‘former world gold medallist’? No. They still won the medal. Nobody came round four years later and asked for it back.
A ‘former Olympic medallist’? Same problem. The medal is part of their record forever.
And ‘former Olympian’ is worse still. Once you have competed at an Olympic Games, you are an Olympian. Retirement does not revoke the status. You do not cease to have been there because your spikes are now in the loft.
So my rule is basically:
- Former champion: technically defensible, but I’d usually replace it with the year.
- Former medallist: no.
- Former Olympian: absolutely not.
Some achievements have a reign. Others are permanent. It helps if the language notices the difference.
4. “Defends” when you mean “successfully defends”
This one isn’t merely fussy. The two phrases mean different things.
If you won the world title in 2025 and line up at the 2027 World Championships, you are defending your title. You have started the defence merely by turning up.
If you then win again, you have successfully defended the title. Or retained it.
So:
Duplantis will defend his title in Beijing.
Correct. (Assuming he plans on competing there!)
Duplantis defended his title with victory in Beijing.
No. He successfully defended it.
And while we’re here, “defending champion will not compete” is technically nonsense too. If they’re not competing, they’re not defending anything.
This distinction occupies vastly more space in my brain than is healthy.
3. “Six one-hundredths of a second”
No.
It’s six hundredths.
We don’t describe nine metres as “nine one-metres”. We don’t describe five kilometres as “five one-kilometres”. So why, when a sprinter wins by 0.04, do otherwise sensible people suddenly start saying “four one-hundredths”?
One hundredth is one. Four of them are four hundredths.
“He won by four hundredths of a second.” Perfectly understandable. Economical. Mathematically sound.
And, crucially, doesn’t make my teeth itch.
2. “British national record”
This may actually be my longest-standing irritation.
A British record is a national record. You do not need to tell me twice.
“British record.” Fine.
Or, if you’ve already established that the athlete is British: “national record.” Also fine.
But “British national record” is the editorial equivalent of wearing both a belt and braces and then having somebody stand behind you holding your trousers up.
Same goes for French national record, Kenyan national record, Jamaican national record and all the others.
Pick one. I promise the reader will cope.
1. “Medalled”. “Podiumed”. “Finaled”.
Absolutely not.
These aren’t merely my least favourite pieces of athletics terminology. I object to them on an almost cellular level.
“She medalled at the World Championships.” She won a medal.
“He podiumed in Paris.” He finished on the podium.
“She finaled in Tokyo.” She reached the final.
English already has perfectly good words for all of these things. They are clear, elegant and require approximately no additional effort.
Yet at some point sport decided that nouns weren’t working hard enough and began forcing them into employment as verbs.
I accept that language evolves. I accept that dictionaries eventually absorb usage that would once have horrified people.
I accept that one day “podiumed” may become so completely normal that nobody gives it a second thought.
But that day is not today. And while I have access to a delete key, it never will be.
Views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any employer.