Thoughts & analysis
Fastest women’s combined sprinters
I have set about trying to compile a definitive list of both the men’s and women’s all-round sprinters. This is based solely on PBs and doesn’t take medals into consideration, so the fairest and most widely-accepted method of creating such a list is by using the World Athletics scoring tables, which assign a points value […]
The mile, the myth and the men who made it
Back in May 2010, on the eve of the anniversary of Roger Bannister’s first sub-four-minute mile, I wrote what I thought was a mildly irreverent blog post. I didn’t understand the fuss. Why, I wondered, did athletics treat a 3:59 mile as though it bestowed some kind of sporting immortality, while equivalent – and sometimes […]
The greatest decathlon battle of all time – take two
A month after Ashton Eaton broke the decathlon world record at the 2015 World Championships, I put together a blog post on the greatest (and completely imaginary) decathlon battle of all time. I didn’t anticipate having to update that post quite so soon, but Kevin Mayer only went and did the unthinkable, didn’t he?! His […]
When race becomes the achievement
When Christophe Lemaître became the first white man to legally break 10 seconds for 100m in 2010, I was fascinated by it. It was unusual. It was historically noteworthy. Inevitably, it became the story. But even at the time, I remember thinking: hopefully this is where that story ends.
Best combined jumpers
Originally published 17 Jan 2014 Embed from Getty Images After compiling the list of the fastest men’s and women’s all-round sprinters, I set about doing the same for jumpers. Well, ‘pole-less’ jumpers, as I’m not including the pole vault. Otherwise it would be a short list indeed. As was the case with the other lists, […]
My spectator PBs
Following on from my recent athletics bucket list, I’m continuing with the theme of “lists that all athletics fanatics should keep” with my set of spectator PBs. In other words, the best athletics performances that I have witnessed in person. The thought of making note of my spectator PBs hadn’t even crossed my mind until […]
The best combined eventers, combined
Twitter is dangerous. Occasionally I see a tweet which triggers my inner geek to create a random athletics-related list. A few months back, fellow stats dude Hilary Evans tweeted about Russian heptathlete Tatyana Chernova’s recent wedding to decathlete Vitaliy Smirnov. So of course, I had to create a list of the best husband-wife combined […]
100 fastest men’s 4x400m relay splits in history
Here are the top 100 men’s 4x400m relay splits, using information from Peter Larsson’s superb website, alltime-athletics.com. The columns are sortable, so you can rank them by time, name, country or relay leg. The top 100 women’s 4x400m relay splits are here.
100 fastest women’s 4x400m relay splits in history
Here are the top 100 women’s 4x400m relay splits, using information from Peter Larsson’s superb website, alltime-athletics.com. The columns are sortable, so you can rank them by time, name, country or relay leg. The top 100 men’s 4x400m relay splits are here.
Fastest marathon debuts in history
These are the top 20 debut marathons in history. Strictly speaking, some athletes listed below may have started previous marathons and failed to finish. But “fastest time achieved in the first marathon they completed” wasn’t really a catchy title, so I’m sticking with the word debut. Either way, I’ve marked such athletes with an asterisk. […]