Last week this column took a look at the Track & Field News event rankings for the Paris 2024 Olympic year. There’s always more to the (self-proclaimed) Bible of the Sport’s annual rankings issue than can be covered in a single take, so let’s go back to it again this time around.
Just as you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows; Nina Kennedy didn’t need a magazine to tell her she was the number one female pole vaulter in the world last year.
As we travelled to Falls Creek for the forty-somethingth year in a row I had one of those existential-type moments. Had the journey up to Victoria’s Bogong High Plains become better than the destination.
None could withstand Rayner’s finish, however. Clear at the bell, he held on to win by some 20 metres from Clifford, with Chignell, Robinson and O’Donnell following.
Australians know ‘schoolies’ as the week-long celebration for high school graduates that takes place after final exams in late November and early December.
The same calendar period brings the Australian All Schools championships. ‘Schoolies’ for high school athletes, if you like. Except for one thing: you only get one chance...
Another eye-popping day in Valencia on Sunday, 1 December 2024, produced an Australian record when Andrew Buchanan crossed the line in 2:06:22. It was the first time an Australian had broken 2:07. An Australian male, we should say, now that Ruth Chepngetich with her 2:09:56 has brought such a time into the realm of the possible for women as well.
A legacy event that didn’t deliver a legacy. On life support after five years. A course you couldn’t run fast on.
Sydney staged Australia’s first marathon back in 1909. The city hosted an Olympic marathon in the year 2000. The course was reckoned to be “a beauty,” crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge – for which the descriptor ‘iconic’ is, for a rare occasion, appropriate - from the start in North Sydney, circling the lush Centennial Parklands before making its way westwards to Homebush and the finish inside Stadium Australia.
The recent announcement that there would be no road events at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games was poignant enough for Australian athletics followers. As Commonwealth marathon champions ‘Deek’, ‘Monner’, Kerryn, Lisa, Michael and Jess are on first-name terms as far as most of us are concerned.
Times are of some significance in popular culture. After midnight is when “we let it all hang out” – according to J.J. Cale, at least. In myriad ditties the dawn heralds the beginning of a new day.
A disturbing image it is, though I have no personal knowledge I hasten to add. But let me take you back to those early 20th century days. The Hobart Harriers and New Town Harriers had just been formed in the capital. Launceston Harriers quickly followed an early example of anything that happens in the south of Tasmania is quickly replicated in the north. And vice versa.
