Norwegian star Jakob Ingebrigtsen has stunned the running world clocking 12:48.45 to break the European record and win a stacked 5000m at the Golden Gala Pietro Mennea Diamond League in Florence, Italy.
Written by Brett Davies for Runner's Tribe
June 10th this year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest middle-distance performances of all time. Britain's Sebastian Coe's world 800m record of 1.41.73. At Florence (Firenze) Italy on a calm summer evening, the legendary distance running icon produced what was...
Australian 3000m steeplechase runner Ben Buckingham has posted an 8:24.39, to finish 5th at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Finland. The Australian steeplechase champion, James Nipperess, in the same race clocked 8:30.48 for 7th. The race was won by Finnish athlete Topi Raitanen, who clocked an impressive 8:19.57.
“Job done,” said Brit Mark Scott just minutes after he outkicked Mo Farah to win the UK title and earn his ticket to the Tokyo Olympics. Mo Farah, the 2012 and 2016 Olympic gold medalist in both the 5000m and 10,000m events, was handed his first defeat over 10,000m for just under 10 years. Farah's finishing time, 27:50:54, was also his slowest since 2014.
Sifan Hassan added another landmark moment to her already glittering career by lowering the 5-year-old world 10,000m record at the FBK Games in Hengelo today.
It was a West Australian affair at the 18th Leonora Golden Gift. Sinead Noonan and Ben Chamberlain, took honours in the blue ribbon elite mile events, in West Australia's Goldfields. Covid-19 restrcitions, saw local WA showdowns on the Main Street of Leonora, a small outback town nestled amongst some of the biggest mines in the world.
West Australian 800m runner, Peter Bol, is Tokyo bound. The Australian champ, posted 1:44.88 on the Gold Coast today, at the Oceania Invitational Meet.
Australia lost one of its athletics’ greats with the death of Rick Mitchell on 30 May. A nation our size doesn’t produce many Olympic gold medallists, even fewer on the male side of the gender balance. And still fewer in individual track events. With a silver medal in the 400 metres in Moscow in 1980, Mitchell is our most recent male Olympic medallist in an individual track event. Before ‘Mitch’, it’s right back to 1968 and Ralph Doubell with his gold medal in the 800 metres in Mexico City.
No such difficulty in nominating a favourite performance of the week. That would have to be Jeff Riseley’s 1:45.34 800 victory in the Citta di Conegliano meeting in Italy. Many things you could say here – just off the plane, ran down Algeria’s Mohamed Belbachir up the final straight, missed the Olympic auto standard by a mere 0.14 seconds. Mostly, however, it was a performance to make you smile.
In 2020, I had the pleasure of racing the takayna Ultra, well I only did the 21km event- but I'll claim it. takayna (Tarkine) is situated in Tasmania's north-west corner, and it is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. It's up there with America's Yosemite, the Great Barrier Reef, or Brazil's Amazon. But few Australians have heard of it, and our politicians are quickly trying to destroy it.
