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.
Timing a return to post-Olympic competition is somewhat analogous to Goldilocks’ porridge: too early for some, too late for others, just right for some other ‘others’
For a few, it was just too much to contemplate.
In a famous case before the Australian High Court Justice Lionel Murphy, in arguing that the conviction of an indigenous activist should be overturned, wrote: “Mr Neal is entitled to be an agitator.”
It took until the very last event on the program for the athlete of Paris 2024 to emerge. And it took until the very last metres of the 42 thousand, 195 metres (plus a metre per kilometre to ensure there is no under-distance measurement) before it became clear Sifan Hassan was going to win the women’s marathon.
On the last night in the Olympic stadium, everything’s a highlight. Every event is a final, that’s more than half of it. But each event is further tinged in the sentimental hue that this is closing night.
The 10,000 meters might be attenuated drama by its very nature, but 25 laps leading to a margin of victory of just one-tenth of a second? If that doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your neck, check your vital signs.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has done it again. For a third time she completed a US Trials-global championships world record double in the 400 metres hurdles in the Stade de France on Thursday night (8 August).
Indeed, the medals came from start to finish on Wednesday, 8 August in Paris. Bronze for Rhydian Cowley and Jemima Montag in the mixed relay marathon road walk in the morning, bronze for Matt Denny in the discus and then Kennedy’s gold in the dying moments of the day’s program at the Stade de France.
The Paris 2024 men’s Olympic 1500 metres was preceded by a bucketful of talk, some of it maybe contrived, but all of it setting the scene for an epic showdown between defending champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen and the man who beat him for last year’s world championship, Josh Kerr.
Mondo Duplantis had the first word on day five of the Olympic athletics program. The pole vault final kicked off the evening program at 7 pm local time.
