Is it just me, or is the pace of indoor record breaking picking up.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen took almost half-a-second off the men’s world indoor record in Lievin, France on Thursday night, reducing it to 3:30.60, a time which is still extremely handy outdoors. But we’re not talking world records here,...
At the World Indoor Tour meeting in Birmingham, Catriona Bisset chased home Keely Hodgkinson in the 800 metres, running 1:59.46. That sliced a massive 2.39 seconds off the previous Australian record which was set by Tamsyn Manou in the heats at the world indoor championships in Valencia. Manou went on to win the gold medal in the final.
During 2021 post-Tokyo, the phone rang when we were in Darwin, at dinner with friends with whom we had just completed a five-day hike on the West Arnhem Land escarpment. John Landy was eager to talk about Peter Bol and the Olympic 800 metres final. Victorious runs are possible...
It’s not often that runners turn their attention to the shot put, but the career of Valerie Adams demands our attention.
In October, 2018, Jack Rayner hit a sweet spot.
Running in the inaugural Commonwealth half-marathon championships (has there been another ne: I’m not sure), Rayner went boldly with the pace set by a pack of Ugandan and Kenyan runners all bringing much more impressive personal bests to the starting line than his modest 63:19.
Sir Isaac Newton is reputed to have developed his theory of gravity after an apple fell from a tree under which he was sitting and landed on his head. Stunning insight, you might say.
But it is Newton’s three laws of motion which are of interest here, specifically the last.
For...
Eleanor Patterson took the silver medal in the high jump and Ash Moloney the bronze in the heptathlon. Must have been mixed feelings for Patterson – her first time over two metres, a medal, but pipped at the last by Yaroslava Mahuchik’s first-time clearance at 2.02.
Australian decathlete Cedric Dubler’s encouragement of his teammate Ashley Moloney during the closing stages of the Tokyo Olympic decathlon has been acknowledged as an iconic moment in Olympic sport.
Amy Cashin won the women’s race and then, 15 minutes later, her brother Liam made a significant break-through in finishing third in the men’s event.
Viewers of the recent world indoor championships may have noticed the take-off board in the horizontal jumps was an official-free zone. No-one standing there as the athlete sprinted down the runway and launched into the jump, then peering closely (and theatrically) at the board for an incriminating toe-mark in the plasticine and raising a white (for a valid jump) or a red flag (foul, there was nothing).
