The blog is nine years old

The situation did improve in 2022. As the epidemic abated, the sports activities went back to an almost normal schedule. In fact, due to the postponements of competitions, 2022 was really exceptional with a World Championship and a European one held within the same season with just one months separating them. With the Commonwealth Games sandwiched between the two, this called for some hard choices for the athletes. 

The Diamond League competitions were held as planned (except for the ones programmed for China) and the athletes participation was massive. Moreover the Continental Tour meetings were efficiently promoted by World Athletics and they are now, if not quite on par with the Diamond League, at least an important rendez-vous for the world elite. Unfortunately World Athletics has extended the monetisation of the Diamond League to the Continental Tour meetings which means that you can watch the event only through the provider who has obtained the rights in your country. Quite often this means a paying subscription, something that I reject as a principle. If there is no official provider in the country then it is possible to follow the competitions on the World Athletics youtube channel. (And the existence of the latter offers the possibility to bypass the official provider through the use of a vpn, but one has to be knowledgeable about these things). 

The traffic of the blog was constantly over 1000 visits per month but my feeling is that there is an overall drop in the views. Could that be attributed to the fact that during the epidemic years people were spending more time on the internet? I don't know. In any case, contrary to last year's visit boost due to the Olympics, this year's championships did not have any sizeable effect. 

The series on Women and the Olympics, launched last year, was completed in March with an article on the great champion Kinue Hitomi. Following this I launched the second season on theories of scoring, and as was appropriate the first article was an interview of the great scoring specialist G. Purdy (who has since become a collaborator of mine). I expect (this season of) the series to be completed before the end of the year. And, in case you were wondering, I intend to pursue writing for the blog, hoping that at the same time next year we will be able to celebrate its tenth year of existence. I must confess that when I started the blog I did not plan for such a longevity of this enterprise of mine.