The blog is 10 years old

Ten years ago I decided to publish a blog on athletics. That idea came while reading A. Juilland's book "Rethinking Track and Field". Juilland main argument is that we must change the way we are doing athletics if we wish to make the discipline again attractive to spectators. I also felt that athletics needed changes (and that World Athletics was too timorous to implement revolutionary ones) and decided to present my ideas in a series of blog articles. As a tribute to the genius of Juilland, I decided to plagiarise the title of his book. 

The blog evolved, as every living entity does, and, over the years, became something I could not have predicted from the outset. As I could never have predicted that after ten years it would be alive and thriving. I have published more than 400 different articles and the blog has been visited 227 thousand times. Now, the statistics of this are somewhat curious. From time to time there is a spurt of visits that I have trouble explaining. At the end of August there was one day with almost 6 thousand visits. Was that an effect of the World Championships? Anyhow, I consider that a thousand visits per month is the normal traffic for the blog and I am happy when the number of visitors reaches four figures.

Some posts have been consistently popular. The champion of visibility is my post entitled "The javelin controversy" with 7.2 thousand visits. Then comes "Pole vault: before and after" with 5.7 k and "Before the olympic medals: the olive wreath" with 3.6 k. In between there is the post "Before the curtain falls: a jaunt into gerontology" which has garnered 6.9 k visitors, but I don't think those were athletics fans. More probably it was the word "gerontology" that triggered the search engines and oriented people towards my article. (I just hope they read it: it's a good one). Speaking about good articles, I am frustrated that one of the best pieces I have ever written "Eleven wretched women, or how fake news almost killed women athletics" has had only 182 visits. The article tells the story of the women's 800 m at the Amsterdam, 1928, Olympics and how a bunch of stupid, dishonest, sexist journalists almost killed women athletics. (If you haven't read it, do it now). This article spurred a whole series I published on the "The long and arduous road of women to the Olympics", complemented by the "Gallery of Shame" where I present the portraits of those who did whatever was possible to thwart the women's efforts to join competitive sports.

Every year, at the anniversary of the blog's creation, I write a short article and end it by asking the question of where I am going to go from here. Ten years look like a good cycle (and way longer that what I could have imagined ten years ago). So I could stop publishing the blog here, settle back and admire the work done. But the fact is that I like writing this blog and I would be really frustrated if it were to end at this point. So, as long as my health allows it, I will continue writing the blog, be it only for my personal pleasure and that of the bunch of my faithful readers.