The World Athletics list of year's best athletes is here

World Athletics has published the list of the top-10 athletes of the year. 

Here is the list of the selected male athletes:

Joshua Cheptegei
Ryan Crouser
Mondo Duplantis
Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Eliud Kipchoge
Pedro Pichardo
Daniel Stahl
Miltiadis Tentoglou
Damian Warner
Karsten Warholm

If you compare the list to mine you'll observe that they coincide at 80 %. The two differences are Pichardo and Stahl. I had included DeGrasse and Vetter, but the choice of Pichardo and Stahl is equally excellent. Pichardo had a great season, missing barely the 18 m barrier. Stahl also dominated his discipline and had a 71+ year's best (plus one other throw over 70 m). They could have made my list.

The list of the top female athletes of the year is:

Valarie Allman
Jasmine Camacho-Quinn
Sifan Hassan
Faith Kipyegon
Mariya Lasitskene
Sydney McLaughlin
Shaunae Miller-Uibo
Athing Mu
Yulimar Rojas
Elaine Thompson-Herah

Again there is a 80 % overlap between my list and that of WA. And in fact the two athletes missing from my list are somehow there: Miller-Uibo appears in the honourable mentions, while I have reserved Mu for the rising star list. (It would be a pity if Mu missed the rising star distinction having made the "senior" list).

The first name from my list missing in the WA one is Jepchrichir. Her victory in the olympic marathon should have sufficed for a place in the list. 

The shocking omission is that of Wlodarczyk. Once more World athletics is ignoring her. This is  something I cannot understand. Wlodarczyk has accomplished this year a unique feat with a third olympic gold in a row. She was nominated athlete of the year by Track and Field News both in 2014 and 2016. She made the top of my year's best list in 2017. I have trouble understanding why World Athletics is systematically ignoring her. It's a blatant injustice.

The new blog of Carles Baronet

Those who follow my blog have noticed several references to Carles Baronet, an expert Catalan athletics statistician. I have first found his blog Trackinsun when following P. Larsson's site of all-time Track and Field performances. Trackinsun was giving athletics results, in almost real time from all over the world. I referred again to Trackinsun when I announced that Carles Baronet had decided to change the format of his publication opting for a weekly newsletter. And again when he was associated to the site Somos Atletismo where he was responsible for the performance statistics part.

Well things have evolved since those posts. During this winter Trackinsun was put on hold, replaced by the weekly newsletters (very detailed, a fortune for the fans of athletics). Unfortunately Somos Atletismo folded and while the blog still exists it is not updated anymore. Trackinsun in now just a place-holder without content. (Which is a pity since the blog contained 10 years' results, a real treasure trove). 

And recently Carles announced to the subscribers of the newsletter that the formula will be changing again next year. The newsletter will disappear and a new blog will make (in fact it has already made) its appearance. It has the unimaginative name of Track and Field results but this time the name of the author appears in the title. As always with Carles the site has an incredible breadth of results, literally from all over the world. So, if you are interested, even a little, in the statistics of athletics I suggest that you start following Carles Baronet's new blog. 

My choice for the year's best athletes

European athletics has already published their shortlist of the athletes of the year and World athletics will not be far behind. So it is time for me to present mine, since, if I publish it before WA I will get to make comparisons of our respective choices.

The year has been a very good one. Coming back from the disaster of 2020 the athletes have offered us a season full of great spectacle and records. The Tokyo Olympics were a success despite the extreme restrictions under which they had to take place. There was a slew of new olympic champions and a few who managed to keep their crown. 

McLaughlin at the finish of the semifinal under a torrential rain

The best female athlete of the year, for me, is S. McLaughlin. She broke the 400 m hurdles world record, twice, and won the olympics in a race of at least equal quality to the one of 2019 in Doha, which saw D. Muhammad win in a world record. 

(Muhammad gets an honourable mention in the best athlete of the year's list. And let's not forget that both she and McLaughlin obtained a gold medal in the 4x400 m relay).

S. Hassan is second. Had she won her bet of three olympic gold medals she would have been at the top of my list. However in Tokyo she could win only the 5000 and 10000 m, getting bronze in the 1500 m. It's an incredible performance and if anybody has the potential to duplicate Zatopek's feat (he won the 5000, 10000 m and marathon at 1952 Olympics) that's Hassan.

A. Wlodarczyk is on the podium of the year's best. Her third consecutive olympic gold is a first for women. Wlodarczyk has been my 2017 athlete of the year. And she has been pointedly ignored by World Athletics despite the fact that she has dominated her discipline like none other. Let's hope that WA will not wait for a fourth olympic medal before honouring this great champion. 

Past the first three there is no order among the athletes of the top list. E. Thompson won her second olympic sprint double and this time, obtained a third gold with the jamaican 4x100 m relay team. Her 10.54 s time is, for me, the world record for the 100 m.

J. Camacho-Quinn dominated the season in the high hurdles and capped it with the olympic gold (a proper redemption after her fall in Rio).

P. Jepchirchir had made my top-three list last year. Had the competition been less fierce this year she would have been again on the podium. Be that as it may she proved once more that she is the best semi and marathon runner by winning the olympic event under taxing conditions.

Y. Rojas was named World Ahletics athlete of the year in 2020 (an absurd decision if there is any). This year she might have merited this title had there been fewer great champions ahead of her. Still, I included her unhesitantly in my top list after her olympic win cum world record performance. And she has improved her style a little bit.

V. Allman made my last year's list mainly thanks to her potential. A potential that she fully realised this year. She won the Olympics and improved her best with a 71.16 m throw.  And I really like her style.

M. Lasitskene, who is the best high jumper of the recent years  has at last added the olympic gold to her collection. She had lost the occasion to obtain gold in Rio because of the exclusion of Russia from international sport. I just cross my fingers for the harsh punishment of the russian federation to end.

F. Kipyegon dominated the 1500 m, and obtained a second olympic gold four years after Rio.  She is a great miler and her presence might push Hassan towards longer distances.

This completes my top-ten list. However I would like to add a honourable mention of S. Miller and N. Thiam. Both added a second olympic gold medal to their collection and, in the case of Miller, accompanied by a superb personal best of 48.36 s in the 400 m.

K. Warholm is my choice for athlete of the year. Not only did he dominate the 400 m hurdles but he went on to win the Olympics in an out-of-this-world record of 45.94 s and he dragged along the other finishers to fantastic performances. He was third in my last year's list.

R. Crouser showed that he is the best shot putter and, having won also in the Rio Olympics, is on his way to join the legends of throws. While the other elite throwers have just progressed, Crouser has really exploded and has now 7 of the 10 best throws of all times.

D. Warner occupies the third place in the list. I followed closely his decathlon in Götzis where he was deprived of a 9k+ record due to fouling his first throw in the javelin. He went after this barrier-breaking peformance in Tokyo, despite a below-par high jump. After a long career with plenty of honourable positions he is at last a well-merited number-one.

A. Duplantis was number one in my list last year. Had be broken the world record he would have occupied the same position for the second year in a row. Be that as it may, he figures in a prominent position in my top list. It is rare to see somebody so young dominate so thoroughly his discipline. 

Speaking of young competitors, the next one in my list is J. Ingebrigtsen. From the outset, nobody doubted his great talent but the question was whether he could stand up to the kenyans. Now we have the answer: he can beat them. It was great to see him win gold at 20-something years of age.

E. Kipchoge is the best marathon runner ever and won the olympic crown in Tokyo hands down. It's a pity that he came to the marathon a little bit too late. It would have been great to see him win a third olympic medal in the distance, somebody nobody else has done. 

M. Tentoglou is part of the top list and not only because he is greek. He won the (indoor) Europeans and the Olympics this year, the latter in a memorable, suspenseful competition and holds the year's leading performance. Way to go, Milto!

J. Cheptegei would have been competing for a place among the first three in my list of year's best had he won the 10000 m race (a race he lost due to a major tactical blunder). Be that as it may, he has his place among the ten best.

I have been watching A. DeGrasse since his collegiate career. I was convinced of his great talent but was worried when he hurt himself in 2018. Some athletes never manage to come back from injury. Not so DeGrasse. And in Tokyo he showed that he is ideed Bolt's heir in the 200 m.

J. Vetter's inclusion in my top list may surprise some readers in view of his way-below-par performance in Tokyo. However after having realised the problems with the run-up area I understood that athletes like Vetter who have fine-tuned their style may be completely thrown off by a bad surface coating. (I will, one day, write about throwing areas and their problems). Vetter is the only 90+ performer of the year.

I don't know if World Athletics will, like last year, give up on the rising star distinction. If they do I will, in 2022, imitate them. However for this year I will present my choice.

The female rising star of the year is A. Mu. She dominated the olympic 800 m and won a second gold with the US 4x400 m team.

I hesitated a lot between F. Bol and Mu for the first place opting finally for the latter. But F. Bol, bronze medalist in the 400 m hurdles, could very well have been first in the rising star category.

K. Hodgkinson completes the podium of the female rising stars. In just one season she went from practically unknown to one of the best 800 m runners, winning silver behind Mu in Tokyo.

The male rising star of the year is E. Knighton. He qualified for the Olympics at just 17 years of age and went on to finish 4th in the 200 m final. 

French (ex Australian) S. Zhoya is a most promising high-hurdler and an excellent pole-vaulter. I will be watching closely his transition from 99 cm to 106 cm hurdles.

Slovenian discus thrower K. Ceh is a tad old (22) to be counted as a rising star but since European Athletics included him in their list, I may as well do the same. After all, throwers are maturing later than the other athletes and his 70+ personal best looks most promising.

Finally I have a special mention for G. Tamberi and M. Barshim. When they decided to share the gold medal they gave everybody a great lesson that athletics is above all a school of friendship and fair-play. 

The blog is eight years old

One more year went by. After the disastrous 2020 (athletically speaking and otherwise), 2021 was a definite improvement. First, the Tokyo Olympics took place. It was a close thing. Just three months before the opening ceremony I published an article entitled "Tokyo Olympics: will they, won't they?". At that moment the opposition to the Games was mounting in Japan, the local government was criminally delaying the implementation of an efficient vaccination strategy and it looked as if the Games were going to be scraped.  Finally the obstacles were lifted and the Games could take place. (In some future post I will write about the uselessness of the Olympic Games, but this is not the right moment).

The athletics in the Games (they were the only sport I followed) were fabulous. I really did appreciate a lot the competitions and I am sure the athletes did also enjoy participating. 

World Athletics made a great effort to maintain the Diamond League circuit and they did succeed. The only thing I deplore is that, in order to rake in as much money as possible, World Athletics is selling the tv right to the various private channels and there is no way to watch the Diamond League competitions unless you decide to pay dearly for this (which I don't). 

The blog fared particularly well this year, toping 1000 visits every month with a peak at 3000 during the Olympics. It has by now become a tradition for me to choose a theme on which to write a series of articles. This year I decided to tell the story of the difficulties women had faced before being accepted in the international sports community. The series started in May with the introductory article "Women and the Olympics" and went on from there. Articles of the series are regularly appearing and I expect to complete it before the end of the year. If the question of women athletics (and women sports in general) does interest you I suggest that you track down my published articles and look out for the new ones that will be appearing.

My Olympic Report (2020): combined events

You know my passion for combined events. Thus I decided that there would be a special section in my olympic report devoted to the decathlon and the heptathlon. (And just to repeat what I am always saying, I still hope that I will see during my lifetime the perfect women-men parity, with women competing in a decathlon).

One Olympic champion (Thiam) and two world champions (Johnson-Thompson and Kaul) were present in Tokyo, and one should add the 2017 world champion K. Mayer and the top performer of the year (and multiple olympic and world medallist) D. Warner who barely missed the 9K barrier in Götzis, with 8995 points. The competition was going to be fierce.  And it was.

K. Williams was first after the 100 m hurdles, with 12.97 s, but Thiam moved to first place after the high jump 1.92 m and stayed there after the shot put, 14.92 m. Her hurdles performance was not bad, 13.54 s, a 0.2 s off her PB. However her high jump performance was way below par and it was clear that she would not dominate the event as she did in the past. This was confirmed at the last event of the day, the 200 m. Thiam ran a so-so 24.90 s and finished 3rd overall. Meanwhile A. Vetter had a solid first day with 13.09, 1.80, 15.29 and 23.81 finishing almost 50 points ahead of Thiam. N. Vidts, Thiam's compatriot, had a series of 13.17, 1.83, 14.33 and 23.70, obtaining the second place, with 20 points more than Thiam. The three US athletes, all having scored more than 6600 points in the Trials, were not in their trials shape, finishing 4th, 6th and 9th after the first day. X. Krizsan who had made a great impression in Götzis with 6651 points, was trailing at the 19th place. I always keep an eye on I. Dadic  who is a solid performer: she was 8th after the first day. And of course I was following also Ninali Zheng, aka Nina Schultz, who is now competing for China: she was 10th at that point. The two disappointments were N. Broersen, who could do no better than 17th at the end of the first day and called it quits and, of course, K. Johnson-Thompson. It was clear that KJT was not at her best this year, coming back form an Achilles tendon injury, but she was more than OK in the three first events. She was 5th after the shot put and could only improve her place with the 200 m. Well, things turned out quite differently: she never got to finish her 200 m due to a calf injury. The task of Thiam was somewhat easier after that.

On the second day Thiam won the long jump with 6.60 m moving to second place but Vetter was always first, Vidts slipping to 3rd. The event that was going to make a difference was the javelin throw. Thiam threw 54.68 m, a good throw (but far from her PB of 59.32 m) moving 64 points ahead of Vetter. At this point E. Oosterwegel, an excellent javelin thrower and an athlete I am keeping an eye on, threw 54.60 m improving her position to 4th. So prior to the 800 m the standings were: Thiam 5912, Vetter 5848, Williams 5642, Oosterwegel 5641, Vidts 5592 and Kunz 5540. When the 800 m started I expected Vetter to make a move, trying to distance Thiam in the hope of beating her for the first place. But it immediately appeared that she had no reserves, so she just followed Thiam up to the point where the latter accelerated and then she just hanged on securing the silver medal with 6689 points. Thiam won with 6791 points obtaining her second olympic victory. The interesting race was elsewhere. Vidts was better in the 800 m than both Williams and Oosterwegel and went all out trying to beat them and move to the third place. But Oosterwegel hanged on, massively improving her 800 PB, losing just 30 points to Vidts and finishing 3rd with 6590 points, obtaining the bronze medal. 

Vidts was 4th with 6571 points and Williams 5th with 6508. Dadic and Zheng finished 8th and 10th and Krizsan, despite her excellent 800 m, at the 13th place. I must make a special mention here of O. Ahouanwanou who was 5th at the end of the first day, 6th after 5 events and 10th after 6 events with 5481 points. Although she is a solid shot put thrower, with a PB of 15.79 m, her javelin throw is not as good, her PB being 48.02 m. But in Tokyo she was 4 m off. Had she thrown close to her PB she would have kept her 6th place. But the real disaster is her 800 m. She ran in 2:29.05 and slipped to 15th (!) place. With a just decent 800 m she could have vied for a place among the 8 first.   

Warner took control of the decathlon right from the first event where he equalled the decathlon world best performance with 10.12 s. He went on to jump 8.24 m which would have sufficed for a bronze medal in the individual long jump. He had a good throw at the shot put with 14.80 m but a slightly below-par high jump with just 2.02 m. He ended the day with 47.48 in the 400m and a total of 4722 points some 25 fewer than the ones he obtained in Götzis. Meanwhile Mayer started with 10.68 s and 7.50 m but it was in the shot put where it became clear that he was not in top shape. He threw 15.07 m, two metres off his PB. Talking to the press, he explained that he had some persistent back pain but he added that he will hang on and try to be on the podium. Things improved slightly when he jumped 2.08 m, just one cm shy of his PB and he completed the first day with 50.31 in the 400 m, finishing at the 5th place. 

Meanwhile P. LePage had an excellent first day (as usual) finishing 3rd overall. But the real surprise came from 21-year old A. Moloney. His series 10.34-7.64-14.49-2.11-46.29 obtained 4641 points and brought him to the second place. S. Bastien was occupying the 4th place, but over the second day he would fade to 10th. The winner of the US Trials G. Scantling was 6th, paying the price of a so-so performance at the high jump. He would try to catch-up over the second day but in the end he would be some 40 points shy of the podium. 

Warner started the second day with excellent performances 13.46 s in the hurdles and 48.67 m in the discus and followed with 4.90 in the pole vault (not his strong event). The order was always the same Warner-Moloney-LePage with Mayer occupying the 4th place. Moloney had a very good series of 14.08-44.36-5.00 comparable to LePage's 14.39-47.14-5.00. Mayer closed the gap with 13.90-48.08-5.20 and after 8 events he was 140 points behind Moloney and 46 behind LePage. At this point Mayer knew that he needed to throw at least 10 m more than those two in the javelin in order not to be threatened in the 1500 m. Warner threw 63.44 in the javelin. It was precisely the event which prevented him from reaching 9000 points in Götzis, having fouled an over 61 m throw and settling for a 59 m one. The 60 points javelin difference would allow him in the end of the day to join the 9K+ club. And Mayer, gave us another proof of his immense talent by throwing a personal best of 73.09 m, moving to the second place with margin to spare. Moloney and LePage could do not better than 57 m and, given that Scantling threw an almost PB of 69.10, were now 3rd and 5th, with Scantling occupying the 4th position. These positions would not change after the 1500 m. When the race started I was somewhat perplexed when I saw Warner running at a rather conservative pace. I knew that he needed something better than 4:34 in order to break the 9000 points barrier but he was too slow for this. Well, up to the last lap. There, he shifted gear and sprinted all the way to the finish, completing his run in 4:31.08 giving him a total of 9018 points. Had he jumped at his usual level at the high jump he would have flirted with the 9100 points. So the obvious question is, can he break the world record? Well, perhaps, but he has to make some real progress in the pole vault and, given his age, his margin of progression is getting thinner by the year.

So, after two days of gruelling competition Warner was first with 9018 points, Mayer second with 8726 and Moloney third with 8649 (and Oceania record). They were followed by Scantling 8611 and LePage 8604 (a personal best). Among the other decathletes, the one I always keep an eye on is L. Victor, who finished 7th with 8414 points (but to my opinion he has a 8600+ potential). 

I was really disappointed by the performance of the estonian decathletes: they finished Erm 11th, Uibo 15th and Tilga 20th (the latter having no-heighted at the pole vault).

N. Kaul has been most unfortunate in these Olympics. He started the competition with an excellent series 11.22-7.36-14.55-2.11 with personal bests in the jumps. But it was in the high jump that he hurt his right foot. He took the start of the 400 m but he was unable to finish and was carried away weeping. Given that he was in a very good shape I estimate his final score in the 8600-8700 range: a place on the podium would have been possible. I guess that we have to wait for next year and the World's in order to see a battle at the highest level.