Vaporflys or how supershoes changed the Marathon forever

Those who follow my blog have noticed that I have a great esteem for Ross Tucker, a renowned sports physiologist. Together with his colleague Jonathan Dugas, Tucker had a blog entitled "The Science of Sport". It was active from 2007 to 2013 and then went silent. The last post in the blog was on the sub-2 hour marathon. And the title expressed clearly the authors reservations: "Is the sub-2 hour marathon imminent? Don't hold your breath". Well, it turned out that they were somewhat pessimistic or rather they didn't predict the revolution that would take hold of long distance running in the years to come. And six years after the Science of Sport article, Eliud Kipchoge ran the first sub-2 marathon in history.

In 2013 the men's marathon world record was held by W. Kipsang with 2:03.23. The women's records were established back in 2003 (mixed race) and 2005 (women only) by P. Radcliffe with 2:15:15 and 2:17:42. Today the men's record is held by the late K. Kiptum with 2:00:35 and the women's records are held by R. Chepngetich (mixed race) with 2:09:56 and P. Jepchirchir (women only) with 2:16:16. Just to put the women's records in the right perspective, the men's 2:10 barrier was broken in 1967 by D. Clayton. (At that time no woman had run under 3 hours). And what is happening it's not only due to some exceptional individuals. We are witnessing a real revolution in long distance running. One can argue that what we observe is due to better training and a ripple effect where the performance of the leaders reverberates through the whole runner community. Maybe so. But there is one factor that has undeniably contributed to the explosion of performances: shoes.

But let us start at the beginning. At the end of the 90s the team of the Human Performance Laboratory of the University of Calgary started interesting themselves in the effect of shoe bending stiffness on jump height performance. In order to increase the stiffness they inserted a carbon fibre plate into the shoe midsole.

The initial studies were targeting high jump but subsequent studies extended the subject to that of running economy. It was well known at the time that the energy put in on the metatarsophalangeal joint (the joint between the metatarsals and he toes) is not returned when pushing off. Using shoes with inserted carbon plates reduces the energy dissipated in these joints. The Calgary research showed running energy savings of approximately 1% when using a stiff midsole as compared to a "normal" one. To put the result in perspective (since the energy expenditure for running is proportional to the athlete's velocity) a 1% gain would mean shaving off more than a minute from the time of a marathon for an elite runner.

Curiously the Calgary study did not have any impact on the shoe industry for more than a decade. It was around 2015, when people from the Calgary lab went to work at Nike, that the new shoe generation saw the light. The first modification with respect to the initial design was a bent plate. The reason is that a flat plate makes it actually harder for the calves to push up. The team of the Locomotion Lab at the University of Colorado studied the prototype of the shoes that would become known as the Vaporflys and found that they lowered the energetic cost of running by 4%.

Kipchoge did attempt an under-2 marathon using Vaporflys in 2016 in the Breaking2 event held in Monza. He came tantalisingly close to the 2-hour barrier, completing his run in 2:00:25. While the course design was legitimate (flat course) the remaining conditions (like the use of rotating pacemakers shielding the star runner and the use of a car projecting a laser beam to aid pacing) made that the record could not be homologated. 

While the people of the Calgary lab attribute the energy gain to the stiff plate, the Colorado team's opinion is more reserved. For them the metabolic savings of the shoes appear to be due to a superior energy storage in the midsole foam, the clever lever effects of the carbon-fibre plate on the ankle joint mechanics, and the stiffening effects of the plate on the metatarsophalangeal joint. Apparently the midsole foam plays an important role. When the foot hits the ground the sole deforms and some energy is lost. However in today's "supershoes" better foams result in diminished energy loss. (And Nike did further improve upon this by introducing air-filled rubber cushioning).

Following these studies Nike came up with a better model, the Alphafly. Kipchoge used them in Vienna in 2019 at the Ineos 1:59 Challenge and this time the 2-hour barrier did fall. Today Alphaflys are available to anybody who can afford the rather stiff price. 

The other brands have caught up with Nike and this explains the explosion of records. World Athletics are trying to put some order in this. They require that shoes be on the market for a month before they can be used in an official competition. Moreover there are limiting the stacking height (the amount of material between the foot and the ground) for track events to 20 mm. However the marathon shoes are allowed to have a 40 mm stack height. Some people are speaking about "shoe doping". I believe that this choice of words is most unfortunate since nobody is cheating and everybody has access to the new shoes. But it remains that they give the athletes a massive advantage. 

If you wish to learn more on supershoes, I suggest that you read an excellent article on Runners World.

Speaking of the advantage offered by the shoes reminds me of a controversy going back to the 50s. In 1957 Yuri Stepanov, a soviet high jumper, broke the World Record with a 2.16 m jump. When photos of the record attempt were circulated people noticed that Stepanov was wearing a shoe with a thick sole on his take-off leg. 

People cried foul (some were talking about a 4 cm "trampoline" but a closer examination of the photo, as well as other photos of Stepanov in competition, point at a thickness not exceeding 2 cm). In absence of specific rules the IAAF homologated the record and proceeded to limit the shoe sole thickness to 13 mm. This limit has been raised today to 20 mm. (But as P.J. Vazel is pointing out, it is not clear that an elevated shoe offers any advantage in the Fosbury style, it might even present some risk due to the quite different take-off technique). While Stepanov's sole thickness would have been acceptable with today's rules, back in 1957 he was heavily criticised by the media. Being mentally fragile he foundered into depression, alcoholism and committed suicide in 1963, at just 31 years of age.

PS And when we thought we had seen everything, along came the running sandals. 

B. Kiplimo won a Marathon in Thailand running with carbon-plated sandals. Now, how can anybody run 42 km with this kind of shoes is a mystery to me. But Kiplimo did it and won the race in a respectable 2:18:55 time. 

A bizarre theory on world records

Some time ago I stumbled upon an article, on BBC of all things. The title was "Why world records seem to be getting harder to beat - according to maths". I was intrigued and I decided to read the article. And once I read it I was really annoyed. How can one pretend, using bogus premises, that mathematics are explaining the new records paucity? 

But let us start at the beginning. The article starts with the, by now almost mandatory, tribute to M. Duplantis, who, by the way is the living proof that records are not getting harder to beat. The author of the article feels compelled to explain the pole vault records, who are in clear contradiction with the title and the thesis he will present later. He does this by invoking improvements in diet, technique or equipment. (Perhaps Mama Duplantis was feeding her offspring a special diet?). And then we goes on to remark that the long jump record is standing unbroken since 1991. Up to that point things are more or less acceptable, in particular, if one  complements "diet" by medical monitoring and aftercare. But the worse is still to come.

The author segues his introduction with a short paragraph where he presents his main argument. In his own words:

 "We refer to these sorts of situations (in which further improvement is impossible and differences between an athlete's performances come down to "luck") as "stationary", in the sense that the overall trend in average behaviour is unchanging. Given a stationary system, we can ask how often we should expect records to fall due to random fluctuations". 

And, just so that people get to understand what he means by this, he presents an example of rain records in various cities ending up with a harmonic series. (The later is the series one gets by adding the inverses of the successive integers 1+1/2+1/3+ 1/4 and so on). A graphic is also given which, supposedly, justifies the authors assumptions.

Well, what are these assumptions? First the stationarity one. It is a clear abuse of the term, in particular when one invokes mathematics. Neither the record situation nor the harmonic series are stationary. But, let us accept that the author decided to simplify the situation in order to make it palatable to us mere mortals. (Referring to the increase of the harmonic series as logarithmic would have probably discouraged the majority of his readers). But the really faulty premise is attributing the establishing of new records to random fluctuations. Nothing is further from the truth. What it takes for a new record is to have a talented athlete. Once the latter matures one expects a series of records by the same person a scenario that we have seen time and again in Athletics. The difficulty is to find the really gifted individuals, but, pretending that the process is random, is pure heresy. 

Now let's get serious. What do real, scientific, analyses say about the evolution of records? A team of researchers of various universities in the Paris region addressed the question (and in fact in a broader setting, as evidenced by the title of their article "Are we reaching the limits of Homo sapiens?"). They analysed a vast amount of data from various sports. In the figure below they show the evolution of the 10 best women's performances for 800 m, high jump and shot put. It is clear from the graphic that starting from the late 80s the performances stagnate and even decline in the case of shot put. But may one draw a sound conclusion based on this graphic? Definitely not. The 80s marked the beginning of a strict anti-doping control era and this changed dramatically the performances. 

The next graphic, where they show the evolution of the world record relative improvement is more instructive. The downward trend of the mean confirms that records are indeed more difficult to break as time goes by.

Does this mean that we are approaching some limit? This is a question that a team of the Guanghan university in China has addressed in an extensive statistical analysis, spanning 23 sports and involving the performances of more than 6000 athletes. If you are interested in the question, you can download freely their article at the url https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-65350-4. But, to put it in a nutshell, they conclude that "...human beings have not yet reached sports limits in athletic performance, suggesting a continuous improvement over time". 

Will this mean that we will see new world records? Definitely, yes. Will breaking records become more difficult? Certainly. Will the process be a random one? Only in the sense that exceptional individuals (the ones that can break world records) cannot (yet) be produced on demand. But invoking the harmonic series in order to explain what is happening is, to my eyes, pure clickbait.

On bad scoring tables

As my regular readers know, I am a fan of scoring tables. And that has been true since a very tender age of 10. I cannot explain why this subject fascinates me, but there we are. Whenever I see a scoring table I feel immediately an attraction. From the outset in this blog, scoring was at the centre of interest. Already the fourth published article talks about scoring, and a whole series entitled "Theories of Scoring" appeared in 2021-22. Scoring was the subject of several articles of mine published in the New Studies in Athletics (alas, now defunct, killed by the belt-tightening measures of Lord Sebastian). And it is, of course, the origin of my collaboration with G. Purdy. While writing these lines I realise that I have never published the article I had promised in "A brief history of the IAAF/WA scoring tables" explaining the relation of the World Athletics scoring tables to the Weibull distribution and moreover I have never presented the results of my collaboration with G. Purdy. One day I will keep my word and explain in detail the relation between performance distribution and scoring.

But let's go back to the current business. As you may know, I am a subscriber to the newsletter of Art of Manliness. Contrary to what woke-brainwashed persons might think, the site is anything but macho. Of course it caters to men's interests and lifestyle, and some people find that they tend to romanticize older stuff, but, frankly, most of its articles (shaving excluded) would be useful to women too. From time to time they publish Army-related articles and they always attract my interest. In case you didn't know, I am a big Army fan. I like the Army discipline, even when it verges on the absurd. Discipline, even exaggerated one, is better than no discipline at all. (I just hope that you are not taken aback by my militaristic tendencies). 

No, it's not modern pentathlon

In an article entitled "Are you combat ready?" (reprinted from one published in 2016) AoM were talking about the "Physical Combat Proficiency Test" of the US Army. The test was designed to assess the soldiers' agility, coordination, and ability to perform what the Army calls “warrior tasks”. The test was introduced in 1969 and was replaced by the Army Physical Fitness Test in 1980. Several iterations and modifications of the latter existed up to 2025 where the Army Fitness Test was introduced (but some people consider the PCPT to be the high-water mark for the Army’s physical training tests).  

What was most interesting in the AoM article was the inclusion of the scoring table for the mile run (the last of five events of the PCPT). Mind you, the mile was to be run in uniform pants and boots, so don't be hard on judging the times.

Once I saw the table I could not resist the temptation. I read off the points and the times and I converted the latter to mean velocity. As I have explained in my article "Theories of scoring: the energetic cost approach", the energetic cost of running is essentially proportional to the velocity, in particular for middle-distance running. But this is something that scoring-table builders are systematically ignoring. As a consequence, the creators of the PCPT mile-run scoring table produced a perfectly regressive table where the points grow roughly as a power 2/3 of the velocity. 

But they are in very good company. In fact, since the introduction of the 1985 tables, that were meant to repair the damages done by the Ulbrich tables, we are living with tables that are regressive for track events. Below I give the corresponding fit for the 1500 m of the decathlon scoring tables.

Apart from the initial part of the curve corresponding to very low velocities, the scoring is regressive, the points growing roughly as a power 3/4 of the velocity. 

I mentioned Ulbrich in the previous paragraph. In fact, he was the one who understood that the quantity in which the tables must be cast for track events is the velocity. His fatal mistake was to assume that velocity was the quantity that was determining the performance in field events. Well, it is, but not the velocity itself. The energy expenditure for field events is proportional to its square. By introducing a scoring proportional to the velocity for field events, Ulbrich introduced a counter-productive regressivity. You can read about this in my post on theories of scoring.

The scoring tables I proposed in collaboration with G. Purdy are strictly progressive for all events. On the same point of progressivity, my Décapassion friends, F. et P. Gousset, make the remark that the current tables for throws are only slightly progressive and this lack of strong progressivity throws the tables off balance. I have promised the Gousset that one day we'll write a joint article on this point. (And when this is done I will give here at least an "executive" summary).

The best of the best of 2025 (according to Athletics Podium)

On several occasions I mentioned in this blog the excellent site "Athletics Podium". It is run by the turkish sports journalist S.F. Erbay, accompanied by a team of contributing editors. I cannot think of any better athletics-oriented site on the web. My Turkish neighbours are really the best and, on several occasions, they have pleasantly surprised me with the originality of their articles. (I must confess that quite often I am jealous when I compare the quality of their site to my blog, but, I console myself with the thought that I am a one-man operation).

At the end of the year they published their year's best athletes list and I must say that I found it original to the point that I had to share it with you. 

They did not follow the World Athletics classification of track, field and out-of-stadium, neither one like mine that lists, roughly, the ten best of each sex. The Athletics Podium people decided to list the best by continent, with America split, as usual to South America and NACAC (which stands for North America, Central America and the Caribbeans). They ended up with the following lists

WOMEN

Melissa Jefferson-Wooden (NACAC) and World
Maria Perez (EUR)
Beatrice Chebet(AFR)
Salwa Eid Naser (ASI)
Natalia Linares (S.AM)
Nicola Olyslagers (OCE)

MEN

Armand Duplantis(EUR) and World
Busang Kebinatshipi (AFR)
Sang-Hyeok Woo (ASI)
Caio Bonfim (S.AM)
Geordie Beamish (OCE)
Ethan Katzberg (NACAC)

I find the list interesting but also somewhat surprising. M. Jefferson-Wooden best of the World?  I would put at least three athletes ahead of her. At least B. Chebet gets plaudits for Africa, but this left no place for F. Kipyegon. (Sometimes choices are hard). N. Linares instead of J. Angulo, M. Perez instead of F. Bol or D. Kambundji would have also been my choices but, frankly, how can one ignore S. McLaughlin?   On the men's side I was happy to see that B. Kebinatshipi did get a mention (although that was at the expense of E. Wanyonyi).

The "Rising Stars" are called "Prospects" by the Athletics Podium people. And out of the 12 names I had to look up almost half of them.

Europe: Kelly-Ann Douala Edimo and Jarno van Daalen 
Africa: Prestina Ochonogor and Justice Oratile 
Asia: Puripol Boonson and Yan Ziyi 
NACAC: Liranyi Alonso and Kamari Kennedy 
South America: Maria Maturana and Ricardo Montes de Oca 
Oceania: Reki Selita Roberts and Gout Gout 

As you may have noticed I am not very good when it comes to the Rising Stars list (although I feel that I have made some progress these last years). So, I don't have major objections to the list above. But, still, I think that if there is one young European athlete who merits the distinction that's Hubert Trościanka. (But then, I am a combined event aficionado, so this explains that). 

I mentioned F. Kipyegon, S. McLaughlin and E. Wanyonyi as being left on the shelf. Well, apart from F. Kipyegon, the other two got a mention in the "Top Performances" list. I reproduce it below but I don't know if the order means something.

MEN

1) Armand Duplantis - 6.30m (PV)
2) Emmanuel Wanyonyi - 1:41.86 (800 m)
3) Mykolas Alekna - 75.56m (DT)
4) Rai Benjamin - 46.52 (400 m H)
5) Jacob Kiplimo - 56:42 (Half Marathon)

WOMEN

1) Beatrice Chebet - 13:58.06 (5000 m)
2) Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone - 47.78 (400 m)
3) Anna Hall - 7032 pts (Heptathlon)
4) Ditaji Kambundji - 12.24 (100 m H)
5) Valarie Allman - 73.52m (DT)

It is my feeling that F. Kipyegon's 1500 m 3:48.68 World Record (and her 3000 m 8:07.04 one) should have secured her a place in the Top Performances list. But where I strongly disagree with the AP list is with Rai Benjamin 46.52 s performance trumping the 46.28 of K. Warholm. We are talking performance here and world champion or not, Benjamin does not have the best performance of the year. At least I console myself seeing two throwers and one combined-event athlete included in the top-5 list, as well as J. Kiplimo who was totally ignored by World Athletics in their out-of-stadium choices.

Although I do not agree with all the Athletics Podium choices, I find their approach most interesting and very well researched. But, of course, this is not astonishing: as I said already, they are the best in what they do. So, if you haven't already done so, bookmark their site and think about visiting it regularly.

On the forbidden cartwheel

I have written, on several occasions, on the "spanish style" for javelin throw. It is in fact a permanent regret of mine that this style was banned and it is not used even for demonstrations. A commenter on my article "The javelin controversy" wrote:

The barra vasca [the throwing style of which led to the spanish one for javelin] was the same for javelin as Fosbury flop was for high jump. The javelin community was appalled: "That's not how you are supposed to throw it!".

With the spinners dominating the shot put, it is now clear that the rotational style is the most efficient one for all throws. So why prohibit it in the case of javelin? But this article is not about javelin. Those who are interested in the latter can read my article on the "javelin puzzle" and track my other articles on the same subject from there.

World Athletics is known for their over-conservative attitude. They only allow something revolutionary (like the fibreglass poles) when they are caught unawares by the evolution of styles or implements and cannot preempt it. 

At the beginning on the 00s, Veronika Watzek, an austrian thrower, invented a new rotational throwing technique, the cartwheel. 

(The thrower in the gif above is not V. Watzek)

Nicky Watzek was more of a discus thrower with a 58+ m personal best (and a 15 m shot put record). Googling for photos of her one finds plenty where she is throwing the discus and in fact the logo of her current enterprise "Athletic Academy" depicts a discus thrower.

It has been impossible to find out whether Watzek's shot put personal best was obtained with the cartwheel style. But I did find an article on a young german thrower who decided to try out the cartwheel style. Certainly his past as a gymnast (which by the way was true also for Nicky Watzek) was helping. Starting with a personal best of 10.98 with the 6 kg shot he had a series of shots culminating to to 13.49 m. Does this suffice in order to conclude that the cartwheel technique presents an advantage over the more conventional ones? Certainly not, but it is a clear indication that exploring different techniques, in particular ones that appear revolutionary, may lead to a progress in performances.

When Watzek introduced the cartwheel the latter obeyed perfectly the rules which stated:

The shot shall be put from the shoulder with one hand only. At the time an athlete takes a stance in the circle to commence a put, the shot shall touch or be in close proximity to the neck or the chin and the hand shall not be dropped below this position during the action of putting. The shot shall not be taken behind the line of the shoulders.

And then the codicil appeared:

Cartwheeling techniques are not permitted.

The official reason: cartwheeling is not safe enough. Of course this is pure hogwash. The real reason is that, were the cartwheel method to be proven more effective, there would have been a monstrous push-back by the existing elite who are throwing in one of the "classical", glide or spin, styles. So WA banned the cartwheel style and that's that. 

End credits for Grand Slam Track

The Grand Slam Track adventure is officially over. On December 18th, GST filed for bankruptcy, acknowledging a debt that can reach 50 million dollars. A part of this debt corresponds to payments to elite athletes, payments that have not been honoured. Big track stars like Sydney McLaughlin, Gabby Thomas or Kenny Bednarek are awaiting payments in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I don't think that the collaterals of GST will suffice to pay them one day. 

Created by Michael Johnson the project was launched with big fanfare and the support of the World Athletic president, S. Coe. It had attracted some of the bigger names of Athletics, like the ones I cited above but also M. Jefferson-Wooden, A. Hall. M. Arop, J. Hull, S. Eid Naser, A. Dos Santos, M. Paulino, O. Seville, to name but a few. (You can find the full list at the GST website that is still online, for the time being). 

The GST circuit staged its inaugural event in Kingston (Jamaica) and it was a financial flop. Despite the participation of big stars it attracted little interest and did not manage to create a buzz. It was followed by events in Miami and Philadelphia but then the final, scheduled for Los Angeles in June, was cancelled. At that point everybody, both suppliers and athletes, became aware of the crisis. GST tried to find an arrangement with suppliers, proposing that they accept a payment of 50% of what they were due, and a rumour circulated that sponsors, injecting an emergency funding, were secured and that at least half of the athletes' outstanding payments would be covered. Well, that turned out to be wishful thinking.

So, what happens now? Well, Lord Sebastian who had welcomed the project is now more circumspect. He stated that Grand Slam Track might not be allowed to return in 2026, stressing that events must have a "sustainable, solid financial model". 

I really like this photo of Coe 

The InsidetheGames site concluded their article on the GST bankruptcy with the phrase: "The toxic mix of heavy liabilities, fractured creditors and an absence of immediate capital leaves Grand Slam Track facing one of the starkest viability crises seen in professional athletics in recent years". But every cloud has a silver lining: thanks to the disaster of GST, we will be getting rid of M. Johnson.

Carles Baronet re-launches a newsletter

If you are a regular reader of my blog you have certainly met the name of Carles Baronet. He is a renowned Catalan Athletics statistician and for many years he was publishing the blog Trackinsun. Then he switched from the blog to a newsletter. From 2023 his newsletter became subscription-only, but after two years he decided that having subscribers was too much of a stress and decided to go back to the previous, free, formula.

So, from January 2026, the newsletter is completely free, allowing Carles to work on the statistics without pressure and with a lower depth of marks. Having more time he plans to compile the year's top 300 marks (well, up to) in each event, as well as a thorough selection of European athletes who are in the United States.

The name Trackinsun is always present. And the first newsletter of 2026 is just out. It's a very detailed one, with results from all over the World. It comes in two versions, pdf and docx. The author believes that the pictures are best viewed in the docx version, but, frankly, those of the pdf are perfectly viewable.

If you are interested in Athletics (otherwise, why are you reading this blog?) I suggest that you send a mail to C. Baronet (just click here) and subscribe to his newsletter. You will discover a whole world of Athletics that you haven't suspected till that moment. People are competing in Athletics all over the world. And not all of them are (or hope to become) big stars who figure (or hope to) in the World Athletics website. I find that really uplifting and thanks to Carles Baronet this information is coming to your mailbox every month. Subscribe!

The 4x100 women's 2000 olympic relay, or how France's medal was stolen

The reason I decided to write this article was this superb photo.

Some time ago World athletics published an article entitled "Saluting the Bahamian Golden Girls 25 years on". It was celebrating the victory of the Bahamas' women team in the 4x100 m relay of the 2000, Sydney, Olympics. It's a very nice article and I highly recommend it (all the more so, if you are of the generation who has experienced the Sydney Olympics live). And if you wish to revisit the race, the video is on YouTube. (If you are younger, you will be surprised by the bad quality of the video. This was the era of the crappy NTSC, an analog system with 480 lines and 4:3 aspect ratio. We have made an incredible progress since that time).

The team of Bahamas were the logical favourite, having won the world title the previous year in Sevilla. France was second on that occasion with Jamaica third and the US fourth. But the Sydney final was a totally different matter. The US team had as anchor none other than Marion Jones who had dominated the 100 m race (and 200 m and had won bronze in the long jump). 

The regular readers of my blog know that there are athletes that I like and others that I don't. M. Jones was part of the second group from the very first day. The media were ecstatic when speaking about her, something I could not stand. (Just as I could not stand the total absence of style in her long jump. You know my feelings about King Carl. But I have always granted that he was the best stylist ever in the long jump. Jones was one of the worst). 

M. Jones went to Sydney announcing that she intended to win five gold medals. (She was also part of the 4x400 m relay that won the race). So she managed to realise 60% of her prediction. And a few years later that was transformed to 0%. I will not go into all the sordid details of the M. Jones doping affair. Jones had been accused of doping from the outset of her career. Already at high school she missed a random drug test and was banned for four years from track and field competitions. She claimed that she was never informed about the test and managed to get the ban overturned. In Sydney there was a minor scandal involving her then husband, shot-putter C.J. Hunter. He was present as Jones' coach, having withdrawn from competition for an alleged knee injury. And then the real reason became known: he had, prior to the Olympics, failed antidoping tests, being positive for steroids. (As a result his coaching accreditation was revoked). Things came to a head years later, when V. Conte, the founder of BALCO, stated publicly, in 2004, that Jones had been doping already before the 2000 Olympics. Jones denied the accusations but in 2006 a sample of her urine tested positive in EPO. She was cleared of doping allegations after the examination of the B sample but the cogs of justice were turning. And finally in 2007 Jones confessed that she had been using steroids, already before the Sydney Olympics. She was suspended for two years and all her results from September 1, 2000 were anuled. And so the career of one of the first T&F female millionaire came to a sad end. 

But this article is not about M. Jones. It's about the disqualification and the medals. M. Jones was active till 2006, participating in high-level competitions. Her results were, quite understandably anuled. But just try to find them anywhere. World Athletics has decided to publish pages upon pages like the screenshot below, where no results are given but just the mention -(DQ).

I cannot imagine a worse display of disrespect for Athletics than this. How can anybody who supposedly loves Athletics do this? What is the point in telling us that M. Jones participated in this and that competition without giving her performances? Would have been so difficult to keep them, adding on each line the code DQ, indicating that the performances were anulled? By making tabula rasa of all post 01/09/2000 performances, WA reminds me of the rewriting of history that is so popular in autocratic states.

The IAAF (that's what World Athletics was called at the time) recommended to the IOC that the two US women's relays be disqualified, due to the presence of M. Jones. That's what happened. Initially. France, having finished fourth in the 4x100 m was promoted to third. Same for Nigeria, who was fourth in the 4x400 m relay. Alas, that was short lived. The US brought the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, invoking a legal vacuum (there was no clear rule disqualifying a team because of a doping offense of one of its members) and obtained a favourable judgement. So M. Jones appears in the official World Athletics page with Olympic honours, gold and bronze medals in Sydney. What a shame!

And the unfair decision of CAS robbed France (and Nigeria) of a medal. Still we have this great photo where one can see D. Ferguson celebrating, ahead of M. Ottey and C. Arron, with M. Onyali on the left and half of M. Jones. (I cannot imagine why WA did things halfway. They could have taken Jones completely out of the picture). Both Ottey and Arron look clearly disappointed. Ottey would have hoped to win the gold medal for Jamaica. (No, I am not going to tell the story of the controversy around M. Ottey's participation in the 4x100 m relay final. I am too big a fan of Ottey to enter these unsavoury gossips. If you are interested you have to find out for yourselves). And Arron was unfortunately no match for the steroid-enhanced Jones. But she got her vengeance three years later in the Paris World Championships.