High and low hurdles: a record explosion

It happens from time to time: performances stagnate and, all of a sudden, everything changes, with records falling one after another. This is the year of the hurdles, with three world records already, and the season is still under way, with two major competitions to come.

But let us start at the beginning, with the one record that was not set this year: the women's 400 m hurdles record. The current world record, held by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, stands at 50.37 s, set at the Paris 2024 Olympics. To illustrate the point about stagnation, let us go back to the pre-Muhammad and McLaughlin era. The previous world record belonged to Yuliya Pechonkina, who ran 52.34 s at the 2003 Russian Championships. (Pechonkina won the 2005 World Championships in a time under 53 seconds, but had finished eighth at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where her semi-final time would have guaranteed her the silver medal). And then, for 16 years, nothing happened. At the 2019 US trials, Dalilah Muhammad broke the record with 52.20 s and improved it further at the World Championships, with 52.16 s. On both occasions, Sydney McLaughlin was not far behind. The positions were going to change when competitions resumed after the pandemic. McLaughlin first shocked the world with 51.90 s at the US trials, then improved the record again in the Tokyo Olympic final, running 51.41 s, with Muhammad just behind in 51.58 s. It was the best 400 m hurdles race I have ever watched. Three more world records followed, culminating in the current 50.37 s mark. (McLaughlin-Levrone took a year off from the hurdles and went on to challenge Marita Koch's 400 m flat record with 47.78 s. She then took another year away from competition to give birth to her daughter). Just to put things in perspective, Y. Lituyev broke Hardin's men's world record with 50.4 s in 1953. Muhammad continues to compete and remains among the best in the world, in a discipline temporarily deprived of McLaughlin-Levrone and Femke Bol (Bol has moved towards the 800 m, a distance in which Muhammad ran 2:03.71 this year).

The men's 400 m hurdles also experienced a period of stagnation. Edwin Moses reigned practically unchallenged for more than ten years, taking the world record from John Akii-Bua's 47.82 s to 47.02 s in 1983. Then came Kevin Young's stunning 46.78 s at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, followed by almost 30 years of silence. The first hurdler to go under 47 seconds again was Abderrahman Samba, who ran 46.98 s at the Meeting de Paris in 2018. Plagued by injuries, Samba never managed to threaten Young's record (although he was a world bronze medallist in 2019 and again in 2025). That honour was reserved for an ex-decathlete who had converted to the low hurdles, Karsten Warholm. He had run under 47 seconds in both 2019 and 2020, but reached the summit in 2021, first running 46.70 s at the Bislett Games and then producing the astonishing 45.94 s at the Tokyo Olympics. (After all, the first official sub-46 performance in the flat 400 m came only in 1955; the best times of the 1950s were still above 46 seconds). Over the last years I have been following Alison dos Santos, who, like all athletes, had his ups and downs because of injuries, but had established himself among the leading figures in the event. Following his victory at the 2022 World Championships, I wrote:

"Dos Santos has progressed to a level at which I will not be astonished if, barring injury, he goes for Warholm's record. What he is technically doing, passing the first three hurdles in 12 strides, has never been attempted before, with most hurdlers struggling with the 13-stride rhythm".

Dos Santos can sustain the 12-stride rhythm because he is at ease with both legs over the hurdles, something Warholm has never mastered. And he can finish the race in 13 strides, while almost everybody else has to switch to 15. So the fact that he ran a 45.80 s world record in Zürich is not such a big surprise.

The other world record set in Zürich was in the women's 100 m hurdles. Going back in history, we find that Yordanka Donkova's 12.21 s record stood for almost 30 years, until Kendra Harrison ran 12.20 s in 2016. (It is remarkable to see a world-record holder achieve so little success when it comes to honours at major competitions. Harrison has just one world title, in the 60 m hurdles at the 2018 World Indoor Championships, one Olympic silver medal, from 2021, and one world silver medal, from 2019). Tobi Amusan broke Harrison's record with 12.12 s in the semi-finals of the 2022 World Championships, followed by a wind-assisted 12.06 s in the final. But this year belonged to Masai Russell. She had announced her intentions last year, when she ran 12.17 s during the Grand Slam Track competitions. (That may have been too early in the season, which could explain why she was not in top shape at the World Championships). In Zürich she ran a flawless 100 m hurdles in 12.09 s, beating Amusan, who could manage only 12.23 s.

The men's high-hurdles record was also improved in 2026. Renaldo 'Skeets' Nehemiah was the first man under 13 seconds, with 12.93 s. Unfortunately, he turned to professional football (the American version) and when he returned to athletics it was too late. Pat Connolly, who coached him, believed that if he had concentrated on athletics he could have broken the 400 m hurdles record as well. In any case, the world record progressed thanks to several great champions, like Roger Kingdom, Colin Jackson, Xiang Liu and Dayron Robles, and had been in the possession of Aries Merritt since 2012, with 12.80 s. People expected Grant Holloway to break it, but he was sidelined by injuries, and the record survived for a few more seasons. The spotlight then moved to C. Tinch, the 2025 world champion, but that was not to be. Finally, it was the 2024 world under-20 champion, Ja'Kobe Tharp, who erased the long-standing record, running 12.75 s in the semi-finals of the NCAA Championships in June. Given that Tharp is only 21, one can hope that this will not be the last record set by this talented athlete. (To achieve that, he will need to become more consistent and avoid blunders such as the one at the Lausanne meeting.)

The two world records were the icing on the cake of the superb Zürich Diamond League. (I enjoyed the meeting in the company of my friend P. Motis at his 'Cacti House' estate on the island of Kythira, where I was spending a week enjoying his hospitality).

The meeting was truly exceptional. Imagine two pole vaulters, Duplantis and Karalis, still competing at a world-record height and finally settling for the highest one-two finish in history: 6.25 m and 6.20 m. There was a women's 800 m in which A. Werro dispelled any doubts I may have had after the Europeans by winning in 1:53.70, the third-best performance of all time, followed by F. Bol in 1:54.71, which places her ninth on the all-time list.

And what about the men's long jump, in which just 2 cm separated two world champions, M. Tentoglou and T. Gayle, with 8.45 m and 8.43 m? It was a contest that barely missed my quality criterion, 'eight jumpers over 8 m', since only seven athletes cleared eight metres. J. Alfred edged M. Jefferson-Wooden in the 100 m, but only just: 10.693 to 10.698.

A. Cockrell ran a world-leading 52.13 s in the 400 m hurdles, just ahead of D. Muhammad, while F. Diallo once again broke the Portuguese record, following her bronze medal at the Europeans, with 53.30 s. N. Olyslagers cleared 2.02 m, I. Gerashchenko 2.00 m and M. Vuković 1.98 m, relegating Mahuchikh to fourth place in the women's high jump. H. Moll cleared a personal best of 4.90 m in the pole vault. R. Pathirage won the javelin with a throw of more than 92 m. E. Wanyonyi ran a world-leading 1:41.76 in the 800 m, while K. Bednarek did the same in the 200 m, with 19.62 s. F. Cherotich won the women's 3000 m steeple with 8:55.82 just ahead of D. Lemngole 8:55.94 and P. Chemutai 8:58.28.

It was a great competition, and I am telling myself that I should not set my expectations too high for the Brussels DL final. As for the famous Ultimate Championship, the one with the curtailed, arbitrarily fixed programme, my expectations are definitely lower. (I would, however, be glad to be proved wrong).

Track events at the Birmingham Europeans

I have mixed feelings about this year’s European Athletics Championships. On the one hand, the standard was very high, as it usually is when the Europeans do not coincide with the Olympic Games. When the two competitions are held in the same year, many (perhaps most) of the leading athletes prefer to save themselves for the Olympics and the European Championships consequently become somewhat watered down.

On the other hand, this year’s organisation was far from entirely satisfactory, both in the decisions made before the championships and in those taken while they were under way.( We shall come to those in due course). Take, for instance, the absurd rule concerning qualification races. It was decided that the 12 fastest entrants in the sprint events would proceed directly to the semifinals, while the remaining athletes would have to run in qualifying heats, from which the 12 fastest times would advance. This sounds perfectly reasonable on paper. But reality turned it into a disaster. Birmingham was plagued by strong and changing winds throughout the competition. The three qualifying heats of the women’s 100 m, for example, were run with winds of 3.2, 1.8 and 0.0 m/s respectively. So how exactly are times obtained under such different conditions to be compared? It is hardly surprising that the fastest time of the championships was recorded in the first of those races.

Amy Hunt was the queen of these championships, winning four gold medals: two individually and two in the 4 × 100 m relays. In the 100 m, after a sluggish start, she had to chase Ewa Swoboda all the way to the finish line, winning 11.00 to 11.02, with the surprising Delphine Nkansa third in 11.06. Hunt was more at ease over her speciality distance, the 200 m, which she won in 22.19. 

Rhasidat Adeleke made a last-minute comeback from injury, too late to be fully prepared for her speciality event, the 400 m. Nevertheless, she won silver in the 200 m, finishing ahead of Dina Asher-Smith, 22.28 to 22.29, thanks to a powerful finish.

As expected, Great Britain won the women’s 4 × 100 m in 42.05, well clear of Switzerland, in 43.12, and Poland, in 43.15. For the first time in European Championship history, a mixed 4 × 100 m was also held, with a direct final involving the eight best teams. Great Britain took no risks and fielded its strongest possible quartet: Jeremiah Azu, Dina Asher-Smith, Zharnel Hughes and Amy Hunt. They won in a European record of 39.97, becoming only the second sub-40 team in the world. Hunt’s split was an impressive 9.86. Germany and Spain followed in 40.11 and 40.42 respectively.

Marcell Jacobs entered the men’s 100 m final as the clear favourite after recording the fastest semifinal time. Alas, 50 m into the race he had to withdraw because of yet another hamstring injury. R. Glave and J. Azu produced a British one-two, 10.06 to 10.16, with the bronze medal going to O. Ansah in 10.19. Ansah was to demonstrate his superiority in the 200 m, which he won in 19.95, finishing two metres ahead of Hughes, who ran 20.16. A long wait followed while the judges examined the photo-finish. In the end, the bronze medal was shared by E. Desalu and T. Mumenthaler in 20.26, as it proved impossible to separate them even to millisecond precision: both were given 20.251. The 100 m was interesting for another reason: it was the first time I had seen the new replacement rule applied. Hinchliffe had qualified for the final but withdrew because of injury. He was replaced by D. Kopec, who had finished ninth in the semifinals.

Great Britain won the men’s 4 × 100 m in 38.45, ahead of Germany, in 38.64, and Belgium, in 38.70. The Greek team also managed to qualify for the final, finishing sixth in the earlier round.

The women’s 400 m was a very high-level event. Five athletes ran under 50 seconds in the semifinals, with N. Bukowiecka recording a season’s best of 49.57. (Had Mawdsley not injured herself a few weeks before the Europeans, it might have been an excellent opportunity for her to break the 50-second barrier). The final, however, was an entirely different race. H. Jaeger crushed the opposition with a devastating sustained sprint, winning in 49.04, ahead of Bukowiecka, in 50.04, and L. Klaver, in 50.15. L. M. Manuel was a disappointing fourth in 50.86, despite having run 49.81 in the semifinals.

    

    

Matthew Hudson-Smith was the favourite for the men’s 400 m title and duly won in 44.17. In the semifinals, however, I had noticed M. A. Kounta, who won his heat in a personal best of 44.38, and I was expecting something good from him in the final. He did not disappoint—one of the rare French athletes to surpass himself—winning silver in 44.40, ahead of J. Phijffers, in 44.41.

Italy won the men’s 4 × 400 m relay after resisting a late assault from Great Britain, 2:59.16 to 2:59.19. Perhaps putting Hudson-Smith on the first leg rather than the anchor was a tactical mistake by the British team. The Netherlands managed to push Belgium out of the medals, 2:59.49 to 2:59.51, thanks to a 43.59 anchor leg by Phijffers. The Dutch did not take any risks in the women’s 4 × 400 m relay, entrusting the anchor to Femke Bol, who ran 49.50. Klaver had also run 49.50 on the second leg. In the end, the Netherlands won in 3:21.10, ahead of Great Britain, in 3:21.68, and Italy, in 3:23.57.

The mixed 4 × 400 m relay was also run as a direct final, with the eight best teams. Once Warholm had completed the first leg for Norway, the Netherlands took the lead through Klaver, despite a superb 50.8 leg by A. Iuel. But on the anchor leg nobody could resist Jaeger’s finish. She brought Norway to gold in 3:09.62, while Great Britain snatched silver from the Dutch, 3:10.47 to 3:10.77.

M. English set a new championship record of 1:43.49 in the men’s 800 m semifinals. Those semifinals also saw the reigning champion, G. Tual, eliminated. English went on to win the final, in which M. Burgin did not participate because of injury and was not replaced—probably because his withdrawal came too late.

I was going to title the paragraph on the women’s 800 m “The Audrey Werro scandal”. On reflection, however, it is clear that Werro herself is not to blame. She fell in the semifinals, and, to my mind, that should have meant that she could not participate in the final. The claim that contact with Bourgoin’s hand caused her fall sounds like a justification invented after the event. (I will not include any link to the several existing videos. You can track them down yourselves and shape your own opinion). 

The matter is quite simple. Lord Sebastianhas made it clear that commercial opportunities, broadcasting and sponsorship agreements are of great importance to him. He therefore could not afford to deprive the championships of the race that perhaps everybody was waiting for. (On the other hand, excluding Russian athletes from Athletics, being prepared to oppose the IOC’s decisions concerning their reinstatement, and fighting the Russian appeal before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (all while rejecting the suggestion that this policy is politically motivated, which it plainly is) is something he tries to present as a defence of “the integrity of competition”). Well, I think that the integrity of the competition suffered a serious blow in Birmingham. Werro was allowed to run in the final, Keely Hodgkinson could not respond, and they finished in 1:54.81 and 1:55.01 respectively. Femke Bol was third in 1:55.54. (And, frankly, I wonder whether Bol’s decision to move up to the 800 m was the right one. Admittedly, she was not the winner of the 400 m hurdles. But will she ever win the 800 m? For the time being, she occupies 20th place on the all-time list).

The 1500 m races were rather uneventful. S. Nillessen, wearing a ridiculous nose clip, prevailed in a tactical men’s race in 3:35.70. Two world champions, Josh Kerr and I. Nader, finished sixth and 12th respectively. Georgia Hunter-Bell won the women’s race in 4:07.78, while the reigning champion, A. Guillemot, finished fourth.

The 5000 m marked Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s return to competition, and he did not disappoint. He let the other runners set the pace and, when they all reached the final straight, unleashed his familiar sprint to win in 13:15.29. Gressier, who had looked like the favourite to many (including myself) finished just outside the medals. He did manage to take bronze in the 10000 m, thanks to his finish, in a race dominated by A. Almgren, who won in a championship record of 27:23.44, defeating the reigning champion, D. Lobalu.

    

N. Battocletti has no serious opposition at European level. She made winning both the 5000 and 10000 m almost a formality, launching her sprint 200–250 m from the finish and leaving nobody capable of following her.

Despite the presence of the world champion, D. Kambundji, the favourites for the women’s 100 m hurdles were P. Skrzyszowska and Nadine Visser. They fought all the way to the finish, after which another long wait ensued while the photo-finish officials tried to separate them.

In the end, the title went to Visser (those who follow my blog know that she is one of my favourite athletes) by a single millisecond: 12.668 to 12.669. (I have written on several occasions about the absurdity of milliseconds, so there is no need to repeat myself here). L. Bapté managed to beat Kambundji to the bronze medal, 12.73 to 12.75.

Like Visser, J. Joseph added the European outdoor title to the indoor one, winning in an underwhelming 13.12 (given the recent progress in the high hurdles). M. Trajkovic reached the final, but some early mistakes over the hurdles prevented him from being competitive, and he had to settle for eighth place.

E. Zapletalova won the women’s 400 m hurdles in 52.91, a time that looks rather ordinary by today’s standards. I had expected something better from Lina Nielsen and A. Iuel, who finished sixth and seventh respectively. On the other hand, I was impressed by the finish of F. Binta Diallo, who took the bronze medal behind E. Newnham, 53.33 to 53.55.

L. Warholm had no serious competition in the men’s 400 m hurdles, winning in a championship record of 46.63. I had noticed E. Agyekum in the semifinals, and he did not disappoint in the final, taking silver in 47.87, ahead of I. Nezir, in 48.26. The latter’s bronze was Turkey’s only medal of the championships.

F. Ruppert, the European record-holder in the 3000 m steeplechase and the only European to have run under eight minutes, won a slow and tactical race in 8:25.33. R. Querinjean provided Luxembourg with its first medal of the championships, taking silver in 8:25.61.

G. F. Krause added a third European gold medal to her collection, following the titles she won in 2016 and 2018. Let us not forget, either, her bronze in 2012 and silver in 2024. A. Finot, who had beaten Krause in Rome in 2024, had to settle for silver this time. Their times were 9:12.69 and 9:14.24 respectively.

I did not follow the marathon from start to finish, but began watching at around 30 km. By then, A. Vainio had established a substantial lead over the chasing group, and it was steadily increasing. She finished in a championship record of 2:22:26, a good five minutes ahead of the silver medallist. And, in case you are wondering, as I was, she is not related to Martti Vainio, the 1978 European 10000 m champion.

Things were different in the men’s race, although A. Petros had taken control shortly after halfway. He did not build a safe lead, however, and the remaining runners actually began to gain on him during the final kilometre. He held on to win in a championship record of 2:09:11, with the first ten athletes arriving less than a minute behind him.

PS1. You know that I do not comment on the race-walking events, but I will make a small exception this time. The new marathon and half-marathon distances were introduced in Birmingham, for the first time at an official championship. M. Pérez set a new world record of 1:30:06 in the half-Marathon.

PS2. People have been aslking about examples of bad organisation. I can give you two images

The 43.23 was regularly appearing in the place of the score of the second attempt in feild events during the first morning Fortunately it was corrected for the evening session. The next image

is a screenshot from the third morning. The three words ISO MELT REEL is video-techncal jargon meaning roughly a highlights video made from the camera’s raw footage. Now, why did we, spectators, had to see this, it's something I have no answer to (apart from sloppiness on behalf of the organisers). 

The steeplechase mile: one and done (part 2 of "where did innovation go?" mini series)

In a recent article, where I returned to the subject of (nonexistent) innovation in Athletics, I wrote that I had seen a steeplechase mile only once. My memory had played a trick on me. In fact, I had watched two of them. The first was part of the farcical comedy that was the Fribourg Track Lab, a competition I hurried to forget. The second, however, was memorable for a completely different reason. It took place at the 2025 Diamond League meeting in Brussels, where a women’s steeplechase mile was organised with the participation of Winfred Yavi, the World and Olympic champion. Yavi did not disappoint. She won in 4:40.13, establishing the inaugural world record for the distance. She does not hold the world records for either the “canonical” 3000 m or the shorter 2000 m steeplechase. Those belong to the great Beatrice Chepkoech, with 8:44.32 and 5:47.42, respectively. Yet Yavi’s 8:44.39 and 5:56.83 place her firmly among the discipline’s best, especially over 3000 m, where she is only 0.07 seconds away from the world record.

And what happened next? Exactly what usually happens with World Athletics’ attempts at innovation: nothing. The event was promptly forgotten. No other steeplechase mile has been organised since, and none appears to be planned in the near future. That is a pity, because it could have been an interesting event.

Actually, that is precisely why it got me thinking. What other distances could be used for steeplechase races? In my article, a follow-up to “Metric versus Imperial”, I examined several possible alternatives for track events. One of them was a 5000 m steeplechase. I remember presenting the idea to the late great Greek steeplechase champion G. Papavasileiou, who found it particularly attractive. He even suggested that, given the difficulty of a race involving more than 50 obstacle jumps, it might be more interesting than the standard 3000 m event.

But the steeplechase mile also raises the opposite question. Could the event be made shorter still? Before answering that, let us look at how the steeplechase is run today. The water jump cannot, for obvious reasons, be placed on the main track. It is normally located in the infield, producing “steeple laps” of roughly 390 to 395 m. It can also be placed outside the track, which produces laps of around 420 m. Each lap contains five jumps, including the water jump. As a result, the 3000 m race contains 35 obstacles, 28 ordinary barriers and seven water jumps. The 2000 m race contains 23, 18 barriers and five water jumps.

How short could the race become before it stopped making sense as a steeplechase? My guess is that 1000 m is the lower limit. To make the format work, the race would have to begin with a water jump. Unlike the 3000 m race, it would need a water jump at the beginning, and there would be three water jumps in total, producing 12 obstacles altogether. That does not sound unrealistic. It would attract a different type of athlete, and the battle for position at the first water jump could provide a particularly entertaining feature.

Now let us remove the water jump but keep the steeplechase obstacles. If we also fiddle with the distances, could an 800 m hurdles race make sense? The average distance between jumps in steeplechase races is roughly 80 m. Over two laps, that would give us ten jumps. There is, however, a complication. The rules require at least 70 m from the start to the first obstacle and at least 40 m from the final obstacle to the finish. Applying the same principle here, we must leave enough room at both ends of the race. So this is what I propose:

There would be six obstacles per lap, with an average separation of 66.67 m. The first obstacle, on the right-hand bend, would be removed on the opening lap, giving the athletes roughly 120 m before the first jump. They could begin in lanes and move to the inside after 100 m. The final obstacle, the second one on the finishing straight, would be removed on the second lap, leaving more than 80 m for the finishing sprint. The result would be an 800 m “hurdles” race with ten jumps in total. And once we accept that such a race is feasible, why not consider relays as well? But relays deserve an article of their own, so I will leave them for another post.

It is clear from the above considerations that there is room for real innovation. Not just new events, but new events that could create new specialists. Will World Athletics ever take such a road? Unfortunately, I do not think so.

The 2026 Women's Decathlon championships

The 2026 edition of World Women's Decathlon Championships were held in Oberlin (Ohio) on July 8&9. And it was a smashing success. You can find all the details on the Décapassion blog, curated by my friends Frédéric and Pierre Gousset. 

Just after the first day I exchanged some mail with them and we shared our optimism on a possible 8000+ final score. Unfortunately that was not to be. But still, overall, that was the best women's decathlon ever. N. Boon who had won the 2025 edition last year with 7451 points improved her score to 7714 but had to contend herself with bronze medal. R. Bidois added close to 500 points to her score and still lost on place in the final classification. And I should point out that C. Newton-Smith who won the event with 7900 is a 6200 points heptathlete. We can only dream what a 6600 heptathlete could do with a one season preparation. (But, to be fair, Newton-Smith has always been practicing the pole vault, so she had only to learn how to throw the discus).

There are some excellent photos on the Décapassion Facebook page. What I would like to share here are the results. There were in fact two competitions staged at the same time, one for the elite and a promotional one with a good 50 participants overall. 

What is really interesting is that almost all participants had a valid performance in pole vault. Slowly this discipline is becoming a women's event (as prophesied in an old article of mine). And what I find astonishing is the second place, in the promotional event, of a 13-year old competitor. Lila Neese is a budding pole vaulter but I cross my fingers that she pursue her decathlon adventure in the coming years. Clearly the next generation of female decathletes, the ones who will practice the event in WA-sanctioned competitions and championships, is here already. Let us hope that lord Sebastian sees the light.

Where did innovation go?

World Athletics loves the word innovation. Type it into the search box on the World Athletics website and you will find articles going back to 2019. (That is already an improvement: until recently, the search function was in shambles and finding anything on the site was an achievement in itself). Unfortunately, the early articles offer little more than polished journalistic blah-blah. Things become slightly more interesting with World Athletics’ article on its “four-year business strategy”. The article links to a substantial document entitled Pioneering Change (2024-2027), which sets out the organisation’s strategic priorities for the future of Athletics.

It is an interesting document, or rather, a profoundly uninteresting one if you actually care about Athletics. It reads less like a sporting strategy than a marketing brochure. Its central ideas are familiar:

Make events faster-paced and more exciting for millions of people watching in stadiums and at home.

Increase innovation throughout the sport and bring athletes and fans closer together.

Turn athletes into the stars they deserve to be through competitions and social media.

Create more inclusive and accessible ways to enter Athletics as an athlete, coach, referee, volunteer, or administrator.

The problem is that none of this is specific to Athletics. Replace “stadium”, “athlete”, and “coach” with the corresponding words from almost any other field and the same paragraph would still work. This is not a strategy for Athletics. It is a collection of general ambitions expressed in corporate language.

The concrete plan is to “reconfigure the summer season to conclude each season with a global championship” and to launch “a new global championship in non-World Championship years”. The latter is the Ultimate Championship, to be held in September with a truncated and strangely unbalanced programme whose logic escapes me. The most revealing passage appears under the fourth strategic axis:

Discipline reform to see if we can improve the entertainment and excitement value of the sport to help future-proof athletics, with a particular focus on field disciplines, race walks and combined events.

Race walking has already provided us with a useful demonstration of what World Athletics means by innovation. First came the 35 km event. It did not take a high-level coach to see the problem. The 20 km and 35 km distances were too close together. An athlete could prepare for both without having to specialise in either. The new event filled a place on the programme, but it did not create a genuinely distinct discipline. A few years later, the 35 km was abandoned and replaced by the marathon, while the 20 km was replaced by the half-marathon. Innovation, apparently, sometimes means undoing the previous innovation. The mixed relay was at least a worthwhile idea. I find its total distance and its distribution bizarre, with legs of 11.45 km for the first man, 10 km for the first woman, 10 km for the second man, and 10.745 km for the second woman. Yet I find the event interesting. As regular readers know, I am a fan of mixed relays.

The reference to combined events gave me the chills. It probably refers to the proposed introduction of the Gundersen method, in which the final 1500 m would be run as a pursuit race. The athletes would start at intervals determined by the points difference accumulated in the preceding events. This proposal is not innovative. It is simply a way of removing the combined event’s defining feature, namely the competition between different disciplines. The decathlon is not a preliminary contest followed by a final 1500 m race. It is a competition in ten events. Turning the last event into a pursuit race would distort the contest rather than improve it. I have explained in detail why this is a bad idea and have presented the technical arguments in a separate article. I strongly recommend it if the subject interests you.

Jasmine Sawyers winning the 2026 Commonwealth Games' long jump

The document then offers a catalogue of possible innovations.

The first is the mixed 4x100 m relay. I advocated this event in a 2017 article. I had to wait until 2025 to see the relay run in the obvious order: man, woman, man, woman. Before that, World Athletics preferred the woman, woman, man, man arrangement, apparently because its decision-makers could not accept the possibility that a woman and a man could match each other’s speed in successive legs.

Then there is the steeplechase mile. Have you seen one? I have. Once. That was the beginning and the end of my experience with the event. Nobody is talking about it now.

“Improved efficiency of measurements” is another fine example of strategic vagueness. Which measurements? If World Athletics means timing in sprint events, I have already discussed the issue in my Imperative Changes series. If it means wind measurement, that subject too has been discussed in detail. In either case, nothing seems to have emerged from the proposal.

There is also a proposal to use new technology to settle ties in the jumping events. If this means the spectacle staged at the Fribourg “Future of Athletics” competition, where the highest point reached by the vaulter over the bar was measured, then I am relieved that the idea has disappeared into thin air.

I will not spend much time on the proposal to review the weights of the women’s shot and javelin. It is hardly worth discussing. Women already throw the shot beyond 20 m, which is within the broad range of men’s performances. There is no convincing reason to change the weight of the implement. The javelin is a different matter. Reducing its weight to, say, 400 g might produce throws in the region of 80 m, but only if the lighter implement could be thrown with the same efficiency as the current 600 g javelin. That assumption is far from certain. A lighter javelin would also be more vulnerable to crosswinds, making the event less predictable rather than more exciting. If World Athletics really wants to reform the throwing events, it should begin by confronting the records established before effective doping control. We may have to wait a very long time before a woman throws 76 m in the discus again.

The Fribourg “Future of Athletics” Track Lab also featured a women’s 100 m hurdles race with no lower reaction-time limit. This was presented as innovation. It was not. If World Athletics genuinely wants to experiment, it could lower the threshold to 70 ms, a value below what is normally considered a possible human reaction time. At least that would eliminate the absurdity of disqualifying athletes for reacting in 99 ms, as has happened in recent years. And if the organisation really wants to improve the women’s hurdles, it could raise the hurdle height to 91 cm. Keeping it at 84 cm suggests that the people making decisions in Athletics are still influenced by the Victorian idea that women are the weaker sex.

I will not discuss the take-off zone for the horizontal jumps at length. I have written about it several times, and the argument seems obvious to me. In one high-level official competition, unlike the Fribourg slapstick experiment, the number of fouls reportedly fell to 13%, compared with a historical average of 32%. The majority of observers appear to support the change. The exception is the group that matters most to the existing system: athletes and coaches. This is the real obstacle to innovation in modern Athletics. People do not want to surrender an advantage they have worked hard to acquire. Long and triple jumpers have spent years learning to hit the board accurately. They understandably do not want that investment to become irrelevant overnight.

The same logic keeps the women’s decathlon out of the stadium. Heptathletes and their coaches do not want to risk moving from the elite of the discipline to the also-rans once the event includes the discus and pole vault. But this is not a reason to postpone the women’s decathlon. It is a reason to introduce it. Every new event changes the distribution of expertise, and athletes eventually adapt to the demands of the discipline. The current dominance of the heptathlon should not be allowed to determine the future of women’s combined events.

And now we come to the question in the title. Where did innovation go? Nowhere. It never existed as a coherent programme, and it was never intended to. What World Athletics calls innovation is mostly presentation, repackaging, and occasional experimentation. The sport’s fundamental problems remain untouched. The organisation produces strategies, slogans, workshops, laboratories, test events, and press releases. But a genuine innovation would require something more difficult: deciding what Athletics is for, identifying which parts of the sport need changing, and accepting that meaningful change will upset people who benefit from the status quo. That is the part missing from the programme.

Zappas and the Revival of the Olympics (part 3 of "the real story of the Olympics")

Soutsos’ appeal for the revival of the Olympic Games struck a chord in many Greek hearts. Unfortunately, it did not move those who actually had the power to act, except for one man, and what an exception he was.

Evangelis Zappas was born in a village of northern Epirus (a region that today belongs to Albania). As a young man he fought in the Revolution of 1821, and after Greece gained its independence from Ottoman rule, he emigrated to Romania, where he became a highly successful businessman. He amassed a great fortune and, inspired by Soutsos’ campaign for an Olympic revival, decided to finance it. In 1856 he proposed to the Greek government a permanent revival of the ancient Olympic Games, offering King Otto a very substantial sum, but he received no reply. Soutsos, who was aware of Zappas’ initiative, published an article referring to his own earlier efforts—the 1835 memorandum and his 1845 speech—where he had suggested that an exhibition might accompany the Olympic Games, probably a concession to Otto’s government. The article bore a telling title: Evangelis Zappas. Minister Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, who had initially considered Zappas’ proposal preposterous, soon changed tone. He wrote thanking Zappas for his splendid idea but suggested instead the creation of Industrial Olympic Games, focusing on agriculture, craftsmanship, and industry. It is quite clear that Otto’s government wished to redirect Zappas’ generosity toward less athletic purposes. Zappas agreed to fund these Industrial Olympics, but he remained firm in his wish to restore genuine athletic contests. He wanted the ancient Panathenaic Stadium in Athens rebuilt in marble and provided the necessary funds for its restoration. That would not happen during his lifetime, however, and the stadium was still unfinished for the 1896 Games. It reached its all‑marble form—the Kallimarmaro—only around 1900.

The first Zappas Olympiad took place in 1859. Since the Panathenaic Stadium could not yet be used (systematic excavations would not begin until 1869), the events were held in a square in Athens. The King and Queen attended, along with members of the government, the municipal council, and thousands of spectators. Yet the result was a disappointment. The atmosphere was closer to that of a fair than a proper competition, the organization was poor, and the police had no idea how to manage such crowds. One story even tells of a policeman who abandoned his post to take part in a race. The fiasco cast a shadow on athletics and public sport.

It would take more than a decade for another Olympiad to be organized. By then Zappas had died (in 1865), but his cousin Konstantinos, his heir and devoted follower, continued his work. In 1870 the second Zappas Olympiad took place, and this time it was a great success. The freshly excavated Panathenaic Stadium was ready to host the events, giving them both dignity and symbolic weight. Many elements that we now associate with modern Olympic Games appeared for the first time at this event: an opening ceremony, a musical anthem, proper athletic attire, timekeeping, medals and diplomas for the first three athletes, sponsors, and even a closing ceremony. One feature quite foreign to the ancient Games was the presence of women among the spectators.

The success of the second Olympiad encouraged plans for a third, held in 1875. Unfortunately it proved a failure, despite the involvement of Ioannis Fokianos, who played a major role in the birth of physical education in Greece. Two main causes explain this setback. First, the Olympian Committee in charge of Zappas’ inheritance shifted its focus toward industry and the arts. Money was squandered, and the Olympic pavilion that Zappas had imagined became the Zappeion, a building for exhibitions. Second, an anti‑athletic faction complained that in the previous Olympiad athletes from the working class had been allowed to compete—and even to win. They pressed for limiting participation to youth from the “cultured class”. Consequently, only university students were admitted in 1875. A mere twenty‑four athletes competed, the crowd was much smaller, and the royal family did not attend. The press was merciless, and a disheartened Fokianos left Athens for Thessaloniki (still under Turkish rule), where he remained until 1879.

The failure of the third Olympiad gave the Olympian Committee a convenient excuse to postpone the next one. The fourth and last Zappas Olympiad did not take place until 1889. When the Zappeion was inaugurated in 1888, a royal decree ordered that the next Olympiad be held together with a commercial exposition, but the athletic competitions were twice postponed. In the end, Fokianos himself organized them and paid the expenses out of his pocket. The events were not held in the Panathenaic Stadium but in Fokianos’ small gymnasium. On the first day the crowd was so large that the contests could not proceed, so they were postponed again and finally held a few days later, with just thirty athletes taking part (mostly Fokianos’ own students).

That was the end of the Zappas Olympiads. Zappas’ dream of an Olympiad in Greece every four years remained just a dream, seized and rebranded by a French baron who convinced the world that the idea had been his all along. Meanwhile, the vast funds Zappas had set aside for athletics were diverted by the “Olympian Committee” toward projects they deemed of greater importance—though one may well ask, for whom?

Yet Greece was not alone in its attempts to resurrect the Olympic ideal. In the next post, we turn to England—and to the small town of Much Wenlock, where a local doctor’s vision would prove surprisingly influential on the Olympic story to come.

Why do we run anticlockwise?

In writing this title, I realized that it may become unintelligible to future generations. As digital clocks replace analog ones, we may need a better term altogether. Mathematics, of course, does not depend on clocks to define the direction around a circle; what we call anticlockwise is simply the positive direction. 

What spurred this post was an article I came across in which one of the co-authors was K. Nishinari. I have known Nishinari-san for many years. I have visited and lectured in his laboratory at the University of Tokyo, and we even once planned a collaboration (which, unfortunately, never materialized). He describes himself as a “jamologist,” a specialist in “jams” (traffic jams, but not only). I still remember one of his seminars, in which he explained how to avoid jams in inkjet printers. I had to follow the seminar in Japanese, a language I do not speak, yet I managed to understand the topic thanks to Nishinari-san’s excellent presentation.

This time, the question was whether there is a left-right symmetry breaking when we move in crowds. In other words, do we tend to favor clockwise or anticlockwise turns? (Perhaps I should point out to my American readers that what I call anticlockwise is what they would call counterclockwise). The article, based on a Spanish-Japanese collaboration, was published in Nature Communications. The authors found that an anticlockwise bias in roaming pedestrians is a robust and reproducible feature. It is independent of crowd size, boundary effects, laterality traits (handedness, footedness, or eye dominance), and social norms. (Admittedly, the study participants were children and young adults, which raises the question of what would happen in the case of individuals with functional limitations). More importantly, the authors showed that the anticlockwise preference originates in individual locomotor tendencies rather than in collective interactions. (This runs counter to the common belief that group-level behaviours are more than the sum of individual behaviours).

The authors do not offer an explanation for this phenomenon, but they do mention some preliminary studies of blindfolded walking, which resulted in a circular motion in one direction “due to accumulating drift in their subjective straight-ahead, possibly linked to vestibular noise”. I will not delve further into this excellent article from the Spain-Japan collaboration. If you are interested, you can find it here.

Back to the anticlockwise preference. If you are, like myself, a swimmer who has to share a training lane with more than one other swimmer, thereby requiring everyone to adopt a circulation that keeps the dividing line always on the same side of the body, it seems natural that the resulting circular motion should be anticlockwise. I cannot claim that this is a spontaneous choice: it may well be a learned behaviour. Still, I have never seen anyone turn clockwise in a swimming lane.

But let us start at the beginning. As always, we have no technical details concerning ancient Athletics. The Ancient Olympics began with the στάδιον (stadion), a run from one end of the stadium to the other. Soon, the δίαυλος (diaulos) was introduced, in which one had to run to the end of the stadium and back. Unfortunately, nothing is known about how the athletes made their turn. On the other hand, literature does exist concerning ancient chariot and horse races, and there it is clear that in the ancient Hippodrome the races proceeded anticlockwise. (I once read a curious story according to which, during Roman times, chariot races in the Circus Maximus were initially run clockwise and later changed by an edict of Nero, after he was struck by the whip of a charioteer. But I would not attach much credibility to that account).

The ancient Greek tradition did not survive into the revival of modern sport. When athletics re-emerged in the nineteenth century, clockwise running was still common, and Oxford and Cambridge are reported to have practiced it well into the twentieth century (which is hard to reconcile with the fact that the direction became standardized soon after the London Olympics of 1908). At the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, track races were run clockwise; the same was true in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904. A short video from the 1906 Athens Olympics survives, but it shows only the 110 m hurdles; even so, the layout of the track and the direction of the race suggest that clockwise running was still in place at that time. By then, however, several countries had already adopted the anticlockwise convention, and complaints were being voiced. In London, athletes therefore ran with 'the left hand inside', and some sources even mention an IOC decision in 1913 to formalize anticlockwise running. That attribution is somewhat puzzling, since the International Amateur Athletic Federation had already been founded in 1912 and was the body normally responsible for technical matters. In any case, anticlockwise track running has now been the standard for more than a century, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon. And the article by Nishinari et al. provides a scientific rationale for a convention that may once have seemed purely arbitrary.

A great long jump competition in Monaco

This year’s Diamond League season has marked the return of Miltiadis Tentoglou to the top of the men’s long jump hierarchy. His sixth-place finish at the World Indoor Championships in March had raised legitimate doubts: would 2026 extend the disappointing trajectory of 2025? That concern was not unfounded. The 2025 season had indeed been a poor one by his standards. It began with a fifth-place finish at the World Indoors and, despite a world-leading 8.46 m at the European Athletics Team Championships, the rest of the season steadily deteriorated, culminating in sixth place at the Diamond League Final and a disappointing eleventh at the World Championships. The contrast with 2026 could hardly be sharper. Tentoglou opened with 8.46 m in Xiamen, followed by 8.49 m in Cyprus, another world-leading mark at the time (later surpassed by Simon Ehammer’s remarkable 8.51 m in his decathlon world best at Götzis). A sequence of high-level performances followed, including a wind-assisted 8.54 m in June.

Then came Monaco.

Tentoglou produced a performance that reasserted his dominance unequivocally. He opened with 8.44 m, already sufficient for victory, followed with 8.52 m and 8.49 m, and concluded with a final-round leap of 8.61 m, a meeting record, surpassing Iván Pedroso’s longstanding mark, and improving his own world lead.

The competition itself reached an extraordinary level of depth. All eight athletes exceeded 8 metres, including Mattia Furlani on his return from injury. More strikingly, this was the first recorded competition in which five athletes surpassed 8.30 m.

This naturally raised a historical question: how often have all eight finalists in a major competition exceeded 8 metres?

The most immediate example is the Paris 2024 Olympic final. Tentoglou won with 8.48 m, ahead of Wayne Pinnock (8.36 m) and Mattia Furlani (8.34 m), with Ehammer fourth at 8.20 m, all four present again in Monaco. The eighth-place finisher, Jianan Wang, recorded 8.03 m. The same benchmark had been reached in earlier Olympic finals: in Rio 2016, K. Gomis placed eighth with 8.05 m, and in Sydney 2000,  the eighth-place mark was exactly 8.00 m. Turning to the World Championships, one might expect the iconic 1991 Tokyo final, defined by the Powell–Lewis duel, to qualify. Surprisingly, it does not: the eighth-place mark there was 7.99 m. Instead, the deepest competition appears to be the 1987 World Championships in Rome, where no fewer than twelve athletes exceeded 8 metres. King Carl won with a championship record of 8.67 m (a record that would not survive the following championships), while eighth place required 8.10 m and twelfth exactly 8.00 m.

Yet this competition is remembered less for its depth than for the controversy that unfolded in its final moments. Lewis had led from the outset with 8.67 m, with Robert Emmiyan second at 8.53 m. Larry Myricks held third with 8.33 m after five rounds, while Giovanni Evangelisti was fourth with 8.19 m. Then, in the final round, Evangelisti was credited with 8.38 m, moving him into the bronze medal position.

The result was immediately met with disbelief. Evangelisti was a top-class athlete, he had jumped 8.43 m earlier that season and had been Olympic bronze medallist in 1984, but analysis of the available video footage suggests that his final jump was not even beyond 8 metres, with estimates placing it closer to 7.90 m. Myricks was unable to respond. Subsequent analysis from the Sports Institute in Köln even suggested that the final jumps of both Myricks and Jefferson may have been longer than officially recorded.

Protests followed, and investigations were conducted. The IAAF maintained that all measurements were correct, stating that “it is not possible to consider the hypothesis of different measurements, carried out at a later date, as integral to or substitute for the official measuring process”.

However, the matter did not end there. Sandro Donati, then a coach with the Italian national team, filed a police report alleging that officials from the Italian federation (FIDAL) had arranged for Evangelisti to secure a medal. According to Donati, immediately before the final round the two British technicians responsible for the electronic measuring system were reassigned to the pole vault, and the system was disconnected. All final-round jumps were then measured manually, with only Italian officials present. An inquiry by the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) ultimately supported Donati’s claims. Eight FIDAL officials were implicated, including the federation’s general secretary, a close associate of IAAF president Primo Nebiolo. Evangelisti’s mark was annulled, and Myricks was reinstated as bronze medallist. Donati, however, paid a professional price, losing his coaching position after bringing the matter to light.

I have previously written about the disgraceful conduct of Soviet officials during the triple jump at the 1980 Olympic Games. The events in Rome in 1987 suggest that such practices were not an isolated phenomenon. On the contrary, the actions of FIDAL officials show that this readiness to subvert competition extended well beyond the Soviet sphere.

Once again, I find myself writing about Athletics Podium

This is not the first time I have highlighted this excellent site. I first introduced it in 2022, and returned to it in 2023 following their article on the African Games. Earlier this year, I discussed their “best of the best of 2025” list—an original and refreshing approach that did not follow the usual World Athletics classification of track, field, and out-of-stadium events, nor my own method of listing the ten best athletes of each sex.

I had been planning yet another article simply encouraging regular visits to this remarkable site, one that, among my recommendations, is second only to the unique Décapassion, which speaks not only to my intellect but also to my heart, and which is curated by the Goussets, who over the years have become close friends.

In my article on the Balkan Games, I mentioned the excellent statistical booklet Athletics Podium prepared for the 2024 Balkaniad. This time, I intended to present their newly published first volume of African Athletics, authored by S. Erbay, the editor-in-chief of Athletics Podium. It is an impressive compilation of the top ten performances in every discipline over more than half a century, from 1970 to 2025. This first volume covers men’s events; it is reasonable to expect that a second volume devoted to women’s results will follow.

However, I kept postponing writing this piece—until a recent publication finally prompted me into action. The article announced the Pan American Athletics Championships, held at the end of June in Medellín, Colombia. As an athletics enthusiast, I naturally follow the websites of World Athletics and European Athletics on a daily basis. The situation is more complex when it comes to the Americas. There is no single continental federation comparable to European Athletics. Instead, countries are divided between NACAC (North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association) and Atletismo Sudamericano (the South American confederation). Their websites do not offer the same level of regular updates, and as a result I tend not to follow American regional competitions closely, knowing mainly those athletes who appear frequently on the global circuit. (On the other hand, Panamerican Sports is a well organised multisports organisation, with an active web site, where Athletics hold a place of honour).

I was particularly impressed that Athletics Podium provided timely and detailed coverage of these championships, offering a valuable and focused perspective. After the competition, they published a thorough review of what appears to have been the inaugural edition of these championships. I will not go into details about the event here. If you are interested (and you should be) I encourage you to visit Athletics Podium and read their coverage. While there, take the time to explore their other articles; I am confident you will quickly become a regular reader.

PS. If you wish to keep up with results such as those from Medellín, there is an excellent solution: subscribe to C. Baronet’s newsletter. It is free, and each week you receive a compilation of athletics results from around the world. The Panamerican championships, for example, were included in the fourth issue of the June newsletter. A glance through the results reveals occasional appearances by U.S. athletes, unsurprising, as the United States is a member of NACAC and eligible to compete. They typically send a B- or even C-level team. In Medellín managed to secure a few medals, albeit none of them gold.

The First Call for the Revival of the Olympics (part 2 of "the real story of the Olympics")

In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius I issued an edict putting an end to pagan festivals. As a consequence, the Olympics, dedicated to Zeus and intertwined with sacrificial rites and festivities, could no longer be held. Modern archaeological evidence suggests that the Games may have lingered into the 5th century, yet they were already in decline, and Theodosius’ decree merely drove another nail into their coffin.

The ancient Greek ideal of the body could not survive within a Christian empire. Christianity focused on the salvation of the soul, often to the neglect of the body, and anything associated with physical display or competition was viewed with suspicion. As a result, athletic pursuits faded through the Middle Ages. Although the Renaissance revived an appreciation for the human body and its beauty, it took time before sport regained social acceptance and began to develop again.

The Byzantine Empire rose and fell, its capital, Constantinople, ultimately falling to the Ottomans in 1453. The Ottoman Empire, which encompassed all of Greece, rose in power but was already in decline by the 19th century. In 1821, a revolution succeeded in liberating part of Greece from the Ottoman rule, giving birth to the modern Greek state. (The term 'modern' is used here merely to distinguish it from ancient Greece). Internal strife (long a national spécialité) led European powers to conclude that the Greeks were incapable of self-government. Consequently, they imported a Bavarian prince, Otto, to serve as the first king of Greece. During this period, poets and writers sought to inspire the population with renewed self-confidence by invoking the nation’s glorious classical past.

It was in this spirit that, in 1833, Panagiotis Soutsos, a Constantinople-born poet, politician, and journalist, published his poem Νεκρικός Διάλογος (Dialogue of the Dead).

In his poem, Soutsos presents the ghost of Plato addressing the modern Greeks, particularly the ministers of the throne, urging them to renounce their internal quarrels and divisions.

…Wretched people, think what your Greece once was!

Can you tell me, where are your ancient centuries?

Where are your beautiful Olympic contests?

Where are your Panathenaea?

Your great ceremonies, your great theatres?…  

This work was the first reference for the revival of the ancient Olympic Games, as part of the revival of the ancient Greek tradition.

Panagiotis Soutsos did not content himself merely with a poetic expression but took active steps toward the realization of these ideas. In 1834, he had the opportunity to promote his proposals in the form of a memorandum to the Minister of the Interior, Ioannis Kolettis, who, in turn, presented them to King Otto as his own. In the proposal he suggested that March 25th, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Greek war of independence, should be declared a national holiday and included thoughts on organizing grand festivals modeled on the Panhellenic Games of antiquity (the Olympic Games, the Isthmian, the Pythian, and the Nemean). The concluding lines of the memorandum referred to the splendour of the ancient Greek contests and to the essential reasons for their revival. The idea of marking March 25 as national holiday was approved, but the Olympic revival plans stalemated.

The memo failed to revive the Games. Yet it may have inspired a law passed in 1837 under King Otto, which called for a national festival featuring competitions in three categories: agriculture, industry, and the athletic games of ancient Greece: “discus, javelin, long jump, footraces, wrestling, and chariot racing” (though notably without the term 'Olympic'). Otto’s national festival, however, was never realized. On March 25, 1838, the inhabitants of the village Ag. Ioannis (ancient Letrina) near ancient Olympia, proposed to revive the Olympic Games on that very site. They envisioned holding the celebration every four years on March 25. This proposal, too, came to nothing. Seven years later, in 1845, Panagiotis Soutsos once again advocated for the Olympic revival in a public speech, but still without success.

The ideas of Soutsos would inspire both the people and later advocates of the revival. Dimitrios Vikelas characteristically notes that the notebooks containing Soutsos’s verses circulated from hand to hand and had a great influence on public opinion. 

The most direct recipient and continuer of Soutsos’s efforts, however, would be Evangelis Zappas. But this will be the subject of the next post.