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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Keep ‘Em Wanting More 🍿

The Diamond League returned last week with a bang. Or two bangs, more precisely: one in Lausanne, Switzerland and another in Silesia, Poland, two days and a few hundred miles apart.

After weeks of national and regional championships where programs are broken up by rounds and padded generously to facilitate doubling, a return to the two-hour straight-final format felt a bit like drinking from a fire hose. (In a good way!)

It caused performances like Letsile Tebogo’s 19.87, Masai Russell’s 12.27, and Marileidy Paulino’s 48.87 to fade into the background—not because they weren’t impressive, but because they were simply expected returns to form after a month off. Paulino, especially, deserves a few more flowers, as she clocked her sixth straight 48-second performance, something no woman in history has ever done.

Something else noticeable was the immediate and dramatic impact that the return of American and Caribbean athletes to the scene had on the dynamics of many events. Commonwealth Games and European Championships are fun because they showcase a subset of performers who don’t normally shine, particularly in the sprints, but the full come-one, come-all Diamond League format was a reminder that the sport is at its best the more global it is.

Rai Benjamin tested something resembling the schedule he may take on at World Ultimates, running 46.67 in the 400m hurdles on Friday in Lausanne then dipping under 44 seconds for the flat 400m for the first time, thanks to a duel with Collen Kebinatshipi. Benjamin ended up at 43.83 behind Kebinatshipi’s 43.56, a great showing from both men as the Motswana athlete picked up his fifth DL victory of the year and Benjamin moved to #3 on the 2026 descending order list in his secondary event.

Speaking of hurdlers: the U.S. men have a streak even longer than Kebinatshipi’s going. The last 14 winners of the 110m hurdles at DL races have all been American, the two most recent being Jamal Britt in Lausanne (13.13) and Ja’Kobe Tharp in Silesia (13.05). Tharp led a dominant 1-2-3-4 finish of U.S. hurdlers, which is impressive in and of itself… until you remember that the most decorated American hurdler of the last decade doesn’t even include Grant Holloway.

Kayla White beat European champ Amy Hunt in the 200m and Oblique Seville stared down Kenny Bednarek in a record-setting 100m, where for the first time in history all nine finishers broke 10 seconds. Of that group, five are from the Western Hemisphere and four hail from Africa. Lachlan Kennedy, the fastest Australian in history and Commonwealth silver medalist, was the first man out of the final. The man who beat him, Emmanuel Eseme, finished ninth in both the qualifying and the final. This isn’t to diminish the accomplishments of the athletes who’ve spent much of August satisfyingly entertaining us, but to highlight just how worthwhile the reunification of the sprinting fields has been.

But there were three events in particular where the thrill wasn’t just the results themselves, but what they suggest about the races to come, namely the Diamond League final and the World Ultimate Championships—plus another great meet tomorrow in Zurich.

Let’s start with the women’s 800m, an event we’ve (rightfully) spilled plenty of ink on already. Audrey Werro continued doing Audrey Werro things. She put on a show for the home crowd in Lausanne with a 1:55.33 victory, leading two of her countrywomen to top-five finishes as well, which suggests that a nation of 9 million residents may have a good shot one day at the world record in the 4x800m. It’s almost comical how routine Werro has made 1:55 seem this season, especially when you consider that one year ago this week was the first time she’d ever cracked 1:57.

No, the big news wasn’t that Werro won, or that she ran fast. It was the margin by which she broke the tape: just 0.08 seconds ahead of Femke Broeders-Bol, who claimed sole possession of the Dutch national record in 1:55.41, another personal-best. Coming down the homestretch, Werro tapped into the same strength she displayed in holding off Keely Hodgkinson to win in Birmingham, but Broeders-Bol looked even stronger, reeling her in and nearly pipping her at the line. It’s one thing for a 400m runner to move up in distance and enjoy some success; it’s quite another for her to close her final 100 meters in 14.8 seconds, faster than anyone else in a world-class field.

Unfortunately, the reunion of Werro, Broeders-Bol, and Hodgkinson will have to wait as the Olympic champ withdrew from Zurich. But fear not! We’ll get a Femke-Audrey rematch with the extra zest of World silver medalist Georgia Hunter Bell, herself a sub-1:55 runner. Now we get to see where Broeders-Bol stacks up against the Commonwealth Games champ, who hasn’t lost an 800m all year (although she’s only raced three). And based on how the end of that race in Lausanne played out, that 0.08 second gap may shrink even more, or *gasp* disappear entirely—and then we’ll truly have a flip of a three-sided coin on offer for World Ultimates and beyond.

Another event where the intrigue continues to build is the men’s 1500m. Last week, we asked a simple but open-ended question: “WTF is going on?” And after Silesia… we could say the same thing.

Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Cole Hocker made their highly-anticipated returns to the circuit after both battling setbacks earlier in the year (okay… in Ingebrigtsen’s wasn’t a setback so much as a two-year derailment via Achilles injury). For the first two-thirds of Sunday’s race, it looked like they’d Freaky-Friday’d each other, with Hocker getting out on the pacers’ heels early and Ingebrigtsen buried in the crowd, hoping to trust his kick. By the bell lap, Ingebrigtsen had made his way to the front, but he ended up a little boxed coming off the final turn as Phanuel Koech hit the front and then the rail.

All that jockeying for position shuffled Hocker backward while opening a lane for a perfectly-timed kick from 23-year-old Ethan Strand, who slingshotted onto the homestretch and put daylight between himself and the rest of the world en route to a 3:30.77 victory—the first of his short pro career on the DL circuit.

Regardless of who you’re rooting for in this field, this was probably the best-case scenario from a narrative standpoint. Hocker and Ingebrigtsen still finished well—finishing third and fourth, respectively, in a pair of 3:31s—but neither man has the pure fitness nor tactical prowess at the moment to dominate like they can at their best. They’ll go into tomorrow’s race against each other, Timothy Cheruiyot, and Yared Nuguse encouraged knowing they’re healthy and capable, but plenty hungry.

Strand, for his part, continues to show flashes of world-beating brilliance that suggests he’ll have a long and fruitful professional career—and one that may start delivering medals sooner rather than later. As his seventh place, 3:49.13 finish in London showed, he’s not quite at the level of racing the best milers in the world at their best at any time… but he’s getting there, improving in both confidence and consistency. Should he race his way into the Diamond League final (likely) or the World Ultimate Championship (less likely, but possible), it’s clear that his range of outcomes now includes winning.

Last, but certainly not least, the excitement coming out of Silesia could all come down to a very critical 0.05 seconds. That’s the margin by which Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, the World champion, beat Julien Alfred, the Olympic champion, in the 100m. That being said, Alfred’s reaction time to the starting gun was 0.04 seconds slower than MJW’s, meaning that the two sprint superstars covered 100 meters in nearly the same exact time. The detailed results show that Alfred and Jefferson-Wooden were between 0.03 and 0.05 seconds apart at every 10-meter checkpoint in the race, confirming what the eye test tells us: these two athletes are so, so close in ability right now that every time they line up it’s going to be a battle of inches.

That being said, Jefferson-Wooden has not lost a 100-meter race since the Paris Olympic final two years ago. So while the margins are small, there’s an undisputed #1 sprinter in the world right now. But for how long? It’s also worth mentioning that Sha’Carri Richardson finished third in what she called her “worst race of the season,” and the U.S. champ was 0.01 seconds behind her training partner at Pre. They’re also 0.01 seconds apart by season’s best (Richardson is ahead at 10.77), and even though they just raced head-to-head-to-head, it doesn’t feel like those results are set in stone. Quite the opposite.

Should Richardson and Alfred bring their best stuff, MJW will in turn need to bring her best stuff to stay undefeated, which means that results with multiple runners under 10.70 feels like a distinct possibility. That’s only happened once before in history, when Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce beat Elaine Thompson-Herah in Lausanne in 2021, shortly after the latter’s second Olympic title. That was a race between two of the all-time greats at the top of their games, and yet it doesn’t feel like hyperbole to say that we might see something similar before the year is out.

One of the oldest adages in showbusiness is that you want to leave the audience wanting more, and last weekend’s results did just that. Putting on a performance that doesn’t let down the crowd and makes them even more excited to shell out for tickets to the next one is a tricky kind of alchemy, but that’s exactly what Silesia and Lausanne delivered. Sure, we were drinking from the firehose earlier, but we’re still thirsty, and that’s going to make the next few weeks of track and field very satisfying.

The Exception That Proves The Rule

Rules were made to be broken, especially if you’re the one who made the rules. That seemed to be what the legal minds at World Athletics thought when they carved out a near-perfect loophole: “what if we put in a rule that says Seb Coe can do whatever he wants?” They gave him nearly unlimited power to dictate the fields at the World Ultimate Championships… but they should have given him more!

The Exceptional Invitation to World Ultimates was intended to max out at one per event. But we quickly learned, well, it wasn’t enough. Aside from a cohort of Hungarian athletes—given spots as thanks to Budapest for hosting the party—and a well-deserving Gianmarco Tamberi in the high jump, there was an impossible decision for Coe to make: Josh Kerr or Jakob Ingebrigtsen? So he just said “screw it, let ‘em both in.”

Although the field has been expanded to 13 athletes to avoid bumping someone deserving out, surely the likes of Ethan Strand and Phanuel Koech are wondering, “what about me?” But for the large majority of fans the Kerr and Ingebrigtsten news was received quite warmly because it’s a match-up that we all want to see—given their rivalry, the presence of both in the race adds some serious spice in addition to even more talent. And with this decision World Athletics is giving us a nod and a wink to remind us: this is an entertainment product!

Given the precedent and bylaws surrounding the Olympics and World Championships, this sort of leniency would never fly at a regular global championship. But Ultimates is not about fairness and should you need a reminder of that then just ask the shot putters, who will be watching from the couch like the rest of us. Even at its least conventional, track and field is thankfully not the Savannah Bananas. The competition itself is still serious. But with this move, we are veering into UFC territory, which is very popular.

A fascinating byproduct of Ultimates being an exclusive event is the lack of quotas by country, meaning entries aren’t limited to three. Depending on what matters to each individual fan—or perhaps just where they’re from—that might lend them to interpret this lack of diversity as a good or bad thing. The good is all the best athletes will be there. The bad is some major markets like Japan, China, Germany, and Brazil, will suddenly have a fraction of the presence they’d be accustomed to.

Let’s compare the number of athletes that competed at 2025 Worlds vs. those projected to be at Ultimates:

• Japan - 70 down to 3

• Germany - 63 down 5

• China - 57 down to 2

• Brazil - 42 down to 3

Not including relays, the U.S. leads the way with 64 athletes, then Jamaica (28), Great Britain (17), Australia (13), Ethiopia (13), Kenya (12), and France (11).

This newsletter has long argued that every season should start as a clean slate with no performances from previous years carrying over for automatic bids or ranking points. But this year is different—it’s headlined by a new event that unequivocally NEEDS the stars to show up to establish its long term viability. Hence all the different paths being taken to ensure they’re there.

To aid with that, World Athletics has gotten creative. There isn’t another professional sport that is embedding its own stars into the production of the event like this, with Mondo Duplantis singing the theme song, Noah Lyles hosting the after party, Tara Davis-Woodhall leading the content creation. If we may adjust our tinfoil hats for a moment, the compensation those athletes will receive for work provided is definitely NOT an appearance fee!

All that to say, Citius Mag has booked its flights and will be on the scene with enthusiastic coverage. And we are going in with an open mind for future iterations, which will likely evolve to improve. With that said, regardless of any hiccups in its first go-round, World Ultimates is gonna feature some incredible competition.

With just over two weeks to go, here are the top storylines that have us most excited for Budapest:

The Olympic 1500m Rematch: Who doesn’t love a re-run? Obviously with the top four finishers—Hocker, Kerr, Yared Nuguse, and Ingebrigtsen—now all in, we’re dying to witness a second crack at one of the greatest 1500m races in history. Can Kerr hold on? Is there enough time for Jakob? Will Cole peak again? And can Yared get his turn?

A New Queen Crowned: Unfortunately, Faith Kipyegon had to call it a season due to health issues, however, without the three-time Olympic and four-time World champion in the field, it opens the door to an heiress. Georgia Hunter Bell has won three major golds already this year, Tsige Duguma is figuring out the 1500m quickly, Jess Hull is always right there, and Nikki Hiltz is Nikki Hiltz.

Double Trouble: 90 seconds. That’s what Rai Benjamin’s personal bests at the 400m Hurdles (46.17) and open 400m (43.83) add up to. It may not sound like much, but he’s going to have to race four times in three days if he’s going to come away with the $300,000 he’s eligible to earn. Benjamin dominated his only 400m Hurdles race in Lausanne, but he has yet to face Alison dos Santos or Karsten Warholm this year. Meanwhile, Collen Kebinatshipi is 3-0 against him on the flat, but one could argue he’s still figuring out the event.

What do these plotlines have in common? They’re dependent on enticing the best to show up, the rest be damned. If there’s one rule World Athletics appears to be committed to sticking to, it’s “quality over quantity.” Exceptional exceptions may not be fair in the letter-of-the-law sense, but they’re effective tools in service of delivering the best possible product, which World Ultimates is designed specifically to present.

At the end of the meet, track and field fans—especially the casuals we’re desperate to turn into diehards – won’t be thumbing through the terms and conditions to decide whether or not they enjoyed the meet; they’ll be thinking about the races themselves and how satisfied they, as viewers, feel. By that measure, bringing Josh and Jakob back together is a move that falls squarely between the lines.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– After trying to muscle out a bad joke about the Coriolis effect making the second hands on the clock move in the opposite way, we’re giving up and presenting this information sans goof: Yomif Kejelcha lowered the half marathon world record in Buenos Aires to 56:51. He’s the first man under 57 minutes in an official performance – second, if you count Jacob Kiplimo’s 56:41 that was later invalidated because he ran too close to the pace car.

– After being hospitalized following a scary collapse at a June community track meet in North Carolina, Jenny Simpson has shared the details of her medical diagnosis and what the future holds for her.

– Girmawit Gebrzihair and Isaia Kipkoech Lasoi were the outright Antrim Coast Half Marathon champions, going 1:06:12 and 58:26, respectively. Meanwhile, Galen Rupp was the over-40 American champion in 1:01:30. In doing so he snagged the U.S. master’s record from Bernard Lagat. And one last fun fact: he placed one spot behind fellow Oregon Duck legend Edward Cheserek, who finished ninth in 1:01:27.

– This fall’s New York City Marathon elite fields have been announced and there’s plenty to be excited about. The obvious headliners are returning champs Hellen Obiri and Benson Kipruto, but we’ll also get a look at most of the top American women and men, Sifan Hassan, plus the debut of Andreas Almgren.

– On a modified course—altered due to wildfires—at the Leadville 100 Miler, Adrian McDonald (15:47:23) picked up his third win in the men’s race, and McKendree Hickory broke the tape in the women’s race 19:39:12, which also made her the 10th finisher overall.

– The World Ultimate 1500m crown is officially up for grabs for unfortunate reasons, as Faith Kipyegon has shut her season down after struggling through several races with a hamstring injury.

– It turns out that last week’s Edmonton Marathon was 674.7 meters long. Congratulations to every single finisher on your new 42.8427 kilometer PB!

– Aleia Hobbs has accepted a six-month ban from USADA for receiving an intravenous infusion of saline while not qualifying for a TUE.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

When There’s A Werro, There’s A Way 🇨🇭

The most exciting and most controversial races of last week’s European Championships, held in Birmingham, UK, happened to be the semis and the final of the same event, held 24 hours apart.

It was clear from the jump that the women’s 800m would be the marquee race of the entire competition—heck, it’s been clear since June 7th, when Audrey Werro beat Keely Hodgkinson and cracked the 1:54 barrier in Stockholm, and even more so since June 16th, when Werro again ran sub-1:55 in Ostrava and Femke Broeders-Bol took second in 1:57.

The trio have been on a much-hyped collision course all summer, as Werro again lowered her Diamond League record to 1:53.80 in Paris and Broeders-Bol made the jump to 1:55.60. After Hodgkinson had to pull out of the 400m final at the UK Championships, some worried that injury woes would deprive us of the head-to-head-to-head matchup we all wanted, but the two-time defending European champ bounced back with a pair of 1:56 victories in Eugene and London. Since finishing second behind Hodgkinson at World Indoors, Werro hasn’t lost a race, but Hodgkinson is a fierce competitor who would be competing in front of a home crowd. Their rematch truly felt like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

From the moment they stepped on the track in the first round of racing, it was clear the two favorites, both bold front-runners, meant business. Hodgkinson set the tone in the first heat of the first round, dropping a ridiculous 1:57.28 prelim, and 10 minutes later, Werro showed she wasn’t messing around either, practically even-splitting a 1:57.83.

But when the semis rolled around on Thursday, the certainty of a two-woman battle for gold was called into question. Disaster struck in the first section, with Werro getting tangled up and tumbling to the ground on the final turn, finishing last in 2:35.35 (more on that below). Then, more positively, Hodgkinson again cruised through in 1:57.38, but this time, she had Broeder-Bol stuck to her shoulder with a smile on her face, looking like she was out for a warm-up jog while running 1:57.46. Perhaps it would be a two-way duel after all—but with the Dutch hurdler taking Werro’s place.

Protests and appeals were filed, and replays flooded both the television and the internet. From one angle, it appeared that Werro had simply stumbled over her own legs, tripping up Gabija Galvydyte as well, who was swiftly advanced. From another, it looked like Anaïs Bourgoin had clipped Werro’s heel with her hand and knocked her just off-balance enough to disrupt her stride. Ultimately, the race officials ruled that Werro had been sufficiently impeded and placed both her and Galvydyte in lane 9, making the final a 10-athlete affair.

The decision made sense on many levels, but of course, a vocal minority (many of whom seemed to be British fans hoping for an unobstructed path to a Keely threepeat) protested that the reinstatement was unfair. There’s an argument to be made that the decision was justified even if the evidence was murky: Werro had done nothing intentionally wrong—certainly nothing to gain an advantage as she ended up with a faceful of track—and fans of the sport, whether buying tickets in Birmingham or tuning in from around the world, benefited from her presence in the final.

Track and field, candidly, could benefit from more discretion at times. The correct decision is not always the right one… although in this case it was both. Had Werro’s untimely fall kept her out of the medal hunt, or worse yet, caused a longer-lasting injury that derailed her summer, we’d all lose. Two of the greatest middle-distance athletes of all time going head-to-head in their primes in meaningful races is a rare thing, and in a year where we’re starving for narratives about why this season matters, the rise of Werro and Broeders-Bol to challenge Hodgkinson’s hegemony has been a welcome thrill.

Friday’s final had all the makings of sporting greatness. Werro was coming in banged up with something to prove. Hodgkinson had the eyes of her home nation all around her. And Broeders-Bol had the benefit of underdog status and an unknown ceiling. More and more, it felt like the sneaky likely outcome was that Femke would steal the whole thing, completing the arc of the Great 800m Experiment that’s been percolating all year.

Hodgkinson held the inside lane all the way around, and by 200m, Werro found herself in the lead. Surely, the reigning champ was remembering how things played out back in June—when Werro got her breakthrough victory by using her rival as a de facto rabbit for 650 meters. Forcing the Swiss 22-year-old to take on the mantle of leading felt like a smart way to turn the tables.

In the end, however, Werro has just gotten too good. Running from the front, she laid down a pace that Hodgkinson simply couldn’t overhaul, even if both women were running pretty much the same speed in the second lap. Werro split 27.4-29.1-29.2-29.1, while Hodgkinson ran 27.4-29.3-29.1-29.2. Those are both incredible runs, decided by a tenth here and a tactical gamble there, and Werro is now the European champ in 1:54.81, with Hodgkinson settling for silver in 1:55.01.

Broeders-Bol didn’t quite have the juice this time to overtake the women she’s been running behind all year, but she did take another meaningful step forward: her bronze-medal run was sewn up in 1:55.54, exactly equalling the 32-year-old Dutch national record. Only a fool would bet that Ellen Van Langen’s mark from 1992 will live to see its 33rd birthday.

Last week proved two things beyond a doubt. Werro is a special, special talent, with the rare combination of front-running speed and back-end strength that makes it nearly impossible to consistently outfox her. Hodgkinson, frankly, did everything right from the first step of the first round, and it still simply wasn’t enough. And the sport benefits greatly when rivalries and racing are paramount—thank goodness track and field didn’t get in its own way this time. When there’s a race that captures our attention, gets people talking, and showcases the best athletes in the world doing their thing, athletics fandom becomes irresistibly exciting. The organizers and overlords of the sport should be very, very grateful Audrey Werro has made herself undeniable this season.

Diamond League’s Summer Break Is Ending. What Did We Learn (And What Still Don’t We Know)? 👩‍🏫

Our summer vacation from the Diamond League circuit comes to an end Friday, when action resumes in Lausanne, Switzerland. The sport’s biggest stars are going back to school after 34 days of rest and relaxation… oh, wait, that’s not true at all.

Track and field’s summer break wasn’t just about family vacations and new haircuts. It was a busy month “off,” with high-profile detours through Eugene, New York, Glasgow, and Birmingham, to name a few. A lot of that non-DL racing helped clear up some mid-season ambiguity about who was healthy, who was fit, and who was really taking 2026 seriously.

At the same time, it almost feels like we have more questions than answers as we head into the back half of the schedule. Particularly as the World Ultimate Championships in Budapest approach, the hard-core rankings nerds aren’t going to be the only ones refreshing the World Athletics website each week as athletes jockey for one of the coveted 12-16 spots on the line.

So what did the last five weeks teach us? And what does it say about the matchups we should expect—and crave—in Lausanne and beyond?

Will the young’uns hang with the uncs?

Literal summer break was good to some of the best sprinters in the U.S., namely Tate Taylor and Mia Maxwell, the double World U20 champs over 100m and 200m. Taylor, especially, has dropped times fast enough that he has to be considered a factor in any senior race, even if he was just recently only a high school senior. With bests of 9.94 and 19.75 set this summer, he’s the tenth fastest American over 100m and the second-fastest over 200m this year. Back in May, Taylor finished second behind U.S. champ Noah Lyles in a pro race in Japan—has the gap between the two closed since then?

Not so fast: Lyles himself had a productive July, winning the 100m at USAs in a personal best-equalling 9.79. He pulled up with a cramp in the 200m final, so we don’t know for sure what his current form over the longer sprint is right now, but the 29-year-old clearly hasn’t lost his fastball. Between Taylor and recent collegiate stars like Jelani Watkins of Arkansas and Garrett Kaalund of USC, the familiar faces of Lyles, Kenny Bednarek, Trayvon Bromell, and Christian Coleman may soon start to sweat as a new generation rises to crowd up the U.S. sprint scene.

Is Amy Hunt ready for prime time?

For an athlete that suddenly has four new European gold medals, Amy Hunt remains something of an athletic enigma. Her PBs in the 100m and 200m aren’t the flashiest—10.97 and 22.08—but she’s a compelling example of one of the sport’s most universal truths: races aren’t run on paper. Despite having turned in just the 49th and 37th fastest marks in the world this year in the 100m, and 200m, Hunt’s name carries the weight of athletes with sub-10.90 and sub-22 credentials because she tends to perform at major championships, having struck silver in the 200m at the most recent World Championships.

Now, coming off an all-time slate of races at Euros and surely buoyed by an appropriately elevated sense of confidence, Hunt still has a major point to prove: where does she stand when the Western Hemisphere gets added back into the mix? In Lausanne, she’s one of just three women in the field without a sub-22-second PB, yet in theory it shouldn’t be a shock to see her give Shericka Jackson—the fifth-fastest woman on the year—a legit fight to the line.

Hunt and Jackson will have their hands full, however, as Americans Brittany Brown, Anavia Battle, and Kayla White will all surely want to take down the Jamaican legend and Great Britain’s golden girl. Hunt’s results may take on greater significance as something of a referendum on the state of European sprints—which historically have not been the same quality of American and Caribbean fields. If she’s once again in the mix for the win (and potentially a big PB), that could be seen as something of a sea change in the event writ large.

Just how fast can the main sprint girlies go?

Just two days after Lausanne, the Diamond League circus will pop up its tent in Silesia, Poland, where the action is scheduled to reach a crescendo in the final event of the night: the women’s 100m. The field is, frankly, bonkers. Sha’Carri Richardson. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. Julien Alfred. Just between those three, you’ve got the global champion in the event from the preceding three seasons. And that’s before even getting into the stellar crew of Jamaicans who would love nothing more than to play the part of spoiler: Shericka Jackson, along with Tia and Tina Clayton..

This ought to be the best women’s 100m race of the year thus far, and unless it’s run into a wind tunnel, the expectation will be that it’ll take a season’s best performance in order to break the tape. Times aside, the real intrigue here is that we get to see the top five finishers from Worlds last year race head-to-head. The winner here doesn’t just get confirmation that they’re wicked fast right now; they send a warning shot to their rivals that could sow a seed of doubt into their minds as they complete their end-of-season preparations.

Aside from Josh Kerr, WTF is going on with the male milers?

In addition to establishing a true pecking order among the fastest women in the world, Silesia also should help clear up the bizarrely murky state of the men’s 1500m. So far this year, we know what Josh Kerr is capable of, and that’s about it. Regrettably, we won’t see him in Poland, but an all-killer-no-filler 15ish-man field is currently slated to line up, and we will finally get data points from Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Cole Hocker, both of whom are making their debuts at their signature distance.

Ingebrigtsen looked strong in his season debut, a 5000m victory at Euros, and Hocker has raced sparingly outdoors—a sixth-place showing at the Bowerman Mile and low-stakes 3000m rust buster back in June. Despite being… well… Ingebrigtsen and Hocker, it’s hard to definitively call either the favorite as of right now.

The 1500m at Euros was, in a word, weird. The results almost look like you put every entrant’s name in a hat then began drawing them out at random. That’s not to say the winner, Stefan Nillessen, wasn’t deserving. It’s just that this was a deep field without a clear cut favorite, and as a result, the Dutchman was able to secure a statement victory. Reigning World champ Isaac Nader finished dead last, and the two fastest guys in the field by season’s best—Jake Wightman and Azeddine Habz—finished sixth and tenth, respectively.

Regardless of how this race actually plays out, it’s going to be the highest-quality field we’ve seen on the circuit this year. In addition to Hocker, Ingebrigtsen, Nillessen, and Nader, we’ve got Samuel Pihlström, Reynold Cheruiyot, Phanuel Koech, Jakes Wightman and Heyward, Nathan Green, Vince Ciattei, Hobbs Kessler, and Ethan Strand all in the mix, and all capable of leaving their mark on this race depending on how it shapes up. With Kerr not competing, the lack of a clear top dog and the plethora of guys who could be top dog at their best makes for an intriguing combo.

Does the men’s 800m get as crazy as the women’s?

This time last year, if you had to guess which 800m world record would fall, the smart money would’ve seemingly been on the men’s, with Emmanuel Wanyonyi coming within a quarter second of David Rudisha’s remarkable 1:40.91 in late 2024 and showing no signs of slowing down. Especially with Marco Arop around to keep things honest, finish times under 1:41 felt inevitable.

One year later, Arop and Wanyonyi are the first- and third-fastest men in the world, but the hype has cooled a little as Audrey Werro’s star has risen on the other side. Both athletes started their 2026 campaign by taking two Ls apiece, and in Oslo, both got embarrassed by 17-year-old Cooper Lutkenhaus. Lutkenhaus, in turn, had a clean racing card until he was outkicked by Brandon Miller at the Pre Classic. Miller then pulled out of USAs, citing injury concerns, but returned to form with a fast but lowkey 600m in Portland. There’s a huge amount of talent in the mix, but also some questions.

Arop and Wanyonyi are both trending in the right direction, with Arop clocking a 1:41.84 world lead in Paris and Wanyonyi breaking the 1000m world record. Lutkenhaus tore apart a Miller-less field in NYC, but he literally has to go back to school so the trip to Switzerland is not happening. Instead, Miller will face off with the two World champions, and if everyone shows up to the starting line 100%, we could find ourselves back in the low 1:41s in no time.

Not all of these questions will be definitively answered Friday… but fans won’t have to wait long for more. There are three Diamond Leagues coming up in the next week, and the two-day final in Brussels is not too far off, on September 4th and 5th. Vacation time is officially over.

What Bill Simmons Got Wrong About Cross-Country Parenting 🏃‍♂️

Dear Bill Simmons,

You had my vote to become Sports Czar, Podcast Mogul Category, before I heard your list of the “20 Best and Worst Youth Sports for Parents.” Unfortunately, I can no longer support you in such an important role given your egregious under-ranking of cross-country at #15.

From a parent’s perspective, cross-country is unquestionably a top-three sport. Let’s go through every point on your own rubric so we can highlight the overlooked benefits of your child deciding they’re going to spend an inordinate amount of time just running around.

How does the sport upend your life?

It basically doesn’t. This may be the strongest argument in favor of cross-country, because it is frictionless from a parenting perspective. There are only a handful of meets to attend throughout the entire fall season. Most teams compete fewer than 10 times, with the large majority of meets taking place at a local park or high school’s campus.

In terms of off-season workouts… that’s typically left up to the athlete. Imagine your teenager out of the house for an hour or so at a time, jogging. Not playing video games. Not being radicalized on the Internet. Not in possession of your credit card en route to rack up a devastating tab at Chipotle. Just jogging! Peace and quiet for you and a microdose of military school-worthy self discipline for them.

But the biggest selling point would be that there are no private teams—kids pretty much only run for their school. Competition-schedule-wise, what you see is what you get. You can write down the dates and locations of every planned meet on your calendar in pen, then, if you’re dramatic, throw that pen in the garbage.

What’s the parent culture?

There is no culture beyond telling runners from your child’s team “good job,” and nodding along in agreement when you’re within earshot of another parent saying “they’re such good kids.”

It’s just a bunch of parents who are happy their kids are doing something generally healthy after school with friends. With no prospect of a major league contract, parents’ investment tends to remain firmly in the “for the love of the game” camp, and unlike baseball, there is no arguing with umpires over balls and strikes.

Maybe shuffle jogging from point to point along a cross-country course with a bunch of other out-of-breath parents isn’t your idea of a perfect Saturday, but would you really rather spend your entire weekend driving to and from an all-day tournament in some middle-of-nowhere town that’s built its entire economy on the youth sports industrial complex?

How expensive is the sport?

How much do shoes cost? Multiply that maybe by two and that’s the maximum out of pocket cost for a season. It’s not nothin’, but it can be measured in three digits, which by most sports’ standards is an unbeatable bargain. Again, there are no travel teams and basically no private coaches. At some point your child may want a slightly fancier GPS watch that could be found on Facebook Marketplace for $50.

What’s the toll on physical and mental health?

The physical benefits of being able to run for a long time should be obvious. But studies have shown that running reduces depression risk by about 30%, and over 89% of club runners report an improvement in their happiness. Like any other sport, it is important to find (and help maintain!) a coach and a team with a healthy culture, particularly when it comes to nutrition and fueling. Plus, it’s a guaranteed hour that your kids won’t be on their phone, which has to count for something.

Is there scholarship potential?

Due to the low costs of operating a cross-country team, it’s the sport with the second-most participating NCAA programs behind only basketball. And when you consider that most kids would rather be playing basketball, soccer, football, lacrosse, golf, or literally anything else, then it is not nearly as competitive!

How much parent entertainment value is there?

Honestly, pretty minimal. To your point, watching most races requires standing around in a field and doing a light jog yourself to the next place that you could actually see the kids. But cross-country meets have set start times, and at the high school level each race maxes out at around 30 minutes.

Is it easy to understand?

It is hard to think of a sport with fewer rules than “who can run around this field the quickest?” The team scoring takes a little bit of effort to figure out, but gone are the days of popsicle sticks and back of the napkin math to figure out who won—we have computers now! And it’s easy to see how your child competed and placed in the field.

Bonus: Are adults happy they did it, and can you keep doing it as they grow up?

If you have never worked in a corporate office with a bunch of 30-year-olds who are tired of going out to the bars, then you may not understand the potential social capital here. The majority of water cooler talk these days is young professionals debating the merits of running New York or Boston this year. If you have a marathon time that starts with the number 3, let alone a 2, then executives will be swarming your desk asking for training advice.

I know cross-country isn’t the coolest sport to brag about your kid being good at. Most adults—present company very much included—never fully move past high school, so there’s objectively more clout to say your son is the starting quarterback. But by all metrics, and especially considering the categories you value most, there is no sport that is better for a kid’s short- and long-term health, while simultaneously enabling you to partake in the absolute bottom of the barrel, low-effort parenting.

Sincerely,

New York State’s 2007 Class A High School Champion (and Father to Two Eventual New York State Class B Participants)

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– The women’s 800m at Euros may have—deservedly—attracted the most attention, but there were plenty of other fantastic performances. Norway’s Henriette Jæger won the women’s 400m (49.04) and mixed 4x400m relay; Nadia Battocletti of Italy showed both the 5000m and 10,000m fields a clean pair of heels as she kicked her way to two easy wins; Slovakia’s Emma Zapletalová won the 400m hurdles in 52.91—her fourth time under 53 this season; Dutchwomen Jessica Schilder (20.73m) and Jorinde van Klinken (67.67m) won the shot and discus, respectively; Great Britain’s Matthew Hudson-Smith took the 400m in 44.17; Karsten Warholm broke his own championship record, winning the 400m hurdles in 46.63; and Andy Díaz broke his own Italian national record in the triple jump, going 18.15m. Perhaps the most impressive effort of the meet, however, was Andreas Almgren’s push-from-the-front 27:23.44 10,000m victory, winning by 19 seconds and negative-splitting 14:05-13:18.

– At the Chinese Championships, 17-year-old Chen Yujie lowered the Asian area U20 record in the women’s 100m to 11.08 (+0.7), winning the event, and 19-year-old Zhang Jiale won the women’s hammer—in a senior area record—of 78.64m.

– Both Beach to Beacon champs doubled back successfully on the Cape. Habtom Samuel’s inaugural season as a road warrior continues to be a smashing success. He won the Falmouth Road Race in 30:53, a new course record and 11 seconds ahead of runner-up Edwin Kurgat. Samuel’s former New Mexico teammate, Pamela Kosgei, likewise, delivered another stellar road performance, winning the women’s race in a photo finish against Jess McClain in 35:25.

– Score one (or two?) for the Commonwealth! Your Falmouth Mile winners were Massachusetts native Heather MacLean (4:25.89) and Luke Houser (3:51.42), whose most obvious Bay State connection is far more tenuous, in that his college coach is from the Boston area.

– The Brooks Beasts showed out at Stumptown Twilight, with Brandon Miller making his return to action following a minor ankle injury. He won the 600m in 1:14.08; Brannon Kidder won the 1500m in 3:33.47, a new PB; and Valery Tobias broke the tape in the 800m in 1:59.83.

– Excellent news for fans of Eugene’s three Burrito Boy locations and their $5 bean and cheese burritos: the 2028 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials will be held at Hayward Field, with a new condensed, six-day schedule, and sans the multis and 10,000m races, which will take place earlier in the spring at TBA venues.

– 10 athletes from the European Championships were named “Gold Crown” winners, meaning they had the highest-scoring performances within their designated event groups, based on World Athletics tables. These winners received a literal gold crown, but also €50,000. Going through the list of prize recipients, they all make a lot of sense, until you get to the “roads, combined events, and relays” category, where race walkers took top honors for the men and women. Not to disparage walkers, but Finland’s Alisa Vainio really got shafted here: she won the women’s marathon in a commanding 2:22:26—by any non-WA-scoring-table metric the best performance from this sprawling classification at Euros.

– Kyle Merber, the man most recently known for penning one of three sections in this week’s Lap Count newsletter, will be competing in the Chicago Marathon, and is being coached by Galen Rupp. Listen to their kick-off conversation—the first installment in a CITIUS MAG Podcast mini-series here.

– Lessons learned: if you organize an underwhelming pro-doping mini-Olympics, align it with some of the world’s most loathsome public figures, all in the interest of hawking supplements to rubes, you are not, in fact, guaranteed to turn a tidy profit right off the bat. The Enhanced Games’ second-quarter 2026 results showed a net loss of over $60 million, and its stock is down nearly 80% from its debut.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Oh The Places You’ll Go… Maybe 📖

Let’s take a trip back in time to 2014.

Guardians of the Galaxy (the first one) was running rampant over the domestic box office, officially pushing the number of MCU films into the double digits. Some truly middling tracks, namely “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea and “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit, were duking it out for song of the summer. And the World U20 Championships were held in Eugene, Oregon.

The natural question whenever a promising junior rises to the top of the age-group heap is whether their ability to dominate the U20 crowd will translate to success at the next level. And now, with the benefit of 12 years of removal, we can confidently provide answers. Let’s look back at the last time Hayward played host to see how things later played out for our then-upstart champions. The long-term results are, frankly, all over the board.

A 17-year-old Joshua Cheptegei won the 10,000m in just his third-ever race outside Uganda. He went on to claim the world record and four global titles at the distance. Mary Cain ran a PB of 8:58.48 to win the 3000m, a year after representing the U.S. in the 1500m at the senior World Championships. This was unfortunately the last major victory of her sadly stymied pro career. And somewhere in between fall the likes of Dina Asher-Smith, who won the 100m, Yomif Kejelcha, the 5000m champ, and Shamier Little, who dominated the 400H.

Just because you didn’t win back in 2014 doesn’t mean you had no shot at making it big as a pro, either. Famously, talented developing athletes can… well, continue to develop. The runner-up in the 100m was a teenager by the name of Trayvon Bromell, who ran 10.28 for silver just one year before his breakout medal-winning performance at the Beijing World Championships. Performing really well at U20s can be an indicator of great things to come, but it’s not actually a great predictor of later success. Conversely, the pecking order among a bunch of 18- and 19-year-olds is far from set and stone as they continue to grow and gain experience.

More recent World U20 breakout stars include Emmanuel Wanyonyi, 2021 800m champ turned 2024 Olympic champ, Faith Cherotich, 2022 steeple champ turned 2025 World champ, and Letsile Tebogo and Tina Clayton, who both won the 100m in both 2021 and 2022. While it’s not necessarily a good thing for myriad other reasons, the youthful side of the sport is inarguably getting more and more professionalized. It wouldn’t be all that surprising to see a decrease over time in how variable long-term outcomes are since more and more U20 athletes are basically seasoned pros by the time they line up at U20 Worlds.

The bigger challenge isn’t so much that talent is hard to translate into results over time; it’s that being a true world-beater is really, really hard, even from one year to the next. In any given U20 cohort there are probably only a couple stars who can spend the next decade racking up senior medals because, simply, the athletes who do that are few and far between. Folks like Salwa Eid Naser, Soufiane El Bakkali, and Karsten Warholm were wunderkinds when they first broke into the World medals in 2017, and nine years later they’re still in the top three in their respective events. Faith Kipyegon winning junior medals in World XC as a barefoot 15-year-old in 2011 then going on to dominate the next 15 years of the 1500m is absolutely the exception, not the rule.

With all that said, there are three performances that stood out to us from all of this year’s action in Eugene, because they’re showing all the signs of big things to come.

18-year-old Texan Tate Taylor did something no man (boy?) or woman (girl?) has ever done at a World Juniors: win the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m triple gold. Moreover, he never looked to be seriously challenged for any of those three victories, despite the strong fields assembled around him. In the 100m, Taylor secured the first World Athletics-ratified, wind-legal sub-10 of his career, running 9.94, and then backed it up with a 19.83 200m victory. These times aren’t merely impressive for a just-graduated high schooler; they’re competitive internationally at any level. Taylor now has the same 100m season’s best as Ferdinand Omanyala and Ackeem Blake, both of whom can contend in a global final. In the 200m, his 19.75 from U.S. U20s puts him #5 in the world, and his 19.83 from last weekend is faster than Tebogo, Noah Lyles, and Andre De Grasse have run this season.

Taylor is three months older than Australian Gout Gout (who didn’t make the trip due to injury, unfortunately) but they haven’t received nearly the outpouring of hype. Part of that is because Gout was faster, younger, and part is because the U.S. have a much longer and deeper sprint cadre than Australians. But with his performance at USAs, Taylor has rightfully entered the conversation alongside Gout—and others slightly ahead of him like NCAA champ Kayinsola Ajayi—of “next great sprinter.”

His fellow Texan and Team USA teammate Mia Maxwell nearly pulled off the same feat, but the women’s 4x100m missed the final by 0.02 seconds. She did, however, pull off the 100m/200m double, and firmly stamp her name into the “star to watch” category. Maxwell and her twin sister Mariah finished 2-3 in the 60m at U.S. Indoors back in March, so it’s not an exaggeration to say they’re already competing at a pro level, but the new glimmer of greatness we glimpsed from Mia Maxwell this weekend came in the 200m.

Maxwell is certainly known to be stronger in the shorter sprints, but she took a leap forward in the 200m last weekend with a 22.37 personal best, improving on her 22.49 from U.S. juniors. This time last year, she hadn’t broken 23 seconds. More importantly, she did so by beating runner-up Shanoya Douglas of Jamaica by a whopping 0.31 seconds—particularly impressive when you consider that Douglas’s PB is 22.11 and that she’s the national U20 record holder in a country with a long history of sprinting excellence. It’s not just what you run; it’s who you beat, and Maxwell’s breakout weekend showed great promise on both fronts.

Last, but CERTAINLY not least, the most eye-popping performance of the weekend. It’s not unusual to see lightly-raced juniors struggle a bit with pacing, letting their fresh legs and comparative inexperience carry them a bit out ahead of their skis only to pace the price. We saw that in the 800m, where Ugandan Shafek Murungi took the field out in a ridiculous 23.63 200m and 49.17 400m only to close his second lap north of 60 seconds and finish eighth. So when 17-year-old Kenyan Emmanuel Kiprono led the 3000m through 1k in 2:26, it seemed certain that we’d be in store for another hilarious blowup.

Kiprono slowed down… eventually. But by not nearly as much as you’d think. After hitting 1600m in 3:54 and 2000m in 4:55, he did eventually stop clicking off sub-60s, but he brought it back to a 28.55 final 200m and crossed the line in 7:28.28, shattering the championship record by 14 seconds and missing Kejelcha’s world junior record by a few tenths in what was, for all intents and purposes, an unpaced solo effort.

Kiprono is a relative unknown with few other races on his World Athletics profile, but there are two other key data points suggesting this kid may be going places. In January, in what appears to be his first international race, Kiprono took second in the U20 race at World XC, finishing just behind his teammate Frankline Kibet. And in his qualifying race for Eugene, run at 5,900 feet of elevation in Nairobi, Kiprono ran a hand-timed 7:35.4 and beat everyone else in the field by over 20 seconds. He ran just 0.05 seconds slower than Yared Nuguse’s 3000m PB, and the only Americans to ever run faster are Cole Hocker and Grant Fisher, all three of whom are Olympic medalists. Did we mention he’s officially still 17?!

Trying to place futures bets based on World U20s results may seem at first glance like throwing darts while blindfolded, but to the discerning eye, these three performances are likely a sign of much bigger things to come. In all likelihood, there will also be someone who isn’t even mentioned in any of the various Eugene race recaps who becomes a comical “did you realize that” trivia in ten years when they’ve won a World title or two, and the sad reality is others won’t even earn a Wikipedia footnote. That’s part of the fun of World U20s: the possibilities are truly endless, and following the range of outcomes as the athletes step out further onto the global stage will surely be a wild ride.

The Reinvention Of Jakob Ingebrigtsen

Entering June 1925, the New York Yankees weren’t having any specific issues with their starting first baseman, Wally Pipp. However, the team was on a bit of a losing streak and looking for some new energy in the lineup. So when Pipp entered the clubhouse one morning with a headache, he was told to pop some aspirin and take the day off.

That created an opportunity for a 21-year-old Lou Gehrig to get some playing time. He entered the lineup and promptly delivered three hits that day. For the next 14 seasons, across 2,130 games that starting first baseman position would be his.

After a solid five years dominating on the track and the conversation off of it, an unfortunate Achilles injury threatened to replace Jakob Ingebrigtsen. But any concern fans may have had in his absence since the 2025 World Indoor Championships have been put to rest—he will not be the next Wally Pipp!

Still only 25 years old, Ingebrigtsen’s resume spills well beyond the standard single page. The one event he has consistently shown up at throughout his career is the European Championships—he’s won 22 senior gold medals across cross country, indoors, and outdoors. It was therefore an appropriate stage to make his return, albeit with an element of mystery that made this far more intriguing than his usual presumptive victories.

Last week, his workout of 6 x 1k from 2:39 to 2:25, plus 5 x 300m in 42, made headlines. That wouldn’t necessarily indicate world record fitness, but it would signal that he’d be competitive. Through the first half of the race, as the leaders clicked off 64-65 second laps, Ingebrigtsen’s competitiveness came into question, however, as he sat towards the very back looking uncomfortable. While this is something he has often done, given the context of the last 505 days, it wasn’t accompanied by the same air of confidence.

Then, as the real racing started when Jimmy Gressier, Florian Bremm, Dominic Lobalu, and other contenders made their way to the front. Ingebrigtsen went wide and plopped himself in the thick of it. Afterwards he would say that with 600m to go that he felt confident that he could win, and a decisive 54.79 last lap to run 13:15.29 confirmed that premonition.

At a global championship when national uniforms are on, we tend to cheer for athletes who represent where we live or are from. But as Americans watching the European Championships, we possess no such loyalty… we have freedom (to cheer as we please)!

Since 2023, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr have traded barbs both on the track and in the media. Anyone following along would agree that the rivalry sparked further intrigue and was overall considered good for the sport. With Ingebrigtsen’s brief absence—which coincided with his Scottish rival nabbing the historic mile world record and a shrewd last lap to run away from the field at Commonwealths—Kerr was filling the void. Jakob-heads who previously would have rooted against his arch nemesis were reluctantly admitting, “that was actually pretty cool” and “you know what, that did give me chills.”

When the Yankees aren’t playing, Bronx natives don’t become Red Sox fans. But our sport isn’t baseball. Track and field’s allegiances are malleable and that’s what makes it unique. It’s possible to both appreciate an athlete’s greatness and cheer them onto records in one race, then turn around to celebrate their defeat in the next by an underdog. And it flip-flops, with the roles of David and Goliath alternating in each passing season.

At some point between the Tokyo Olympics until the Achilles injury, Ingebrigtsen winning became the expectation and the standard, especially in rabbited races. While it’s patently clear that his favorite event is the 1500m, between Worlds in 2019 and Worlds in 2025, he did not lose a single 5000m. On the rare occasion that he did lose and show signs of being fallible, it was exciting because it was different. But this comeback reset everything—it was a return to relatability and the experience took on an oddly nostalgic hue. It was a feeling we haven’t felt in a while, like a smell that brings you back to childhood.

As Ingebrigtsen ran down the home straightaway and well past the finish line in Birmingham, it felt like he was charging past Timothy Cheruiyot for the first time, again. Just like that first Olympic final in 2021, the desire to cheer for the Norwegian aligned with the desire to see an underdog on top. Oh, how we missed those moments.

As he enters what feels like a new chapter in his career, Ingebrigtsen once again looks more like a Gehrig—the epitome of consistency and longevity—than a Pipp. The sporting world hasn’t left him behind, and with something like a decade of prime racing still to come, it’s easy to imagine he’ll one day be thought of as the Iron Horse of track and field.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Outside of the three standout performances mentioned above, the rest of the World U20 Championships also featured quality competition and entertaining outcomes as well. As they’ve been doing all season, Jayden DeLeon and Quincy Wilson battled to the line to finish 1-2 in the 400m, with DeLeon taking gold in a championship-record 44.47. South African Tumi Ramokgopa pulled a Masai-Russell-in-college and earned silver medals in the 100m hurdles and its longer 400m counterpart. Florida now-sophomore Claire Stegall came oh-so-close to a surprise gold for Team USA in the 1500m, finishing just 0.04 seconds behind winner Josephine Mancha of Kenya. And while the hurdles are a slightly lower height than senior competition, Le’Ezra Brown still set a world junior record (99-cm version) in the 110H at 12.72.

– As you read this, the European Championships continue in Birmingham, UK. On Day 1, Amy Hunt brought the British crowd to its feet with an 11.00 victory in the 100m, Jessica Schilder continued her reign of terror with another huge 20.73m victory in the shot put, and Leo Fabbri got his implement out to 22.31m in the men’s final. Yesterday, Nadia Battocletti defended her 5000m title in a tactical 15:37.84, the 800m women opened their races with a collection of fast heat wins (Keely Hodgkinson 1:57.28, Audrey Werro 1:57.83, and Femke Broeders-Bol 1:59.96), and Team Great Britain took top two spots in the men’s 100m, with Romell Glave (10.09) edging out Jeremiah Azu (10.16).

– Drop the “NA.” It’s cleaner that way. In a torrential downpour at the CAC Games, Mariledy Paulino won the 400m in 48.94 in front of an elated home crowd—the video is awesome; Colombia’s Flor Ruiz threw a South American record 67.34m to win the javelin by nearly 10 meters; José Figueroa of Puerto Rico went 19.76 (+2.0) in the rounds of the men’s 200m, then won the final in 19.98 into a 2.4m/s headwind; and Cuba’s Daily Cooper Gaspar took the women’s 800m crown by five-plus seconds, going 1:59.00.

– The mystery of “why isn’t Jonah Koech racing?” has been solved. The 2025 U.S. 1500m champion has been issued a three-year ban by USADA for blood doping. Koech has been stripped of his 1500m title, making Ethan Strand the official U.S. 1500m champ from 2025. Additional congrats/condolences go out to Hobbs Kessler, who has been bumped up to third place… not much comfort after missing out on a World Championship team, we’d have to assume.

– Speaking of Hobbs, Kessler (3:51.86) and Margot Appleton (4:23.45) timed their kicks well to claim victory at this year’s Sir Walter Miler in Raleigh, North Carolina.

– The following day in Cleveland, Kayley Delay—who placed second at Sir Walter—broke the tape at the Guardian Mile in a new course record of 4:17; Brandon Kidder made it a Brooks Beasts sweep with his victory in the men’s race (3:56). Also of note, the road stroller mile world record was broken—4:17—by Stephen Biebelhausen (and his baby Blake).

– Following a disappointing fourth-place showing at the U.S. Championships, JuVaughn Harrison cleared a season’s best and world-leading 2.34m in the high jump at a miniscule meet in Monaco.

– Another sign that Cooper Lutkenhaus has made it big-time: he got a full profile in the Athletic section of the New York Times. As if a World Indoor title wasn’t enough already.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Where Is America’s ‘Tweener Championship? 🌎

What exactly is the Commonwealth Games?

We know what they are on paper: a nearly 100-year-old quadrennial assembly of 74 national teams to compete for medals in ten sports, offset two years from the Olympics themselves. The championship originally known as the British Empire Games is, despite its weird and persistent shades of colonialism and monarchism, held in high esteem by England and the 73 other jurisdictions with King Charles on their money. Athletes from those countries prize Commonwealth medals just below World and Olympic ones, sometimes to the confusion of those of us watching quizzically from the outside.

Ethical and moral questions aside, the Commonwealth Games matter.

But like… why? Perhaps that’s the better question.

The history, particularly for Brits themselves, is part of it. But in large part, winning gold at Comms matters because the competition is really, really good. The fact that Jamaica and Kenya were once colonized by the English means that both the sprints and distance events require elite performances to land on the podium, particularly when compared with, say, the European Champs.

Here’s how the 66 individual track medals at the 2024 Olympics broke down: 20 Americans, 25 athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations, and 21 from other countries. The field events are a little more equitable (10 U.S., 19 Commonwealth, 25 other). So while no one participating nation is better at track and field than Team USA, collectively, the competition is stronger than at our national championship or any other regional championship.

What that means, essentially, is that for Josh Kerr to win the mile at the Commonwealth Games, he must face the strongest medal competition he’ll see outside of a World or Olympic final. Which, in a year like 2026, means the Commonwealth Games is probably the toughest championship race on his schedule (apologies to World Indoors but it’s true).

If you’re deciding to put all your 2026 eggs in a small number of baskets, it’s understandable that you’d bet on the staying power of Year 96 of Comms over Year 1 of the World Ultimate Championships. Which isn’t to say that many of the same athletes won’t double back and vie for gold at both. But when these folks are sitting comfortably in their living rooms 20 years from now, the stronger conversation piece might be the medal on their mantel also given out to Usain Bolt, Steve Cram, or Merlene Ottey. But the Commonwealth Games aren’t just a legacy endeavor.

This year’s results were, for a lack of a better word, cool. The men’s 100m saw the generally-unsung Emmanuel Eseme set a Games record of 9.83 for Cameroon, just ahead of Australia’s Lachie Kennedy, who became the fastest white boy in history, at 9.85. Ky Robinson pulled off a tactical master class with a front-running 27:48.93 gold in the 10,000m, as his fellow Aussies ran rampant over the women’s distance events, picking up all three golds and six of nine medals in the mile, 5000m, and 10,000m. Adaejah Hodge kept her summer going strong with a 22.07 win in the 200m, which of course sparked controversial comments from some sore losers.

The athletes from the British Isles—back under one national team umbrella after enjoying the rare chance to rep their various countries and dependencies—will get to run it all back next week at Europeans, and the youngsters head to Eugene this week for the World U20 Championships. But with no Diamond Leagues set for another three weeks and not much else on the calendar, any American pros riding the high of USAs are forced to scour the globe and send their agents on a scavenger hunt for quality meets in August. Most of them will retreat back into training mode, only for a select few to emerge from mid-summer hibernation if they get one of 16 entries on offer for Ultimates.

That’s not the most exciting prospect for American track fans. And it’s got us asking: where’s our Commonwealths? The U.S. and our North American neighbors have NACACs, a strange semi-regular regional championship that started in 2007 and has been held five times total, but the collective sentiment is that the host locations (generally altitudinally or climactically unfavorable to fast times) and competition (basically the same as USAs, at best) renders it largely superfluous to the greater track and field picture. As a matter of practice, the squads Team USA sends to NACACs tend to be comprised of folks who didn’t finish top three at that year’s national championship.

The Europeans have Europeans; the Africans have the African Championships and the African Games. The problem for American track and field fans, particularly in a year like this one, is that we don’t have a suitable “‘tweener championship” to attract stars and fill the gaps on a scale somewhere between national and global. Maybe one day we’ll have a Revolutionary War Dual Meet, where we team back up with France to take on the Commonwealth nations in what would be a pretty fair fight, but that doesn’t seem likely any time soon.

Without the benefit of a century of prestige and national fan bases that, y’know, care about track, we’re forced to watch Commonwealths jealousy from our La-Z-Boys while drinking Bud Light and munching on bright orange chips filled with chemicals that would kill a Victorian child. And next week we’ll be frantically googling “Birmingham time zone to EST” and “Femke Bol which event?” when the UK hosts their next big ‘tweener championship, Europeans. It’s so hard to make events matter in the current athletic ecosystem, which makes those meets with genuine, built-in cultural significance all the more precious.

So don’t take it for granted, chaps.

Where Did All The 400m/800m Guys Go? 🤠

Of the five women who have run under 1:56 in the 800m this season, you’d probably only consider one to be a true 800m/1500m-type: that’d be Georgia Hunter Bell, who is an Olympic bronze medalist and the British record holder over 1500m.

Audrey Werro’s gone 50.80 and is the European record holder in the 600m. Keely Hodgkinson split ~50.1 on her 4x400m leg at World Indoors this March. Femke Broeders-Bol… well, you know what she’s capable of over a single lap, hurdling or not. Anaïs Bourgoin hasn’t clocked a 1500m result in the World Athletics database since 2022, but raced distances as short as 200m during the early stages of her 2026 indoor campaign. If she more naturally fits the mold of an 800m/1500m runner, she’s actively working against it, it would seem.

Aside from Broeders-Bol—the indoor world record holder over 400m—none of these athletes are globally relevant at 400m. Capable of delivering a more than respectable leg on a high-stakes relay? Sure. But a medal threat? Not quite.

Still, if you want to divide the event into 800m runners whose prowess in the distance is the result of their natural speed and their innate strength, these are your speedsters: the sort for whom an opening lap of 56 seconds isn’t particularly daunting. They obviously work on their strength in order to withstand the cruelty of the second lap, but most 400m/800m-types are going to be looking to minimize attrition rather than keeping an ace up their sleeve for the homestretch.

Very generally speaking, the current state of the women’s 800m is defined by speed-based stars. For the men, however, that’s increasingly not the case. Let’s take a look at the five fastest men over 800m in 2026.

Marco Arop has spent the past few years mixing it up in the 1500m, and has the North American record in the 1000m. Cooper Lutkenhaus—a bit of an outlier in many ways—raced 12 800ms this year, a 600m, one 1500m, and no 400ms. Emmanuel Wanyonyi set the 1000m world record, and though he still possesses a modest 1500m PB, a case could be made that he is actually more of a miler with great 800m speed. Brandon Miller’s first two races of the year were a mile and a 1500m. And if we go back to Josh Hoey’s 2025—his last complete season of racing—yes, he ran the North American indoor 600m record, but he ran way more 1500m/mile races than under-distance ones, and even broke 3:30 in Ostrava.

But it’s more complicated than these guys all being naturally aerobically-inclined.

While competing at Mississippi State, and even for a stretch after going pro, Arop regularly raced the 400m and lined up for 4x400m relay duty. Per World Athletics, he last clocked a 400m in 2022, going 46.10. Coincidentally—or not!—that season he also began to dabble in the 1500m. Just last year as a sophomore, Lutkenhaus placed second in the largest division of the Texas state high school track championships in the 400m, going 46.30. That was one of seven 400m races he recorded during his final year of high school competition. And while at Texas A&M, Miller routinely raced the 400m and slotted into the school’s 4x400m relay squads. His PB is 46.30 as well, which he ran in 2022.

At least in the case of these three fellas, they weren’t born as 800m/1500m guys—they made a conscious decision to become them. But why the disparity at the top of the men’s and women’s 800ms when it comes to choosing a path?

The answer might come from the competition itself, especially those who dominated the event in the recent seasons before this one.

Despite efforts to turn her into a miler, it’s hard to deny that Athing Mu-Nikolayev was—at the height of her powers between 2021 and 2023—a prototypical 400m/800m runner. (She still holds the North American U20 record in the 400m along with the U.S. record in the 800m, after all.) Her customary sparring partner during her most competitive stretch was Hodgkinson, who comes by her 400m/800m bonafides honestly, having last raced a 1500m in 2017. And the only other woman to beat Mu-Nikolayev at a global championship in that time frame, Mary Moraa, is absolutely a 400m/800m runner. With personnel like that at the top of the heap so recently, it could be a tactical move to push your chips toward developing speed just to not wind up 15m behind the leaders at the bell.

That theory holds a bit more water when you consider that 2023—the tip of the iceberg for guys running wicked fast again after a less fallow period for the event—was also the start of the Wanyonyi Era. Is it fair to assign that much weight to the emergence of one man, who happens to have beat the best milers in the world at their own game?

Perhaps! He’s the reigning Olympic and World champ! His lowest finish at a global championship since he burst onto the scene was fourth! Guys know that in order to get on the podium, he’s a major obstacle, and because of his strength, he can race the 800m just about any way he wants to. That’s probably enough for speed-based 800m guys to at least entertain upping the ol’ mileage and for Coach to toss them in a B-heat of an invitational 1500m, early enough in the season to chalk up a lousy result to rust.

Then there’s the fact that for 800m specialists, there really isn’t a group dedicated to training 400m/800m guys. If you want the logistical and financial support of a group, you’re gonna likely have to suck it up and dip your toes into the threshold waters with some world class 1500m guys.

This isn’t to say the 400m/800m male archetype no longer exists; it’s just that he’s been squished through a 1500m-shaped mold over years of strength-building sessions, like a glob of fast-twitchy Play-Doh. One day you’re pulling double duty on the 4x400m at your college conference meet… the next you’re getting your lactate levels read mid-workout, because you know as well as any other world class 800m guy that you need something left in the tank on the homestretch to do anything of note in a race of consequence.

Of course, our current state of strength-focused 800m men won’t last forever. Families Training systems are always rising and falling in America this sport. And “all” it’ll take is a world beater with sub-45-second 400m chops to burst onto the scene for the rest of the top dogs and coaches to reassess their approach.

Plus, there’s the lingering fact that the current world record holders in the 800m—David Rudisha at 1:40.91 and Jarmila Kratochvílová at 1:53.28—were both indisputably 400m/800m runners. Rudisha clocked a hand-time, at-altitude 45.2 400m a year after setting the world record in the 800m, and ran an asterisk-free 45.50 400m in 2010. Kratochvílová’s 400m PB (47.99) is the fourth fastest time ever, and actually has a higher WA score than her 800m WR. No amount of bicarb or 1500m versatility can change the fact that being the best 800m runner in the world requires you to be really, really fast.

In this regard, and this regard only, Broeders-Bol is perhaps best positioned to break an 800m world record in the next 12 months, assuming her experimentation in the distance continues to progress, even at a more modest pace than it has thus far. A relatively blank and prodigious slate like Lutkenhaus could very conceivably lower his 400m speed into 45-mid territory, and likely improve his prospects of running in the 1:40s before his 20th birthday.

It’s conventional wisdom that strength is easier to develop than speed. So if you were picking an athlete who you’d rather coach with the goal of winning an Olympic gold medal in the 800m or even breaking the world record, surely you’d prefer the guy who ran 22.12 for 200m as a 15-year-old who was decidedly not training like a short sprinter… or the woman who has proven herself to be one of the best and also most versatile 400m hurdlers ever.

The 400m/800m archetype isn’t necessarily in vogue right now for men, but if somebody is gonna supplant Rudisha from G.O.A.T. status, they’ll likely have to stay at least a little acquainted with the 400m.

Where’s All The Sponsor Money Going?

The Los Angeles Dodgers have broken baseball.

The reigning American League Cy Young winner, Tarik Skubal, was traded from the Tigers to the back-to-back World Series champions. For the non-baseball fan readers, basically: the most dominant team is becoming more dominant. But the larger implication of this acquisition is that it may have just canceled the 2027 season.

The MLB players union’s collective bargaining agreement is set to expire in December, and the main topic of debate will be a potential team salary cap—something the NFL, NHL, and NBA all already have. The team owners, players, and league management will all be fighting over whether teams should have upper and lower limits to how much they can spend, with no clear resolution in sight. Currently, the Dodgers are happy to pay $180M+ in luxury tax penalties in exchange for a basically unlimited budget, while the Cleveland Guardians keep trying to Moneyball their way to a .500 record. Players deserve their value in a free market, fans deserve a front office that tries to win, but it’s bad for the game if three teams are pricing the other 27 out of a legit shot at a title.

So we’ll probably have no baseball for a bit.

This would never happen in track and field because there is no Player’s Association. Every athlete is piecing together their salary from different money sources, whether it’s shoe contracts, sponsors, meets, federations, or benefactors. There is no single source of income, so there is no single entity to boycott. And without a consistent definition as to who would even qualify as a professional, unionization remains a nice idea in theory, but mostly impractical.

That doesn’t mean action is impossible or meaningless. There is a whole generation of USATF athletes who only remember Nick Symmonds as a whacky YouTuber and not a modern day Prefontaine who sacrificed a World Championship roster spot to fight for better revenue sharing. Many hundreds of athletes have been paid out multiple thousands of dollars because Symmonds caused a fuss. If you are an aging veteran star, try thinking like a Boy Scout before your Achilles pops: how might you leave the sport better than you found it?

The quiet truth is that there’s never been a better time to be a professional track athlete than right now. Contracts are up! Appearance fees are up! Prize money is up! And NIL contracts are circumnavigating child labor laws.

With LA2028 on the horizon, shoe companies are getting aggressive and setting themselves up for maximum exposure. All the while, NIL contracts are giving the kids options because staying in school pays, but those contracts also typically have rights of first refusal baked into them, so once a student-athlete turns pro, their NIL sponsor gets first dibs. Once a brand has invested a few years into a career, they’d usually like to maximize returns beyond the NCAA restrictions. In baseball, the top free agents are choosing between the Dodgers and losing—an easy decision. In track, athletes are choosing between more studying, signing with their NIL sponsor, or waiting out the tail period.

Let’s take a look at the podiums from the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2004 vs. 2024 to see how representation has changed.

2004: Nike (51%), Adidas (15%), Asics (3%), Mizuno (2%), New Balance (2%), NCAA/Unattached/Other (27%)

2024: Nike (33%), Adidas (15%), New Balance (8%), Puma (5%), Brooks (4%), Asics (3%), On (2%), Under Armour (2%), lululemon (2%), NCAA/Unattached/Other (26%)

Economics 101 would suggest competition is good. That 18% dip of market share from Nike opened the doors to other brands to see their way onto the podium, and that’s not including others who still have a presence, like Hoka, Tracksmith, Bandit, Saucony, and other new challengers.

But why the increase in brand diversity?

It’s because athlete sponsorship works, and more brands are recognizing its impact. As a result, we as fans get a better, more interesting product on the track (and it’s easier to tell different uniforms apart). Those lucrative bidding wars are good for the stars, but the trickle-down is creating opportunities for more athletes to chase their dreams and therefore contribute to the depth of performances.

Ultimately, the motivation for a company to pour money into any type of marketing, athlete sponsorship included, isn’t pure benevolence; it’s to convert the dollars spent into sales. Putting the fastest athletes in the world in your gear lends credibility to the product, makes a logo visible, unlocks the potential for storytelling, and helps shape a brand identity. But depending on the maturity of a brand, the motivation boils down to one of two things: awareness or association. For newer, smaller companies, the athletes could have bigger followings than their backers and can provide a megaphone to amplify. For the legacy players that already have distribution channels, it’s about finding credible salespeople for what you’re hawking.

Baseball and track and field are different. (No sh*t!) Sure, Shohei Ohtani is moving a few pairs of cleats for New Balance, but predominantly professionals are making their income from teams. And MLB teams, for the most part, sell tickets and merch by winning. A player’s value can be quantified by a metric called WAR or Wins Above Replacement.

In track and field, determining whether or not you’re a winner in the most literal sense doesn’t require a formula—you just look for where your name slots into the results page. But the good news is that while winning is nice, it’s not everything. Instead the fictional statistic that matters would be something like “IRG”: Influenced Revenue Generated. If an athlete made most of their money from Diamond League appearance fees, the incentives would shift, but the smaller pond actually means all the fish have a better chance to eat.

Players like Tarik Skubal might make $32 million a year… but at least track athletes will have a season next year. We may have many structural problems as a sport, but in 2026, parity isn’t one—and for that, we’re fortunate.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– A few more notable events we didn’t highlight earlier from the Commonwealth Games: Chukwuebuka Enekwechi of Nigeria took down Tom Walsh in the men’s shot, with a best throw of 21.07m; reigning Olympic triple jump champ Thea LaFond took the title here as well thanks to a 14.60m leap; Rumesh Tharanga of Sri Lanka won the men’s jav with an 89.75m heave; Georgia Hunter Bell won the women’s 800m in 1:59.51 off of a negative split; Samuel Ogazi claimed the men’s 400m title in 44.25; and Elise Thorner broke out big time with a 9:05.45 run in the women’s steeplechase for silver over two-time Olympic medalist Peruth Chemutai.

– At the IFAM Oordegem in Belgium, Waberi Houssein won the men’s 5000m in 12:56.12 just ahead of Abdi Nur who went 12:57.32; Ethiopian 18-year-old Saida Tsehaye won the women’s 800m in 1:57.96—a new national U20 800m record; Rachel McArthur won the 1500m, going 4:02.90 (a PR); and Georgia Griffith, left off the Australian Commonwealth Games squad, won the 5000m in 14:44.64 ahead of Alicia Monson, who ran 14:50.63.

– Always the premiere 11.273-kilometer race on the circuit, the Giro Podistico Internazionale di Castelbuono drew a slew of top-tier male marathoners to its picturesque course, and Tamirat Tola prevailed in 34:26.

– Hoo? Vin Lananna is leaving the University of Virginia to take the CEO position with the USA Track & Field Foundation.

– Habtom Samuel won the Beach to Beacon 10k in Maine in his professional debut, breaking the tape in 27:40; his New Mexico teammate Pamela Kosgei claimed the women’s title just ahead of Elise Cranny, 31:50 to 31:52.

– The saga surrounding Brazilian marathoner Daniel Do Nascimento has come to a happy conclusion. Missing since late June, the South American record-holder over 26.2 was spotted and reunited with his family in good physical condition. According to his family, Do Nascimento has struggled with his mental health since returning home after he was issued a five-year ban for doping.

– Anyone looking for a master’s degree? Last weekend, a Colorado judge issued an injunction extending the NCAA’s “five in five” policy to athletes in the Class of 2022, meaning those who exhausted four years of eligibility in that year could theoretically return to college athletics, at least until the next court case comes down.

Interested in reaching 20,000+ dedicated runners and track and field fans? Advertise with us here.

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The Unsponsored Project aims to solve a problem in professional running where athletes compete at elite levels, but receive no monetary compensation from the brands whose gear they wear on the track. To-date, 12 Unsponsored Project athletes have gone on to sign traditional footwear deals.

This past weekend, we were so proud and honored to play a small role in supporting 77 unsponsored athletes who bet on themselves against the best in the world at this USA Champs. They received 100% unbranded kits to represent themselves, cash for travel/lodging/anything else they may need, and a contract featuring an immediate opt-out clause if another brand comes along with a larger deal.

Congratulations to all the athletes who competed, including Alia Armstrong who came away with the national title in the 100m hurdles.

Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Lessons Learned From An East Coast USAs 🇺🇸

Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca, the team has made it back home from the long journey across the stormy seas of the East River to the remote island of Randall. And also like Odysseus, the trials (and finals) we faced along the way taught us a lot.

The first New York-based U.S. Championship in over three decades is in the books, and in so many ways, it was very different from the last five editions of USAs, all of which took place in Eugene, Oregon. Unlike an Olympic Trials, all the action was compressed into four days of action, and with no global championship teams being selected, more than a few stars opted to focus on their own personal Odysseys of the European summer circuit over domestic glory.

That isn’t to say the results were all that watered down, however. Look at the short sprints, where Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson took the 100m finals in 9.79 and 10.77, respectively. Throw in Melissa Jefferson-Wooden dropping a 21.69 in the 200m, Cooper Lutkenhaus negative-splitting a 1:43.48, and two men nearly tying for the victory at 13.00 in the 110m hurdles, and any worries that the Icahn Stadium times would pale in comparison to Hayward Field were put to rest.

The distance races were… another story. Whether it was the women’s 10,000m going out in 99 seconds or the men’s 1500m closing in 51, the overarching theme of the championships races this weekend were a whole bunch of athletes with infallible faith in their own kicks putting that (over)confidence to the test. That probably explains why the men’s and women’s 5000ms were both won by athletes who’d placed top-three in the 1500m the day before, giving Emily Mackay and Vince Ciattei the first U.S. outdoor titles of their respective careers.

So what did we learn from all this? There was a lot of talk heading into the meet over whether an off-year championship in a new city would produce a better or worse entertainment product, or if such conditions could even perform the coveted magic trick of bringing entirely new eyes to the sport.

The results were mixed.

There was a lot to like about the East Coast version of USAs, and a lot that could be improved upon. Ultimately, it’s probably helpful to have made the change, if for no other reason than to test out different variables in the pursuit of finding new best practices that can be made permanent rather than putting on the same show year in and year out. Neither Hayward Field nor Icahn Stadium is a perfect place to watch track; such a place doesn’t exist (at least not in the U.S.). So the next best thing is to be both open to new ideas and willing to invest in replicating those that prove successful.

When it comes to scheduling, density is the goal. There was a lot of chatter early on in the weekend about sparsely-populated stands and whether or not fans would actually show up. That’s not unique to NYC; it’s pretty much a perennial talking point for every major American meet. What was noticeable, however, was how different the crowds were on Saturday and Sunday versus Thursday and Friday. Some of that is that it’s easier to fill a stadium on the weekends when folks aren’t forced to take time off or commute after work, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that the bulk of the exciting competition happened on days three and four of the meet, with only two track finals apiece on the two opening days.

Heats are a necessary evil of most track and field schedules, and there is value to creating doable doubles so the biggest names can get in front of the crowd multiple times. But the reality is that, without a team to make, many of the biggest stars—like Grant Fisher and Woody Kincaid in the 10,000m and Parker Valby in the 5000m, along with Lyles, Richardson, and Jefferson-Wooden—only picked one event to focus on anyway. World Ultimates seems to be betting on the value of trading off some quantity for quality, and it would be worth USATF further exploring ways to compress the schedule in non-championship years, perhaps looking a bit more like indoor NCAAs in the future.

The actual scheduling of events within a day leaves something to be desired as well. The current programming format usually allows hefty cushions for post-race interviews, commercials, and setup, but the net result is that there’s a lot of time when nothing is actually happening on the track. Sometimes, that dead air hanging over the oval is filled by field events, but usually the timing of final throws is more of a happy accident than deliberate choice. Better “block scheduling,” where track and field can end up looking more like a basketball game with 15-20 minute periods of constant action broken up by longer advertising, bathroom, and concession breaks, would make the actual flow of the meet more energetic.

It should be as easy as possible to go to a track meet. For the majority of Americans, it’s way easier to fly, drive, or train to New York City than it is to get to Eugene. Once you’re in the Big Apple, however… getting to Randall’s Island is a whole other story. It’s inaccessible by subway, includes very limited CitiBike parking, and a battle to reach in rush hour traffic. Shuttle buses and other forms of piecemeal transit infrastructure can only go so far. Compare that to Madison Square Garden, located in the heart of Midtown, and it’s not exactly a fair fight for casual sports fans’ attention.

Finding a host location that has the trifecta of being affordable, accessible, and populated enough to attract a built-in local audience isn’t easy, but there’s one obvious choice: Franklin Field, located at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Annoyingly, a strict read of the rulebook means Penn isn’t allowed to host USAs because the track does not have nine regulation lanes all the way around. But if there’s ever a reason to bend the rules, it’s this. Consider this our official call to action for USATF and World Athletics to cobble together whatever exemptions and waivers are needed to allow Franklin Field to host USAs, building on all the great things about Icahn with a whole bunch of other benefits to boot.

Make USAs a party from start to finish. Sports, at the end of the day, are supposed to be fun. And yes, a big part of that is sitting in your seat with your friends and family and cheering when Valarie Sion yeets a discus halfway across the island, but every part of the experience around that thrilling moment should be additive. Icahn Stadium did have food and drinks, both alcoholic and virgin, for sale, but only at one location. There were a limited number of fan activations outside the stadium, but plenty of unused space immediately adjacent to the athletic facilities.

Who doesn’t love a tailgate?! Allowing the area around the stadium to become part of the attraction both before and during the meet makes it easier for fans (especially those with rambunctious young future track and field stars) to make a whole afternoon of it, which in turn makes the in-stadium vibes more positive and exciting. Some of this is already happening—like having athletes throw T-shirts to the fans after their event, and situating the warmup area right near the entrance so fans get an extra look at their faves—but when it comes to atmosphere, more is generally more.

Many elite track and field events benefit from a well-timed mass participation event, like the BAA 5k before the Boston Marathon or the various road races that coincided with the Budapest World Championships. You’d never know it based on the advertising, but the New York Road Runners actually hosted its annual Team Championships 5-Miler Sunday morning in Central Park. It feels like a no-brainer to cross-promote and create a little synergy. Host the race—one that lures about 5,000 dedicated club runners out to the starting line—at Randall’s Island two hours before the meet! Give the winning team free drink tickets! Make Noah Lyles the official race starter! The possibilities are endless and largely mutually beneficial.

Complacency is the enemy of success, and USATF deserves a lot of credit for switching things up. Every sport, not just track and field, relies on a careful balance of tradition and innovation to keep its existing audience base happy and attract new viewers. No one in their right mind would argue that we’ve perfected the formula, and in a lot of ways, that’s a good thing: it creates demand for creative thinking, collaboration, and growth. If the national championship ends up back in Hayward next year, here’s hoping they bring some of the best parts of this year’s edition with them.

Who Should Seb Coe Give The “Seb Coe Entry” For World Ultimates? 💥

Still buzzing from the weekend and looking for your next track-cation? Look no further!

The inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship—or “Ultimates” as the kids are now calling it—will be hosted in Budapest September 11th-13th. While attending won’t necessarily be the same as having watched the first-ever Olympics in-person, it’s still an excellent chance to witness Olympic-quality racing, with vastly easier logistics, for a fraction of the price.

Ultimates is only three days long and every session tops out at three hours, which means you can explore the city while the sun is up then experience nonstop finals in the evenings. There are plenty of flights from New York for under $800. Nice hotels in Budapest cost $100 a night. And a three-day ticket package is $90. For the value of a single morning session ticket in Los Angeles, you can watch 10x the amount of track and pay for an entire vacation. Like Icahn, the stadium sells beer – but for roughly 1/4th the price.

“I’m listening… but what athletes will be there?” you ask. Well, it’s an exclusive event with only 16 qualifying for events with semi-finals, 12 athletes in straight finals, and only eight qualifiers for the field events. With the national championships behind us, our attention now turns to the Road to the Ultimate tool to see which of our favorites still have to close the gap.

As you sort through the current status of potential athletes in each event, you’ll notice some names missing, like Yared Nuguse.

Despite having a fantastic season that includes multiple Diamond League wins and a 3:45 mile, his name is not on the list, which is odd because he’s technically ranked second in the world at 1500m. That’s because in most events an athlete needs five performances to be ranked, and three of those have to come in the exact event. So while Nuguse has raced plenty this season, including multiple fast miles and a couple indoor 1500ms, he needs one more outdoor 1500m to be considered.

Aside from those who will be invited based on their rankings, reigning World and Olympic champions will receive bids. Additionally, the week before Ultimates at the Diamond League Final in Brussels, one more spot will be handed out per event. These go to whoever is the highest finisher that has not already qualified. Meaning an athlete could finish last, but if everyone who beat them was already in the quota, then they’ll still get invited.

But there is yet another way to get invited to the World Ultimate Championships and that’s through what will henceforth be known as the “Seb Coe Clause.” Buried at the bottom of the rule book is a little loophole for exceptional invitations:

World Athletics has the right to provide an entry to an athlete who for whatever reason has not qualified for the Championship. This athlete would be within the above defined Target Numbers. Such exceptional invitation is limited to one per event and, unless notified otherwise, the deadline to allocate them is Monday 17 August.

For you non-lawyers out there, that basically means at the end of the day, anyone can be invited if World Athletics deems their absence to be a problem. It would be quite the power move to leverage an invitation via the Seb Coe Clause since it would bump another already-qualified athlete, considering there are lane limitations. So just because it seems like a competitor is comfortably inside the quota today, they are only a Yared Nuguse outdoor 1500m, a Diamond League finalist, and a Seb Coe Clause invitation away from being bumped.

Now, given the potential for controversy and outcry, Lord Coe shouldn’t waste these spots on just anyone—they should be reserved for transcendent superstars, otherwise other athletes will rightly scream “KANGAROO COURT” and stop buying into the whole rankings thing.

While it’s in the best interest of TV ratings to extend an invitation to iShowSpeed for the men’s 100m, it’s probably a dangerous precedent. Instead, an athlete should have a body of work or standout performance this season that gives us reason to believe they’re in the sort of shape it’ll take to become the first ever World Ultimate champion in their event.

So it’s our opinion that as of July 29th, these are the only athletes that should be considered for a Seb Coe Clause invitation:

Josh Kerr: It’s like this rule was written just for him. Despite a mile world record and World Indoor title this year, Kerr is nowhere close to qualifying the old fashioned way. Given that the Commonwealth Games is running the mile rather than the 1500m for the first time since 1966, it seems unlikely that the Beast will run three outdoor 1500m races. Who knows if he’d even accept the invite, but Kerr should definitely be Seb’s first call.

Rai Benjamin: Although he technically has invitations two ways to run the 400m hurdles, the Olympic and World Champion is not yet ranked in the flat 400m. Benjamin’s win in London and personal best of 44.05 proves that he’d be a contender. Fortunately, it will only take one more race to get him inside of the quota so this might not be necessary. (Of course, USAs could have been it, but Benjamin opted out.)

Elaine Thompson-Herah: Hot take – more people will want to see the five-time Olympic gold medalist run than whoever would otherwise get this spot. While it isn’t a popularity contest, ETH’s accolades and proven ability to show up at global championships warrants a bid. She is currently ranked 27th on the descending order list and just one or two solid showings at a Diamond League might get her over the hump. Regardless, the legend has run 10.91 this season and owns a personal best of 10.54 so there is merit.

Yomif Kejelcha: The only man ever to have run every marathon under two hours. Look, he’s probably not going to accept the invitation to run a 5000m, but he would have three months before Valencia. His range is a proven commodity and he only just recently stepped away from the track with a personal best of 12:38, in addition to two Diamond League wins last year. Kejelcha makes every race he is in more interesting, and given his newfound strength there is no doubt he’d be up front pushing the pace. At least ask him!

That’s it. Names like Mary Moraa, Isaac Kimeli, Sifan Hassan, and Gout Gout could be considered, but ultimately there was a stronger argument for keeping those fields in their present, organic forms. That said, if Jakob Ingebrigtsen wants to run the 1500m, Coe should obviously let him, if for no other reason than to ensure it’s an honest race from the gun.

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Can You Be A G.O.A.T. Candidate But Not Your National Record Holder? 🇬🇷

At the Greek national championships this past weekend, Miltiádis Tentóglou posted the best jump of his life, launching himself 8.66 meters.

He’s among the greatest long jumpers in history, with a list of accolades that includes two Olympic golds, a World Championship gold and silver medal, the 2022 Diamond League Final crown, a pair of World Indoor titles, 11 wins on the Diamond League circuit, and three wins at the European Championships.

You might expect that an athlete of this caliber posting a PB would put him feet ahead of any of his compatriots. And yet, despite being tied at No. 13 all-time with that mark, Tentóglou only managed to tie the Greek national record.

The man with whom he shares that distinction, Louis Tsatoumas, was by no means a slouch. He jumped 8.66m after all! But he never medaled at the Olympics, never landed on the podium at a World Indoor championship, and the extent of his global medal haul was a single bronze medal, from the 2006 IAAF World Athletics Final.

By really any metric except—except a very notable one: PRs—Tentóglou is the superior jumper. And yet, in theoretical tavernas across Athens right now, long jump aficionados are embroiled in impassioned arguments over who is the Greek G.O.A.T., Tentóglou or Tsatoumas. Sure, one side has more ammunition than the other, but the shared national record at least gives the other side a bit of rhetorical room to operate. (That, and technically, Tsatoumas owns a 2–1 record in their head-to-head matchups.)

Crazily enough, Tentoglou might not even be the best athlete with this particular problem. For a variety of reasons, which could include the size of your country, a poorly-timed career ascension with a great rival, or a record book full of sketchy marks from the 1980s, there are more people than you’d think who’ve never held their country’s national record but have resumes worthy of the Hall of Fame. Such as:

Yohan Blake: We’ll start with one that’s simultaneously obvious but also criminally underappreciated. Blake is the second fastest man ever over 200m. His 19.26 is one of two performances ever under 19.30. In the 100m, he’s tied for second all-time with Tyson Gay at 9.69—that mark is tied for the third best in history. Of course, the only man unequivocally faster than Blake, Usain Bolt, isn’t just his compatriot… he was his contemporary.

That’s how perhaps the second greatest sprinter of all time is also the second greatest sprinter of all time from Jamaica, as well as just a one-time individual global champion. (Blake’s 2011 World title in the 100m happened to come in a race in which Bolt was disqualified for false starting.)

Asbel Kiprop: Kiprop sits at No. 3 on the all-time men’s 1500m rankings, thanks to his 3:26.69 showing at the 2015 Monaco Diamond League. With an Olympic gold medal to his name plus three World titles in his signature event, Kiprop is certainly in the conversation for the Mount Rushmore of men’s metric mile-dom.

And yet… he’s only the second-fastest Kenyan man ever behind Bernard Lagat—a man who is also (depending on who you ask) the fastest American man ever over the same distance, and who still clings onto the second spot on the all-time list. Though their competitive primes didn’t perfectly align, they still squared up in seven 1500m finals, with Kiprop beating Lagat in four of their battles.

Joe Kovacs: The 11 farthest shot put marks in history belong to Americans: The world record, along with the second, third, and fourth best throws all belong to Ryan Crouser. Then at number five is Joe Kovacs’s 2022 23.23m heave. The two next best heaves came courtesy of Crouser and Kovacs, respectively.

Much like the case of Blake and Bolt, Kovacs is more or less the unambiguous historical number two in his event. Totally great, yet totally unlucky to constantly trade blows with the unambiguous historical number one. Crouser won the last three Olympic games. Kovacs claimed silver every time. Unlike Bolt and Blake, both Kovacs and Crouser are still competing. Should Kovacs capture lightning in a bottle and throw one past Crouser’s current 23.56 WR, the G.O.A.T. conversation becomes a bit more interesting.

José Luíz Barbosa: When Joaquim Cruz ran 1:41.77 back in 1984, he was the second fastest man ever over 800m and along with Seb Coe, one of two men ever under 1:42. Cruz went on to win the 1984 Olympic gold medal after having finished third at Worlds the year before. He nabbed a silver medal in 1988 in Seoul, for good measure, rounding out his resume and claim to all-time legend status. Though Brazil isn’t necessarily known as an all-encompassing track and field powerhouse, Cruz isn’t the only 800m superstar it’s produced.

All of this is to say that had Barbosa been born anywhere except Brazil (and Kenya, and probably Switzerland), he’d have been the best 800m runner ever from his country. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he nabbed silver and bronze at Worlds, won a World Indoor title, and finished just one spot off the podium in 1996 in Atlanta.

Soufiane El Bakkali: Younger steeplechase fans have only known a world in which El Bakkali is a dominant force. Since 2019, he’s placed no worse than third at a global championship—a streak that includes two Olympic victories, a pair of World titles, two World silver finishes, and a lone World bronze medal. He’s the ninth-fastest steeplechaser in history, and one of just 15 men to ever run under 8:00 in the event.

And yet… the Moroccan national record belongs to Brahim Boulami, who is credited with a 7:55.28 PB. Boulami ran even faster—7:53.17 in 2001—but that result was vacated the following year as the result of a positive doping test for EPO. His 7:55 was kept on the books.

If there’s any takeaway from this trip down memory lane, it’s that the adage that “records get broken, but medals stay golden” should probably have an addendum: sometimes, records don’t get broken even if the performances that follow are equally legendary. Time (and distance, in the case of Kovacs or other field eventers) is a weird thing in this sport; it feels like a universal and unbiased measure of accomplishments, and yet… it’s not. Athletes’ careers can be greater than the sum of their parts, and Tentoglou’s is a great reminder that personal bests are just one part of the whole story.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– He’s ba-a-ack! Jakob Ingebrigtsen has announced his intentions to return to competition in the European Championships 5000m in two weeks.

– At the Norwegian championships, Henriette Jæger lowered the national record in the 200m to 22.55 and also won the 400m, in 50.41; and Karsten Warholm won the 400m hurdles crown, given him a whopping 27 national titles thus far in his career between indoor and outdoor championships.

– And speaking of Warholm, Alison dos Santos reclaimed the 400m hurdles world lead from his Norwegian rival after winning the Brazilian title in 46.48.

– Slovakia’s star 400m hurdler, Emma Zapletalová, dropped the hurdles and some distance to contest the 200m at her national championship—she not only won, she set a new national record (22.67) in the process.

– Mykolos Alekna predictably claimed the Lithuanian discus title, launching for throws past the 70-meter mark. His best mark—72.65m—is the furthest he’s heaved the discus outside of Ramona.

– At his national championship, Andy Díaz extended the Italian triple jump record to 17.87m—also a world leading mark. But even then, Díaz had competition! Simone Biasuitti went 17.32m, which puts him at number 10 on the year.

– Rénelle Lamote edged out Clara Liberman, 1:58.70 to 1:58.82, to take the 800m at the French champs.

– We’re a couple of days into the Commonwealth Games, and we’ve got a handful of notable champions already: Kenya’s Edmund Serem won the men’s steeple; Jamaica’s Romaine Beckford won the men’s high jump (on count back) at 2.25m; Ethan Katzberg of Canada took the men’s hammer title; and Australia’s Rose Davies won the women’s 10,000m.

– Juliette Whittaker has joined the Brooks Beasts.

– The Boston Athletic Association has done it (it, being upsetting and/or confusing thousands) again, by announcing there will be an added, lottery-based layer to Boston qualifying.

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Compiled by David Melly, Kyle Merber, & Paul Snyder

What Josh Kerr Got Right About “Project 222” 🏟️

It’s not often in the sport of track and field that you can hear the roar of a crowd through your television screen. But with one lap to go in Josh Kerr’s audacious record-setting mile run at the London Athletic Meet, the Olympic Stadium was as loud as any World Cup match.

Spurred on by 60,000 or so screaming fans, Kerr was able to pull away from runner-up Yared Nuguse and go where no man had ever gone before, stopping the clock at 3:42.66. In doing so, he became the first man under 3:43 in history and knocked Hicham El Guerrouj off the top spot for the first time in 27 years.

Behind Kerr, Nuguse held on for second in 3:45.69 and Jake Heyward continued his improbable comeback season, setting a Welsh record of 3:46.73. Heyward missed three straight seasons to injury, and now he’s back to his best stuff in half a season of racing. Robert Farken rounded out the most cheer-worthy performances by breaking his own German record for the second time this month, running 3:46.82 for fourth.

Around Kerr was another thrilling Diamond League meet, headlined by a red-hot Julien Alfred, who defeated Olympic champ Gabby Thomas over 200m once again, running a new meet record of 21.66 to Thomas’s 21.81. In the men’s 100m, NCAA champ Kayinsola Ajayi caused quite a stir with his finish line staredown of World champ Oblique Seville (or was it Jordan Anthony?), which didn’t slow him down too much because he still won the race in 9.84 into a headwind. Ajayi’s Auburn teammate Ja’Kobe Tharp re-proved his NCAA performance was no fluke, as he picked up his second of two 110mH wins on the pro circuit last week. Running 12.89 in London and 12.85 in Budapest in an incredible display of high-level consistency. And British fans will surely be throwing their tea and crumpets at the screen right now because we got four paragraphs in without mentioning Keely Hodgkinson’s 1:56.21 win in the 800m.

The theme of the field events was shocking losses, as Mondo Duplantis withdrew early from the pole vault program with hamstring tightness and ended up fourth, while discus queen Valarie Sion threw well, but not well enough to counteract Cierra Jackson’s surprise Diamond League record in the discus. Last year’s NCAA champ launched an absurd 71.72m sixth-round throw in the discus to defeat the reigning champ and log the longest throw in the world outside the wind tunnels of Oklahoma in nearly four decades.

But you’d never know any of this happened from the headlines, because the media firestorm that followed was all Josh Kerr, all the time.

Deservedly so!

Kerr can be a polarizing figure for his public bravado and seemingly impregnable ego, but if you’re going to take the incredibly vulnerable risk of calling your shot four months in advance, you deserve the literal and metaphorical victory laps that follow.

Kerr’s 3:42.66 seemed to accomplish two rare feats: it broke through to the broader sporting public’s consciousness, making its way into ESPN push alerts to Twitter clip farms, and it captured the full attention of the hard-core track and field fandom in a way that few events outside an Olympic final can. The physical achievement itself is all the more impressive because of the way it was successfully framed and presented to the world as a moment, a where-were-you-when phenomenon that will live on as one of the defining achievements of both the track and field year and Kerr’s entire career.

So how’d he do it? It’s one thing to put in the training and harness the technology necessary to get into world-record form, but it’s another to win the marketing and promotional game as well.

One key factor has already been mentioned: Kerr’s been telling us about the “Project 222” endeavor for months. Full entry lists for Diamond League meets are rarely available more than a few days in advance, and athletes are (unfortunately) under no professional obligation to tell fans what races they’re running until they get to the start line. Yet we’ve known since March that Kerr was running this race, on this day, and what his stated goal was. That allows for months of speculation by fans and analysts alike, dissecting workouts and cross-referencing splits to gauge Kerr’s chances of both victory and record-setting success.

Typically, track and field endeavors flicker in and out of our brains in a matter of seconds, with last weekend’s meet quickly subsumed by the next surprise PB or big upset. But sports more generally thrive on narratives that fans can sit with, and a mile world record attempt is just as worthy of sustained public attention as a 41-year-old’s free agency journey.

Since March (and actually, fairly consistently for the last several years), Kerr has rigorously documented his buildup. Again, the lack of professional obligation to tell the world anything about your health and training means that there’s an enormously wide range in how forthcoming professional track and field athletes are, with some posting daily runs on Strava and others dropping off the face of the planet for years. Kerr, like many of his rivals, has harnessed the power of YouTube effectively to keep fans interested and drop new tidbits of information to help shape the story. If there’s one criticism to his media strategy in the leadup to the race, it would’ve been nice to officially know about Kerr’s 2:42 1200m time trial at altitude sooner than the day before the race, because that would’ve really helped the pre-race frenzy.

Kerr’s selection of the London Diamond League as the venue of choice was also an audacious, but critical, ingredient in the recipe for success. He was not only inviting all challengers (at least those that could acquire a bib for a DL meet), but he removed any sort of asterisks that have become all-too-common place in these much-hyped record attempts. By opting to compete at a real race rather than a brand-sponsored exhibition, he was not only making sure the record itself was official-official, but that the entire endeavor felt performance-forward.

Surely the higher-ups at Brooks would’ve preferred a few more logos, and there’s plenty of “project” precedent—whether it’s Nike’s various Kipyegon/Kipchoge exhibitions, Jim Walmsley’s 100K Hoka time trial, or the Adidas “Road to Records” events. Even within the bounds of official competitions, there’s a wide range of perceived legitimacy. But with all due respect to the BUs and UWs of the world, it’s so much more satisfying to watch a record fall on an international broadcast of a 73-year-old professional meet than a half-empty college track.

London itself proved once again why it’s one of the track and field athletics capitals of the world. There’s great value in bringing track to new and exciting places where it doesn’t have a pre-existing footprint, but just as important is honoring the tradition and history of one of the world’s oldest sports. If your goal is to maximize in-stadium energy, choosing the place that delivered two of the best track and field events of recent memory—the 2012 Olympics and 2017 World Championship—as a homecoming for the most decorated UK distance runner since Mo Farah (Editor’s note: or second-most, depending on how you stack up Kerr’s resume against Hodgkinson’s) is a brilliant move.

Then there’s the goal itself. Taking down an El Guerrouj WR was no cakewalk, but despite being 27 years old, the 3:43.13 mile was arguably one of the more gettable marks on offer. Per the World Athletics scoring tables, 3:43.13 is “easier” than the 800m, 1500m, 3000m, and 5000m marks; it and Emmanuel Wanyonyi’s newly-set 1000m record are the only male distance records worth less than 1300 points.

3:43.13 is 3:28.01 1500m pace plus 109 meters; seven active runners including Kerr have run faster for 1500m. When Jakob Ingebrigtsen came within a second of the mark in 2023, his PB at the time was 3:27.14. Running 3:42 is something few men will ever be capable of, but it also doesn’t necessarily require being in 3:26-low 1500m shape.

The net result was an event built for success. An ambitious, but achievable goal teased months in advance, with repeated drips and drabs of new information to build interest dropped along the way. A perfectly-packaged showcase with the UK’s best miler headlining the UK’s biggest meet, while still preserving the high level of competition and elite standards essential to the race’s credibility. A generational athlete with a love-him-or-hate-him persona, evoking strong emotions from his fervent supporters and biggest detractors alike. And of course, the run itself; Kerr was able to blossom, not wilt, under the bright lights as he has at championships going back to NCAAs in 2017.

Few track and field moments will be able to match this one’s alchemy, but more should try. Josh Kerr deserves a lot of credit for putting his reputation on the line to create must-see TV, and even more for delivering. Whether his record stands for two more weeks or 27 more years, it’ll eventually be broken, but the thrill of that roaring crowd will last forever.

The Silver Linings Of A “Skippable” U.S. Champs 🗽

The U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships are set to kick off tomorrow at Icahn Stadium. New York City, baby! Not Eugene! National titles on the line in the nation’s largest city! This is something everyone in the American track and field ecosystem has been clamoring for years!

And yet, the pre-meet hype feels a bit muted.

This is a weird year for professional track and field. Thus, we have a weird USAs. Instead of an Olympics or World Championship to build a season around, all some roads lead to the brand new World Ultimate Championships. Possible world ranking point accumulation aside, qualification for said Diamond League Final x Worlds hybrid ignores national championships.

Accordingly, athletes with byes into the WUC fields or who are confident their rankings will get them in can pass on a weekend in New York, relatively consequence free. That’s why fans who schlep over to Randall’s Island will not be treated to feats of strength/speed/endurance/springiness from the likes of Cole Hocker, Yared Nuguse, Brandon Miller (a late scratch), Masai Russell, Gabby Thomas, Rai Benjamin (another late scratch), Katie Moon, or Ja’Kobe Tharp.

Before you let your fan ire reach a critical mass and head to the comments section of these athletes’ profiles, consider: you make more money finishing first ($10,000 vs $8,800) at any Diamond League than at USAs, and you also make more money finishing fifth, sixth, or seventh. Plus, USAs offers nothing in the form of appearance fees, and for sprinters in particular, Icahn Stadium is not likely to produce times quite as fast as Hayward.

But rather than dwell on who is not on the start lists, here at the Lap Count, we choose to focus on the positives. And there are plenty. First off, stars like Sha’Carri Richardson, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Noah Lyles, Kenny Bednarek, Valarie Sion, Cooper Lutkenhaus, Quincy Hall, among plenty of others, are all slated to compete as of Tuesday evening. Any time you can watch big names like these do their things—especially inside a condensed, four-day schedule in a (comparatively) easy to reach stadium—that’s special.

But beyond that, the notable absences at USAs, in some ways, make for more interesting competitions. Neat things—athletically, to be clear—can happen in a power vacuum! Events are less predictable, rising talent has a chance to make a statement on a still-very-much major stage.

The men’s 1500m is perhaps the single event most obviously defined by who’s sitting it out—in addition to no Hocker or Nuguse, Jonah Koech has been M.I.A. all year, Ethan Strand has scratched, and Hobbs Kessler is opting for the 800m. But that simply leaves room for a scene veteran—competing during a historic period for U.S. men’s middle distance—like Vince Ciattei or Sam Prakel to take home a precious U.S. title or for a youngster like Nathan Green or Simeon Birnbaum to re-announce their presence on the pro stage. Plus, without known entities like Nuguse to keep things honest, or Hocker’s anxiety-inducing kick in the mix, even predicting how this one will pan out is a challenge. And that rocks!

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s absence here has nothing to do with the World Ultimate Championships, at least not directly. She just gave birth to her daughter, and is understandably sitting things out. But in her absence, both the 400m and 400m hurdles suddenly feel wide open. As much as we love witnessing SML outclass world class athletes, we’re pretty stoked about the prospect of a late career Dalilah Muhammad U.S. title in her hometown, or an Aaliyah Butler win that establishes her as the unquestionable quarter-mile queen of the U.S.

In a race like the men’s 5000m, we’ve got our headliner in Grant Fisher, but no clear pecking order beyond that. Without Graham Blanks, Nico Young, or Parker Wolfe in the field, Fisher’s strategy feels more open ended. Does the double Olympic medalist simply run away from the field from the gun, flexing on a crew of young, scrappy, non-sub-13-PR guys? Does he trust he can cruise at a comfortable clip then close better than anybody else? It seems unlikely that anybody else will lead for much of the race—why would they? The men’s longer distance events at U.S. championships in recent years have deviated from the sit-and-kick affairs of yore, and become true races of attrition where three or four big dogs battle it out and let the pace and warm conditions take their tolls. Here, Fisher has the world’s largest target on his back and will likely be handed the keys to the race from the jump—how does he play it?

But it’s not just tactical intrigue or room for new champs that slightly watered down fields encourage. Superstars feel a bit more leeway to dabble in a secondary event, as Nikki Hiltz is doing in the 800m, and Davis-Woodhall is apparently attempting in the long jump and 100m hurdles. In both cases, a double victory at first thought feels impossible, but hey… stranger things have happened.

Hiltz is undoubtedly the class of American 1500m running at the moment, but given their strength relative to the nation’s 800m cohort and absolutely killer close and racing instincts, you never know. Plus, despite Addy Wiley and Roisin Willis having had very strong years up to now, there isn’t a clear insurmountable favorite in the field. Because Hiltz’s world ranking projects to comfortably slot them onto the World Ultimate starting line of the longer race, they can give this demanding double a shot.

As a high schooler, Davis-Woodhall posted the then-second fastest ever prep time in the event, and as a college senior she ran 12.75. Returning to the event for the first time since 2021, in her one outing over hurdles this season she ran a massive PB of 12.47. She’ll likely need to shave off another 0.2 seconds to be competitive—and potentially to even make the final—but given her talent and the rust she could conceivably bust through the rounds, who’s to say what her ceiling is this weekend?

No matter what, it’ll be fascinating to watch her alternate between lining up in the blocks and measuring her steps before getting the stands clapping. And even if everything goes horribly, horribly wrong, Davis-Woodhall still knows she’s still assured a turn on the runway in Budapest as the reigning World and Olympic champ. That degree of insurance makes risk-taking like what she’s set to do viable. (It’s a damn shame Ryan Crouser has shut down his season, because this is likely the best shot we’d ever get at witnessing the high school record holder dust off the discus.)

So go ahead and open up the usual browser tabs, ensure you’ve got access to the requisite streaming services, get the group chat fired up, and tune in to what may not be the most star-studded USAs in history, but what still promises to be a memorable one. We’ve got superstars stepping out of their comfort zones, soon-to-be household names hungry for their first U.S. title, and best of all, lots of favorite-less competitions in store.

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Some Of Y’all Need An Altitude Attitude Adjustment 😤

Dating is not easy. In the early stages of getting to know someone, it’s important to be on the lookout for potential red flags—something they do or say that gives a glimpse into who that person really is. Well ladies, if a guy ever tries to pass off his converted 1500m time as a full mile… RUN!

If you want to break four minutes in the mile, you have to break four minutes in the mile. And the only bigger faux pas than estimating one’s ability to keep going for an additional 109 meters might be using an online calculator to make an altitude conversion. While running a 4:04 mile at altitude might indicate the ability to break four minutes at sea level… it’s not a sub-four minute mile.

But the NCAA is not in the business of statistics, it’s in the business of selecting the top 16 athletes every indoor season to compete at the NCAA Championships. Since 1981, citing supportive scientific studies, the NCAA has implemented a standardized conversion formula to adjust marks to account for competitions held at different altitudes. And since 2013, the length and bank of the track has also been factored into the selection equation. (Anyone who has ever tried sprinting on the turns of a flat 200m track understands why.)

Relying on altitude conversions has been the path to qualification for several NCAA mile champions, including Josh Kerr, Anthony Rotich, and Geordie Beamish. Historical results demonstrate that athletes who get into the quota because of adjusted times generally prove that they belong. And even if they don’t, it makes sense that the NCAA would want to take a chance on the possibility that a Montana State guy who didn’t make it out of Bozeman may have more upside than a runner who finished 11th in heat 2 of three different 3000m races held in Boston.

That’s all about to change.

The NCAA Division I Men’s & Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country Oversight Committee has voted in favor of removing the altitude and track-size calculations as procedural for the selection of NCAA qualifying marks. That means running 14:00 for 5000m at the Sky Dome in Flagstaff would have been worth 13:22 last year, but next season it will be worth 14:00.

As you might imagine, the comment section about this news had a mixed bag of opinions.

Oregon athlete Connor Burns had strong thoughts: “If you have the ability to qualify to NCAAs you will get to race at sea level I promise no coach is letting that opportunity pass.” Which is certainly true for many, if not most, top athletes. But let’s look at who else is and is not qualifying for NCAAs.

At the 2026 NCAA Indoor meet, 527 of the 625 competing athletes represent a school in one of the Power Four conferences, or about 84% of attendees. And that’s not including the 14 athletes backed by Princeton’s $34 billion endowment, or the 18 additional athletes from historical powerhouses Villanova and Northern Arizona. There are only 68 teams in the P4 conferences, but there are 365 Division I schools.

For small-school, at-altitude or altitude-adjacent athletes, getting to NCAAs is more dependent on their coach having the money to get them to sea level than their talent. The divide between the haves and have-nots in the collegiate system is a gap that continues to widen. And that’s not getting into the four-figure sums programs now have to drop to run everyone in a 5000m at BU. By eliminating altitude and track conversions, the NCAA is effectively adding another layer between the fully-funded and barely-scraping-by—that’s the problem here.

College coaches gaming the system to bring their athletes to altitude to unfairly qualify for the NCAA Championships is a made-up problem. This past year, across the 800m, mile, 3000m, 5000m, and DMR on both the men’s and women’s side, there were only 12 spots filled by conversion. Meanwhile, 14 of the 16 top times in the men’s 3000m were run at Boston University.

Getting rid of altitude and flat track conversions won’t significantly change who qualifies for an NCAA meet, but it may give more ammo to athletic directors looking for a good reason to cut roster spots and save on budget. That small DI school in the mountains may not fly their best athletes to Boston if they don’t have a chance of qualifying, but now they’ll appear much less competitive nationally and in recruiting.

The NCAA made a huge step towards professionalizing the collegiate system when it became acceptable to pay student athletes. Unfortunately, however, the House v. NCAA ruling did not go far enough. Whether it’s the MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, EPL, or virtually every professional sport in the world, the healthiest leagues maintain a level of revenue-sharing so that the prosperity of big market teams is spread to smaller markets.

It’s already being done in college sports, but the $1.03 billion doled out among the SEC schools doesn’t spread beyond those 16 institutions. There’s a complicated component of the legislation moving through Congress that would work to spread the wealth, literally, but long story short: that’s not going anywhere any time soon.

NCAA track will never achieve true parity. There will always be big schools with big budgets who can send more athletes to more places in pursuit of qualifying marks. But it’s also an individual sport, and the opportunities that follow collegiate track and field can be life-changing, both career-wise and financially. So it’s a shame that this particular rule change flattens and narrows the path to long-term success, because it will almost certainly lead to an All-American talent sitting at home, trying to borrow an ESPN login to watch a race they could’ve won.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– At Kingsport, Tennessee’s Crazy 8s 8k—which doubled as the U.S. 8k championship—Andrew Colley (22:38) and Emily Venters (25:05) took the titles. That makes two U.S. titles on the year for both athletes.

– At the Night of Athletics (incredible name) in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium, Winfred Yavi went 8:52.87 to win the steeple and José Carlos Pinto set the Portuguese 5000m record in 12:59.75.

– Recent Indiana high school grad Noah Bontrager, who won the U.S. U20 3000m title in June, secured the World U20 auto standard of 8:04 last weekend in Philadelphia, on an indoor track, paced in part by his dad. After World U20s he’s headed to Notre Dame in the fall.

– In what has to be considered terrifying news for her hammer throw rivals around the world, three-time Olympic champ and world record holder Anita Włodarczyk, at the spry young age of 40, threw 75.01m in Madrid to log her best performance in nearly four years last weekend.

– Neils Laros has called it a season, citing a bum Achilles.

– In other sad tendon news, 1:06 half marathoner Taylor Roe tore her FHL tendon and had to have it surgically repaired.

– Already in New York, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Noah Lyles stopped by the TODAY show to explain what exactly the World Ultimate Championships are.

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There’s a reason why the top cyclists and triathletes in the world are jumping in painter suits to do heat training blocks ahead of big races. The science is clear: heat training can induce performance-boosting adaptations like increased hemoglobin mass and VO2 max, which can match the same gains you get at altitude, minus the trip to the mountain. CORE’s thermal sensor streams your real-time core temp and other heat data straight to your watch, so you can safely and effectively conduct heat training without overcooking yourself.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Why Josh Kerr Will—Or Won’t—Break The Mile World Record💂

All eyes turn to the London Eye this weekend. Or, more accurately, a few miles northeast, to Queen Elizabeth Park and the city’s Olympic Stadium, where British record holder Josh Kerr will take a much-publicized shot at Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record in the mile.

Kerr and the Brooks camp have dubbed it “Project 222,” circling this date on the calendar months in advance and calling his shot at 3 minutes and 42 seconds. (Not to be pedantic… but technically, Kerr could fall short of 222 and still succeed, as Ej Guerrouj’s world record, which just celebrated its 27th birthday last week, stands at 3:43.13, or 223.13 seconds.)

Kerr has a personal best of 3:45.34, set at the Prefontaine Classic two summers ago. At the same meet nine months earlier, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Yared Nuguse worked together to give Ej Guerrouj’s mark its closest scare yet, running 3:43.73 and 3:43.97, respectively—the third and fourth fastest marks in history. It was the first time since the record was set that anyone not named Hicham got within even two seconds of the mark.

Since then, Kerr has picked up his second Olympic medal, PRed in the 1500m, and set a world indoor best in the two mile. After winning his second World Indoor title over 3000m this past winter, he’s raced sparingly outdoors but has clocked an outright PB of 1:44.60 in the 800m. All indications suggest that, in theory, Kerr is capable of achieving the goal he’s set for himself, but such an ambitious attempt requires not just ability, but also for circumstances to align favorably.

Just like everyone else this week, we’re asking the same question: “Can he do it?” And frankly, it could go either way.

Why he’ll break the record

• Science has been good to the middle distances: Bicarb, Wavelights, shoe tech, singlets with silly little holes in them… you’ve heard it all before. The net result has been the resetting of eight different world records in men’s and women’s middle-distance events from 2020 onwards. With Emmanuel Wanyonyi finally taking down the 27-year-old 1000m mark last weekend in Monaco, the mile and 1500m records are the last remaining men’s records between 800m and 10,000m that come from the 1990s. No record lasts forever, and eventually El Guerrouj will be bumped from his spot atop the record books just like every man who came before him.

• London has a beautiful evening in the forecast: The one factor meet organizers can’t completely control seems to be agreeing so far, with temperatures in the mid- to high-70s Fahrenheit and a smattering of clouds in the forecast for Saturday afternoon in the UK. Just as crucially, as it stands neither the wind nor the humidity are currently throwing up major red flags either. Part of any successful record attempt is good luck, and so far, the weather gods seem to be on Kerr’s side.

• This is Kerr’s goal race: It’s one thing to ride the high of good mid-season form to a PB, and it’s another to time your peak perfectly for championship season. In a normal year, distance runners rarely get the opportunity to do both at the same time, but this isn’t a normal year. As we’ve said already, the unique nature of the “off year” allows the very kind of risk-taking that makes this brave chase possible.

• Two words—Yared Nuguse: Even the best rabbits in the world can only take you so far, and then you’re stuck doing the hard work up front all alone for the hardest part of the race. Except! Throughout Kerr’s career, he’s been fortunate in many of his best races to be taking on strong challengers who aren’t afraid to lead, from Jakob Ingebrigtsen to Grant Fisher to Yared Nuguse, the American record holder who’s toeing the start line alongside the British headliner. Nuguse hanging onto Kerr’s heels, or even taking the lead himself in the back half, may be just what they both need to dip under the 3:43 barrier.

Why he won’t break the record

• The excitement leads to a pace that’s too hot to handle: It happens to the best of us. The roar of the crowd and the glare of the lights can get in the heads of even the most seasoned professionals, and nervous energy sends a little too much adrenaline coursing through their veins. All of a sudden, the pacer(s) and/or the race leaders are ahead of the Wavelights and the legs go from fresh to cooked a few meters too early. When you’re trying to ride the razor’s edge in pursuit of a historic time, the margin for error is infinitesimally small, which can lead to miscalculations and missteps that throw the whole effort into disarray.

• The rabbits end up hurting more than helping: The converse of rabbits that get overexcited are rabbits that, frankly, don’t get the job done on the day. We’ve all watched a race where a record attempt gets derailed because the pacer is absolutely rigging while doggedly trying to hit their assigned distance. Then they won’t get out of lane one, forcing the runners they’re trying to help to either slow down or swing wide, a tough decision in the moment. Rabbits Brannon Kidder and Žan Rudolf are solid middle-distance runners in their own right, but Kidder’s 1000m PB is 2:17.21 and Rudolf’s is 2:19.03. A kilometer at 3:43.13 pace is 2:18.67, and that won’t come easy, or necessarily evenly paced.

• Kerr picked the wrong Diamond League: Historically, the fastest 1500m/mile tracks in the world are located in Monaco, Eugene, and Rome. (Those Diamond Leagues have already happened already, in case you missed them!) Few fast miles have been run in London’s Olympic Stadium, and the swiftest 1500m being Phanuel Koech’s 3:28.82 winning mark from last year, which stands only 55th on the all-time list. It’s great for the ambiance and the storyline that Kerr wants to break the record in front of a home crowd, but if optimization is the goal, there isn’t a lot of evidence to support the notion that London was the best spot to host this attempt.

• Two words—Yared Nuguse: In order for Josh Kerr to break the world record in the mile, he first must win the race. It’s not totally implausible that Kerr could run faster than 3:43.13 and finish second. Nuguse has a personal best 1.3 seconds faster than Kerr, and he’s been running great all season, picking up two Diamond League victories and another pair of runner-up finishes. Kerr remains the odds-on favorite, but in nine career head-to-head 1500m/mile races, he’s only got a 5-4 advantage against Nuguse, so it’s not like it’s never happened before.

Given how long Kerr, his camp, and London meet organizers have given fans the chance to get excited, expectations will be sky-high. And all parties involved get a lot of credit for choosing to stage this audacious endeavor at a real, sanctioned race with all the history and prestige that comes with it, rather than a glossy brand-controlled time trial. Success is far from guaranteed, but that’s what makes it fun to watch.

Why Is Almost Everyone Running The 400m Wrong? 🙅

It’s been a banner year for the one-lapper. While neither world record has gone down (yet), both the NCAA and Diamond League records have fallen over the course of the last month, with no end in sight to fast times.

Both 2024 Olympic champ Marileidy Paulino and 2025 World champ Busang Collen Kebinatshipi are riding four-race win streaks and coming off dramatic wins in Monaco. Paulino is running it back in London this weekend, but Kebinatshipi is skipping out—perhaps an intentional decision on the part of meet organizers to give a homer like Matthew Hudson-Smith some time to shine. But it’s not just their winning record that’s turned heads.

Both world leaders are running really, really fast, really consistently, and they’re doing it by running very differently than their competitors. No one on the professional level even-splits a 400m, but both Paulino and Kebinatshipi have become known for their hard-charging closes down the finishing straight. Technically, they’re still slowing down just like everyone else, but compared to their competitors, it looks like they’re finding another gear and kicking it in.

Let’s look at Paulino first. In Monaco, she hit halfway in 23.87, sitting in fifth-place out of eight, and nearly a second behind early leader Lurdes Gloria Manuel. Yet Paulino ended up taking the win in 48.67, with a 0.93-second differential between her first and second 200ms. By comparison, runner-up Aaliyah Butler also broke 49 seconds, but her positive split was more than double Paulino’s—23.23-25.61, for a +2.38 differential.

In Paris, when Paulino set the now-Diamond League record of 48.48, she was in third place at halfway. She ended up winning that race by nearly a full second over Manuel. Poor Lieke Klaver, who led both Paris and Monaco at halfway, ended up fourth and fifth, respectively.

Kebinatshipi’s race splits tell an even more dramatic story. Across four Diamond League victories, Kebinatshipi has not hit halfway in the lead in any of them, and in his two league-record performances this year, he’s positive-split by less than a second. His 43.44 run in Monaco was absolutely ridiculous by professional sprinting standards, not because he ran historically fast but because he did so by going out in seventh place in 21.47, positive splitting by only 0.50 seconds and closing his final 200m under 22 seconds.

It’s hard to put into words how unusual that is, but here’s a quick comparison. Kebinatshipi is now tied with Hudson-Smith at #6 on the all-time list. Hudson-Smith ran his personal best in the 2024 Olympic final, which unfortunately does not have official 100-meter splits like the Diamond League, but a slowed-down rewatch of the race video has him hitting halfway around 20.5 seconds, nearly a full second up on Kebinatshipi two years later, while they crossed the finish line in the same time. As you may recall from that race, Quincy Hall’s dramatic come-from-behind finish for gold stole the show, but even Hall in that race still split roughly 21.3 at 200m.

The one time this strategy didn’t quite work for Paulino was in Tokyo last fall, when both she and World champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone closed in 24.8 but Sydney got a 0.14 second advantage at halfway, which ended up being pretty much the margin of victory at the finish (okay, it was 0.20 seconds). They both clocked positive splits in the 1.8-second range, a bit more normal, but still a relatively evenly paced effort.

Weren’t they running such similar races because they were the two top dogs racing each other to the line? Yes and no. Competition is certainly a factor, as the best athletes are pushed by their desire to win. But the 400m/400H, perhaps uniquely as the longest races run entirely in lanes, are so entirely dependent on being able to perfectly gauge your own effort.

The two fastest men in history took two different approaches. When Michael Johnson set his then-world record in 1999, he executed a fairly even effort, splitting 21.22 and hanging on for the coveted sub-22 second half to run 43.18. Current world record holder Wayde van Niekerk set his 43.03 mark running blind – and scared – in lane 9 at the Rio Olympics, and you can tell from the splits: his first half was 20.54, and he unofficially ran a ridiculous 9.78 from 100m to 200m.

So Monaco, and all the history that preceded it, lends itself to two natural conclusions. Either: that pretty much every other long sprinter in the world is going out too hard in the 400m. Or: both Paulino and Kebinatshipi, but especially Kebinatshipi, could run faster in their next races by simply getting out harder. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but with their sample sizes growing by the week, there’s a good argument that the pros on the circuit who keep losing to the same runners in the same way may want to change tactics.

While Kebinatshipi’s 21.47 split in Monaco isn’t quite as earth-shattering as Dick Fosbury’s radical decision to jump backwards, it’s notable that four of the last six global titles have been won by runners, male and female, who’ve produced historically fast results with the same race strategy. If you can’t beat ‘em, copy ‘em.

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American Track’s Lack Of Elitism Is What Makes It Elite 🏆

Well, the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team has been eliminated from the World Cup. They performed more or less exactly as everyone expected, and we know just who to blame: it’s the kids’ fault…

Sort of.

Every four years, casual soccer fans become deeply—and temporarily—invested in a handful of games the American men play well in. We even allow ourselves to believe “we” could win it all! Then before returning to our default state of soccer-ambivalence, we point our angry fingers at the fragmented for-profit youth system that seems directly responsible for the USMNT’s middling results.

But for the team representing our particular country on the international stage, is there not a better symbol of our most defining values than a team that has been developed and assembled through pure unfettered capitalism? The United States’ current pay-to-pay youth system differs greatly from the rest of the world. While the countries that routinely beat our asses tend to have an infrastructure in place propped up by multi-billion dollar clubs, the 16th best team in the world asks parents to whip out their checkbooks or take out a loan to bankroll their child’s travel team dreams.

The perfect example of the European youth development model is Spain’s 19-year-old wunderkind, Lamine Yamal. Although his family grew up in relative poverty, he was scouted by FC Barcelona’s academy when he was just seven years old. Because of his long-term promise, the club footed the bill for his coaching, housing, meals, medical, gear, schooling, and then gave him a few hundred dollar stipend on top of it all. With incentives his current contract is worth €40 million each year, and Barcelona negotiated a €1 billion release clause, he’s not going anywhere.

In the land of the free, club dues alone can run upwards of $5,000 each year, and with tournament dues, gear, travel, and all the other add-ons, it’s not uncommon for an average family to spend $20,000 annually so their child can play in a competitive league. That’s a lot of dough!

Now that the World Cup is almost over, it’s time for us to return our focus to what we really care about: track and field. Amidst all this grumbling about how inaccessible soccer is in the U.S. is an incredible opportunity for our sport.

This pay-to-play model is not exclusively a soccer issue. It’s just the one we’re talking about right now because of the World Cup. If the World Baseball Classic was as big of a deal, then you’d see talking heads bemoaning how the U.S. is falling behind athletically because we’re letting less-well-off kids slip through the cracks. And while we like to think we run the basketball world, how about the fact that the last American to win the NBA’s MVP award, James Harden, did so nearly a decade ago, in 2018?

In the United States, developing the necessary skills to gain broader recognition at a young age in team sports generally requires money. In this economy, the number of families that have the disposable income to even attempt investing in their child’s athletic future is dwindling. So while the United States may have a population of 342 million people, the fiscally-filtered talent pool is quite limited. And historically, the best athletes don’t always spawn from families with silver spoons and French au pairs.

Do you know what does not cost a lot of money? Running track.

Whereas team sports require extensive travel to weekend-long tournaments—a requisite to even be recruited by a college program—race results provide more than enough information to gain attention because the clock is objective and winning speaks for itself.

There’s an estimated 30,000 tracks in the United States, and many, if not most, are free for public use (outside of school hours). That’s because virtually every high school in the country has an oval around its football field, and that accessibility is our sport’s differentiator. And crucially, unlike track and field’s competitors (re: soccer, basketball, etc.), the high school varsity program is generally the best route for development anyway. If you go to public school and ignore the cost of property taxes, it’s basically free!

That does not mean that a pay-to-play model at the youth level in track is completely absent. There are, of course, the AAU circuit and USATF’s Junior Olympics available for the most enthusiastic parents. Even those programs, however, are a fraction of the price of other youth sports and don’t require buying hockey sticks or baseball bats.

And while some athletes who excel as tweens do develop into stars (Jonathan Simms, Tia Jones, Brandon Miller, and Aleia Hobbs come to mind), it is not obligatory. In fact, many experienced coaches and physiologists would argue against starting a serious training regimen early.

David Epstein, the author of the #1 New York Times best-selling book, Range, contends that when it comes to developing athletes, the best approach is to encourage broad exposure to many sports so as to not specialize in anything early on. He praises the Norwegian model for youth sports, which is one focused on participation. Giving every kid a trophy and not keeping score until they are 13 years old is not some gentle parenting agenda—it’s an effective developmental strategy! By minimizing pressure and maximizing fun, kids stay involved and it allows them much needed time and space to advance their skills and overall athleticism.

For American running fans, the goal should be to start scooping up the talent left behind by other sports. When they zig, we need to zag. As the fastest kids are being priced out of travel soccer or AAU basketball or Little League or whatever other endeavor costs as much as a car, that’s when track coaches ought to swoop in.

It sounds nice in concept, but what does that mean in practice?

It means professional teams like the Atlanta Track Club or Oregon Track Club having youth divisions that are affordable yet well-resourced. It means having the New York Road Runners or USATF going into schools to host clinics. It means the Armory making its track accessible for the neighborhood. It means having a free kids’ fun runs at the local 5K, and all-comers meets that cost a few bucks. It means Recovered Running donating equipment and gear to schools that don’t have any. It means the USATF Foundation giving grants to youth clubs. It means Girls on the Run implementing after school programs for grades 3-8 with volunteer coaches.

But most importantly, it means that the current culture of inclusivity that the sport has cultivated must continue. Track and field is not soccer. It’s impossible to know if a seven-year-old may one day break world records. For that reason—among countless others!—we shouldn’t create barriers to entry just because their parents can’t afford to find out.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– At the Gyulai István Memorial, Ethan Katzberg threw a season’s best in the hammer, 83.64; Ja’Kobe Tharp beat Jamal Britt in the 110m hurdles, 12.85 to 13.01; Julian Alfred won the 100m in 10.87; Gabby Thomas took the 200m in 21.83; and Masai Russell won the 100m hurdles (again), in 12.33.

– If somebody runs the second-fastest 800m on North American soil and only a few hundred Albertans turn out to see it, does it still garner a bullet point in this newsletter? Turns out, the answer is yes. Marco Arop went 1:42.13 at the Edmonton Athletics Invitational on Sunday, winning by over two seconds. In the prelims of the 100m, Sade McCreath broke the Canadian record, going 10.86, but was beaten by Audrey Leduc in the final.

– At the Sunset Tour, in-demand rabbit Abe Alvarado proved he’s also good at finishing races, winning the men’s 800m in 1:44.07 for an 0.01-second margin of victory, and Makayla Paige took the women’s 800m title in 1:58.14 in another squeaker—second place was just 0.03 seconds back.

– Emily Venters continued her solid string of 2026 racing at the U.S. Women’s USATF 6km Champs, winning in 18:08 and holding off a late challenge from Elise Cranny. Annie Rodenfels rounded out the podium in Canton, Ohio. Incoming Indiana University freshman Katy Zang finished 11th, splitting 15:45 through the 5k.

– This being an even numbered year, this past weekend’s Hardrock 100 was run in a clockwise direction, and both the clockwise course records fell despite the occasional presence of wildfire smoke. Courtney Dauwalter won the women’s race by over four hours in 26:03:10, finishing fifth overall. 50-year-old Frenchman Ludovic Pommeret won outright in 21:11:36.

– At a blustery Ed Murphey Classic, Jamaica’s Kadrian Goldson snuck in a wind-legal 9.89 (+1.9) 100m, while two Americans notched global top-five marks: Jordan Geist heaved the shot 22.44m and Russell Robinson went 17.54m (+1.6) in the triple jump.

– Jemma Reekie won the 800m at the British Milers Club Grand Prix in 1:58.41, winning by 1.6 seconds.

– TLC favorite Sam Prakel scored the win in the mile at the Morton Games, going 3:50.97.

– Congratulations to Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who gave birth to her first child!

– And additional congratulations to Emma Bates, who also welcomed her first child to the world!

Interested in reaching 20,000+ dedicated runners and track and field fans? Advertise with us here.

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There’s a reason why the top cyclists and triathletes in the world are jumping in painter suits to do heat training blocks ahead of big races. The science is clear: heat training can induce performance-boosting adaptations like increased hemoglobin mass and VO2 max, which can match the same gains you get at altitude, minus the trip to the mountain. CORE’s thermal sensor streams your real-time core temp and other heat data straight to your watch, so you can safely and effectively conduct heat training without overcooking yourself.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Women’s Sprint Rivalries Are Keeping The Sport Alive 🔥

The 51st running of the Prefontaine Classic, a meet that always delivers both top-tier talent and absurd depth, had a big problem in the women’s 100m this year: there are too many women who are very good at the 100m.

Athletes like Tia Clayton (10.82 PB), Kayla White (10.84 PB), and Amy Hunt (2x British champ over 100m) found themselves on the outside looking in of the final as it took two stacked heats before the TV window to even decide who would toe the primetime start line. With two World champs, five of the seven fastest women of 2026, and four of the ten fastest women of all time on the entry list, the race was more stacked than many a World or Olympic final.

There were plenty of rich narratives, too. A generational battle—between the up-and-comers (Tina Clayton, Shawnti Jackson, and Adaejah Hodge) and the veterans (Shericka Jackson and Dina Asher-Smith), the Americans versus the Jamaicans, the Americans versus the Brits, and of course, a clash of training group alphas as Star Athletics’s two brightest stars, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Sha’Carri Richardson, both entered in fine form.

Longtime Richardson followers know her race is often decided in the first few steps: she is not the best starter in the world by any means, and when she’s off her game she can lay down some real clunkers out of the blocks. On the other hand, if she gets to her drive phase within spitting distance of the lead, she’s very, very dangerous in the back half. So when Richardson got the jump on Jackson and Jefferson-Wooden to her right, it was clear she’d be tough to beat.

Instead, Jackson and Hodge struggled mightily out of the blocks, and while Hodge still closed like a freight train to move up through the field, neither was able to challenge Richardson. No, it was her training partner and three-time World champ MJW who had the gears to beat her to the line. Jefferson-Wooden leaned her way to a 10.78 season’s best, just 0.01 ahead of Richardson.

A lot of hay is being made in sprint circles around Richardson’s general aversion to leaning at the line, but whether or not you think that made the difference in the race, the net result was that Jefferson-Wooden kept her 100m win streak alive: she hasn’t lost a race at the distance since taking bronze in the final in Paris.

After the finish line, Jefferson-Wooden was, for lack of a better term, fired TF up. Off the track, the American is polite and low-key, arguably one of the softer-spoken pro sprinters on the circuit. But in the heat of competition she gets as animated as anyone else in the whole stadium, glad to continue her run of dominance despite sharing in pre-race interviews that she’d had a less-than-ideal spring of training.

Richardson, who’s known for her showboating ways and high-energy presence, was more restrained this time around, but nevertheless looked pleased to have dropped her second sub-10.80 of the season. Despite her 10.65 PB and prodigious talent, this is only Richardson’s third season of dipping under the 10.8 barrier more than once. The others were her 2023 campaign that ended in a World title and her 2021 season that saw her win the Olympic Trials before her unfortunate post-facto disqualification. Early on this season, there were some questions around her health and fitness, but they’ve all been answered now.

This is arguably only the second season when both sprinters have been in top form at the same time. If you count the results from 2021, either Jefferson-Wooden or Richardson has won the 100m at the last five U.S. Championships, but MJW didn’t break 11 seconds in either 2021 or 2023 and Richardson only dipped below the barrier once last year. 2024, where both women landed on the podium in Paris, was the only season we’ve gotten prime Melissa vs. Sha’Carri to date. Sha’Carri has the lifetime edge in the 100m 6-5, but Sha’Carri got out to a 6-0 start and now Melissa has won their last five matchups. Now, the gap is literally one race and 1/100th of a second.

With the two best Americans in recent years performing their best right now, the 2026 national title at USAs will not come easy for anyone. On the international scene, the addition of Hodge and the resurgence of Jackson and her countrywoman Elaine Thompson-Herah virtually guarantees that no Diamond League or World Ultimate Championship will be a cakewalk. And that’s not even factoring in the Claytons, who are still just 21 years old, Pre fourth-placer Jonielle Smith, who got a PB of 10.89 in third, or… Olympic champion Julien Alfred, the only athlete in the world who’s shown she can beat both Richardson and Jefferson-Wooden at their best.

This is the best of track: a bevy of emotions, drama, and intrigue packed into nine lanes and ten seconds of racing. The time and the place matters: With all these young women running as well as they are, the 10.60 barrier—cleared only by two women in history—will inevitably see a battering any week now. And yet, at any given meet one of them could drop a top-ten all-time mark and not win.

So pick your fave and lock in. Because whether you want to see a rematch of the Star stars, a Jamaican revenge tour after getting shut out of the top-three at Pre, or a World vs. Olympic champ showdown for the ages, it’s coming. With each impending race, the plot only thickens, and even without the traditional prizes on offer this year, the bragging rights alone will take on a historic significance given the level of competition. They’re only just getting started.

Pre Proves Not All Rabbits Are Helpful 🐇

By nearly any metric, last weekend’s Pre Classic was a barn-burner of a meet, as it basically always is.

The women’s 100m was so exceptional that we dedicated the entire preceding section to it; Lilian Odira took down Keely Hodgkinson again in the 800m; Nikki Hiltz won their first Diamond League race ever, defeating the entire 2025 World Championship podium in the process; Masai Russell continued her incredible run over the 100m hurdles, tying the meet record at 12.24; Chase Jackson got the better of her Dutch rival in the shot; 19-year-old Tate Taylor upended the men’s 200m global pecking order with his 19.75 victory; Collen Kebinatshipi continued to make the case that he’s the best overall sprinter in the world, as he held off an impressive late charge from Rai Benjamin in the 400m; Cam Myers became the first Australian winner of the Bowerman Mile; Jamal Britt’s late career resurgence gained another data point with his 12.86 110m hurdles PR and meet record; Leonardo Fabbri threw a new world lead in the shot; Mykolas Alekna’s kept up his remarkable return from surgery with a 71.06m—non-Ramona!—toss in the discus.

Even some of the non-Diamond League events were notable! Zhang Jiale, the 19-year-old Chinese hammer phenom, beat Camryn Rogers with a personal-best heave of 77.94m, and Brandon Miller continued to explore his new late-charging strategy to great success in the men’s 800m, edging out Cooper Lutkenhaus and just about every healthy top American 800m man in the process.

However, we wouldn’t be track fans if we didn’t find something to grumble about amidst an otherwise delightful two-day span of athletics. And that thing was pacing in a handful of races.

In the women’s 800m, the rabbit split 53.58 at the 400m mark, well ahead of the pacing lights and even further up from any athlete with an intention of finishing the two-lap race. In the men’s 2 mile, the field essentially said “nope” to the rabbit and pace lights from the jump. In the women’s 2 mile, when the pacer stepped off after a 4:33 1600m, the leaders likewise stepped off the gas. And in the women’s mile, the pacer and lights were ignored from the get go.

Rabbit mess-ups led to interesting results: the women’s 800m still turned out to be an excellent race that saw plenty of shuffling of the field throughout the final 200m… the men’s 2 mile was another in a recent stretch of great races from Parker Wolfe… or the women’s 2 mile saw six athletes still in contention with 200m to go… and in the women’s mile, the fact that it wasn’t a 4:13 race as called for likely made Hiltz’s upset possible.

No matter how exhilarating the outcome of a distance or middle-distance race, whenever there’s a visual reminder of the gap between how fast people are running and how fast they at one point claimed to want to go, there’s going to be disappointment. A pacer mishandling the assignment is one thing, and easily dismissible as such. But pace lights blinking along 20+ feet ahead of the field is simply a bad look that screams “a week ago I wanted the world record but now I’ve got cold, spiked feet.”

Diamond League pacesetting is a careful dance between ambition and adaptability. More often than not, the fault lies not with the pacers themselves, but with the athletes refusing to chase them. Understanding and quickly responding to shifting race dynamics is a commendable part of racing savvy, but the visual weirdness of abandoned-pace efforts needs to be addressed.

The range of possible solutions range from Vaudvillian to Ludditistic, and just about all of them are infeasible, but hey… let’s run through them anyway.

Get rid of pacing lights entirely

This one isn’t gonna happen. They’re extremely useful and clearly help athletes keep up with brisk paces once human rabbits step off. We like seeing world records, and really, records of any sort fall. Accordingly, meet directors would probably rather deal with minor blowback from the iffy visual of lights dropping athletes like at Pre, if the tradeoff is a 5% increase in the likelihood of a world record, should everything go perfectly. It does feel like there should be a moment, however, in a comically slow race where someone simply makes the executive decision to kill the power.

Implement an “all-you-can-eat sushi”-inspired penalty system

Most all-you-can-eat sushi establishments have a policy: you pay extra for any sushi you or your party are unable to consume. This keeps people from attempting to abuse the system or doing the very cool but reckless “I’ll have one of everything” move, unless they are extremely hungry or dining with an entire NFL offensive line.

Why not apply something similar on the DL circuit? In most rabbited races, the pace is dictated by one or two athletes. Should those athletes not go with the rabbit, they should be fined a percentage of their appearance fee for every lap they fail to do so. If it was the meet director who got greedy and asked for an unreasonable pace, then they should be required to run an all-out 400m at the conclusion of the race, and if they don’t complete their penalty lap within two seconds of what they predict they will run, they have to go again.

Pull ineffective rabbits off the track with a giant cane

If a rabbit opens up a gap so large on the field that it becomes unseemly, a dedicated prop comic employed by the meet should use a giant cane to yank them off the track. The crowd will love the little taste of slapstick comedy, and once the speeding rabbit gets the hook, all attention goes back to pure, time-agnostic, unfettered racing.

Borrow a concept from cycling

Even a rabbit hitting the prescribed paces perfectly can wind up in no-man’s land. The big dogs sometimes simply forego the slipstream. Yes, unfortunately these pace-setters will still get the hook, but rather than allow the pace to wallow, we can utilize financial incentives to get somebody else in the competitive field to become a de facto rabbit.

In criterium-style bike racing, riders can earn a prime (pronounced “preem”) for leading the race at key intervals. Sure, a dominant rider could theoretically ride from the front the entire time, gobbling up payouts en route to victory. But the typical outcome is that a few athletes without a shot in hell of winning say “screw it,” blast off to the front, quicken the pace for everyone else, battle for their bonus, then die an honorable death.

On the track in any given race, at least half the field will likely recognize within a lap or two that this isn’t going to be their day. Chasing a halfway prime allows these runners to salvage what would otherwise be a bust of a race at best or a DNF at worst. If this system is good enough for the Fifth Avenue Mile every year, it’s good enough for the track.

The Silent Treatment

This one doesn’t help the fans in the stands, but there are several ways a TV broadcast can help address the issue. The cameras themselves can simply choose to ignore the pacer and the lights, which keeps the focus on the actual race dynamics playing out. More importantly, commentators can actually talk about the race in front of them, not the race they wish was happening. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching a thrilling sprint finish and having the first words out of the announcers’ mouths be “So-and-so just misses the meet record!” There’s even an argument to be made to not let announcers see the clock at all to force them to do their darn job: calling the race in front of them.

World records rarely fall, even under the most advantageous conditions with optimal pacing. Great racing can happen at any time, anywhere. And even with some serious real estate between the lights and the action a handful of times at Pre, we got plenty of great racing.

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The Wind-Aided 9.67 Heard ‘Round The World 🌍

When Marcell Jacobs won the 2020/2021 Olympics, this newsletter’s subtitle for the write-up on the victory was simply titled, “Wait, who?”

Remember, the Italian had been a long jumper until 2018 and it wasn’t until a couple months before shooting to stardom that he first dipped below the 10-second barrier. His then-personal best of 9.95 would be broken in the Olympic prelims, semi-finals, and finals, where Jacobs earned the most prestigious medal in the world.

Naturally, there was speculation. Coming out of lockdown—a quiet spell for the sport—Jacobs’s seemingly sudden ascension raised yellow flags for many fans. How could someone no one had ever heard of would suddenly be the fastest man in the world? His mixed bag of results that followed only added to the confusion. The next year he won the World Indoor Championships 60m. He then DNS’d the semi-finals at the World Championships, before bouncing back and winning the European Championships, albeit in a time of 9.95—a far cry from his still personal best of 9.80.

In 2023, Jacobs didn’t break ten seconds. In 2024, scratching from previously announced meets became common practice. But when it mattered most, he tended to step up, winning the European title and then finishing fifth in the Olympic final in Paris.

Then it was like rewatching the same movie again in 2025: no World final and a season’s best of 10.16. The online ridicule returned, and the once-massive appearance fees almost certainly started to dry up.

The narrative in track and field is that medals are what matter most. And Jacobs has proven time and time again that he can show up in the most pressure-filled moments. Between the Olympics, Worlds, and Europeans he has nine medals. Medals are what matter most, but the regular season is where narratives are shaped. He has only run in eight Diamond League meets through his career, without winning any and often losing by quite a significant margin. And that’s why such a large gap exists between his reputation and his legacy-defining accomplishments.

This past week, however, Marcell Jacobs’s name was back in headlines, thanks to a regular season mark! At a windy meet in Austria—one you likely didn’t know was happening—he ran 9.67 with a significant tailwind of +4.1 m/s. That performance makes him the second fastest man ever (in all-conditions) behind only Usain Bolt. Even without the wind, that’s worth about a 9.84, an objectively strong mark.

It certainly doesn’t prove that he is the second-best sprinter ever, or even the best this year. However it does prove that five years after coming out of nowhere, Marcell Jacobs is still relevant. Does hindsight help explain that 2021 performance? We weren’t ready to digest it then, but maybe we are now with the benefit of additional context. While some athletes win the Olympics to put an exclamation point on their careers, others first announce themselves via Olympic gold.

Critics have long lambasted Marcell Jacobs—at best as a one-hit wonder who got lucky, and at worst as a potential cheater. But the reality appears to be less sensational: he’s proven himself to be an exceptionally talented, yet injury-prone athlete.

At 31, Jacobs does not appear to be done. After a two-year stint in Florida, Jacobs is now back training under his old coach, Paolo Camossi, and it seems to be working. Winning a blustering 100m at a Continental Tour silver meet isn’t exactly enough to make him the presumptive favorite for World Ultimates, but that result does chip away at previous misconceptions. It may be insane to refer to an Olympic champion as an underdog, but if you’re cheering for Jacobs, it certainly feels like you’re rooting for one.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Rest in peace to Jamaican coaching legend and co-founder of the MVP Track & Field Club, Stephen Francis. Francis coached—among many other exceptional sprinters—Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Asafa Powell, Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shericka Jackson, and Kishane Thompson. He was 64.

– Former Villanova standout Haftu Strintzos lowered the Australian and Oceania area marathon record to 2:06:20 thanks to his win at the Gold Coast Marathon. Ethiopia’s Almaz Kebebe—just 20 years old—claimed the women’s title in 2:24:53.

– At the Meeting Stanislas Nancy in Tomblaine, France, Francesco Pernici lowered the men’s Italian 800m record to 1:43.60 and Frenchman Anas Lagtiy Chaoudar led a competitive 1500m field at 3:31.40; France’s Clara Liberman broke the tape in the women’s 800m at 1:58.90, while Adèle Gay dominated the 1500m, going 4:01.21.

– Summer signing news dump! Colin Sahlman and Gracie Morris have joined Swoosh TC; Sanu Jallow-Lockhart and Gary Martin are now Brooks Beasts; Marco Langon now represents Diadora professionally, after working with the brand in an NIL capacity; and freshly minted world record holder Ja’Kobe Tharp has signed with Adidas.

– The IOC has lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, meaning Russian athletes can compete internationally again… unless they are track and field athletes, because World Athletics voted to maintain its ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes from international competition.

– French hammer throw record holder Yann Chaussinand has apparently broken the world record in the toilet toss.

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The Lack Of Worlds Brings A Heat Wave To Paris 🔥

Heading into last Sunday’s Diamond League meet in Paris, the headlines were dominated by questions over whether the meet would even happen amidst France’s historic heat wave. After a few days of back and forth with city officials, the show did go on, with the distance races shifted to the end of the program and crowd-cooling efforts underway.

By the first commercial break, any weather-related concerns were a total afterthought as the real heat was happening down on the track. The first two events resulted in Diamond League records as Collen Kebinatshipi scorched a 43.54 400m and Audrey Werro clocked a 1:53.80 800m, her second league record in as many weeks.

Later in the program, Marileidy Paulino added her name to the DL record books with a 48.48 run in the 400m, winning by a country mile and clocking the fastest regular-season time of her illustrious career. Even in events where no record fell, we still got the first sub-1:42 of the year thanks to Marco Arop in the 800m and a world-leading 3:28.00 from Cam Myers in the 1500m.

After getting stuck at 13.07 for two years, Jamal Britt has now run sub-13 in three of his last four 110m hurdles races, the most impressive of which coming in Paris as he cracked the top-ten all-time list with a 12.89 personal best. The flat 100m wasn’t quite as impressive, timewise, but what did get a few folks talking, including Noah Lyles, was Trayvon Bromell’s 9.91 win out of lane eight.

The home crowd had plenty to cheer for, especially with middle-distance runners Anaïs Bourgoin (1:55.65) and Agathe Guillemot (3:56.24) setting national records in the 800m and 1500m, respectively. Guillemot held the record already, but in knocking over a second off her lifetime best at age 29, Bourgoin also took down a 31-year-old mark from Patricia Djaté-Taillard.

Their runs, combined with an impressive 5.93m showing from Baptiste Thiery in the pole vault (winning the non-Mondo division), probably made up for a slight disappointment from World 10,000m champ Jimmy Gressier, who finished a well-beaten seventh in the 5000m. Instead, the loudest cheers were from U.S. track fans (or maybe a few Franco-Americans from Maine or New Orleans with divided loyalties) when Grant Fisher finally earned his first career Diamond League victory after a handful of second- and third-place efforts. After his brief, mixed-bag dalliance with the half marathon, it was oddly comforting to see Fisher looking like himself, unleashing a perfectly-executed 54-second close to clock a 12:54.80, the ninth sub-13 of his career.

Diamond Leagues are fast—we get it. For better or worse, the nebulous points system and ranking implications for World Ultimate take a back seat when the fields are strong, the pacing is well-executed, and the Wavelights are humming. Everyone both competing and watching cares first and foremost about running a fast time, which is arguably a bad thing in the long run, but when fast times come, it sure is thrilling.

But this particular meet at this particular point in this particular season delivered flames top-to-bottom in a way that stuck out, and it’s pretty clear why. The lack of a World Championship (at least in the traditional, nine-day format) opens up the menu of racing options. If you’re the kind of top athlete who doesn’t care about indoor and doesn’t have to worry about actually winning your national championship (i.e. non-Americans, East Africans, and Jamaicans), you suddenly have a pretty boundless calendar in terms of when you want to peak and deliver your best stuff. For some athletes, that might be WUC, Europeans, or Commonwealth Games. But even then, there’s plenty of space to circle a line on the record book and focus on crossing it off.

Look at the way the middle-distance races played out. Days in advance, Werro was talking about following the pacer out at 55-second pace—and that’s exactly what she did, pulling Femke Broeders-Bol and the field along with her as seven of the top eight finishers set PBs. In the men’s 800m, Arop simply didn’t have the competition to push him without Emmanuel Wanyonyi or Cooper Lutkenhaus in the field (Editor’s note: it still sounds insane to put Lutkenhaus in that sentence), but he went for it nevertheless, putting a massive gap on the field around 500 meters that was never clawed back as he ended up winning by nearly two full seconds.

Despite the men’s 1500m not being an official DL event, Cam Myers was clearly rearing to go after finishing second and third in two more middling races earlier on the circuit. The 20-year-old Aussie stuck to the rabbit like glue and then ran the legs off runner-up Azeddine Habz in the final lap. That was the race of a man who knew he had a fast one in his legs and wasn’t content to take the win in a kick. As a result, while everyone else ran 3:29+, Myers knocked 1.8 seconds off his PB, took down Olli Hoare’s national record, and climbed to #12 all-time. Sub-3:30s are becoming increasingly commonplace in the mid-2020s, but only six men have run faster than Myers since 2020, and of those six, three are World/Olympic champions.

The freedom afforded by not scheduling your entire year around three rounds of racing in September has a leveling effect on the rest of the track and field calendar. Not everyone is at their peak fitness in June, but way more global-medalist-types are in 2026 than they would’ve been last year. Mid-summer has always been a somewhat fruitful time for time-trialing, particularly at the Parises, Romes, and Monacos of the world, but the shifted incentive structure of a “non-championship” year elevates those races much higher on the totem pole.

If rabbit-assisted record chasing is going to remain a part of the elite racing scene, we might as well watch our faves blow the doors off the place when they do. Paris showed that… and with the star-spangled Nike-funded megapalooza that is this year’s Prefontaine Classic, set for the Fourth of July in the U.S. on the country’s 250th anniversary, you can bet that this year’s onslaught on the history books is far from over.

2015 Nostalgia Comes To Croatia

Cam Myers ran a world leading 1500m in Paris. He’s just 20 years old. Isn’t that incredible? Ask Samuel Ogazi, the 20-year-old world leader at 400m. Or Ja’Kobe Tharp, who set a world record in the 110m hurdles at… you guessed it: just 20 years old. Then there is Adaejah Hodge who currently holds the world lead in the 100m and the 200m. She is of course 20 years old. And don’t forget about Birke Haylom, the world leader at 1500m, who is also 20 years old!

Maybe being young is an advantage?

Well, the Boris Hanžeković Memorial, held in Zagreb on Friday, would argue otherwise. Held since 1951, the Continental Tour Gold event is the oldest sporting event in Croatia. Last week it certainly felt that way.

Elaine Thompson-Herah (34) won the women’s 100m in 10.91.

Shaunae Miller-Uibo (32) won the women’s 200m in 22.19.

And then Andre De Grasse (31) won the men’s 200m in 19.95.

What year is it… 2015?

At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, the trio all earned their first of many outdoor global championship medals. In fairness, De Grasse did have to share his bronze medal with another young up-and-comer named Trayvon Bromell (30)—the same guy who just won the Paris Diamond League.

Today’s world leaders would have been finishing up elementary school in 2015! And in 2026, they’re competing against athletes that used to play snake on a Nokia while waiting for their call time.

As fans, we love the excitement of the prodigy. We’ve certainly written extensively in this newsletter about the wunderkinds suddenly at the helm of our sport. There is no limit to how high a 20 year old’s ceiling might be and that unknown potential is nothing if not captivating! If anyone is going to break a world record, it’ll likely be one of the kids at the top of sport, though it’d be great to see a tricenarian prove that prediction wrong.

The list of athletes who are 30+ and still posting top-10 marks in their event is a short one.

Across the track in 2026, there are only 17 women and 10 men who qualify for that accomplishment. The oldest athlete with a current top-ten time is 36-year-old Dalilah Muhammad. Track is not like baseball, where the average age of a major leaguer is 29 and there are currently four active roster players who have entered their fifth decade.

To still be active and winning some of the most prestigious races in track and field, these older athletes had to persevere. Andre came back from a torn hamstring, while Trayvon and Elaine both tore their Achilles. And in addition to knee surgery, Shaunae has had two kids.

At a certain point in every athlete’s career, the narrative flips from “what could they do at their best?” to “how long can they keep doing what they’re doing?” And that’s if they’re lucky— there are plenty of athletes whose legs don’t take them that far. Let’s not forget that Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Usain Bolt are the same age, but she made it two Olympics and four World Championships longer than him. And both of these Jamaican greats are two years older than David Rudisha, who, at 37, has never officially retired but hasn’t raced in nearly a decade. It goes to show just how special being great for a really long time is that even the best of the best rarely are.

So while most fans are understandably excited about the future and what records may someday fall, let’s also leave time for a little nostalgic appreciation of continued greatness. Being fast when you’re 20 is impressive, but building a decade-long career is the stuff of legend.

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What Can Western States Tell Us About The Future Of Ultrarunning?

Coming into this past weekend, the course records at the Western States Endurance Run were held by Jim Walmsley (14:09:28 in 2019) and Courtney Dauwalter (15:29:33 in 2023). It was one of those statistics in sports that felt perfectly intuitive. LeBron James and Diana Taurasi are the all-time leading scorers in the NBA and WNBA… Walmsley and Dauwalter were the fastest ever over the 100.2 mile course at WSER.

But after this past weekend, both course records are considerably faster and held by different athletes. Winner Vincent Bouillard (13:46:15) was one of four men under Walmsley’s old record, and one of three to break the long-coveted 14-hour barrier—Francesco Puppi took second in 13:51:08, Ryan Montgomery came next in 13:53:55, and Thomas Cardin finished in 14:07:58. Jennifer Lichter won the women’s race in 15:28:05, placing 11th overall. Out of the 50 WSERs ever contested, Lichter’s time would have outright won 36 of them.

Results such as these surely merit a larger unpacking of the all-time pecking order at the most historic ultra in North America… right? To make sense of what we just witnessed on the switchbacks between Olympic Valley and the Auburn High School track, we checked in with Stephen Kersh, a two-time top-ten finisher at Western States, who was on site photographing and filming parts of the race.

To understand why what just transpired was even possible, let’s start with what Kersh himself was wearing during his long day out along the course: “I was in jeans all day and wasn’t ever very warm.”

This is what most ultra-followers pointed to in the post-race de-briefings—not Kersh’s pants, but the fact that the weather was as close to perfect as you’ll ever get for a race that covers this much varied terrain. “The conditions this year were an anomaly,” says Kersh. “There was no snow along the course due to low snow during the winter, and then the temperatures were some of the coolest in race history, topping out in the high 70s in Auburn (though it certainly was warmer than that in the canyons and along the river).”

Obviously this all contributed to the course records in both men’s and women’s races and the overall historically fast finishing times in the entire top ten. Kersh suggests that the weather provided a psychological boost as well as a physiological one, but he’s quick to wedge a big old caveat in there.

“I think it would be easy to say the weather was what made people really ‘go for it,’ and I’m sure that it played a part in the calculus, but these top athletes are now just complete professionals,” he explains. “They have the ability now to completely focus on this performance and put so many resources into having the perfect day.”

It’s easy to look at a race with as rich a history and surrounded by as much fanfare as Western States and assume that those striving to win it have always been type-A sickos following rigorous training plans, backed up by the latest in sports science. But if you’ve spent any time crewing for a friend at a trail race, you’ve undoubtedly met an old-timer bemoaning the sport’s ongoing transition from fringe activity for recluses, naturalists, and off-the-grid dirtbags, into something that is becoming optimized and that attracts increasingly talented athletes who both love the outdoors and want to kick your ass in terms of exploring it.

Take a look at what Boulliard was doing during his prep for WSER, as outlined by his coach, Mario Fraoli. Lots of aerobic volume, lots of threshold work, lots of heat acclimation, lots of course-specific prep.

The true professionalization of ultrarunning is still fairly new—it might even be fair to say that as a genuine high-end competitive endeavor, it’s a young sport. But given there are some structural similarities between ultrarunning and regularrunning—what we’ll call marathoning for the sake of this piece—we can expect it to reach competitive maturation quickly. And in regularrunning, we are seeing athletes go for it in previously unthinkable ways, and be rewarded. Take the two recent sub-two hour marathon performances, for instance. Kersh thinks that’s what happened to an extent this past weekend.

“The fear of blowing up certainly still exists in the sport, but the chance of lacing one is much higher now,” he unpacks. “The landscape has changed and the caliber of athlete at the pointy end of these races is a more elite, trained, and calculated one. The big swings used to look like someone running recklessly—now it’s just what you need to do.”

There is still an element of caution required in ultras that might now be a thing of the past on the roads. Just ask Hans Troyer, the pre-race favorite who led at a blistering course-record clip before slowing down and ultimately dropping out at mile 78. Other notable DNFs this year included Hayden Hawks, Kilian Jornet, and Walmsley himself. It might be an exaggeration to say anyone on course-record pace was running conservatively, but simply making it through all 100 miles of a 100-mile race remains a significant chunk of the battle.

A lot more can go wrong in a race that takes over half a day to complete than in one that might be completable in about two hours. That’s especially true when your 13+ hour day is spent on undulating and uneven terrain with the potential for tons of sun exposure and often long gaps between aid stations.

Boulliard didn’t hit the lead until he had about two hours of running left, and comfortably ran much of the race several minutes back from whoever was leading at the moment. Lichter likewise took an aggressive yet slightly cautious approach, running hard but still in 20th to 30th position overall for much of the first half of the race, then easing her way up toward the top-10 on the back half. About a third of the way through the race, she overtook early women’s leader Riley Brady and ended up beating Brady by 14 minutes.

So what does this all mean for our collective understanding of ultrarunning greatness? As we enter a new era of performance for the sport, do the legacies of past greats wind up tarnished as their once dominant times are gradually buried? Not quite. Because of the reasons outlined in the preceding paragraph, course records and times probably matter less in ultrarunning than in any other competitive wing of our sport. Its fans and athletes inherently understand that the course and conditions have an outsized impact come raceday, which means placing is the purest measure of greatness.

If anything, ultrarunning is uniquely well-positioned to weather the changes it’s going through for that very reason. Right now, Vincent Boulliard and Jennifer Lichter are the fastest athletes to ever traverse the Western States course. But are they the best champions the race has ever seen? That’s more open to debate, which is the sign of sport that’s navigating its growing pains in a healthy way.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– In positive news: Jenny Simpson has been discharged from Duke University Hospital and will continue her recovery in North Carolina.

– In “Gig ‘Em” news: after four years at the helm of Auburn’s track & field program, Leroy Burrell has been hired to take over at Texas A&M.

– In “about time” news: beginning retroactively for athletes who competed at this year’s Winter Olympics, the IOC will begin offering $10,000 grants to Olympic athletes—this is the first time direct financial support has been made available to Olympians.

– In “so long super seniors!” news: The NCAA has made it official—at the Division I level, athletes can only compete within a five-year competition window that begins at full-time enrollment or on their 19th birthday, whichever comes first. That means basically no more conventional redshirting, but exceptions can still be granted for religious missions, maternity leave, or active-duty military service. We talked about what this means for track and field already if if you missed it.

– In “not the same as the Pan Am Games” news: At the first ever Pan American Championships in Medellin, Colombia (elevation: 4,900 feet), the home team’s Ronal Longa won the men’s 100m in a South American record time of 9.85 and Puerto Rico’s José Figueroa won the 200m in 19.87. Daily Cooper of Cuba won the women’s 800m in a speedy 1:56.10.

– In World Athletics Combined Events Tour news: Annik Kälin broke the meet record while improving on her own world lead (now 6819) at the Stadtwerke Ratingen Mehrkampf-Meeting; reigning world champ and hometown hero Leo Neugebauer won the decathlon with 8573 points.

– In non-old-timers news: at Croatia’s Boris Hanzekovic Memorial, Dominica’s Thea Lafond notched a world lead in the triple jump (15.25m); Jamaica’s Rajindra Campbell heaved the shot 22.44m; and American Nathan Green continued his winning ways in the 1500m, going 3:32.46.

– In “you know you’ve made it when” news, Grenadian Olympic champion Kirani James will be honored with his face on the new Eastern Caribbean $5 note coming into circulation in 2027.

– And in “desperately keeping this joke structure alive” news: former elite sprinter and notable track and field online personality Monzavous “Rae” Edwards evidently learned from a CITIUS MAG Instagram post that he had been banned two years—not three, as he had originally believed to be the case—by USADA for his role in connecting Marvin Bracy-Williams to a testosterone supplier.

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Compiled by David Melly, Kyle Merber, & Paul Snyder

Put Some Respect On Emma Zapletalová’s Name 😤

As we approach the halfway point of the Diamond League season, only three runners have won every DL competition on offer in their preferred event: Alison dos Santos, Soufiane El Bakkali, and Emma Zapletalová.

Dos Santos is the 2022 World champion in the 400m hurdles, a four-time global medalist, and the third fastest man of all time. El Bakkali is a four-time global champ in the steeplechase. And Zapletalová is… probably not an athlete many fans outside of Slovakia knew by name before last year.

The 26-year-old entered 2025 with a 54.28 personal best from four years earlier, and her fastest 400H in the last three seasons was only 57.26. Injuries cost her the entire 2023 season and she only raced three times in 2024, but Zapletalová turned things around in 2025, finishing second in three different DLs and putting a bow on things with a bronze medal at Worlds in Tokyo.

This year, she picked up where she left off, and then some, setting an indoor 400m PB of 50.78 and, most recently, winning the first four 400m hurdles on the Diamond League circuit. Outside of a cool, breezy day in Oslo, she’s improved her PB every time out, dipping under 53 seconds and getting all the way down to 52.30 last week in Doha.

In a few short weeks, Zapletalová has moved from #29 to #6 on the all-time list. She’s beaten three of the five women ahead of her this season head to head (Jasmine Jones, Dalilah Muhammad, and Anna Cockrell). With Femke Broeders-Bol focusing on the 800m and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone expecting her first child, a new star has emerged in the 400m hurdles.

Is that all this is, though? A void left by two giants in an event (with less relative depth) gets filled by a “best of the rest”?

Not so fast: Zapletalová is no also-ran.

Only three times in the last five seasons has an athlete not named Femke [pre-Broeders] Bol won a DL 400H with a mark under 53 seconds. Muhammad, Cockrell, and Shiann Salmon have each done it once. Remember: Zapletalová has done it three times this year. Her resume is starting to look a lot like Broeders-Bol’s than anyone else’s, a clear sign she’s moving out from the crowd and into some very rarefied air.

It’s hard to compare times across eras, but it’s still worth noting that Zapletalová has leapfrogged big names like Olympic champions Lashinda Demus and Melanie Walker. She’s now bettered every time in the pre-Dalilah era, and her 52.30 in Doha would’ve landed her on the podium of every global championship except for the 2020 2021 and 2024 Olympic finals.

The case for Zapletalová being a true-blue, no-matter-who’s-on-the-track contender is rock solid at this point. If the injury bug doesn’t return to bite her, it may start to look once again like the podium spots at World and Olympic championships are pretty much spoken for, even with Muhammad threatening to retire every season. And we shouldn’t make any assumptions on finish order, either, given that this new and improved version of Zapletalová hasn’t gone head-to-head against McLaughlin-Levrone or Broeders-Bol, and thus, hasn’t been pushed to an even faster time by the event’s undisputed all-time number one or two.

Given the known absence of its two brightest stars, heading into this year it was easy to assume that the women’s 400m hurdles would be either a) boring or b) evenly-matched, but at a lower level of competition overall. So far, neither possibility has come to pass. Sure, Zapletalová winning every week may not exactly be thrilling in its unpredictability, but it’s way more exciting to see how long she can sustain this newfound dominance than to watch Femke pick up her 45th circuit victory. Since she’s gotten faster and faster every week, the conversation will inevitably move to just how close she can get to gold-medal contention even with FBB and SML returning.

The lesson here is clear: the track and field universe works in mysterious ways. An empty throne will never remain empty for long. Whether it’s new runners rising through the ranks, athletes sensing an opportunity and switching events, or long-toiling veterans getting their time to shine, the vacuum will eventually incent and incite greatness. Emma Zapletalová saw her chance and took it, and good luck taking her down now that she’s on top.

Niels Laros Finds Himself At The Classic 1500m Crossroads 🛣️

To quote the great poet Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one that I hoped would lead to 1500m gold.”

…or something like that. These days, 1500m gold actually feels like a road more traveled. Every year it’s a different guy on the top step of the podium. As a result, we’ve got an ever-increasing sample size of the path to middle-distance success—and a dwindling sample of strategies for sustained, multi-year dominance.

Historically, very few milers are equally skilled at both 800m and 5000m. Only two men in history have broken 1:45, 3:30, and 13:00, and they were two of the all-time greats: Saïd Aouita and Augustine Choge. Conventional wisdom is that there are two kinds of 1500m runners, the speed-based ones and the strength based ones. In our bicarb-fueled current reality where winning championship times in the 3:20s are becoming downright commonplace, the balance seems to have tipped toward the latter, with runners like Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Yared Nuguse, and Cole Hocker finding success in fast-from-the-gun wars of attrition.

Call it the Timothy Cheruiyot Effect. The lesson from the 2019 World Championship was clear: Cheruiyot opened up a huge gap on the entire field by front-running alongside teammate Ronald Kwemoi, and the gap proved insurmountable. Cheruiyot ended up winning by two full seconds in 3:29.26, rendering the kicks of Matthew Centrowitz, Taoufik Makhloufi, and others powerless. In the next four global finals, the winner has changed, but the winning time has been 3:29 or faster every time.

Fast forward to 2025, when the absence of Ingebrigtsen in his de facto pacer role meant that the winning time was 3:34.10, and the top three spots went to speed demons. 2025 champ Isaac Nader has run 1:43.86 in the 800m, but he’s never raced a track 5000m; runner-up Jake Wightman has only run 13:52 on the roads; and bronze medalist Reynold Cheruiyot has a PB of 13:16.40.

Is razor-sharp footspeed back in style? Niels Laros seems to think so. The 21-year-old Dutchman ran his first race since last year’s World 5000m final this past weekend in Hengelo, clocking a 1:43.83 PB for the win. Laros has “only” run 13:10.86 in his short but illustrious career so far, but he’s also run 7:29.49 in the 3000m and his best results in 2025 came in fast-paced Diamond League races.

Even before his 800m last weekend, it was clear that Laros wasn’t settling for one road or the other. At the European U23 Championships, he skipped the 1500m entirely and instead picked up wins in the 800m and 5000m, using the opportunity of slightly-watered-down age-group competition to hone his chops at both ends of the spectrum. At the Pre Classic, he first burst into the international spotlight with his epic kick to reel in Nuguse from way back, but in the Diamond League final, he took the win in 3:29.20 by sticking in the top three the whole race.

In Tokyo, Laros ended up fifth as the shuffle and chaos of a kicker’s race didn’t quite work out in his favor. After handily dispatching many of the same men in three different DL races, he discovered a racing weakness the hard way. Much like the men in that 2019 final finding themselves unable to reel in Cheruiyot over the last lap, there was a lesson to be learned, and if Laros’s season opener is any indication, he’s taken it to heart.

Generally speaking, the most consistent middle-distance runners of the 2020s have been jacks-of-all-trades, or something close to it. Josh Kerr has yet to run a fast 5000m, but his battles with Cole Hocker over 3000m and two miles make it clear that he isn’t wilfully sacrificing strength for speed in training. Jake Wightman is generally known for his kick, as demonstrated in last year’s final, but it’s worth noting that the 2022 World champ won his gold medal in a 3:29 race, staying close enough to Ingebrigtsen to use his speed to its max effect. With all the advancements in training, fueling, and technology, it’s easy to envision the list of sub-1:45/3:30/13:00 guys ballooning rapidly in the next few seasons.

If Laros is going to keep the streak alive in 2027 of a new World 1500m champion being crowned each year, he’s got to be prepared for either kind of race. And if anyone else wants a chance at beating him to the punch, it’s looking increasingly like they’ve got to reject the notion that the two middle-distance roads must diverge and try to venture down two paths at the same time.

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U.S. U20 Championships Ushered In A New Wave Of Stars… Or Did It? 👋

The last time the U.S. U20 Championships were held in Eugene, Oregon, the year was 2014. The San Antonio Spurs were cruising toward the franchise’s fifth NBA title. Barack Obama was president. Hayward Field was still the wooden old Hayward Field. And a bunch of American teenagers qualified for their first taste of international competition as part of Team USA.

Qualifiers at that meet included: Raevyn Rogers (800m), Elise Cranny (1500m), Mary Cain (3000m), Kendell Williams (100m hurdles), Arianna Washington (100m), Kaylin Whitney (200m), Shamier Little and Sydney McLaughlin (400m hurdles), Elle Purrier (steeple), Quanesha Burks (long jump), Keturah Orji (triple jump), Raven Saunders (shot put), Valarie Allman (discus), Brooke Andersen (hammer); Trayvon Bromell (100m), Grant Fisher (1500m), TJ Holmes and Kenny Selmon (400m hurdles), and Curtis Thompson (javelin).

Twelve years later, this group has collectively accomplished quite a bit in the sport: Olympic and World medals, American records, impressive showings on the Diamond League circuit. Not all of them progressed into global podium threats, but each of them carved out something of a career for themselves in the sport—no small feat.

However, just like qualifying for World U20s didn’t necessarily lead to a big boy/big girl medal a decade later, there were plenty of athletes who finished outside of qualification at U.S. U20s back in the day and went on to much bigger and better things (Brittany Brown, for example, took third in the 200m and sixth in the 100m).

So which is it: a U.S. U20 breakthrough means O20 (a phrase we are desperate to coin for “over-20” competition) stardom; or making a U20 team basically means very little? It depends! The answer is complicated.

For starters, U20s are a weird event at both the U.S. and World level. They aren’t held every year, so there’s an element of randomness to who is eligible to compete. Being 19 in the right year can be a real advantage. Unless you’re the best to ever compete in your event—like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone—you likely aren’t going to be good enough at 14(!) to take on college freshmen.

For American athletes, U20s aren’t necessarily a top priority before fall cross country season or after a long indoor/outdoor campaign. Distance runners especially may already be deep in summer training, and frankly, some kids who had a lot of success during the school year might, understandably, simply want a vacation. And of course there are the true freaks, the Cooper Lutkenhauses and McLaughlin-Levrones who are legitimate medal contenders at the senior level while still teenagers. The true top-end talent has the luxury of skipping U20-level competition entirely and jumping directly to the big show.

Even still, it’s worth keeping close tabs on U20 Team USA members to seem like a cool, knowledgeable track fan a few years from now. In 2014, the top U20 athletes were essentially still prospects: athletes you squint at in hopes of divining their futures. But this past weekend, about a dozen qualifiers for next month’s U20 World Championships—also in Eugene—are already competitive on the world stage at the senior level.

That’s where this current batch of U20 athletes feels different. This past weekend, New Hayward in New Eugene hosted the U.S. U20 Championships sort of in conjunction with Nike Outdoor Nationals. And a lot of the names at the top of the results have been at the top of high school ranks for years and making a splash in bigger ponds. They may not be poised to extend their season to the World Ultimate Championships after a speed run of Diamond League outings, but they’re already ranked favorably among their senior peers and have to be thinking that senior U.S. teams—and even medals—is no more than a year or two out of reach.

Take the 110m hurdles, for instance, which is rapidly becoming a Hayward Field trademark. Zacchaeus Brocks won it in 12.98, a new high school national record and a top-five time in the world this year including the seniors. Brocks, who will attend Ohio State in the fall, won by 0.002 seconds over Georgia freshman Le’Ezra Brown. To qualify for the World U20 team you had to break 13 seconds!

Quincy Wilson is already an Olympic gold medalist. He predictably made the U20 team after running 44.84 in the 400m final. But less predictably, he placed second to Jayden Deleon (44.52), which forces us to ask the question “is the kid with the Olympic medal even the top freshman going into the next year of NCAA competition?” Wilson will compete for Maryland and Deleon for LSU. Tate Taylor, a Texas Tech-bound high school senior, spent the better part of the spring traveling the world and competing against professional 200m runners. He’s ranked 14th in the world this year after his 19.94 victory in Eugene.

Wondering whether or not these guys take the next step to become stars almost feels like asking the wrong question… by basically any metric, they’re already stars. Even if they don’t get much better, they could all conceivably make a World final in 2027.

While the U.S. U20 women don’t have as many super-highly ranked athletes in the mix as the men do, to place in the top-two and advance to… well, Eugene again… you’ve gotta be a top-100 ranked athlete in the world, at least in the sprints or throws.

Oregon Duck signee Jaslene Massey is the high school record holder in the discus and California record holder in the shot put. She won both events in Eugene, and is ranked 43rd and 99th, respectfully, in the world in each. Mia Maxwell, who won both the 100m and 200m, is ranked 57th and 33rd. Her sister Mariah Maxwell placed second behind Mia in both events, and ranks 70th in the world in the 100m and 28th in the 200m. Ataja Stephane-Vazquez won the 400m in 51.08, which ranks the Georgia-bound senior 52nd in the world this year. Natalie Dumas’s 56.13 puts her in the 80th slot in the world in the 400m hurdles, but given her lifetime PBs—all set last outdoor season—span impressively from 51.14 in the 400m to 2:00.11 in the 800m, she feels like someone whose best event going forward could change.

An athlete ranked 28th through 80th in the world is already elite. You don’t need to perform advanced calculus or practice the dark arts of sports scouting to make the argument that plenty of 2026 World U20 Team USA members will go on to be great at the next level, too. That’s what makes this year so intriguing. Junior athletes generally have high ceilings, but these are high-floor athletes already established as globally competitive. We’ll certainly be tuning into World U20s in July… and keeping tabs on potentially lucrative futures bets for 2028 Olympic medals.

Let’s Make “Off Year” USAs A Bit More Interesting 🤔

Who’s your favorite runner’s favorite runner?

Though it’s a title of endearment and a massive compliment to anyone in consideration, it’s a little backhanded given that being described this way means you’re probably not a unanimous fan favorite. That’s because fans know accolades, while the pros know each other.

Your favorite runner’s favorite runner is probably not a perennial medalist. They likely don’t have the most Instagram followers and almost certainly don’t have the biggest contracts. Instead, their popularity is earned by how often they show up, and how they show up once there. They’re the type of athletes who have run in every U.S. championship the last decade but haven’t always made the team. But they’re sure to keep the pace honest in a prelim because they always make the final.

These runners are staples on the circuit. They know their way around the train stations in Belgium and rack up loyalty points on every European country’s cheapest airline. This runner shows the college kids where to warm up and picks their meet schedule partly based on where the best afterparties are.

So when Sam Prakel ran 3:33.23 to win the 1500m in Hengelo, his peers let out a collective “Hell yeah!”

Prakel is 31 years old, has run 3:38 or faster every year since 2016, and this year has already posted a personal best of 3:32.76. Although he’s represented the United States at the World Indoor Championships and earned a bronze medal in the Road Running Championships, he’s never represented the nation at a global outdoor championship.

That’s not because he hasn’t been good enough—he was simply born in the U.S. around the same time as so many of its all-time great middle distance talents. But during this “off” year, that doesn’t really matter, because there are no caps on qualifiers per country for the World Ultimate Championships. Should Prakel scratch and claw his way to a high enough world ranking to sit within the field size quota, it doesn’t matter if three, or four, or five other Americans are ranked higher.

While considering how exactly to follow this strange conventional championship-less outdoor campaign, it’s worth keeping an eye on the Sam Prakels of the world. Can he earn a spot at his first outdoor global championship? Picking up 1199 points for the performance in Hengelo will certainly help the cause, but the additional 100 points for winning a Category A meet will help further.

Those extra points add up, particularly because the U.S. Championships will be worth less than usual. As a “Category B” meet with no qualifying spots on the line, there has never been a better time for A-listers to skip USAs entirely. Fortunately, the easy travel and novelty of a non-Eugene host—and a trip to New York City—will be enough to pull in some talent; we can assume Sam Prakel will be there.

Now here’s where we slide into interesting proposal territory: why doesn’t USATF game World Athletics’s own system to give its athletes a better shot at World Ultimate qualification?

One criteria that separates Category A from Category B meets could be addressed at no additional cost: a minimum of 15% of the total Athletes participating in a Meeting shall be based outside the host area. So why not open up the U.S. Championships to foreigners in off years? It would increase the overall level of competition while ensuring that performances are worth more in the eyes of World Athletics. And there’s precedent!

In 1993, Noureddine Morceli, the Olympic gold medalist from Algeria, won the U.S. Indoor Championship in the mile. In 2015, American Andrew Wheating won the 800m at the New Zealand National Championships. Some nations basically always open up their national championships to the rest of the world.

Just last year, Grenada’s Lindon Victor was allowed to compete in the decathlon at the outdoor U.S. Championships. This year, USATF is again encouraging international athletes to compete at USAs, so long as they’re heptathletes or decathletes—seemingly as part of the World Athletics Combined Events Tour. Let’s extend that policy to all events!

Allowing international athletes to compete in the U.S. Championships once every four years isn’t just a clever workaround for a complicated point system, it’s a lifeline to maintain fan interest. By inviting the world to race on American soil, there is an opportunity to elevate the national meet to a must-watch event. All while simultaneously giving the truest grinders in the sport—the Sam Prakels of the world—another chance to boost their rankings.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Oblique Seville threw down a 9.82 100m (+0.6) to win the Jamaican Championships; the Shericka Jackson comeback tour continued apace, as she won the 100m in 10.81 (-0.3) over Tina Clayton (10.85); and Demisha Roswell went 12.40 to win the 100m hurdles.

– With Commonwealth Games spots on the line at the Kenyan Championships,

Timothy Cheruiyot did what he’s done all season long: kept his foot on the gas. His 3:32.28 was enough to fend off Reynold Cheruiyot (3:32.35) and Brian Komen (3:32.60). And reigning World 800m champ Lilian Odira secured a victory of her own in 2:00.44.

– At the UK Athletics Championships Amy Hunt prevailed over 100m in 11.01; Georgia Hunter Bell obliterated the championship 800m record, going 1:55.93 for the win; Amber Anning also broke a championship record—her own in the 400m—at 50.16; and Jake Wightman snagged a tactical 800m title in 1:45.40. After running 51.62 in the 400m prelims, Keely Hodgkinson scratched from the final, citing a “twinge.”

– It feels nuts to follow up a slate of national championship recaps with a bullet point exclusively for a lowkey meet in an Orlando suburb, the Star Athletics Sprint Series, but alas, that’s where Sha’Carri Richardson went 10.77 (+0.3)—her fastest time in about two years. Additionally, Courtney Lindsey went 9.89 (+1.4), and Brandon Hicklin and Sam Blaskowski went 19.92 and 19.93 in the 200m, respectively.

– One last shout from the FBK Games in Hengelo: Femke Broeders-Bol won the 800m in 1:57.41, keeping her string of solid showings in her new distance alive.

– Four-time World 1500m medalist Jenny Simpson experienced a medical emergency at a community track meet in Raleigh, North Carolina, last Thursday, requiring CPR and the use of an AED before being rushed to a local hospital. Per an update shared by her employer, Fleet Feet, she has shown “encouraging improvement.” Here’s wishing for a full and speedy recovery.

– Texas A&M and LSU coaching great Pat Henry has announced his retirement. Henry-led teams won a whopping 37 NCAA titles across his 54-year coaching career. Please join us in letting out a hearty “Gig ‘em” and/or “Geaux Tigers.”

– The 2027 London Marathon will take place across April 24th and 25th. Each day’s race will accommodate roughly 50,000 runners, making it twice as irritating for the nearly one million people who still won’t get selected to run.

– Boston Celtics superstar—and perpetual subject of trade rumors—Jaylen Brown met up with Noah Lyles for some offseason speed work.

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NCAAs Proves Its Own Relevance Once Again 👩‍🎓

The divide between American track and field fans and international athletics fans might come down to an age-old question of importance: what matters more, an NCAA title or a European Championship?

Traditionalists across the pond will scoff at the notion that a bunch of students meeting up in Eugene should carry the same prestige and clout as a continent-wide professional championship. And World Athletics tends to agree, rating NCAAs a Category “B” meet two rungs below Euros (or, for that matter, NACACs). Some of that, of course, comes down to the long-held beef between World Athletics and the NCAA on drug testing policies. But here’s the thing…

When it comes to the level of competition, particularly in the short sprints, NCAAs is inarguably a world-class meet each year. Only USAs and global championships can consistently claim to be better meets across the board. Diamond League meets are usually better, but… not always.

With the dust settled over Hayward Field, the fastest marks in the world this year in the men’s 100m, 200m, 400m, and 110m hurdles and women’s 100m, 200m, and 400m belong to athletes representing American universities. Now, that’s a slightly misleading stat. The college kids all peaked for June and the pros likely have September circled on their calendars—but the kids are also taking a crack at the all-time lists as well.

Adaejah Hodge’s 10.63 in the 100m prelims puts her at #5 all-time, and her 21.68 winning mark from the 200m puts her at #8 all-time, tying her with reigning 200m World champ Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. Samuel Ogazi of Alabama ran 43.38 for #4 all-time to win the 400m over Georgia’s Jonathan Simms, who equaled the old world lead of 43.92 in second. And then Simms came back to drop a ridiculous 42.99 split on the Bulldogs’ winning 4x400m.

Kanyinsola Ajayi of Auburn followed up his 9.84 100-meter performance at East Regionals with an absurd 9.72 in the final, nudged along by a breeze just over the legal limit at 2.2 m/s. That puts him sixth on the all-conditions 100m list. And of course, Ajayi’s fellow Tiger Ja’Kobe Tharp, who’s already shown he can contend with the best pros by winning USAs last year, delivered the performance of the meet when he broke Aries Merritt’s 12-year-old world record in the 110m hurdle prelims, running 12.75. For good measure, his 12.90 in the final would’ve also been a world lead and all-time top-ten performance.

“But that’s just a few talented future-pros at the top!” you protest in a thick French accent.

That would be true… if the depth weren’t elite as well. Behind Jaiden Reid’s 19.63 collegiate record in the 200m, five total men ran under 20.1. T’Mars McCallum’s 20.09 for fifth would’ve earned him a second place finish if transponded onto the Oslo DL two days earlier. There’s only one meet this year where two women have broken 49 seconds: NCAAs, thanks to Dejanea Oakley and Madison Whyte. No Diamond League has pulled that off in 2026, and in all of 2025, only two—the Rome DL and Worlds—saw multiple women break 49 in the same race.

The distance races are harder to compare apples-to-apples because at NCAAs, races are un-rabbited and tend to play out tactically. But that being said, six women ran 1:58.55 or faster in the 800m final, led by Sanu Jallow-Lockhart’s stunning 1:56.85 collegiate record. The record she broke was, of course, Athing Mu’s, who single handedly proved this premise herself by winning Olympic gold two months after claiming the NCAA title.

At least when it comes to sprints, the NCAA championship is one of the best meets in the world. Amateur competition or not, the meet has earned professional-level respect because the athletes that show up year in and year out are world-class. Winning NCAAs is impressive because you can hurdle a 12.98 or sprint a 48.97 and lose.

In a sense, the best European analogue to NCAAs isn’t Euros; it’s Götzis. The Hypomeeting is an annual pilgrimage for the greatest multi-athletes in the world, and even though it isn’t a championship of any kind, World Athletics has placed it in the “GL” category alongside area championships because the level of competition is so high. On paper, Götzis shouldn’t matter at all, but because the best athletes keep competing there, it merits special consideration.

When you look at the meets in the “A” category one slot above NCAAs, it starts to look a lot more like the collegiate championship’s peer group. Commonwealth Games, regular season Diamond Leagues, WA Continental Tour Gold meets. Maybe the “NCAAs matters more than Euros” argument remains the provenance of angry Twitter users for now, but at least for the sake of rankings, it’s long past time for World Athletics to swallow its pride and bump NCAAs up—particularly if it’s going to move one day toward an all-rankings model.

It’ll always be a little strange that a group of colleges in the U.S. all got together and decided that a huge part of higher education is going to be bringing in top athletic talent from all over the world and attaching a billion-dollar sports league to academic institutions across the country. But that’s the world we live in. NCAAs is an important meet because the athletes’ choice to take their talents to Hayward makes it so, and to pretend otherwise is to live in a fantasy.

The Summer Of The Women’s 800m 🔥

There’s an old saying in running we may or may not have invented: You’re only as good as your second best time.

Rather than listing personal bests on a start list or in meet previews, we might be better served when setting expectations to remove the outlier performances. How many of us really show up as the best version of ourselves on any given day? Now the second- or third-best version of ourselves? Oh yeah, that’s what you’re far more likely to get.

By this rule, it’s now fair to say that Audrey Werro is good enough to be called a 1:54.45 runner. The 22-year-old Swiss star came through the first lap in Ostrava on schedule at 56 seconds and slowly pulled away from the only other person in the field who opted to follow the rabbit, Femke Broeders-Bol. Werro may have surprised Keely Hodgkinson (and all of us) in Stockholm on her path to a 1:53.98 clocking, but now the expectations have risen.

Werro is 22 year old and two years ago she was a 1:57 runner. Now, she’s the fourth fastest woman of all time and has the fastest second-fastest mark ever. For comparison, Caster Semenya’s second-fastest 800m is 1:54.60 and Hodgkinson’s is 1:54.61. Hogkinson is the fastest third-bester at 1:54.74 with Semenya on her tail at 1:54.77.

Back to Broeders-Bol for a moment. If it weren’t for Werro, then all eyes and thinkpieces would be focused on the Dutch 400m hurdler-turned-half-miler’s outdoor debut at her new distance. Unlike Werro, there are only two performances to list on Broeders-Bol’s recent resume: 1:59.07 from indoors and 1:57.13 from yesterday. Given this small sample size and trajectory, it feels fair to say maybe she is better than her second best time.

Behind those two headliners, six other women broke two minutes, highlighting the increasingly obscene depth in the event (more on that in a moment). As Spotify is publishing their predictions for Song of the Summer 2026, we are ready to make a prediction of our own—the Event of the Summer 2026 will be the women’s 800m.

It’s a weird summer because every athlete has their own set of priorities. Is the focus on the Commonwealth Games, European Championships, Diamond League Final, or World Ultimate Championships? There is a high possibility that many of the top athletes pass by each other like ships in the night. (Let’s hope that in the women’s 200m, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Julien Alfred, Gabby Thomas, and Shericka Jackson all find themselves at the same venue at the same time. Sounds expensive…)

But we know that at least Werro, Hodgkinson, and Bol will all meet at the European Championships. The trio are also regulars on the circuit and so the odds of additional run-ins are quite high. Werro has already raced 12 times in 2026, but that’s nothing in comparison to 2025 when she had 29 races. Last year, Femke raced 32 times.

Maybe it’s a rush to include Femke in this group as she just lost by 2.6 seconds to Werro. Yet her background and trajectory adds a must-watch X factor to an event that is certainly not lacking in established star power.

Missing so far in the conversation is the defending World champion Lilian Odira, who ran 1:57.27 to finish third in Rabat behind Werro, and 2024 Olympic silver medalist Tsige Duguma. That’s the nature of the women’s 800m though—anyone can show up on the day. In the past seven years there have been six different global champions, and the only one to repeat is Athing Mu.

In 2023, 59 athletes broke 2:00. The next year, that jumped to 78. Last year, there were 88. And with three months still to go into 2026, there are already 69 women under that barrier.

The entire event is undergoing a major renaissance and the baseline of what was once considered competitive has now shifted. And nothing would signal the end of the previous era like the takedown of Jarmila Kratochvílová’s 43 year old world record.

So get in losers and buckle up, because being the second best version of oneself won’t be good enough this summer.

Catching Up With Caleb Winders Ahead Of New Balance Nationals 🏃‍♂️

With New Balance Nationals Outdoor set to get underway tomorrow, CITIUS MAG’s Paul Hof-Mahoney chatted with one of the breakout stars from last year’s meet, Caleb Winders. Winders, hailing from Bloomington North High School in Indiana, won the boys’ 800m outright in 2025 out of the “B” heat. Now, the University of North Carolina-bound senior has his sights on another NBN title, this time taking on the other contenders head on.

The following is an excerpt of a longer interview, which you can read here.

CITIUS MAG: This outdoor season you haven’t raced a ton. Out of those few data points you do have, what are you taking away?

Yeah, I haven’t raced too much, I’ve also been dealing with some hamstring issues. That 800m I had against Noah Bontrager wasn’t my season opener, but it was my first time running really fast in the 800m, so that was good to see where I’m at. It was a fast race, I wish I could’ve run a little bit faster, but it was good to see that I’m in 1:47 shape.

[Before that race,] I didn’t know what kind of shape I was in yet. There was a pacer and he took it out in 51… I felt good, came through 600m in like 1:18… I was struggling at the end, I was swimming. With 10m left I see Noah pass me, so I try and throw in another surge but he got me at the end. I wish I had a little bit more, but it was a good race to see where I was at.

During the indoor season, you ran a huge mile PB of 4:02 to win at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, and you’ve backed that up with a 4:14 outdoors. How will adding a bigger strength component to your skill set help when you get into championship races?

When you get into championship time, you have to run a lot of 800s, so there’s a lot of strength to it. My coach and I knew that I could run one good 800m, but I couldn’t really run a good mile or two 800s well. We really worked on our strength this year and got in a really good race during indoor and ran 4:02. That kinda surprised me, but moving forward I think that’ll help a lot with the 800m.

Was that from a big change in the way you trained this fall? How did you build up that strength?

I’ve done a couple of tempos and a couple of long runs, which I hadn’t really done before, so that helped a lot. I feel like the main thing was actually just the mental side of it. I wasn’t bought into the mile, I just wanted to run an 800m and anything longer than that, I wasn’t really excited to do. So I feel like when I ran the miles this year, I was more mentally in it, and when I started to fall off I just kept on pushing, kept holding on for at least one more lap.

When you get back to NBNO, you’ll be the one with the target on your back after winning last year out of one of the slower heats. Is that pressure and expectation something you thrive off of, or do you try and ignore it?

I love the pressure, I feel like it makes me run better. It’s kind of cool that I have the target on my back. Just compete with the guys, there’s some really good athletes in there so I’m sure there’ll be a lot of competition and it’ll be a really fast race again.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Go ahead and deposit your old World Major medal box in the trash. They’ve added another race to the series, and we’re up to Eight Stars after the announcement that Cape Town has earned World Major distinction beginning in 2027.

– The L.A. Grand Prix, back after a year off in 2025, made a splash in its return. Parker Valby’s comeback tour continued with a 14:39.88 5000m PB; Kenny Bednarek won a loaded 100m in 9.72 (+2.4m/s), ahead of Christian Coleman in second in 9.84, Sam Blaskowski in fourth (9.91) and Letsile Tebogo in fifth (9.95); frontrunning Brandon Miller come from behind win the 800m convincingly in 1:43.94; Tshepo Tshite held off a too-late charge from Cole Hocker in the 3000m, 7:37.57 to 7:37.37; Sha’Carri Richardson was victorious, running 10.99 in her first 100m of the year; Masai Russell went 12.26 in the 100m hurdles ahead of Tara Davis-Woodhall, who ran an impressive 12.47 despite a lousy reaction time—she also won the long jump in 7.25 (+3.3m/s).

– The Oslo Bislett Games, the sixth stop on the Diamond League circuit—and the first with a cool name—was predictably excellent as well. Any discussion of the Norwegian megameet has to begin with Cooper Lutkenhaus’s stunning 800m victory: a 1:42.08 world U18 record that saw him out-lean reigning World and Olympic champ Emmanuel Wanyonyi; Julien Alfred impressed in the 100m, running a wind-aided but dominant 10.76; Chinese teenage javelin star Ziyi Yan’s 67.11m toss gave her the win by over five meters; Tebogo won the 200m in 19.84; Timothy Cheriyuot turned back the clock and won the mile in 3:48.21; Alison Dos Santos claimed the 400m hurdles in 46.89; and Freweyni Hailu took down the 3000m field in 8:24.22.

– World Indoor pole vault champ Molly Caudery will miss the rest of the outdoor season after undergoing emergency spinal surgery.

– Freddie Crittenden, a 2024 Olympian in the 110m hurdles and the 16th fastest man in history, has shared that this will be his final season as a professional track athlete.

– You think your Strava is impressive? It can’t compare to Joabe Barbosa’s, after he became the first known runner to cover every single street in Chicago on foot.

– If you’re looking for a really good read and potentially a really good cry, this interview with Irish Olympian Ciara Mageean, who is battling stage 4 bowel cancer at age 34, will provide both.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

Stars Losing Is Good For The Sport 😵‍💫

Which athlete winning would generate the most chaos? The answer to that question is generally also the most fun athlete to cheer for. We’re in the content business, and a major upset makes for good content!

We love Keely Hodgkinson; her unabashed pursuit of records and fearless racing make her easy to root for. We love Mondo Duplantis; it’s not often in sports you know you get to watch a GOAT at the height of their powers. And although we were not hoping they’d lose, per se, it was certainly exciting to see someone else win two events that have felt rather predictable of late. Sports are supposed to be chaotic! A heavy favorite can dampen the excitement of competition because sometimes it feels like the outcome is already a predetermined conclusion.

Leagues around the world do whatever they can to promote parity between their teams. The NBA is currently experiencing a golden age of parity. With the Knicks and Spurs squaring off in the finals, the winner will ultimately become the eighth new champion in eight years. In that time span there have been a total of 14 different teams that have vied for a title.

The NBA has been able to pull off this balancing act, partly, by implementing a two-apron luxury tax system that heavily penalizes owners for trying to buy successful teams. Rather than just financial punishment, teams in the second apron are limited in their ability to sign free agents, operate in trades, and could even lose draft picks.

It’s why Formula 1 has such strict rules around how the cars are engineered. It’s why baseball is considering a salary cap. And it’s why the worst NFL teams always get the next star quarterback.

From a league’s perspective (remember: leagues are also in the content business) this is a dream—it means more fan bases across the country are engaged on opening day, and remain engaged deeper into the season. That’s because every team… except maybe the Sacramento Kings… could possibly turn things around in the blink of an eye to become a contender.

World Athletics can’t do any of that. The only levers our sport’s governing body can pull are providing resources for youth development, incentivizing top athletes to race against one other, and getting rid of rabbits.

But with so many events, is it even that big of a deal that a few that are being singlehandedly dominated? We don’t hear too many complaints about Faith Kipyegon or Ryan Crouser being bad for the sport (along with Duplantis, they’re the only actively competing athletes who have won five straight global titles). That’s because while leagues and newsletter writers love parity, fans tend to love stars, too. They’re familiar while being historic, and people ultimately like to appreciate greatness.

In a way, the presence of these Old Faithful-esque performers provides a nice contrast to events like the men’s 1500m, which hasn’t had a repeat winner since Asbel Kiprop in 2015. But the unpredictability has made it one of the most interesting events to follow for the last decade, and there’s only so much hype that a growing win streak can generate.

Mondo hadn’t lost a competition of any sort since July 2023. The last time someone else won a global pole vault championship was Worlds in 2019, when Mondo was still a teenager and finished second. While the pole vault has never been this deep—we have 10 active jumpers with lifetime bests of at least six meters—it doesn’t make for the most spirited internet debates when those dudes are all theoretically jumping for second.

If you sat down with Kareem Rahma on Subway Takes and told him, “I think it’s good that Mondo always wins,” then he’d most certainly hit you with a “100% disagree!”

The excitement of just about any Mondo-involved competition at this point hinges on a world record clearance (which, to be fair, he’s done plenty of times). In fact, his era of dominance has been so thoroughly one-sided that it’s tempting to call his performances exhibitions instead. That is, until the unthinkable happened! Kurtis Marschall got one on the board with a 5.90m clearance in Stockholm. He’s a 29 year old three-time global medalist and he only just won his first-ever Diamond League meet.

Had you wagered a parlay on both Mondo and Keely losing in Stockholm then you’d potentially have enough money to get into tonight’s game at Madison Square Garden. Heading into Sunday, Hodgkinson was 12-0 lifetime against Audrey Werro. Although the two have raced regularly since being junior standouts, it was hardly a rivalry. The question leading into the race was not, “Who can beat Keely?” But “how fast can Keely go?”

Faster than ever before, it turns out! Hodgkinson’s 1:54.33 was a personal best and good for number six all-time. But Werro’s shocking finish changed the dynamic of the event. She ran 1:53.98. That means this season is no longer just about Keely breaking records—it’s about who can manage to get under the 1:53.28 world record first.

Another event that has become polarized at the top is the men’s 800m. Similar to the pole vault, the event has never been better. But it’s in need of some new blood. Since the 2021 Olympics, Emmanual Wanyonyi has won 4 out of 5 global championships. And the podium of Wanyoni, Marco Arop, and Djamel Sedjati has recurred three times in the past four years.

Cooper Lutkenhaus’s historic win in his first Diamond League race wasn’t just a huge moment for kids who still have bedtimes, it also cemented Lutkenhaus’s entry into the event’s true upper echelon. Beating Arop in 1:42.70 confirms what most of us already knew—last year was not a fluke. It also means there is a fresh new face in the 800m this outdoor season who could break up the increasingly standard trifecta.

For most readers of this newsletter, it would be an unthinkable delight for Cooper to win the World Ultimate Championships this year, the World Championships next year, and then secure the Olympic title on home soil come LA 2028. What a dream that would be! If the top young prospect in the world delivered on all the promise and expectations, then he should get a Lebron-esque “Chosen 1” tattoo across the top of his back.

After that though… it might be nice to let someone else have a turn. Let’s hope Cooper Lutkenhaus is so fortunate in the next few years of his career that, one day, we celebrate when he loses.

The Best Track And Field Athletes Of 2026 (So Far!) 📈

You thought we were done with rankings… but we’re just getting started.

In addition to World Athletics’s push to use event-specific rankings more for World Ultimate Championships and Beijing 2027, the organization maintains another rankings list that’s more for discourse than for meet selection: the overall athlete rankings.

These rankings try to answer one of the most fundamental track and field questions: how do you compare athletes across events? It’s no easy task. WA does this in a relatively simple, straightforward way—but also one that’s inherently flawed. The “overall ranking” is simply a consolidated list of every athlete’s individual ranking score (their top performances, graded on the World Athletics scoring tables with placing points awarded for bonus). The problem, of course, is that the WA scoring tables are far from a perfect system, and certain events receive disproportionate consideration.

As we mentioned last week, the top three track athletes in the men’s overall rankings are 400m hurdlers. According to Seb Coe, the eighth best male athlete in the world is one who’s never won a World Championship: Greek pole vaulter Manolo Karalis. And because rankings are updated weekly but include the last 12 months performances, the second-best athlete in the world in June 2026 is a woman who’s pregnant and will not compete this year, Beatrice Chebet.

That said, coming up with a better system is no easy task. Contemplating the best athletes using only 2026 results means that, in theory, an athlete like Melissa Jefferson-Wooden is only being judged on two races. World Indoors is the biggest championship that’s occurred so far on the calendar, but many regular-season Diamond League races have stronger fields than Toruń did. Plus, a particular quirk of this year (the lack of a true World Championship and limited events on the World Ultimate program) means that distance runners aren’t exactly climbing over one another to race high-quality 10,000ms or steeples.

We asked the Citius Mag team to rank the top 25 track and top 25 field athletes since the start of 2026, and the range of responses were interesting. Unlike WA’s point system, there were no hard and fast criteria beyond limiting performances to this calendar year, prioritizing high-level professional competitions, and considering event depth. In a phrase, it’s just vibes. Times and places still matter, but the official team position is that running 10.7 in the 100m at NCAA Regionals is still less important than running 10.8 in Stockholm. So without further ado, here they are:

2026 Track Power Rankings

1. Julien Alfred 🇱🇨

2. Noah Lyles 🇺🇸

3. Keely Hodgkinson 🇬🇧

4. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden 🇺🇸

5. Cooper Lutkenhaus 🇺🇸

6. Audrey Werro 🇨🇭

7. Gabby Thomas 🇺🇸

8. Busang Collen Kebinatshipi 🇧🇼

9. Kenny Bednarek 🇺🇸

10. Alison dos Santos 🇧🇷

11. Shericka Jackson 🇯🇲

12. Masai Russell 🇺🇸

13. Georgia Hunter Bell 🇬🇧

14. Josh Kerr 🇬🇧

15. Soufiane El Bakkali 🇲🇦

16. Jordan Anthony 🇺🇸

17. Yared Nuguse 🇺🇸

18. Peruth Chemutai 🇰🇪

19. Cole Hocker 🇺🇸

20. Birke Haylom 🇪🇹

21. Devynne Charlton 🇧🇸

22. Adaejah Hodge 🇻🇬

23. Emma Zapletalova 🇸🇰

24. Kishane Thompson 🇯🇲

25. Samuel Ogazi 🇳🇬

2026 Field Athlete Power Rankings

1. Mondo Duplantis 🇸🇪

2. Camryn Rogers 🇨🇦

3. Simon Ehammer 🇨🇭

4. Valarie Sion 🇺🇸

5. Jessica Schilder 🇳🇱

6. Ziyi Yan 🇨🇳

7. Ethan Katzberg 🇨🇦

8. Yaroslava Mahuchikh 🇺🇦

9. Chase Jackson 🇺🇸

10. Molly Caudery 🇬🇧

11. Leyanis Perez Hernandez 🇨🇺

12. Sofie Dokter 🇳🇱

13. Andy Diaz Hernandez 🇮🇹

14. Kristjan Čeh 🇸🇮

15. Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage 🇱🇰

16. Miltiadis Tentoglou 🇬🇷

17. Joe Kovacs 🇺🇸

18. Hana Moll 🇺🇸

19. Jordan Scott 🇯🇲

20. Matty Denny 🇦🇺

21. Mattia Furlani 🇮🇹

22. Daniel Ståhl 🇸🇪

23. Anderson Peters 🇬🇩

24. Manolo Karalis 🇬🇷

25. Nicola Olyslagers 🇦🇺

The most intriguing takeaway from these rankings may be that the women’s sprints are heading toward a clash of the titans. Jefferson-Wooden may be the triple World champion, but she just lost to Alfred over 200m in Rome. Neither is a 200m specialist in the way Shericka Jackson or Gabby Thomas is, so with those two getting back to 100% health and fitness, the battle for best female sprinter could also become the battle for best athlete in the world. And that’s not even including in the X factor that is Adaejah Hodge, who’s currently running rampant through the NCAA but has yet to face professional competition this year.

It’s also worth noting that isolating rankings to calendar-year performances could be a harbinger of a very different near future. Ryan Crouser doesn’t make the top 25 right now—could his imperial reign over the shot be coming to an end? Or what about Yulimar Rojas, whose post-Achilles-surgery triple jumping has been sufficient to land on the indoor and outdoor podium, but not good enough for multiple golds and word records? The back half of the season will let us know whether the first few months of 2026 are a blip to be overcome, or a trend toward decline.

They say you can’t compare apples and oranges, but there you have it. “Who’s the best” is usually just fodder for long run debates and comments sections, but it’s also an official practice of World Athletics—and now the Lap Count. And with the direction the sport is being pushed, get ready for much, much more of this in the months and years to come.

Where’s Track And Field’s Heated Rivalry? 📺

When it comes to the “big four” sports in the U.S., professional hockey consistently ranks last. And yet, interest and excitement in hockey—which, at least for American viewers, still far outpaces track and field—is on the rise, thanks in no small part to the wildfire success of shows like HBO’s Heated Rivalry and Prime Video’s Off Campus, as well as the smutty romance novels on which they’re based.

Heated Rivalry has become a worldwide phenomenon, and Off Campus was renewed for a second season before the first had even premiered. Even before the horny-gay-hockey boom, we’ve been in something of a golden age for sports TV, from Apple’s Ted Lasso to Netflix’s Running Point to the Amazon remake of A League of Their Own. It’s not just that sex sells—there’s a healthy and ample appetite for fictionalized sports drama on the small screen, and burly hockey guys are far from the sole protagonists.

Track and field has its own long history of portrayals in media, but just like the sport itself, we’ve fallen a bit from the 1980s heyday. Classics like Chariots of Fire and Without Limits (or, if you’ve got something against Billy Crudup, Prefontaine) once held a proud place in movie theatres and on VHS shelves, and even more recent efforts like McFarland, USA, or the Jesse Owens biopic Race found niche, but perfectly respectable, success in the mid-2010s.

Heck, track and field even has its own horny gay fantasy: 1982’s Personal Best, a fictional story of the relationship between two women training for the 1980 Olympic Trials. That film was a critical success but underperformed commercially (sounds very appropriate for track and field), but why should its lackluster box office performance stop us from trying to remake it into a direct-to-streaming series 40 years later?

Much like virtually every other aspect of the sport, track and field’s nerdy, old-school fidelity to accuracy at the expense of excitement may be holding us back in the entertainment world. Most of the running films you can think of offhand are biopics steadfastly rooted in faithfully recounting an inspirational, but hardly boundary-pushing, tale. Where are our Rockys? Our Challengerses? At this point, it would even be nice to see a modern remake of 2005’s Fever Pitch where Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney fall in love at Hayward Field instead of Fenway Park.

A great sports movie isn’t about the stats. Even the most diehard of Indiana basketball fans can’t recall the final score of the championship in Hoosiers, and no one is tracking the weekly mileage of the cyclists in Breaking Away. The emotional journeys of the central athletes, the challenges they overcome, and the relationships they forge along the way are all way more important than the minutia of whether or not the main character is doing double thresholds. Track and field’s “passion problem” is sorely in need of a highly-dramatized, fictional shot of adrenaline. And at this point, we very well may need to rely on conventionally-beautiful actors showing gratuitous, albeit tasteful, butt on screen to do it. Beggars can’t be choosers.

So here’s the pitch: two up-and-coming middle-distance runners wrap up their All-American college careers, sign pro contracts with rival shoe brands, and embark on a journey to make a splash on the Diamond League circuit. While they vie for their first U.S. teams, pose for hydration-powder photoshoots, and shuffle in and out of training groups, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another. After a season full of sexual-tension-filled glances across call rooms and slow-motion droplets of sweat flying through the air, they find themselves sharing a hotel room at the World Championships and the rest is history.

If there are any up-and-coming romance novelists and/or successful TV screenwriters subscribed to the newsletter, we’re begging you: please put pen to paper. The sport needs you.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Overshadowed by this past week’s two Diamond League meets, the Paavo Nurmi Games still managed to showcase some rock solid performances: Germans Florian Bremm and Frederick Ruppert went 12:56.80 and 12:57.61 to take the top two spots in the men’s 5000m; Kristian Čeh won a loaded men’s discus with a 69.13m heave; Monae’ Nichols won another long jump competition, soaring 6.88m; Chase Jackson nabbed a women’s shot victory over Jessica Schilder with a 20.66m toss; and Camryn Rogers went 80.09m to win the hammer.

– While insane tail winds rendered the results of the men’s 100m largely moot at the Lone Star Grand Prix (CLASSIC TEXAS!), the gusts cooperated for much of the rest of the meet, and excellent, legal marks abounded. Zimbabwe’s Makanakaishe Charamba won the men’s 200m in 19.88, ahead of teen phenom Tate Taylor, who became the first American high schooler under 20 seconds—he ran 19.97; Jamar Marshall won the 110m hurdles in 13.04, the second fastest mark in the world this year; Curtis Thompson posted a global top-10 javelin mark, 84.88m; 19-year-old Jamaican Sabrina Dockery ran a big PR—10.92—to announce herself as another up-and-coming 100m star; Gabby Thomas ran a world leading 21.70 in the 200m; Shafiqua Maloney won the women’s 800m in 1:57.34; and Demisha Roswell went 12.53 to take the women’s 100m hurdles.

– The NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships start today in Eugene, Oregon. Follow along with the action on the CITIUS MAG Twitter and Instagram.

– Professional and sub-elite marathoners all across America are frantically googling “what is toasted ravioli” after it was announced last week that St. Louis, Missouri, will host the 2028 Olympic Marathon Trials.

– At the U.S. 4 Mile Champs, held in conjunction with the Steamboat Classic in Peoria, Illinois, Ahmed Muhumed (17:57) and Kassie Parker (20:16) were crowned the victors. We don’t know much about Peoria, but as fans of the four-mile distance and steam-propelled watercraft, this race sounds like a great time.

– Agnes Ngetich won the Mini 10K in Central Park, smashing the course record in 30:07 and finishing more than 45 seconds ahead of the next finisher, two-time World Cross Country podium finisher Tsigie Gebreselama.

– TIME Magazine released its first ever sports edition of TIME100, naming the 100 most influential people in sports in 2026. Four track athletes made the list: Sebastian Sawe, Faith Kipyegon, Nikki Hiltz, and Mondo Duplantis.

– The latest influencer foray into the track world features professional dunking (that’s apparently a thing!) YouTuber Jordan Kilganon challenging high jumper Shelby McEwen to a jump-off.

– Very sad news as the Irish Times reported yesterday that 2012 Olympian Ciarán Ó Lionáird has died suddenly at 38 years old. R.I.P.

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Union Catholic (NJ) junior Paige Sheppard is one of the nation’s brightest middle distance stars. Sheppard, a New Balance NIL athlete, has won numerous New Balance Nationals titles, currently has the fastest 800m time in the country, and ran a U.S. No. 8 all-time 1600m days after recording this interview at 4:28.77.

Sheppard sat down with CITIUS MAG to breakdown her postseason plans, talk about how she’s grown as a racer, and give insights on her early decision to commit to Stanford.

The following excerpt has been lightly edited for length and clarity—the full interview is coming soon!

CITIUS MAG: The 800m has been what you’ve been focusing on individually this year. Going back to your tactical 2:05.07 win at Arcadia over a great athlete in Braelyn Combe, what did you learn from that race?

It kind of taught me that just because I won indoors last year, doesn’t mean that every race is necessarily mine—there’s going to be opportunities where it’s going to come to the line and I’m gonna need to really dig deep. There’s gonna be races like that where it’s gonna take a lot more grit.

With the World Junior Championships coming to the U.S. in August, you’ll be targeting the U.S. U20 Championships as your main postseason goal. When you’re approaching a meet like this with some slightly more experienced athletes you’ll be racing, how does the preparation from a training and tactics perspective vary?

I’ll probably call back to my mindset when I ran the USA Championships during the indoor season. The thing that I told myself is that I had nothing to lose. I knew the pressure wasn’t on me, it was more on the rest of the field because they were going up against a high schooler. I was just out there to have fun. That mindset will definitely shift a little bit because I do really want to make the team this time, so I’ll be going in with a little bit more grit, and just go out there and do what I know I can do.

A few weeks ago you announced your commitment to Stanford. What made Stanford stand out as the choice for you?

I don’t know exactly what I want to do in life, but I’ve known since freshman or sophomore year that Stanford was where I wanted to go. I’d never been to that part of California or anything, but it was just kind of calling to me. I got the opportunity this year before Arcadia to see Stanford. The environment and how they all supported one another, cheering each other on during reps at practice, it was an amazing feeling. That and the better weather compared to Jersey after such a harsh winter all led me towards that was where I wanted to be.

Before we go, talk me through what your shoe rotation for a week of training looks like as a New Balance athlete.

Right now I’ve been wearing the Ellipse a lot, and not even just the one shoe but all the different colorways. I think what’s so great about the New Balance shoes is that they’re really stylish and they go with a lot of different outfits. I actually just got a pair of shorts last week that match the Gabby Thomas Ellipses that are pink, so it’s really fun to put together outfits. So the Ellipse right now has definitely been a big strong runner, but the SC Elites are also great for long runs or workouts, and the 1080s are always great for an easy run.

Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, Kyle Merber, & Paul Hof-Mahoney

It’s Time To Stop Sleeping On The Rabat Winners ⏰

With the third edition of the Meeting International Mohammed VI d’Athlétisme in Rabat in the books, the Diamond League season is officially 20% complete. And while the early action on the circuit can sometimes struggle to attract all the big names, we still saw some familiar faces in Morocco. Valarie Sion won her 21st Diamond League discus competition. Kenny Bednarek looked supremely relaxed while dropping a 19.69 200m and blowing away a strong field. Yared Nuguse picked up the fifth DL win of his career in the 1500m, more than any other American distance runner. And of course, hometown hero Soufiane El Bakkali capped it all off with a win in the steeplechase, his sixth in nine years at this meet, running the second fastest time of his career in the process.

And yet, there were also notable absences. After two wins in China, Shericka Jackson skipped out on the 200m this time around, as did Masai Russell in the (non-DL) 100m hurdles. There’s no sign yet of Femke Bol or Keely Hodgkinson on the circuit, which takes some of the shine out of the 400H and 800m lineups but opens the door for other performers. And after dropping a sub-44 in Xiamen, World champ Collen Kebinatshipi wasn’t on the 400m start line this time around, which led to Jacory Patterson defending his title from last year and claiming his fourth career DL victory.

The glass-half-empty crew will look at this as a negative—in a year where regular-season racing should have greater emphasis, where are all the stars? It’s a valid point. But the silver lining of that half-empty mixed-metaphor glass is that Rabat was full of breakout performances from athletes who’ve been really, really good for a while but haven’t gotten their time to shine.

Over the last two seasons, Emma Zapletalova has improved her 400m hurdles PB from 54.28 to sub-53. The 26-year-old Slovakian secured a World bronze in Tokyo last September, finished second behind Bol in last year’s DL final, and holds the flat 400m national record for Slovakia as well as over the hurdles at 50.76. But until Sunday, she’d yet to pick up a Diamond League victory. Not only did she win in Rabat, she ran 52.82 to handily beat Anna Cockrell, set the world lead, and crack the top-20 all-time. For the front half of the 2020s, the Femke-Sydney dominance of the event pretty much sucked up all the air—Diamond League or otherwise—in the 400m hurdling room. But Zapletalova has been in the mix for a while now and that win felt long overdue.

Similarly, Swiss 800m phenom Audrey Werro had a breakout moment or two in 2025, most notably winning the DL final in front of a home crowd in Zurich. But she’s also done a lot of running in Keely Hodgkinson’s shadow. Werro finished second in two of the most consequential races of the indoor season: Hodgkinson’s record-setting run in France and the World Indoor final, where, of course, Keely again emerged victorious. You’d be excused if you missed the fact that, in the World final in Torun, Werro became only the second woman in 20 years to break 1:57 indoors… because, of course, she was a full second behind Keely’s 1:55.30 win.

But Werro is 22 years old and just opened up her outdoor season with a 1:56.56 win over Tsige Duguma and, just as notably, reigning World champ Lilian Odira. As an 800m runner, Werro is of the “go out really hard and hang on” variety, which can get you in trouble in championship-style races. But in the rabbited DL format where everyone wants to run fast, it’s got a much better success rate.

Speaking of… Odira wasn’t the only 800m World champ to fall in Rabat. Emmanuel Wanyonyi losing was probably even more surprising, given that his chief rival Marco Arop wasn’t in the race. Instead, it was 24-year-old Brit Max Burgin who got the better of him. It’s hard to say Burgin “sneak-attacked” the field, because he was out front from the gun, but that’s what it felt like. Burgin was the only guy to go with the rabbit as the rest of the field hung back, and by midway through the second lap when Wanyonyi started his move, the gap was too much to overcome.

Burgin was rewarded for his bravery with his second-career DL win, but his first since his breakout run in London in 2023. He’s one of those guys who may not be on the tip of most non-British fans’ tongues, but he’s been in the mix for a while now, finishing sixth at the Olympics in Paris and sixth in Tokyo last year. While he’s just 2-8 against Wanyonyi head-to-head, both of those wins came in Rabat as last year Burgin finished second to Wanyonyi’s third when both men lost to Tshepiso Masalela. Wanyonyi fans shouldn’t be too worried, however, as the Kenyan started last year with two 800m losses before picking up four wins in a row and, eventually, the World title.

The last, but certainly not least, first-time Diamond League winner was Cambrea Sturgis, who took the win in the 200m in 22.21. Shaunae Miller-Uibo was the pre-race favorite but got a very poor start and ended up fourth, which meant that Sturgis’s biggest competition ended up being fellow American Kayla White, who took second in 22.28. Sturgis, you may remember, was the 2021 NCAA champ over 100m and 200m, but since turning pro she hasn’t seen the same level of success. She’s only made a U.S. final once (finishing fourth in the 200m in 2022), and until this season she hadn’t run close to her 10.87/22.11 PBs in over three years.

But Sturgis has been on another level so far in 2026, finishing first or second in 11 of her 12 open races this season. She set a PB in the 200m at the Kip Keino Classic, running 21.93 on Gabby Thomas’s heels, and ran her fastest 100m in three years last weekend. She’s been on quite the Tour de Africa, as Morocco is the fifth country on the continent she’s raced in over the last two months. Now she’s won her first Diamond League meet, arguably the biggest win of her professional career to date.

The absence of other top athletes doesn’t diminish any of these performances by any means; it merely clears the way to appreciate excellence that’s been skimming just below the surface. Just as importantly, it adds new wrinkles to season-long narratives that could otherwise get a little repetitive. Next time Shericka Jackson or Keely Hodgkinson toes the line, they’ll be racing a rival that’s coming off the confidence and good vibes of a big win. And next time Cambrea Sturgis, Audrey Werro, or any of the other big winners out of Rabat take on the top dogs in their respective events, they’ll do so knowing without a doubt that they’ve got what it takes to contend.

“Après Moi, Le Déluge:” Steeplechase Edition 🌊

The biggest steeplechase news out of Rabat wasn’t Soufiane El Bakkali getting back to his winning ways. It also wasn’t World champion George Beamish finishing 13th, albeit in a perfectly respectable 8:16.30 season opener. It was runner-up Frederik Ruppert.

Just like he did at Rabat last year, Ruppert used a strong last lap to reel in, but not quite overtake, El Bakkali and got a big PB in the process. Unlike last year, however, where the winning time was 8:00.70 and Ruppert ran 8:01.49, this time the 29-year-old German knocked another 3+ seconds off his best, clocking a 7:57.80.

That time landed Ruppert at 12th on the all-time list, and he, along with third-placer Simon Koech, joined the still-small club of sub-eight-minute steeplers that now has 15 members. Most notably, however, Ruppert became the first man not born in Africa to crack the barrier.

Of those 15 sub-eight runners, ten are Kenyan (eleven if you count Saif Saaeed Shaheen, who was born in Kenya but represented Qatar internationally), two are from Morocco, and only one, surprisingly, is Ethiopian. That one, of course, is world record holder Lamecha Girma, who’s run ten full seconds faster than the second-fastest Ethiopian in history.

After Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad and Evan Jager both got tantalizingly close, running 8:00 in 2013 and 2015, respectively, it seemed like a matter of time before an American or European broke the barrier. When Jager took his fateful fall over the final barrier in Paris en route to his 8:00.45 PB, it seemed like a foregone conclusion he would be the guy… alas, the cruel track gods had other plans. Instead, it took nearly eleven more years and a guy from a different continent.

Since 2015, 15 of the 20 American and European Olympic distance records (men’s and women’s 800-10,000m) have been broken. The ones that haven’t are Wilson Kipketer’s and Jarmila Kratochvílová’s European 800m marks, Bernard Lagat’s 1500m American record (depending on what you count), and both men’s steeplechase marks. In the age of supershoes, Wavelights, and bicarb, the men’s steeplechase has remained a stubborn outlier to the trend of past times getting blown out the window.

It’s not a steeplechase problem: the women’s sub-nine list has gone from one name to 17 in the last decade, and eight of the fastest marks have been run since 2024. In 2020, running 9:27 would get you on the U.S. all-time top-10 for women; now that cutoff is 9:10.72. In the same race as Ruppert, Matthew Wilkinson moved up to U.S. #7 all-time with his 8:09.56 run, but only one of the six men in front of him (Kenneth Rooks) ran his PB this decade. By comparison, every member of the women’s top-10 ran her PB in the last eight years, and seven of the ten did so in the last three.

Does bicarb simply not work on American men’s stomachs? Do European men respond differently to carbon-spike technology? If you look at the trajectory of all the other mid-distance and distance events, that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. Unless we’ve discovered some sort of crazy scientific anomaly where the combination of running, jumping, and splashing affects one gender and one regional subset in a totally different way than every other athlete and event, a simpler explanation must be true: we’re overdue.

The steeplechase is one of those events where big time jumps are possible, and in championships they’re downright common. Look at Ruppert last year, going from 8:15 to 8:01 in one race. Or Doris Lemngole deciding to take the kid gloves off and improve the NCAA record from 9:15 to 8:58 in one season. Kenneth Rooks’s silver-medal winning run in Paris was a nine-second PB; Courtney Frerichs’s 2017 Worlds breakout was a 15-second improvement. Other men will follow Ruppert under the barrier, and it might not even be someone who’s particularly close at the moment.

The 800m and 1500m have gotten faster not just because of technology but because more races are paced for faster times, and more fields are full of athletes who have both the belief and capability to run in the 1:42s and 3:20s. For the better part of the last decade, the men’s steeplechase on the elite international level has been El Bakkali, Girma, and then a huge gap, which can create race-within-a-races where the chase pack has no help from rabbits. But just like Faith Kipyegon and the women’s 1500m, the rest of the world is starting to be able to stick closer to the frontrunners for longer, and the times will follow.

In Rabat, Frederik Ruppert became a Roger Bannister of sorts, and in the next year or two, Bannister’s famous words—“après moi, le déluge,” French for “after me comes the flood”—will start to feel true. The number of Europeans and Ethiopians under eight minutes will not stay at one for long, and an American sub-eight is coming sooner than we might imagine.

What’s In A World Ranking? 📝

As evidenced by recent changes to the voting procedure for the end-of-year awards, World Athletics has proven itself to be a governing body that listens to its constituents. That’s why after now having a week to fully digest the new standards and qualifying procedures for 2027, this newsletter is now more prepared to dive into the implications and perhaps make a couple suggestions.

To quickly recap the updated system, there key takeaways:

• The standards are harder

• Rankings are more important

• Meet quality matters

In its press release, World Athletics noted that they’re targeting 40% of qualifiers to earn their spot via entry standards. Using the 2027 standards, last year’s qualifiers would have been achieved by 32% of the full World Championship field—meaning there is a big bet on another significant increase in depth, or that 40% number is a bit facetious. The world rankings only became relevant in 2020, and every year a greater emphasis has been placed on them. Like boiling a frog, the infrastructure of the sport is slowly changing without everyone recognizing it.

Why is World Athletics walking further and further away from entry standards? Because they’re not stupid. The sport is better when the top athletes are competing against one another regularly. And when an athlete can time-trial a qualifier at an indoor college meet in December and then disappear until championship season, that’s bad entertainment. At the same time, they want to protect the stars and guarantee that they’ll be on the biggest stage at the end of the season, so expect the various wild cards to remain (and possibly expand).

While the headlines focused on the eradication of the BU Indoor Track, it’s not a targeted attack. Instead, all races on 200m tracks will no longer be eligible for standards nor will meets categorized below the “C” designation (they still will count for ranking points). The goal here is to consolidate the number of meets athletes are competing in.

By rearranging the incentives, World Athletics has made their stance clear: athletes are competing at way too many different meets. It’s difficult to follow where everyone is and it’s easy to avoid competition. Imagine a perfect world where every top professional competed in the same 10 meets—you would always tune in.

But there is an obvious problem with the finite number of lanes on a track. Chasing standards was also about accessibility. Any time, anywhere… if you’re fast enough you could prove it and make it to the big stage. This is different from other sports, where no matter how many home runs one dude might hit in a rec softball game, he doesn’t get to play in the World Series.

So here are three suggestions to improve on this gradual realignment of the sport:

1. Eliminate time standards entirely and replace them with an auto qualification quota. The issue with depending exclusively on rankings is that an athlete exploding onto the scene won’t qualify. Think about a guy like Cooper Lutkenhaus at the U.S. Championships, who ran the fourth fastest time in the world, but then wouldn’t qualify for Worlds. Instead just declare the top 10 time performances as automatically qualified.

2. Add a bonus to the performance score set in non-rabbitted distance races. One of the advantages of getting into the Diamond League is that athletes get into faster-paced races. Additionally, they get higher placement scores because of the “Category A” distinction so that’s twice the disadvantage. To help offset that edge, let’s throw some extra points to athletes who can run fast on their own.

3. Improve secondary races at Diamond League events. The pre-TV-window races at most DLs are considered “Category F,” despite being held in world-class stadiums that meet the highest technical requirements. Why not have a full program of high-level racing the night before at a higher categorization? From an organizer’s perspective, they’d love nothing more than to have top athletes on hand in case of a scratch in the main program. And from a planning perspective, that’s more opportunity for athletes on the fringe to set schedules earlier, while meets would have promotional and commercial benefits.

Ranking athletes is difficult, and inevitably some very capable athletes may miss out because getting five performances in an increasingly tight window can be difficult. No methodology is ever going to be perfect, and unlike sports such as tennis, the peaks and valleys of fitness and health are extreme. Look at the current world rankings and you’ll see some obvious flaws. For example, the three highest-ranked men on the track in the entire world are all 400m hurdlers.

With the World Ultimate Championships debuting this September, rankings are about to become a much more prominent part of athletics fandom. With a maximum of 16 athletes qualifying in each contested event, qualifying will require peak fitness and an ability to game the system. There are still a few months left; however, if we analyze the Road to the Ultimate tool (as of June 2nd) then there are some fascinating qualification stories already developing:

• W100m - Sha’Carri Richardson and Adaejah Hodge are outside the quota.

• W200m - Julien Alfred and Brittany Brown are outside the quota. Also, eight of the 16 athletes are American.

• W800m - Tsige Duguma and Mary Moraa and are outside the quota.

• M800m - Cooper Lutkenhaus, Marco Arop, and Djamel Sedjati are outside the quota.

• M1500m - Josh Kerr, Yared Nuguse, and Timothy Cheruiyot are outside the quota. Also, four of the 12 athletes are Australian.

• Letsile Tebogo is not in the 100m, and Kenny Bednarek is not in the 200m.

• Olympic champion Grant Holloway has been injured all year, but has qualified.

• Olympic 400m champion Quincy Hall ran 45.54 for eighth in Rabat, but has qualified.

While fitness improves and athletes race more, many of these apparent glitches will course-correct. But still, rankings discourse will be an integral part of the World Ultimate Championship experience.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Despite our grousing last week about the current state of the NCAA regional meets, there were some impressive performances thrown down at both—here are a few: Alabama’s Samuel Ogazi (43.82) and Florida’s Justin Braun (43.99) went 1–2 in the East region 400m; Kanyinsola Ajayi ran 9.84 to lead five Auburn men who qualified for nationals in the 100m; all 12 men’s qualifiers in the 400m hurdles and 11/12 in the flat 400m ran PBs; and Doris Lemngole (Alabama) soloed 15:08.45 to win the 5000m.

– Out west, Arkansas’s Sanu Jallow won the 800m in 1:57.74, just .01 seconds off Athing Mu’s collegiate record; Stanford’s Alyssa Jones went 7.09m in the long jump, the second best in collegiate history; and Kansas State’s Tafadzwa Chikomba long jumped 8.75m—further than the NCAA record, but he had a 3.2m/s tailwind.

– Sam Blaskowski, a 14-time NCAA Division III champ for the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse, won the 100m at the Music City Track Carnival in 9.89—that’s the second fastest time in the world this year. He then joined Chris Chavez on the CITIUS MAG Podcast!

– In the process of breaking the Swiss record and setting a world decathlon lead (8778) at the Hypomeeting in Götzis, Austria, Simon Ehammer managed to post the top long jump mark in the world this year, 8.51m—to be clear, that’s the further jump by anyone, not just multi-eventers. His compatriot Annik Kälin won the heptathlon, also in Swiss national record fashion and world leading fashion, with 6726 big ones.

– The Great Manchester Run lived up to its billing: it was a great run in Manchester. 2020 Olympic 10,000m champ Selemon Barega continued his exploration of the tarmac, winning the 10K race in 27:37, while Slovenia’s Klara Lukan took home the women’s ‘W’ in 30:58.

– We don’t see much of a point in reporting results from races with elevation profiles so net-downhill that their results can’t count for really anything. But a part of our lizard brain kicked into gear when we saw that Burundi’s Rodrigue Kwizera covered the 10K course at the Madrid Vintage Run in 26:01—we haven’t been able to find a faster 10k time on record, even if that record includes goofy-ass courses.

– At the 8th Irena Szewińska Memorial in Bydgoszcz, Poland, Jamal Britt continued his 2026 undefeated streak in 110m hurdle finals, going 13.10, and Klaudia Kazimierska gave the home crowd something to celebrate with a 3:59.99 1500m victory.

– Britt gets a second bullet point for returning to the track two days later to win another 110m hurdle final, this time going 13.20 into a headwind at the Josef Odlozil Memorial in Prague. Let this be a lesson to all other athletes reading this: if you want more bullet points, win more frequently.

– 2016 U.S. Marathon Trials qualifier and accomplished ultra runner Tyler Andrews has—pending certification—lowered the fastest known time for an oxygen-assisted ascent of Mount Everest.

– Carey McLeod, the 2024 World Indoor bronze medalist for Jamaica, has been issued a two-year ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit for whereabouts failures.

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If you’re around this weekend, RSVP for a free spectator ticket and come cheer on racers from 21 countries and 45 states.

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber

2027’s World Championship Standards Are Out—Will Anything Change?

The CITIUS MAG hivemind put together an incredibly detailed piece about the ambitious new auto-qualifying standards set by World Athletics for the 2027 World Championships. You can dive into the nitty gritty of the new standards and slight rule changes here, and if you’re a real track dork we imagine you will.

But the TL;DR is this: just about every event got a whole lot harder to qualify via time, and just about every athlete in the world isn’t gonna secure a mark necessary to ensure their spot at Worlds in Beijing next September.

This is because World Athletics wants to incentivize athletes to take its world ranking system way more seriously—if that’s the only viable path for you to compete at Worlds… yeah, you’re gonna adjust your schedule to slot in as many point-rich opportunities as you can and compete more often. Oh, and you’re not gonna be able to get your standard at BU or in Ramona anymore, folks.

We are a time-agnostic newsletter that has more than belabored the point that track and field is better when its best athletes actually compete against each other. In that these changes are presumably in service of achieving these goals, we are fully in World Athletics’ corner on this one.

But with every well-intentioned change comes a few negative externalities.

For instance, one change announced by World Athletics is that for a mark to count toward auto-qualification, it has to be posted at a Category C or higher meet. That means basically all NCAA competition—outside of Division One indoor and outdoor championships meets—won’t count. (They will for world ranking purposes.) Relatedly, one of the reasons so many American professionals compete in meets largely geared toward college athletes is that there just aren’t a tremendous amount of Category C meets in the U.S.

This will either send U.S. pros across the pond in droves to Europe for higher-level opportunities. Or it won’t. Travel to Europe is expensive, and in a country with sprint depth like the U.S., there are certainly World Championship-caliber athletes not on massive shoe deals who won’t be able to swing it. This tier of athletes will keep hacking away at it within the U.S., and hope they are consistently great enough for their world ranking to do the talking.

It’s not fair that frequent, costly international travel is an expectation for athletes from North America—and even more so for those from much of Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia. But World Athletics likely recognized this problem, thought about it, and determined that it was offset by the positives of its rankings-focused system. You may not love the verdict reached, but you’ve gotta respect that WA loves its ranking system so much that all of its decisionmaking is looking to bolster its importance: “Yeah, this might piss some people off, but it’s gonna get the bigger names out on the oval more often.”

You’d hope World Athletics also contemplated another issue: that getting into higher-category meets is deeply political. There’s no qualifying system for most of them, so unless you’re a big enough name to singlehandedly impact ticket sales, it’s a matter of who you know, or your coach knows, or your agent knows, or your sponsor’s sports marketing team knows.

Again, the theoretical athlete getting the short end of the stick here isn’t a household name with a mantle full of global championship hardware. It’s the young upstart or the developing pro. To World Athletics’ credit, there’s been a push recently to shore up the availability of quality meets outside of Europe. You won’t get politicking out of track and field, but you can spread out the power into the hands of more players so that there are fewer people playing favorites.

We understand the calculus by World Athletics. As much as we love an underdog story, ultimately, it’s the stars that drive the sport—ours and every other. By and large, these changes aren’t likely to present major obstacles to 99% of the athletes who will win medals in Beijing. The new policies and standards should primarily encourage most athletes to skip out on the collegiate meets or low-key season openers in favor of actual professional competition on what we loftily refer to as “the circuit.”

But we can walk and chew gum and type a paragraph at the same time, and we’ll be adding to that list of multitasking now, by saying we’ll at the same time pour one out for the feel-good stories of third-place finishers at USAs who stormed down the home stretch out of obscurity to steal a spot on a global championship team, forever changing the course of their careers and lives, and inspiring generations of kids watching at home or in the stands. Professional sports are just that: professional. But the more professionalized and optimized they become, we do lose a little bit of the potential for that particular brand of magic.

That said, if we want track and field to continue to grow as a professional enterprise, then that’s one of the prices you pay. At their highest levels, sports are a celebration of the absolute best of the best—you’ve just gotta ensure there’s a pathway for that greatness to reload, and that young or unheralded athletes aren’t frozen out forever.

Tobi Amusan’s World Record’s Redemption Arc

The year was 2022 and the World Championships were in Eugene.

On day three of competition, the world leader in the 110m Hurdles, Devon Allen, was controversially disqualified from the final for having too good of a reaction time. His first movement came 0.099 seconds after the start of the race—the somewhat arbitrarily established human limit of reaction is apparently 0.1 seconds—and he was not allowed to advance on protest.

Hayward Field—old or new—is hallowed ground for American athletes. For the rest of the world, especially with a shiny new facility, there’s no culturally imprinted notion of it being special. Now, however, it was the international track and field community’s turn to come experience the magic for themselves.

On day seven, Shericka Jackson threatened FloJo’s world record running 21.45 to win the 200m. Maybe the Willamette Valley was a sprinter’s paradise after all, and not just a micropolitan area where distance runners can enjoy some low-humidity racing late into the summer?

On the penultimate day of competition, Tobi Amusan set an African record of 12.40 in the 100m Hurdles.

It was a small personal best by one-hundredth of a second and the fastest time of the day, though not enough for the 25-year-old from Nigeria to be considered the favorite… yet. Although she had an NCAA, Diamond League, and Commonwealth Games title to her name and finished one spot off the podium a year earlier at the Olympics, despite these accolades, Amusan wasn’t broadly talked about as a clear cut podium finisher.

On the last day of racing, Amusan stunned the stadium, dropping a 12.12 win in the semi-final to break Keni Harrison’s world record of 12.20, seemingly out of nowhere. The wind reading registered +0.9 m/s, well below the legal limit of +2.0.

Behind Amusan, across both semis, there were an additional five national records and 12 personal bests.

Was the clock broken? Was the track mismarked? Did they forget a hurdle?

While fans were actively still processing what they had just witnessed, and while the rumors and speculation began swirling, it was time for the finals.

And when Tobi Amusan crossed the finish line even faster than in the previous race, the rationalizations over how such a thing could be even possible were kicked up another notch.

Her world championship winning time of 12.06 remains unfathomable to many, even with the assistance of a +2.5 m/s that ultimately made the time not record-eligible.

Sprint races are not like distance events where athletes can call their shot well in advance, tuck in behind a pacer, and if appropriately fit, deliver. In sprints, there are too many factors that need to go perfectly right. And especially in a rhythm race like in the hurdles, seasons can change in the flip of a switch as steps can suddenly fall into place. What should have been a triumphant moment for all fans and pundits of the sport drew skepticism from those outside Africa.

There’s undoubtedly a Western bias in athletics journalism, and that was amplified by the then recent high-profile doping violation of Blessing Okagbare. Additionally, under the classification as a Category A nation, Nigeria was required to test its athletes three times in out-of-competition, unannounced tests. The federation’s failure to properly test 10 of its athletes prior to the 2021 Olympics, resulting in those athletes ineligibility for the Games.

However, Tobi Amusan had never failed a test and all her personal testing protocol had been met. But because of the country she competed for and because she improved so much, she was unfairly criticized and never properly celebrated by the global community.

The best time to really acknowledge how special Amusan’s string of races in Eugene was, was in 2022… in Eugene. The next best time is now. Her performance at Worlds is becoming more validated and accepted each season.

This past weekend at the Xiamen Diamond League, the Olympic champion Masai Russell broke her own American record to run 12.14 (+0.5) and claim the second fastest time in history. This was her third time under that previous world record of 12.20, a mark that has also since been eclipsed by Tia Jones. Similar to Tigst Assefa’s old world record in the marathon, the public perspective shifts once a performance is not as significant of an outlier.

Masai Russell looks poised to continue challenging 12.12 through the rest of this season. And second to Russell in China was none other than Amusan herself, who has already proven she can run faster, and appears to be rounding back into form. As the marks fill in and more eyes are opened, it is important to reexamine the treatment of the current world record holder. The victims of doping in sport are not limited to those who are beaten, but also to those who will unjustly be accused in the future.

(Here is this newsletter’s reaction to that race from 2022: “As the old saying goes, you’re only as good as your second best time—so she did it again. Less than two hours later, Amusan ran 12.06 to win the World Championships. Although the wind read a non-record legal +2.5 m/s, it certainly validated her hours-old world record run.”)

Make Regionals Mean Something 🙏

When it comes to the NCAA outdoor season, there’s plenty to love. The national championships are awesome. Most conference championships are awesome, especially when team titles come down to the 4x400m. Heck, even a few of the mid-season regular meets—Payton Jordan and Penn Relays come to mind—can hold their own on the entertainment scale.

However, the two regional meets sandwiched in between conference weekend and NCAAs are… not awesome.

The NCAA East and West Regionals …or preliminary rounds, or first rounds, or qualifiers, or whatever you call it… are treated by pretty much everyone like a necessary evil to muscle through.

Regionals are a pair of enormous four-day meets full of all the biggest collegiate stars who have to show up and compete. In theory it should be the second-most exciting meet on the whole collegiate schedule. But instead, the whole shebang basically boils down to “play it safe, don’t mess up, and finish top 12.”

For the athletes at the top of the list, there’s nowhere to go but down. For the athletes rising up from the lower ranks, qualifying for NCAAs is a thrill, but you’re ultimately just earning the honor of getting bounced in the first round come June. And for the bottom third of the fields, while qualifying for Regionals is a nice accomplishment, you probably already picked up a point or two at your conference meet, which likely matters more to you and your teammates.

The 10,000ms are particularly farcical. With only one heat in each region and no need to even glance at the clock, the whole affair morphs into a long, boring tempo workout where the only goal is to finish in the top 25 percent of the field. It almost never yields surprise non-qualifiers. It’s everything we hate about tedious championship round-running with none of the payoff. That’s all saved for the championship itself—which has its own rounds of qualifying for most events anyway.

And yet, we shouldn’t take it for granted that regional meets are boring. Cross country regionals are thrilling rides, with teams battling for the few auto spots then anxiously awaiting results from around the country to see how at-large points shake out. NCAA tournaments in other sports—most notably basketball but also football, baseball, softball, and others—include multiple rounds of exciting action that are worth watching before the real big championship rolls around. So how do we fix ours?

In short, something about Regionals has to mean something. Turning the whole meet into a qualified/not qualified binary makes it so that the only exciting outcomes happen somewhere between 11th and 13th place, while the stars are incentivized to do the absolute bare minimum. Teams (and the athletes that comprise them) need something else to run, jump, and throw for.

Unlike NCAAs and conference meets, there isn’t a team scoring element to the preliminary meet. On one hand, who cares? Teams still want to get athletes to nationals for the scoring potential they offer there. But on the other, you again run into the problem where the really good teams have no reason to do anything beyond the bare minimum to advance, not the maximum their talent and roster allows.

The first piece of the solution is easy: turn two regional meets into four. The “Final Four” branding of basketball is nearly as iconic as the NCAA itself, so why not borrow a nifty turn of phrase and the cache it provides? At cocktail parties in 15 years, 10k runners can say they “made the Final Four” in college and the only giveaway will be the fact that they’re 5’8” and still have a pronounced watch tan line.

More seriously, this tweak allows the selection process to remain the same, numerically, while encouraging more competitive performances, cutoff-wise. Instead of 48 athletes vying for 12 spots, you’ve got 24 athletes per event going for a mere six big-Qs. That leaves a lot less margin of error for sprinters shutting it down at 80 meters or jumpers retiring after four attempts, and a kicker’s race in the 5000m or 10,000m could easily turn into a bloodbath. It’ll keep the top guys on their toes and force them to go for broke, or risk allowing exciting upsets to occur at their expense.

But that’s just the start. Here at TLC, we’re increasingly seeing the value in the liberal and strategic use of wild cards. Track and field’s historic love for its meritocratic selection processes, while important in some contexts, can also be a weakness when the goal is drama. So here’s a tantalizing offer for the teams contending for every point at NCAAs: win your Regional, and you’ll be mightily rewarded. In addition to the prestige of beating all the other Northeast, South, Central, and West Regional schools, the team champion will be awarded one wild card entry into an open event and one in a relay of its choosing. You already qualified both a 4x1 and a 4x4? No problem—now you get a B team. It’s not hard to imagine a world in which the Arkansases or Floridas of the world could put two relays in the top eight and make a big difference in the national meet scoring.

The individual wild card could go to a talented, but fragile, athlete who got healthy late but didn’t have time to get a qualifier, or it could allow for ballsier doubles if your best 200m/400m or 1500m/5000m runner doesn’t have to run both events at both meets. “But, but, but— fairness!” teams will cry. In this instance, we’re willing to sacrifice a little fairness for a lot of intrigue.

Our other “run hard at Regionals” gimmick is similar in that it’s designed more to reward the top athletes for trying than the underdogs for overperforming. In events with both heats and finals at NCAAs (100m–1500m, both hurdles, and the steeple), the Regional winner should get an automatic spot in the national final. The top four athletes in the national final will all be extra rested, so it doesn’t create a totally lopsided system favoring one athlete, but in order to do so, they’ll have to give 100% or close to it two weeks earlier. Since few, if any, collegiate athletes are so good they can win a regional meet outright with a restrained effort, it’ll essentially require all the athletes who normally coast to run through the line in pursuit of that sweet, sweet bye.

There you have it: a three-step fix that’s deeply undemocratic, but potentially highly effective at increasing the number of exciting NCAA postseason weekends by 50%. Defenders of the status quo will hate it, but fans of quality racing will love it. And now track and field has a Final Four weekend to contend with every major sport. Let’s give it a shot.

The New Runner’s Guide To Bathroom Use 💩

There are a lot of new runners who have recently joined our great community thanks to mid-life crises or a desire to meet other singles in their neighborhood. As lifelong runners who toiled in the trenches (got made fun of for wearing running shorts as high schoolers in the early 2000s), we hold no resentment towards our new hybrid athlete brethren and sistren with much better bench press and squat PBs. If anything we welcome you! Perhaps a handful of you will cross the Rubicon from “frequent run club attendee” to “obsessive dork who contributes to the stellar open-rate of a weekly track and field newsletter.”

With that said, there are a few obvious signs that someone may not have gone through puberty as a member of the cross country team, aside from innocuous ones like being good at frisbee. The most glaring tell is a lack of basic bathroom etiquette on group runs. And because we aren’t gatekeepers and are genuinely glad you are here, here are 14 unanimously understood rules by lifelong runners about going to the bathroom on the run:

1. When someone has to pee you wait for them.

2. You can’t stop to pee in a group before three miles.

3. Pee breaks are at the top of hills, not the bottom.

4. If you break rules 2 or 3 that’s fine, but you forfeit rule 1.

5. Hold your pee until those coming the opposite way on the trail pass.

6. If someone needs to poop and they don’t have paper, then whoever does have some is expected to share.

7. It’s not littering if it’s a poop covered biodegradable sock.

8. If someone who needs to poop requires a physical bathroom then the route will change to include one.

9. If a poop is going to take more than two minutes then the pooper should encourage the group to do an out and back.

10. Fart in the back of the pack.

11. No poops at the Sedona track.

12. In the last 10 minutes before a marathon there are no rules, or laws, for that matter

13. You can’t stop your watch mid-race to use the bathroom and then pretend that’s your actual time or say things like, “if I didn’t stop to use the bathroom, then I would have…”

14. The decision to poop your pants mid-race is a personal one and shall not be judged, but you better be running a massive personal best if you go through with it.

14 rules? Phew! We know that’s a lot, and we don’t expect you to commit them all to memory right away. If you mess up in a pee way, not a poop way, that’s okay. You merely adopted the dark hobby… we were born socially stunted through our obsessive participation in it.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– ATHLOS will host its non-New York meet this fall in London on September 18th, at StoneX Stadium. The venue primarily serves as a rugby stadium, and is tucked away in far North London, ensuring competitors will experience the full spectrum of athletic arenas, ranging from “borderline pastoral” to “on a weird partially manmade island in the East River.”

– LA Track Fest was billed as the best assemblage of U.S. distance running talent this side of the Pre Classic, but we still got treated to an Ackeem Blake 9.99 100m showing and Michael Norman going sub-45 for the first time since the 2024 Olympic 400m semi-finals. Beyond that, the meet lived up to the billing: Brandon Miller (1:44.26) bested Abe Alvarado and Josh Kerr in the 800m; Vince Ciattei’s 3:33.41 was enough to put away a solid domestic 1500m field; New Mexico’s Habtom Samuel broke the collegiate outdoor 5000m record, winning in 12:57.22; Roisin Willis impressed in her New Balance Boston debut, winning the 800m in 1:58.08; Parker Valby made her professional outdoor debut via a 14:49.41 victory in the 5000m; and Great Britain’s Elise Thorner dominated the steeple, winning by over 13 seconds in 9:07.39.

– It being a stop on the Diamond League circuit, the competition in Xiamen was predictably exciting and the notable results, numerous. But if we had to pluck out a few highlights from the day, like say, for a newsletter, here’s what we’d note: Masai Russell broke the American 100m hurdles record (going 12.14) and now sits just .02 seconds behind the world record; Yan Ziyi, the teenage Chinese javelin star, launched it 71.74m—the second best throw in history; Shericka Jackson continued to impress on her comeback tour, winning the women’s 200m in a season’s best of 22.87; Peruth Chemutai won her second straight DL 3000m steeplechase, this time taking down rivals Winfred Yavi and Faith Cherotich in the process; Collen Kebinatshipi went 43.92 to take the win in the men’s 400m—he’s now the world leader over 400m and 100m; and Rajindra Campbell surprised a men’s shot put field loaded American talent (including Ryan Crouser) and won it thanks to a 22.34m toss.

– After last year’s wind-related cancelation, the 2026 Cape Town Marathon provided a dose of redemption for the race, which harbors World Major status ambitions. Ethiopia’s Mohamed Esa ran the fastest marathon ever on African soil, taking the win in 2:04:55, and his countrywoman Dera Dida claimed top honors in the women’s race, going 2:23:18. Meanwhile, Eliud Kipchoge counted this as a stop on his philanthropic world tour, and still managed to clock a 2:13:29.

– At the Ottawa Marathon, Elvis Kipchoge Cheboi, a man with an extremely cool name, broke the tape in 2:09:22, while the women’s champion was Abeba Aregawi, the 2012 Olympic 1500m silver medalist and 2013 World 1500m champ, in her marathon debut—she went 2:23:12.

– Perhaps the only community road race in the country where half of the local professionals compete in the “civilian race,” the Bolder Boulder 10K saw Rebecca Mwangi win the women’s elite race in 32:32, while in the men’s elite race, Patrick Kiptoo Kiprop prevailed in 28:37.

– Team USA has shared its complete and enormous roster for this summer’s World Road Running Championships. In the half, it’ll be Weini Kelati, Jess Tonn, Emma Grace Hurley, Ednah Kurgat, Molly Born, Carrie Ellwood, Annie Rodenfels, Conner Mantz, Wesley Kiptoo, Hillary Bor, and Ahmed Muhumed. For the 5K, it’s Karissa Schweizer, Courtney Frerichs, Drew Hunter, and Dylan Jacobs. And in the mile, you’ve got Addy Wiley, Gracie Hyde, Yared Nuguse, and Vince Ciattei.

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New Balance is celebrating Grey Days 2026. It’s a tribute to the iconic shade that helped define the brand’s identity. Featuring rising sprint star Quincy Wilson alongside a roster of global athletes and ambassadors, the month-long campaign honors the evolution of grey from a practical runner’s choice to a symbol of timeless style, innovation, and independence. Check out the Grey Shop here.

Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, Kyle Merber, & Paul Hof-Mahoney

The Weekend’s Big Losers Are Actually Winners 🙃

From Tokyo to Terre Haute and pretty much everywhere in between, there was a lot of track to process this weekend. As certified Time Doesn’t Matter guys here at the Lap Count, the temptation is to focus solely on the weekend’s victors at NCAA conference meets and Diamond League openers. But interestingly, one common theme this weekend was that many top runners who lost races all over the globe kinda ended up with the better narrative.

Maybe calling them “big losers” in this section’s header is overkill—we were just trying to capture your attention… These athletes only lost by a little, which makes them “regular losers,” but we wanted to give a moment of appreciation to six athletes for some great racing this past week that may have been overshadowed by their competitors who actually landed on the top of the podium.

Tate Taylor: The American U20 record holder made his first international business trip, foregoing the Texas state championship to instead compete at the Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Tokyo. The high school senior needed more than a permission slip to attend this meet; he needed a passport. Despite a substantial time zone difference and a few nights away from mom’s homecooking, the precocious star excelled, finishing second in the 100m and running 10.04 (+0.6). If ever there is a moral victory in defeat, it’s traveling to the other side of the world and only losing to the Olympic champion. Also making the trip was Taylor’s fellow high schooler and training partner Jake Odey-Jordan, who finished third in the final, although he actually beat Taylor and set a PB (10.07) in the prelims.

Timothy Cheruiyot: When you’re 30, you (hopefully) don’t feel that old, but when you’re the former World Champion, entering your 12th year on the circuit, then it feels like you’ve been around a lifetime. The 1500m specialist previously tested the deeper waters of a 3000m in 2023 when he ran 7:36 to finish 5th at the Doha Diamond League. But a few years later, his return to the distance has given reason to believe he might have a fair shot at a second act in his career. In what was the deepest 3000m ever (14 guys under 7:30), Cheruiyot finished fourth in a significant PB of 7:27.24.

Tsige Duguma: The 2024 Olympic silver medalist over 800m was technically around in 2025, but she wasn’t always around the front. Well, in 2026, it appears she’s returning to form. After testing the 1500m waters with a 4:03 debut during the indoor season, the Ethiopian standout returned to the event on the DL circuit and knocked her second swing out of the park. It’s not so much that her time of 3:55.71 is exceptional, it’s that the athletes she finished ahead of are: the reigning World Championship silver and bronze medalists, among others.

Devynne Charlton: In the immortal words of Adam Sandler, “Happy learned to putt… uh-oh!” That’s the sentiment we’re feeling after seeing the 3x World Indoor Champion and world record holder over the 60m hurdles break through with a personal best of 12.38 (+0.4) in her first 100m hurdles race of the season. The Bahamian star had a previous best of 12.44 and has finished 6th at the last two Olympics, so it’s not like she hasn’t been competitive. But if those last few hurdles come together like they did in China then she could be joining training partner Masai Russell (the race’s winner) on the medal stand soon.

Kena Tufa: If your first reaction was “who?” You’re probably not alone. That’s because Tufa, the 20-year-old Ethiopian steeplechaser who took fourth in Shanghai, just improved her personal best by a whopping 32 seconds to become the 17th woman in history under 9 minutes. Tufa had shown signs of potential for those paying very close attention, finishing second at the Kip Keino Classic last year and winning the Ethiopian Championships in March, but to the wider world outside hardcore African distance fans, she’s a complete unknown. Not for long, if her current trajectory holds.

Trent McFarland: It feels like McFarland has been hovering on the cusp of a breakout all year. He took third in the mile at NCAA indoors, ran 3:33.17 and 3:52.73, and anchored Michigan to a 9:14.80 DMR (#2 all-time). Simeon Birnbaum got the better of McFarland at Big Tens by about half a second in a kicker’s race, but McFarland had to do a LOT of work on the final lap to get up on Birnbaum’s shoulder with 200m to go. If McFarland starts that lap in the right spot and then unleashes his kick, it’ll be a much closer race and the positions could easily end up flipped. He is a winner here not for his performance, but for the lesson learned.

The most memorable quote from the forgotten pre-West Wing Aaron Sorkin show Sports Night is “if you’re good enough to come in second place, then you’re good enough to be disappointed in it.” It sure feels like the lessons these athletes picked up from their races have the potential to lead to a lot of winning in the weeks, months, and years to come.

Every Lane Of The Shanghai 200m Had A Story 📖

The very first meeting of the 2026 Diamond League season kicked off last Saturday in near-ish Shanghai, China, and at the end of the morning (assuming you were watching in the U.S.) there was plenty to talk about.

Masai Russell continued her red-hot start to the season, posting a world-leading 12.25 in the 100m hurdles. When you’re that fit, it doesn’t matter whether you’re hurdling in your own backyard of Lexington, Kentucky, or halfway around! The distance closes were all decided by tiny margins: Faith Kipyegon won the 5000m by 0.07 seconds, Mark English took the 800m by 0.04 seconds, and Peruth Chemutai persevered over World champ Faith Cherotich in the steeple by a mere 0.01 seconds. Chemutai’s win was no kicker’s race, either: she and Cherotich clocked the two fastest times ever recorded in May at 8:51.47 and 8:51.48. South Africa’s Gift Leotlela took down a strong field in the men’s 100m with a 9.97 win over the likes of Kenny Bednarek and Trayvon Bromell. And Mondo Duplantis (of course) recorded his 40th straight victory in the pole vault.

But the most interesting event from top to bottom was, undoubtedly, the women’s 200m.

Shericka Jackson took the victory in her first 200-meter race of the season in 22.07, her fastest opener since 2023. That’s a great early-season time, but it’s only the fourth-fastest run in 2026 so far, and only one of the nine total finishers set a personal best. Sounds pretty boring, right? Wrong! There’s something interesting to unpack about every single result in this race, so let’s go through it all, finisher-by-finisher.

1. Shericka Jackson, 22.07: Jacko is back-o, baby! After a strong run in the 4x100m at World Relays and a couple rust-busting 400ms, the sense was that the 31-year-old Jackson was starting the season fully healthy for the first time in a while and ready to rock. After taking bronze at Worlds last year, Jackson showed that her injury woes at the Paris Olympics wouldn’t define the next stage of her career, and it’s also clear she isn’t ceding the top step to Gabby Thomas, Julien Alfred, or anyone else for that matter. Compared with last year’s DL opener, where she was well-beaten by Anavia Battle in Xiamen, this is a much better starting point, and though she ran hard all the way through the line, she looked comfortable the entire way.

2. Shaunae Miller-Uibo, 22.26: Speaking of “back, baby,” the now-mom-of-two taking second in this stacked field was probably the biggest surprise. Miller-Uibo ran her fastest 200m since 2021, knocking nearly two-tenths off her season’s best and beat the second- and fourth-placers from last year’s World final in the process. At 32, Miller-Uibo has plenty of good years of running ahead of her, but it would be understandable if the three-time global champ over 400m focused solely on the longer event during her comeback. Flashing this kind of speed this early in the season sent a clear message that the Bahamian isn’t settling for less than her best stuff.

3. Anavia Battle, 22.40: This time last year, no one was thinking of Battle as a major international contender… until she won the first four Diamond Leagues in a row. She then beat Gabby Thomas and Brittany Brown at USAs, made the team, and took fourth at Worlds in Tokyo. She may not have started this outdoor season with yet another DL win, but she actually ran a hair faster than she did in Xiamen. If there was even a shred of doubt left, let it fade away: Anavia Battle belongs in the conversation.

4. Sha’Carri Richardson, 22.42: Sha’Carri haters will probably look at the three names before her and decide this race was a failure to launch, but in comparison to her past openers, this race was a qualified success. It was her fastest opening 200m since 2022, and in 2024, she ran 22.99 and 23.11 in China before dropping her time to 21.99 in her next 200m. 22.42 won’t set the world on fire or put any real fear into her rivals in this particular event, but it’s a good sign that the 100-meter specialist will be well-prepared for her debut over the shorter distance. Her race execution was far from perfect, getting a sub-par start but then running a strong bend and easing up a little just before the line. Plenty of room for improvement, which at this point in the year is probably a good sign.

5. Amy Hunt, 22.48: British athletics fans were likely hoping for a slightly more impressive run from Hunt, who beat Jackson to take silver at last year’s World Championship. Hunt clearly times her peak well, as her first and last 200ms of 2025 were 23.08 and 22.94 but her best time of the season (22.08) came in the World final. There’s no reason to panic after Hunt ran 22.63 and 22.48 in her first 200m efforts of the season, but there also isn’t exactly much evidence that Hunt has decisively leveled up.

6. Jenna Prandini, 22.68: Death, taxes, and Jenna Prandini. 11 years after her Diamond League debut, the 33-year-old vet, now sponsored by On, is still mixing it up. She began her outdoor season Stateside, going 3 for 4 with 100m/200m wins, and didn’t quite match her 22.36 season’s best here, but Prandini is the kind of relentless that is honestly inspiring for those of us who were in college at the same time as her.

7. Yujie Chen, 22.84: On the other end of the experience spectrum, 17-year-old Yujie Chen made the most of her second-ever Diamond League in front of the roaring home crowd, snagging a new PB of 22.84 in eighth. It’s only her third-career sub-23, and after making her World Championships and World Relays debut last year, she’s got a bright future ahead of her as she racks up more experience.

8. McKenzie Long, 22.85: Long had a pretty tough lane draw, running blind in lane 9 before Miller-Uibo used her strength to fly past her on the home stretch. This is probably a race to forget for the 25-year-old, but the pro life is an unforgiving one. Let’s not forget that Long ended up fifth at USAs but then made both the Diamond League and World finals over 200m—it’s purely a testament to the talent at the top of the event that occasionally she finds herself overmatched.

9. Torrie Lewis, 23.25: The only athlete with a worse lane draw than Long was Lewis, who drew the short straw (almost literally) and had to brave the tight turns of lane 1. Given the proximity of time zones, it wasn’t a surprise to see Australians show up in almost every event in Shanghai, and Lewis, like many of her compatriots, was making her way back from World Relays in Botswana as well. After a long indoor season featuring five meets in Europe, this may be a sign that it’s time for a little rest and reset. Lewis is probably not used to not being the youngest athlete in fields like this, as she’s only 21. Like Chen, there’s probably still a bit of a learning curve as a working pro on the road.

The women’s 200m in Shanghai was unique for its sheer number of storylines, but in a way, it’s also a microcosm for this point in the season. For some athletes, it’s an opportunity to bust the rust and tighten the screws; for others, it’s an addendum to an indoor campaign that began in January. The old heads are taking on the newest crop of young guns, and either way, that can feel a bit like you’re fighting just to prove you deserve a lane at the highest level of competition. Most of all, meets at this time of year leave you wanting more, and fortunately for us, every finisher in this 200m is running it back in the same event next weekend in Xiamen.

An Elegant Solution To The Women’s Shot Put Record Board Issue 💪

What are we to do about the all-time list in the women’s shot put?

It’s a dilemma that has long troubled throws enthusiasts, and a 27-year-old Dutchwoman by the name of Jessica Schilder once again brought the issue to the forefront over the weekend. On her fifth attempt at the Shanghai Diamond League, Schilder—the reigning outdoor World champ—uncorked a mammoth 21.09m toss that ended one of the discipline’s most significant droughts. For the first time since July 17, 2012, a woman threw past the 21m mark in the shot put.

With her historic effort, one that hadn’t been matched for well over a decade, Schilder landed herself all the way up to… tied for 29th on the all-time list?

That doesn’t seem right. Surely a performance of this stature, a drought-breaker like this one, would slot in substantially higher in the record books? A 14-year fallow period would end if we see a man go 9.6X in the 100m this season—and he would be tied for second fastest ever, at worst! Usually when we see long stretches of time without a particular mark populating the results sheets, it’s because it was just as hard to do in the past as it is today.

And then, there’s the women’s shot put. 35 women in world history have hit the 21m barrier (a shade under 69 feet for imperial measurement fans). 31 of those women did so between 1972 and 1999, with 28 hailing from Eastern European nations and the remaining three from China. That leaves Schilder and three other women that have hit that mark this century:

Russia’s Larisa Peleshenko, who threw 21.46m in 2000 at age 36 and served a four-year doping ban in the late 90s which wiped her 1995 World Indoor title off the board.

Belarus’s Nadzeya Ostapchuk threw 21.09m in 2005 and was once one of the most decorated women’s throwers ever before the final 7.5 seasons of her career were Thanos-snapped away due to a string of positive tests. (That 21.09m throw is actually the last mark on her World Athletics page that is still recognized.)

Finally, New Zealand’s Valerie Adams threw 21m on four occasions between 2009 and 2012. Very notably, in this context, the 10-time global champion never incurred a failed drug test or other anti-doping violation in her career that spanned over two decades. In fact, two of Adams’s 10 titles were originally won by Ostapchuk and then reallocated following her suspension.

Adams’s excellence really highlights the flaws in the record books, as her PB of 21.24m comes in at No. 23 in world history. In order to believe, without doping suspicions, the historical dominance of the all-time lists by athletes from decades ago, you need to believe that the event has simply taken a massive step back, bucking the trend of progress experienced across nearly every other discipline. Many reasonable observers do not blindly accept that.

Women’s discus faces many of the same issues, but ever-windy Ramona has served as something of an equalizing factor in that respect. Shot put can’t be helped out with favorable weather patterns in the same way, unfortunately, so the common solution presented is resetting the record books.

That’s a lot harder to do in practice than in theory. For starters, how do you land on “X” date as the new start of shot put history? That unfairly impacts athletes that were clean in your somewhat arbitrary purge window and ignores the dopers that were active after that era concluded. You can be suspicious all you want, but in the absence of actual positive tests from the Soviets and East Germans and Bulgarians and whatnot, World Athletics’s figurative hands are tied in what they can do in terms of eliminating or resetting marks.

That leaves us with one other option: change the implement! Javelin has done it a few times before, with the men’s model changing in 1986 as a result of people throwing far enough to regularly endanger officials and crowds. It created an entirely new record book while still maintaining the sanctity of the former list, as World Athletics still recognizes distinct current and old model lists and records.

A shot put is a simpler, more spherical implement that can’t be tweaked by moving the center of gravity forward, so what about tinkering with the weight? Two years ago there was a widely-lambasted report that Seb Co and Co. were thinking about making the women’s shot put lighter to make it more exciting.

It’s this newsletter’s opinion that that’s a silly proposal. The excitement of the event is very much there. Just look at round six from Tokyo…. It was awesome! And every Diamond League brings the opportunity for a different winner. So our forthcoming (very realistic, extremely serious) solution doesn’t hinge on needlessly cooking the distance of throws to somehow make the event more interesting or exciting. It doesn’t need that! We’re just trying to allow the current generation of athletes to get the historic recognition they deserve.

Instead, let’s up the weight… by 0.01 kilogram! It’s not a meaningful difference and shouldn’t change the event in any meaningful way. It would still allow for valid comparisons between clean throwers of different eras, while also making excitement about world and continental records a possibility. Who knows what contract incentives and bonuses the 4.01kg shot might open up? It also makes marketing to outside fans easier if you can bill clashes between a handful of the 10 best women in world history instead of a kneejerk reaction that this current group of athletes is lightyears behind the 80s and 90s.

Again, we must reiterate that this is not a perfect solution. In fact, it’s not even a realistic solution! But it’s a conversation worth having, because Natalya Lisovskaya’s 22.63m world record is one that likely will stand the test of time until someone builds a throwing facility inside a hurricane’s eyewall.

Until that day comes, though, we implore you not overlook how impressive a performance like the one Schilder just had is simply because it’s over 1.5m back of the world record.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Tokyo’s Golden Grand Prix featured a mix of locally-sourced, pseudo-national championship-style competition, plus a handful of small but elite international fields. In addition to the aforementioned Noah Lyles return to the 100m, where he took the win in 9.95, Rai Benjamin (44.69) secured a tidy 400m victory over Paris bronze medalist Muzala Samukonga.

– At the African Athletics Championships there was a major upset in the men’s 4x400m relay, with Zimbabwe breaking the tape in 3:01.11 ahead of Kenya and Morocco… pre-race favorites Botswana came in fourth; 2016 Olympic silver medalist and Kenyan javelin institution Yulius Yego won his sixth AAC gold medal; in the women’s steeple, Kenyan youngsters Diana Chepkemoi and Mercy Chepngeno employed some classic team tactics to secure gold and silver.

– The SEC Championship’s annual bid to be informally recognized as the premier sprinting meet in the world was an impressive one. On the women’s side Georgia’s Adaejah Hodge claimed the 200m title in 21.92 and her teammate Dejanea Oakley won the 400m in 48.92; in the 800m, Arkansas’s Sanu Jallow won in 1:58.82; Emmi Scales of Kentucky won the 100m hurdles in 12.64, and Akela Garrett (South Carolina) won the 400m hurdles in 54.02. Each of those event winners are now also the NCAA leader, and all finals were run with legal wind readings. For the men of the SEC, Jelani Watkins of Arkansas snagged wins in the 100m and 200m (9.95 and 19.87, both wind legal); Alabama’s Samuel Ogazi won the 400m in a world-leading 43.95; and Auburn’s Ja’Kobe Tharpe won the 110m hurdles in 13.05 into a 1m/s headwind. The Florida women and Arkansas men took the team titles.

– The Oregon men and women completed their triple crown of team conference titles with their dominant wins at the Big Ten Championships. Washington’s Hana Moll broke the collegiate outdoor record in the pole vault with a 4.83m clearance; Oregon newcomer Sharifa Davronova only recorded one attempt in the triple jump, but at 14.11m, it was NCAA-leading and more than enough to win; and Simeon Birnbaum won a stacked men’s 1500m in 4:00.98, perhaps a signal that we are returning to an era of tactical conference men’s mid-D events… nature is healing. The sprint times were aided by Wizard-of-Oz-tornado-level winds, with Eddie Nketia of USC taking the 100m in 9.73 (+5.6) and, not to be outdone, his teammate Madison Whyte got the wind reader up to +6.0 for her 21.78 200m win.

– Big 12s also saw a humorously slow men’s 1500m final, with reigning NCAA indoor champ Carter Cutting (3:58.63) striking gold; Tafadzwa Chikomba of Kansas State won the men’s long jump in 8.27m and Texas Tech’s Jonathan Seremes won the triple in 17.09m, both NCAA leads; Emmaculate Jemutai of Kansas took home the win in both the 800m (2:05.90) and 1,500m (4:09.66). Texas Tech won the men’s and women’s team titles.

– ACCs were held in Louisville (“LOO-uh-vul”) so feel free to read the rest of this paragraph while dropping unwanted syllables at your discretion: Neo Mosebi of Florida State won the 100m in 9.98; Virginia Tech’s Nicholas Plant impressively closed the back half of the men’s 1500m to edge out Gary Martin and Rocky Hansen; Juliette Whittaker of Stanford outleaned Sadie Englehardt in the women’s 1500m; Whittaker’s teammate Alyssa Jones won the long jump at 6.92m; and UNC’s Makayla Paige went 2:00.68 to win a loaded 800m. The Clemson women and Virginia men were the team champs.

– Matthew Gray of Appalachian State won the Sun Belt pole vault title in the third best outdoor clearance in the world so far this season, 5.84m; and Molly Caudery—the World Indoor champ—opened up her outdoor season at 4.61m at the Loughborough International meet.

– The all-time high school boys’ 200m all-conditions leaderboard is lousy with wind-aided results, but nobody has run a faster wind-aided time than Blake Hamilton. The senior from Katy’s Tompkins High School ran 19.86 with a +4.6m/s wind reading to win the Texas 6A State Championship. His fastest wind-legal time is 20.27, which came in the prelims. He hasn’t lost a race all season.

– U.K. 800m wunderkind Phoebe Gill stepped up to the 1500m at the inaccurately named British Milers Club Grand Prix and broke the meet record in a PB of 4:05.53; that’s her first result since an indoor 400m 2025.

– Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Olympic champion, husband, musician, brother, father, and achilles tendon injury sufferer, has shared that his focus is getting back to peak health and fitness rather than rushing into racing by a set date. “I’m trying to train as much as I can and that’s the main focus right now… I am a competitor and of course, I’m going to compete once I’m ready for it. However, it’s not my main goal right now,” he told Johanna Gretschel of Runner’s World.

– ATHLOS NYC is returning to Icahn Stadium for the third straight year, with the 2026 edition of the meet slated for October 2nd. And! There will be a second meet that takes place before the NYC one!

– On is launching a sprint-focused pro group, based in Los Angeles, and coached by John Bolton. Stay tuned for updates and content from CITIUS MAG, who will be embedded with the group the next few days.

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The Collegiate 1500m Has Never Been Better 😎

We’re living in a golden age of unpredictability.

At the same time as we lament the flattening of professional marathoning into a series of technology-aided time trials, elsewhere in the track and field world, outcomes have never been more uncertain.

We’re talking, of course, about the NCAA men’s 1500m. Generally speaking, middle-distance races on the collegiate level tend to separate the tactical wizards and generational talents from the also-rans, filtering out the chaos of championship racing over time to fairly predictable results. Over the last several years of the 800m/1500m at NCAAs, there have been a good number of repeat champions:

• Maia Ramsden (2023 and 2024 outdoor 1500m, 2024 indoor mile)

• Cole Hocker (2021 indoor 1500m, 2021 outdoor 1500m)

• Roisin Willis (2023 indoor 800m, 2025 outdoor 800m)

• Juliette Whittaker (2024 indoor 800m, 2024 outdoor 800m)

• Luke Houser (2023 and 2025 indoor mile)

• Joe Waskom (2022 and 2024 outdoor 1500m)

• Nathan Green (2023 and 2025 outdoor 1500m)

• Wilma Nielsen (2025 and 2026 indoor mile)

Come outdoor NCAAs this year, there will be two women with an opportunity to pick up their third titles—Whittaker and Nielsen. But at the 2026 indoor meet, three of the four middle-distance champions (with the exception of Nielsen) were adorned with the crown for the first time, and none was more unexpected than mile champ Carter Cutting of BYU. You’d think that the reigning indoor mile champ would be the odds-on favorite to win outdoors, and yet that feels just as unlikely as Cutting’s first trip to the top of the podium.

Cutting’s won his first three 1500m outings of the season, but two of those races were in Utah, and at the Stanford Invitational, he wasn’t in the fastest section and won his race by six seconds in 3:41.32. Until his conference meet at least, he’s kinda in the same boat as indoors: good at winning races, but no super splashy PBs to his name. Then again, that can often be the kind of runner who thrives in championship settings, so maybe we shouldn’t put too much stock in his spot on the descending order list…

It’s hard not to, however, in the current environment. That’s because the eight fastest college 1500ms of all time have all been run in the last two seasons, including four of the top five in the last three weeks. The newly-minted collegiate record holder is Oregon’s Simeon Birnbaum, who only finished seventh in last year’s 1500m final but took third second in the 3000m indoors and became the first collegian ever to run 3:31 in-season with a stunning eight-second victory at the Oregon Team Challenge in April.

So is Birnbaum the favorite? Surprisingly, that’s a pretty hard case to make. He has three Big Ten titles to his name, but all in longer distances, and had he not just run a huge 1:44.67 800m this past weekend, one could argue he would be better suited focusing on the 5000m and hoping for a tactical race. But now the be-(sun)-spectacled junior has opened his outdoor campaign by running 1:44, 3:31, and 13:19 so it’s hard to call him anything but a contender in any or all distance events.

Besides Birnbaum, there are at least four or five guys with nearly as strong a claim to co-favorite status.

Unless his fate changes this time around, Villanova’s Marco Langon may very well graduate with the dubious honor of being the fastest guy to never win an NCAA title, as he sits at #2 on the 1500m list (3:32.79), #3 on the 3000m list (7:34.00), and #5 on the 5000m list (13:05.21). Could his last season be the one where he finally gets to the line first?

Gary Martin and Colin Sahlman are two guys that’ve already won NCAA titles in other events, but never the 1500m. There’s a good chance one or both of them opt to focus on other distances, but it’s fairly likely that at least Martin will give the 1500m one more go in his senior season. Sahlman has been ripping 800ms all year but skipped the event entirely indoors; perhaps the lack of a distance relay outdoors will entice him to the shorter event. But if he does choose the 1500m, he’s gotta be considered a threat.

The two guys that finished between Cutting and Martin at NCAAs indoors are Trent McFarland of Michigan and George Couttie of Virginia Tech, two runners who’ve been in the mix but never on top on the NCAA scene for a little while now. They don’t have the pedigree of some of the others, but at the same time, it wouldn’t be a shock to see either of them break out.

Last but not least (how’s that for a lede for a section about a guy who is fourth on the all time list?) is Brian Masai of Arkansas. The SEC 3000m champ PRed by five seconds at the Arkansas Twilight meet last weekend, running 3:33.17 for second behind OK State alum Fouad Messaoudi. Masai’s historically been more of a distance guy, but he did anchor the Razorbacks to a runner-up finish in the DMR indoors.

So that’s eight guys who’ve never won a 1500m title but have a legitimate chance to. If they all make the final in Eugene in June (far from a guarantee), it’ll be anyone’s guess who comes out on top. No matter what, the results will be nothing less than epic. If you ascribe to the belief that predictability is anathema to excitement, the collegiate 1500m has never been better. And if you’re the kind of fan that wants to see a record in every race… well, all the fastest guys are running fast right now. There will only be one victor, but everybody wins.

Shanghai Hopes 🇨🇳

Following a week without much in the way of across-the-board high-level track and field action, we’re back, folks. We’re back in a huge way. The Diamond League—once again the king of the pro circuit by default, since the husk of Grand Slam seems unlikely to lure top-tier athletes away—season begins on Saturday.

Though still called the Shanghai Diamond League, the event will actually take place 140 miles away in Keqiao. And while the first few non-European meets on the calendar don’t always attract the same buzz as your Londons or Zurichs or Brusselses, we’re truly excited for what Shanghai/Keqiao will reveal about the state of the sport at this early stage of the season.

Every single event—regardless of weird, nebulous “Diamond+” status—has the potential to be awesome, or at the very least, interesting. Because every event is also essentially kicking off the full season of competition, we’ve boiled down every single contested event this weekend into a bumper-sticker log line for your viewing pleasure:

Men’s Long Jump: The full podium from Tokyo ‘25 is set to compete, which very notably includes China’s own Shi Yuhao, the bronze medalist from Worlds. In an event with as much parity as the men’s long jump, look for the roar of the roughly 40,000 hometown fans to factor in as he attempts to flip the script on Italian gold medalist Mattia Furlani, Jamaican silver medalist Tajay Gayle, and the rest of the talented field.

Men’s Pole Vault: Our shortest preview segment ever: this one has Mondo.

Women’s Shot Put: Going off of current world rankings, the six best throwers in the world will all enter the ring in Keqiao. Of the four women who have thrown past 20m in 2026, only this year’s Indoor World champion Chase Jackson has done so outdoors. Will that small bit of momentum be enough to once again carry her past her many worthy adversaries?

Women’s 5000m: Compared to last year’s highly-publicized sub-four attempt/brand activation, things have been relatively quiet on the Faith Kipyegon front. Last year’s 1500m World champ has raced once in 2026, an under-the-radar but still very impressive 29:47 road 10k debut in Monaco. She won the race outright, but it was really more of a paced hard effort from the looks of it. All that said, anytime the GOAT steps on the track it’s worth tuning in, because there’s a chance she does something wild, like knocking out her first career sub-14 5000m in her track opener. Hilariously, this is not an official DL event.

Women’s 400m: No non-NCAA woman has run under 50 seconds so far this year. Look for Salwa Eid Naser to become the first as she begins her redemption tour following last year’s bronze-medal performance at Worlds. She opened up her 2025 HOT, posting a pair of 48.X quarters before May, so she’s no stranger to early season statements.

Men’s 110m Hurdles: Whether or not we are living in an era of post-Grant Holloway dominance has a lot to do with whether somebody else comes in to assume the mantle. Right now, Cordell Tinch has as much a claim to that throne as anyone, given that in 2025 he was the World champion and world leader in the event. We’ll get our first look at him in meaningful competition here, but last year’s runner-up, Orlando Bennett of Jamaica, Spain’s Enrique Llopis, and Japan’s Rachid Muratake all probably think they’re next up, too.

Women’s Long Jump: Tara Davis-Woodhall will not be here, which means somebody else has to win! Colombia’s Natalia Linares is the only 2025 World Champs medalist we’ll see on the runway, but she’ll have her hands full with three other top-10 world ranked jumpers (including Italy’s Larissa Iapichino, who had the third farthest jump in the world last year), plus American Lex Brown, who has already posted a mark in 2026 that would have tied for the second best in all of 2025.

Women’s Steeplechase: The steeple won’t be contested at the World Ultimate Champs (boo!). And given how close Winfred Yavi came to taking down the world record these past two years, you’ve gotta assume putting Beatrice Chepkoech eight-year-old WR (8:44.32) to rest is just about the only to-do on this list this year. With no Yavi in this one, that means Faith Cherotich of Kenya and Uganda’s Peruth Chemutai will get first dibs at a fast time in what will likely be a strung-out, rabbited affair from the jump.

Men’s 800m: Without any of the Tier-One stars of the event slated to compete, this should be an incredibly fun battle of the wildcards. Australia’s Peter Bol likely comes in as the favorite, but really, you could run this race a dozen times and get a dozen different outcomes thanks to potential spoilers like Ireland’s Mark English, Botswana’s Kethobogile Haingura, Great Britain’s Ben Pattinson, and America’s Brandon Miller.

Men’s Discus Throw: For the most part, dudes just don’t throw over 70m outside of Ramona. That’s not meant to discredit what’s still a very competitive discus cohort currently competing, but it is the narrative. Every time out, then, keep an eye on whether or not somebody like Sweden’s Daniel Ståhl or Slovenia’s Kristjan Čeh can put that notion to bed—for what it’s worth they’ll both be in Keqiao and are the only two non-injured men in the world who went over 70m not in Oklahoma last year.

Women’s 200m: This could be the most fun event on the program. We’ve got a nice mix of DL circuit mainstays, up-and-comers, returning world medalists, and established stars looking to prove that they’ve got more in the tank. For America, you have Anavina Battle, McKenzie Long, Jenna Prandini, and Sha’Carri Richardson. Amy Hunt of Great Britain took silver in Tokyo, and just behind her in third was Shericka Jackson—they’ll both line up. Shaunae Miller-Uibo struck Olympic gold back in 2016, when Yujie Chen—just 17 now and the U18 Asian area record holder in the 200m—was a literal child. No matter what happens here, it feels like we’ll be spinning an entire 1,000-word essay out of it next week on the implications.

Men’s 3000m: No shade to the 3000m—or wait, actually, yes shade to the 3000m—but it feels almost like a waste to put a field like this in an event that isn’t really a thing. Oh well. We won’t turn our noses up at the chance to watch Andreas Almgren (who won a DL 5000m, which is A REAL DISTANCE, last year in Stockholm) duke it out with Cheruiyots Ronald and Timothy, Eduardo Herrera, and a slew of other guys who on the right day can make a splash, or at least make things interesting.

Men’s 100m: Even though plenty of guys in this field have already gotten under 10-seconds this outdoor season (Lachlan Kennedy, Ferdinand Omanyala, Akani Simbine), we’ll be more interested in seeing what the season debutants—Kenny Bednarek and Letsile Tebogo—look like here. Simbine tends to burn his hottest at this point in the season, but will the medal merchants show up a little fitter than normal during this atypical year?

Women’s 1500m: With Kipyegon reporting for duty over 12.5 laps, maybe half of the 16 very accomplished milers in this field have a realistic shot at a Diamond League win to kickstart their spring campaign. Jess Hull and hard-closing Claudia Hollingsworth represent Australia’s best shot at a win here; Ethiopia’s got established threats in Birke Haylom and Worknesh Mesele, plus 2024 800m Olympic silver medalist Tsige Duguma will be making her outdoor debut at the distance. Kenya’s Dorcus Ewoi always comes to play, and American Emily Mackay has been on something of a heater since February.

Men’s 300m Hurdles: Another weird distance, another great field. We’ll get our first look at Karsten Warholm following his surprise fifth-place showing at Worlds last summer. Even if he’s in great form, he’ll have to contend with the likes of Alison Dos Santos. If either of these two perennial global medalists are a step slow, it’s anybody’s race.

Women’s 100m Hurdles: If the parity in men’s longer hurdling comes from the absence of Rai Benjamin and a reshuffling around him, things are far more exciting in the women’s high hurdles. Five of the finalists from Worlds last year are in this field, and the worst world ranking of anyone competing—aside from the obligatory host country entry—is 11th. This is an impossible event to build much momentum in right now because of just how deep and good everyone is. Masai Russell has the world lead at the moment, but you’ve gotta assume that even if she retains it after Saturday, it’ll be a quicker time than the 12.40 she posted in Kentucky earlier this month.

There’s something for everyone, particularly if you’ve been starved for some good ol’ fashioned pros racing pros. In America, that will require a Flotrack subscription, an alarm clock, and a coffee maker, as the paywalled meet is set to start at 7am E.T. on Saturday. But start it will, and with it, an unusual pro season full of intrigue.

The Inherent Problem With The 400m Hurdles For American Dudes 🙇‍♂️

Don’t point fingers at Rai Benjamin… It’s not his fault… but the U.S. men have a 400m hurdles problem.

Okay, maybe it is Rai’s fault, just a little bit. Let’s get into why.

The United States has a storied tradition in the 400m hurdles, dating way back to the Paris Olympics… not that one, the one held 126 years ago. The event was first introduced at the 1900 Olympics, and its inaugural champion was Walter Tewksbury who ran 57.6 seconds over what then became the standardized 10 hurdles. (He also medaled in the 200m, 60m, 100m, and 200m hurdles, which arguably makes it less impressive because it seems like those fields were comprised of chainsmokers suffering from whichever vitamin deficiencies were fashionable at the onset of the previous century.)

A whole lifetime later, the event came to be dominated by American Edwin Moses, who in addition to winning two Olympic gold medals, a bronze, and two World Championships, went on an incredible streak of 122 consecutive wins. Eventually his world record was broken by California’s Kevin Young, whose Barcelona Olympics-winning 46.78 would stand for almost 29 years. In 2008, the American trio of Angelo Taylor, Kerron Clement, and Bershawn Jackson swept the Olympic podium and only deepened the legacy of great 400m hurdlers.

An American man has won 50% of all possible Olympic medals in the event.

But is the world catching up? Like most events in track and field, times are quickly getting faster. For the 400m hurdles, the 30th fastest time in 2025 was 48.45, compared to 49.03 in 2016.

Although depth has improved, it has been an event dominated by a few names for quite a few seasons. Aptly named “The Big Three” there is no question who has run the tables the past seven seasons. Since 2019, there have only been six men to win a medal at a global championship:

• Rai Benjamin (6)

• Karsten Warholm (5)

• Alison dos Santos (4)

• Kyron McMaster (1)

• Abderrahman Samba (1)

• Trevor Bassitt (1)

In addition to winning medals, the trio has established the three fastest times in history and Kevin Young’s once seemingly unbreakable record is now a paltry 26th on the descending order.

This is not to say the event is boring—it’s anything but! These are three wildly entertaining personalities and with an American, European, and South American trading blows year after year, there are global rooting interests.

The concern for Americans, however, is outside of our dominant leader (who at any point is liable to abandon hurdling for road cycling) that the depth—and crucially, investment in the event—is fading. At the 2025 US Championships there were 25 qualified individuals, yet only six of those individuals had a shoe contract. During the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, only three of the 27 qualifiers had a shoe sponsor. Are shoe deals the best proxy for the quality of an event at a given time? Hardly… ask just about any thrower. But we’ll come back to the significance of these figures.

Is it the chicken or the egg? On the international stage, the American advantage is deteriorating quickly. While in 2008, eight of the top 12 times in the world were owned by an American, that dwindled to just four of the top 15 in 2025.

The flip happened around 2019 when the 10th fastest American matched up with the 30th fastest man in the world. In 2025, the 10th fastest American was 58th in the world. This is a great sign if you’re Seb Coe as World Athletics continues to invest in popularizing and expanding the sport in all corners of the globe. In contrast, an American hurdles fan may not be feeling quite as idealistic about such stats.

So what’s happening?

Well, at least in the U.S., the 400m hurdles is often introduced to versatile athletes as a way for coaches to score points to win meets. This past weekend, for instance, the best prep quarter miler in American history, Quincy Wilson, ran the 300m hurdles in 38.77 for the first-time ever to help his high school team win their conference meet.

The NCAA has long been the entry point for many 400-meter runners to add some jumping in the middle, but the collegiate system—formerly the U.S.’s developmental secret weapon—is no longer a secret to international talent. In 2016, only six men broke the 50-second barrier and all but one were American. In comparison, there were seven non-Americans who dipped below 50 seconds in 2025.

Now let’s get back to talkin’ turkey, and by turkey, we mean an entry-level shoe deal that might amount to essentially a meager stipend plus gear and some travel. Imagine you are an American quarter-miler considering what event to focus on as a post-collegiate athlete chasing the dream.

In the 400m hurdles there is relatively little interest from shoe companies, and as long as Rai Benjamin lives and breathes and can still get over the hurdles at a respectable clip, there are only two spots up for grabs. Plus, it’s a gamble. What if you invest a year of your prime to hurdle-specific training, only to discover you are godawful at it?

Now look at the open 400m, which has three spots that seem to be doled out via random number generator—15 different men have qualified since 2019. Then consider that there is a 4x400m squad AND, since 2019, a mixed-gender relay. Just making the U.S. final is essentially a lock to earn a World or Olympic medal! Plus, it’s comfortable: it’s the event you’ve specialized in since you were a 10-year-old on the AAU circuit.

Which event are you choosing?

The United States being slightly less deep and dominant at the 400m hurdles is not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things. Having a diversity of countries being competitive on the international stage is ultimately a good thing for the sport. And this “issue” is one without any real blame to assign. Like all of us, athletes chase after opportunities where they can win and get paid.

Ironically, Rai Benjamin himself has never really needed to explore his other options. But this season, in what is one of the most intriguing storylines of 2026, he is opting to. The defending World/Olympic champ is dipping his toes into the 200m in an effort to produce the fastest flat 400m times of his career. The rest of the world may no longer have an American 400m hurdler problem, but the quarter milers are about to find out if they have a Rai Benjamin problem.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– At the U.S. 25K Championships in Grand Rapids, Andrew Colley (1:14:00) and Emma Grace Hurley (1:22:51) took top honors. That’s two U.S. road titles for Hurley this season, and a perfect four-for-four podium finishes. Just in case nobody has made this awful, awful joke before, here goes: “maybe Emma Grace should call herself ‘HURLEY-DAVIDSON’ because she sure does excel on the roads!”

– Jimmy Gressier, last summer’s surprise 10,000m World champion did the expected and dominated the French 10k Road Champs. He clocked in at 27:47, which was about a minute ahead of second place.

– Rachel Entrekin won the Cocodona 250—the 250 mile sufferfest from Black Canyon City to Flagstaff in which runners scramble up roughly 40,000 feet of accumulated vert—outright. It was her third time winning the women’s race, and the first time in race history that a woman was the overall winner.

– Yes, yes, at the Franson Last Chance meet in Azusa, Marco Langon went 3:32.79—the second fastest NCAA mark ever. But we also want to note that in second was Jake Heyward, who went 3:34.18 and shaved over three seconds off last week’s season opener… which was his first race since 2022!

– 60m hurdles GOAT Grant Holloway revealed on Instagram that he tore his hamstring in March, which kept him from competing all indoor season and, thus far, has kept him out of the mix outdoors as well.

– In happier hurdler news, four-time World/Olympic medalist Jasmine Camacho-Quinn announced she’s pregnant and will presumably miss the 2026 season. Congrats!

– Go ahead and return your one-of-one “CROSS COUNTRY IS A WINTER OLYMPIC SHIRT” to the bottom of the drawer. There will be no cross country at the Winter Olympics in 2030.

– Gout Gout was featured on 60 Minutes, and regardless of where you stand on his controversially blustery 200m performance from last month, you can’t deny the kid has charisma! (Watch the full interview here.)

– And lastly, a GoFundMe has been started for Fast Women’s Alison Wade, to help provide a bit of financial stability for her family following the sudden and tragic death of her husband, Parker Morse.

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World Relays Is Still A Diamond In The Rough 💎

It’s not every day that you see a packed stadium going absolutely out-of-its-mind bananas for track and field. But at last weekend’s World Relays, held for the first time in Gaborone, seemingly every fan in the 25,000-seat stadium was on their feet screaming and clapping every time a single Botswana athlete so much as set foot on the track to walk to the start line.

Let’s start by giving World Athletics some serious credit. The organization’s commitment to putting the “World” in “World Athletics” pays off in situations like these, where countries that have historically not been hot spots for professional track and field are given the opportunity to host big meets and celebrate the sport. Much like 2023 Worlds in Budapest or 2017 World XC in Kampala, the palpable excitement of the first-time host nation made the crowd a major character in the track and field narrative, lending some much-needed verve to an event that has become a bit of an afterthought on the global calendar in recent years.

The biggest payoff for the home team came at the very end of the meet, of course, with the all-star Batswana quartet of Lee Eppie, Letsile Tebogo, Bayapo Ndori, and Collen Kebinatshipi winning a thriller of a 4x400m. (Editor’s note: That wasn’t a typo in the preceding sentence. “Botswanan” is an incorrect term for citizens of Botswana; the correct demonym is “Motswana” for individuals and “Batswana” for groups.) Questions about proper start lines and 3,000-odd feet of elevation aside, the results were nevertheless stunning: Botswana took the win in 2:54.47 ahead of South Africa (2:55.07) and Australia (2:55.20), the third, fifth, and sixth fastest marks ever run.

Pause: let’s consider that for a moment. Of all the all-star Team USA squads assembled over the years, only two—the 1993 team featuring Quincy Watts and Michael Johnson, and the 2024 Olympic team—have run faster than Australia did in Gaborone. Sure, there might be some weird altitude-acknowledging asterisks around the marks, but even still, it helps support the notion that carving out a little time for athletes to focus solely on relays is a worthwhile endeavor. Australia in general deserves a lot of credit for sending a team of 30 athletes halfway around the world, including stars like Torrie Lewis and Lachie Kennedy, and they were rewarded by making the final in three out of six events. Not too bad for a nation generally not considered a sprint powerhouse.

The Jamaicans weren’t messing around either, bringing in their big guns and coming home with two golds and a silver. With all due respect to the Team USA athletes who made the trip, no one on that roster was as big a name as Elaine Thompson-Herah or Ackeem Blake. Kishane Thompson and Oblique Seville, the top two finishers in last year’s World 100m final, were also initially named to the team, but withdrew before the meet. ETH continued to build hype around her triumphant return to the track in the women’s 4x100m with a virtuosic anchor leg, getting the baton well behind Canada and overhauling poor Donna Ntambue in a matter of steps before cruising to a 42.00 victory.

The strange experiment known as the “mixed 4x100m” continued to be… strange, with the rapid pace changes between legs causing all sorts of handoff issues. Nevertheless, Blake and the Clayton sisters powered Jamaica to sub-40 seconds in both the prelims and the final, becoming the first world record holders in the brand-new event. Unlike the mixed 4x400m, where handoffs are less critical to smooth execution and smaller countries have the chance to shine, this one feels like perhaps it’s just simply more trouble than it’s worth.

Overall, there was a bit of a reversal of fate in the American-Jamaican sprint rivalry. In recent years, the American women have been wildly successful on the world stage, but the men have struggled. This time in Gaborone, it was the opposite: the U.S. men won the 4x100m ahead of a hard-charging Akane Simbine of South Africa, but the Jamaicans failed to make the final entirely after finishing fourth in their heat on day 1. They returned to the repechage to book a spot in next year’s World Championships (more on that shortly), but didn’t have the chance to contend for medals. In the women’s race, however, the U.S. team didn’t even contest the repechage after finishing fourth in the heats, which means that the 3x defending champs will need to qualify for Beijing ‘27 some other way. Not a great look, particularly with 14 of the 15 fastest 100m American runners of 2025 sitting at home.

Before you scroll back up, you read that right: the meet being held in May 2026 is serving as a qualifier for the World Championship set for September 2027. In what world does that make sense? Particularly given the fact that participating countries are under no obligation to run the same athletes at both events, there isn’t the faintest logical argument for why 12 of the 16 spots should be determined 16 months in advance.

If World Athletics really wants to use their championship to entice teams to show up for World Relays, they actually haven’t gone far enough. The current setup is laughably illogical and does little to motivate the big nations to bring the big guns. Instead, they should hold the two events the same year, but require participating countries to declare and enter the same six athletes for both. You want a bonus gold medal, Noah or Sydney? Then you’re going to have to pick up a baton at least twice a year.

The meet broadcast itself also had its ups and downs. Compressing the finals into the last hour of the program made for a very exciting hour, but it also made the rest of the event feel like background noise. Relays are short, high-stakes, and exciting by nature, but with only six finals slated, it doesn’t quite feel like a full meet. The return of a DMR, 4x200m, or even—gasp!—a 4x800m could help pad out the program a bit.

All in all, this year’s World Relays did feel a bit like the unique medals themselves. Embedded at the center of this event is the spirit of something interesting, and perhaps truly special, but you’ve really gotta squint to see it. The challenge we haven’t quite figured out yet is the right placement and presentation to make this little gem really shine.

This Week’s Results You May Have Missed But Shouldn’t Sleep On 👀

With all eyes on the World Relays, it was apparently a relatively quiet weekend on the professional circuit for athletes who didn’t want to fly to Botswana or run farther than 400 meters. That is, until you dig in a little deeper into the couch cushions of the results pages.

It’s been a long-held stance of this newsletter that professionals shouldn’t run in college meets, but because we are not in charge, it does still happen. One of the main reasons for that opinion is that when the best runners in the world step onto the track, they deserve their due attention. An Olympic champion running the world-leading time ought to be appreciated in real time and celebrated after! But alas, that’s not the present world we live in.

So to make sure that none of the standout performances from the week are overlooked, here are some under-the-radar results that have us excited for various reasons:

Masai Russell: The 2024 Olympic champion quietly dipped below 12.50 seconds twice at her training grounds at the University of Kentucky this weekend. Russell’s 12.40 (+0.5) established a new world leading time and gave peace of mind to anyone who may have been concerned over the fact that she did not compete at all indoors for the first time in her pro career. She looks eager and sharp enough to prove that last year’s fourth place finish at the World Championships was a fluke.

Josh Izewski: Ask someone on the street what the American record for 10 miles is and you’ll get 10 different answers (or more likely, 10 blank stares). Two weeks after winning the Jersey City Half Marathon (62:09), the former ZAP athlete who now runs for Asics won the Broad Street 10 Miler as he cruised the Philly street(s) in a course record of 45:09. The point-to-point race is not eligible for official records, but Izewski ran the fastest an American has ever run for the distance. After the race he’s rumored to have shouted, “Tell Chris Chavez I’m coming for his marathon power rankings!”

Jonathan Simms and Samuel Ogazi: The pair of 19-year-olds had good excuses as to why they couldn’t make the trip to Gaborone—they had class. But Simms, the University of Georgia freshman originally from Allen, Texas, set a world lead of 44.02 in the 400m to confirm what we already knew… UGA’s new facility isn’t just pretty; it’s fast! And Ogazi was not far behind; the two-time NCAA champion for Alabama also ran 44.02. It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since he finished seventh for Nigeria in the Olympic final, and he’s still not old enough to legally enjoy a warm Natty Light.

Jenna Prandini: Speaking of, while you should never ask a woman her age, it has been 11 years since Prandini won the NCAA 100m title for the Ducks in front of the (original!) Hayward Field faithful. Well, for the first time since 2018, the now-On-sponsored sprinter is back under the 11-second barrier after she dropped a 10.97 (+0.4) at the Desert Heat Classic. While Team USA may not have fielded a 4x100m team in Botswana, may we offer a suggestion for a third leg if they do end up at Worlds in 2027?

Julien Alfred: If anyone had a good excuse to skip the World Relays it’s the 2024 Olympic champion. With a population of ~185,000, the island nation of Saint Lucia has zero recorded 4x100m’s in the World Athletics database (although Wikipedia notes a NR of 46.78 from 1999). If only Julien had a twin like Tia Clayton. Alfred opened her season on home turf in Austin with a double of 10.93 (+1.8) and world leading 21.86 (+0.5). And if you’re rooting for a Saint Lucia relay resurgence, keep an eye on the nation’s young talent like Naomi London, who is following a familiar trajectory by competing for Texas.

Hobbs Kessler: It probably won’t be enough to convince him to switch events, but it was cool to see the indoor world record holder at 2000m make his 5000m debut in Palo Alto. Kessler’s 13:13 was only good enough for sixth place in his race, but for a guy who rarely runs more than an hour at a time, it was proof that rock climbing ability converts. (Liam Murphy won the race in 13:12 despite likely possessing comparatively poor grip strength.) Until someone proves otherwise, it’s our belief that this is the fastest-ever 5000m debut by an American.

Jake Heyward: Now that’s a name we haven’t heard in a long time. The Welshman is back in action for the first time since 2022, winning the 1500m at Payton Jordan in 3:37.75. During his last competitive season he finished second at both Europeans and 5th Avenue. The 3:31.0 PB he set at the time was good enough to rank tenth in the world back then. But times change and that would’ve landed him 27th in 2025. It’s also worth noting, however, that entering 2020 his PB was 3:36.90, and in 2021 he cut it down to 3:32.82. Maybe he’ll take another big jump with healthy legs back underneath him.

Ko Ochiai: The Japanese 19-year-old popped off a 1:43.90 800m at the 41st Shizuoka International Athletics Meet in Fukuroi—the fifth fastest mark in the world this year. He’s the only other teen in the top ten so far, the other being Cooper Lutkenhaus, but if you expand your definition of “wunderkind” out to include “kids under 20 who are also ranked within the top 20 in the world in the men’s 800m,” you also get Australia’s Daniel Williams (who sports a very Gen Z haircut in his World Athletics profile photo). So it looks like the event is in capable hands well into 2040.

With the first Diamond League meet of the season now just nine days away, these performances add up to something of an intriguing appetizer to what will hopefully be a sumptuous meal of elite track and field. And more importantly, you’ll know who to keep an eye on the next time you see Kessler next to Heyward or Prandini next to Alfred on a starting line, thanks to the tantalizing hints of fitness and potential they dropped before the lights got bright. Stay tuned!

What The New NCAA Rules Mean For Track And Field 🖐️

When it comes to the NCAA these days, Bob Dylan said it best: the rules, they are a-changing.

The proliferation of NIL deals and revenue sharing, heavily shaped by the historic House v. NCAA settlement, has injected an unprecedented flow of cash into college sports. Next year’s men’s basketball landscape is expected to feature 20-25 teams with $20 million rosters. Seemingly every legacy rule about “amateur” athletics, earnings, and eligibility has been overturned in court, and the lack of subsequent Congressional action has created a wild west of an intercollegiate athletics landscape. The result in big-money sports is that the COVID-impacted seventh-year seniors era has seamlessly transitioned into the five-schools-in-five-years transfer portal era.

The consolidation of conferences into the “Power Four” has widened the gap between the haves and have-nots in some ways, but the ability to buy yourself a competitive team has evened the playing field in others. Generally speaking, the little corner of the college sports landscape occupied by track and field hasn’t actually changed nearly as much as it has for sports like basketball, in large part because we weren’t exactly a money-maker in the first place. Conference competition means very little in this highly-individualized sport and the few NIL deals that have cropped up are much closer to the spirit of “name, image, likeness” endorsements rather than simply paying a donor-supported salary to athletes.

But the next switch-up on the horizon could have much more direct impacts on our sport, and the new rules are likely to go into effect as soon as this fall. Last week, the NCAA Board of Directors directed its rulemaking body to advance a proposal that would fundamentally change how eligibility works for college athletes. The general sentiment is that this edict will not be nearly as vulnerable to endless litigation.

The new rules channel another classic musician, Dave Brubeck: when it comes to eligibility and time signatures, take five. The simple version is that Division I athletes will now be limited to five years of eligibility, regardless of medical status, and—with few exceptions—they’ll have five years to use it. For U.S.-originating athletes, the clock starts with high school graduation; international students would have five years from the time they turn 19.

Two phenomena that have dominated NCAA track and field—and cross country even moreso— would suddenly change dramatically.

There would be no more mucking around with redshirts, questionable injury waivers, and other career-extending strategies: you simply have to do your best to stay healthy for your five year window of eligibility and maximize your potential within that time.

It would also spell the end of 28-year-old freshmen arriving in the U.S. via international recruiting. (That being said, age manipulation is not exactly unprecedented in this sport, so we very well may also see an influx of “19-year-old” Millennials.)

Military service and religious missions would still be exempt from the new rules, so BYU’s cross country roster could very well still have a few 26-year-old fathers of two on it here and there. But the net result of all these changes is that cross country competition should, in theory, be levelized a bit more. Managing rosters and career development would be a much simpler task, as coaches will not have to make eligibility-related decisions based on what’s best for the team and, hopefully, will instead choose to race or not race athletes based on what’s best for them.

Generally speaking, this could be the largest and most impactful change of the last decade for our sports specifically. And generally speaking, it’ll probably move things in a positive direction. The age factor aside, it should create a system where expectations are clear and the best coaches will be operating on a series of five-year plans to get the best out of the athletes. Getting really injured for long periods of time will still be a bummer (when has that not been a bummer?) but a more defined timeline creates an incentive structure for runners to prioritize staying healthy in the time allotted over pushing the limits knowing they have the fallback of a medical redshirt.

No single rule change will “fix” NCAA track and field, and some would probably argue that track and field is a lot less broken than other college sports. But every action will have an equal and opposite reaction, and with the prospect of a brave new world of eligibility looking more likely by the day, coaches, teams, and athletes better be ready and plan accordingly.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– At the U.S. 5k road championships in Indianapolis, Drew Hunter (13:28) and Dylan Jacobs (13:29) punched their tickets to the World Road Running Championships. Karissa Schweizer (14:59) did as well, while second-place finisher Emma Grace Hurley (15:01) had already qualified for Team USA in the half marathon. She could run both events, but may forego one. In that case, next up was Gracie Hyde (15:04), who also already made the team, in the mile in her case. Should both Hurley and Hyde opt for the first events in which they secured spots, it could be Courtney Frerichs (15:07) who gets the nod.

– Up at 4,600-odd feet of altitude, Riley Chamberlain beat out Jane Hedengren in a mile at the BYU Robison Invitational, running 4:25.27 to Hedengren’s 4:31.10. In the men’s race, Tayvon Kitchen took the win in 3:59.17

– Sabastian Sawe’s haul for breaking the marathon world record continues to grow. Upon arriving back home in Kenya, president William Samoei Ruto awarded him the equivalent of about $62,000, a new car, and best of all: a vanity license plate reading “01 59 30.”

– Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce posted “and just like that…🚀” to her Instagram, indicating she is either teasing a return to the track or she just found out about the HBO reboot of Sex and the City.

– He sure knows his way around a runway: Mondo Duplantis continued his quest to become a multi-hyphenate, adding “fashion icon” to “world record holder” and “up-and-coming pop star” with his appearance at the 2026 Met Gala.

– And in the interest of encouraging more historical powerhouse college teams to partake in dual meets, UCLA won the men’s competition and USC won the women’s battle at the 92nd installment of the grudge match between the two Los Angeles schools.

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Compiled by David Melly, Kyle Merber, & Paul Snyder

Why A Sub-Two Hour Marathon Isn’t As Crazy As It Seems 🤔

By now, you’ve surely heard the news: the marathon world record starts with a “1” for the first time in history, thanks to Sabastian Sawe’s historic run through London.

1:59:30 is 4:33 mile pace, or 14:09 5k pace. Sawe actually sped up throughout the race, posting a significant negative split (60:29, 59:01), covering 30k to 40k in under 28 minutes, and closing his last 2.2 kilometers at 4:17 mile pace. All of those sound like video game stats, not real paces a human man ran in a legitimate, non-controlled setting, so it’s understandable to look at Sawe’s run and feel your brain start to break a little.

Even in the aftermath of Eliud Kipchoge’s Ineos-funded science experiment from 2019, the prospect of a sub-two marathon felt like a tantalizing hypothetical. After two years of men’s world records in 2022 and 2023, the untimely death of Kelvin Kiptum in 2024 seemed to reinforce that notion. It was further solidified by Kipchoge entering his master’s era.

From December 2023 to April 2026, no one so much as broke 2:02, even as the promising debuts of Sawe and Jacob Kiplimo reignited hope for the future. As recently as last week, Sawe and his team were careful to temper expectations for London, suggesting that the course record of 2:01:25 was the target, not the world record. The requested pace of 60:30 at the halfway point seemed to confirm that intention, although it’s worth noting that when Kiptum ran the course record, he only split 61:40 for his first half.

So that’s part of why Sawe’s 1:59:30 (and Yomif Kejelcha’s 1:59:41 behind him) felt to some like such a surprise. And why so many of us are attempting to attribute the result to some new breakthrough, whether it’s the newest adidas shoes, the “personalized gut training” provided to Sawe by Maurten, or some new performance-enhancing drug designed to evade $50,000 worth of testing. Surely this barrier would not have been so resoundingly shattered without another massive leap forward in the technology that propels runners from start to finish…?

Well, yes and no. The increasing push for optimization in the marathon, for better or worse, has led to faster times. But 1:59:30 is more of a logical next step in the event’s progression than some crazy outlier.

Let’s start with the race itself. Sawe’s run was incredible, yes, but he didn’t exactly go solo. From the halfway point to around 30K, both Kejelcha and Kiplimo were right on his heels, and Kejelcha managed to stay in Sawe’s pocket until the final blistering mile. While Sawe will always be remembered for setting the new world record, three men actually broke the old one, and fourth placer Amos Kipruto ended up sixth on the all time list at 2:01:39, equalling Kipchoge’s old WR mark that stood until 2022. It’s inaccurate to boil down the historic day in London to one man—or one pair of shoes for that matter, as Kiplimo was wearing Nikes.

Sawe’s 59:01 closing half was the fastest ever recorded in a full marathon, but we’ve seen splits of a similar caliber before. Kiptum twice closed marathons under 60 minutes in his short but illustrious career, and Eliud Kipchoge’s 2:01:09 from Berlin in 2022 began with a 59:51 opener. While the London course is record-eligible, it’s still a point-to-point race with the finish line around seven miles west of the start, and from roughly 20 miles to the finish, the course runs east to west in a relatively straight line. So a breeze out of the east, which Sunday had, acts as a net tailwind and is particularly helpful on the back end of the race.

Compared with other barrier-breaking runs like, say, Ruth Chepngetich’s 2:09:56, this looked more like Boston the week prior: a day where the stars aligned and everybody ran fast, not a single superhuman effort defying all logic and straining credulity. Sawe’s margin of victory was 11 seconds, compared with 7:36 for Chepgnetich.

The time itself was unprecedented in its starting number, but statistically it doesn’t stand out nearly as much. The World Athletics scoring tables assign 1:59:30 a 1328-point value, just five points ahead of Jacob Kiplimo’s 56:42 half marathon and 16 ahead of Chepngetich’s. It’s far from the highest-scoring men’s world record, either—Usain Bolt’s 9.58 and Mondo Duplantis’s 6.31m both clear 1350 points. The top four 200m marks all rank higher than Sawe’s WR, at least in World Athletics’s estimation.

Since the supershoe era formally began in 2016, the men’s world record has now been broken four times, twice by Kipchoge, once by Kiptum, and now once by Sawe. The latest 65-second improvement isn’t particularly unusual by those standards, either: the last three jumps were 1:18, 0:30, and 0:34. Carbon and foam technology has undoubtedly increased the margins of improvement—the last minute-plus improvement before Kipchoge’s was in either 1967 or 1969 (depending on whether you count Derek Clayton’s second world record, which is a whole other story)—but in this new era, Sawe’s mark isn’t totally out of line.

All this context isn’t designed to take the shine off Sawe’s special day. Quite the opposite, in fact. If you’re the cynical type that questions every great performance and you feel more inclined to ascribe record-breaking runs to science, cheating, or both, this should help calm your anxieties a little. 1:59 is incredible in the typical sense of “amazing” or “excellent,” but it’s not incredible meaning “impossible to believe.” It could be too good to be true, by all means, but the time does still make sense in the broader arc of the sport’s history.

It’s a brave new world out there, and it’s a near certainty that this pair of sub-twos won’t be the last we see. With Berlin and Valencia coming up in a matter of months, they might not even be the only sub-twos this calendar year. And with Sawe (31), Kejelcha (28), and Kiplimo (25) just barely scratching the surface of what are hopefully long and fruitful marathoning careers, today’s barrier-breaking may look a lot like business as usual before long.

Power-Ranking The World’s Best Marathoners 🌍

After the success (and a little controversy) of last week’s U.S. marathoner power rankings and the end of the spring World Marathon Majors, it’s a great time to take stock and look at who the best marathoners in the world are right now.

In some ways, defining “right now” is just as difficult as forecasting out to 2028. Do we only consider races run in 2026? How long ago is too long to be relevant? Someone like Olympic champ Sifan Hassan, for example, is the fourth-fastest woman of all time but most recently finished a well-beaten sixth in New York, then withdrew from London with an injury. There was a hefty debate among the group as to whether Benson Kipruto’s 2025 NYC Marathon victory should outweigh his loss to Alphonce Simbu in Boston. Ultimately, it’s a bit hard to say definitively, but we tried our best to focus on the last 12 months of racing.

As always, marathoning accomplishments fall into two main buckets: how fast you run and who you beat. Even though this is a snapshot of world marathoning as it currently stands in April 2026, you’ll see a slight bias toward runners who’ve proven they can be consistently good over intermittently great—which of course slightly hurts the two marathoners on this list who’ve only run one marathon. But if you made the top five with only one performance, it must’ve been a damn good one.

Women

5. Fotyen Tesfay

Some may consider Tesfay the legitimate world record holder after her stunning 2:10:51 debut to win the Barcelona Marathon. (It’s now the second-fastest mark in history behind Ruth Chepngetich’s now-suspect record.) Tesfay doesn’t have a second performance or WMM win to move her higher on the list, but like her countryman Yomif Kejelcha, the future is clearly bright given her sole effort to date and her two sub-64 half marathon performances. It wouldn’t be surprising to see her shoot upward on this list this fall if, or perhaps when, she picks up a second win and the huge appearance fee she’ll likely command.

4. Sharon Lokedi

As the now two-time Boston champ, Lokedi has assuredly put to rest any suggestion that she doesn’t deserve a top five ranking. Her second win in Boston gives her three WMM victories and six total podium finishes, which should more than balance out her comparatively modest 2:17:22 PB. Her surprise victory at New York in 2022 may have seemed at the time like a fluke, but with each passing year and each passing major race, Lokedi has shown she’s legitimately one of the best in the world on any given day.

3. Brigid Kosgei

The former world record holder had fallen out of the top rankings for a little while, but she’s back in the mix thanks to a commanding 2:14:29 course record win at the Tokyo Marathon this past spring. After running 2:16 to win Shanghai last fall and finishing second to Sifan Hassan in Sydney, Kosgei has officially run her way back into the top five mix. Only two women have run sub-2:15 more than once: Kosgei and Chepngetich—who’s not on this list for obvious reasons.

2. Hellen Obiri

It takes a world-beater to beat Hellen Obiri, and that’s just what happened in London. Since her sixth-place debut in New York in 2022, Obiri has finished first or second in all her WMM appearances (she also nabbed a bronze medal in Paris). She’s won four of her nine career marathons, and with her new PB of 2:15:53 and second-place finish from London, she’s shown she can do it in a fast, rabbited race just as well as any other. Of the 11 women ahead of Obiri on the all-time list, only Tigst Assefa has shown she can consistently beat Obiri, which she’s now down twice. The only other woman to beat Obiri more than once in a marathon is Lokedi, but Obiri has the lifetime 5-2 advantage on her compatriot.

1. Tigst Assefa

London ultimately was a battle for world #1, as both Assefa and Obiri now have four World Marathon Major wins apiece, but Assefa won the head-to-head duel. In the four years since Assfa’s breakout run to win the 2022 Berlin Marathon, she’s run six marathons and finished first or second in all of them. The only two women to beat Assefa in that time are Peres Jepchirchir (twice) and Sifan Hassan at the Olympics, so you’ve basically gotta be an all-time great to even give her a scare. Her second straight London and second women’s-only world record now pair nicely with her 2:11:53 PB (#3 all-time), and she’s officially the top dog until someone else knocks her off.

Honorable mentions: Sifan Hassan (2025 Sydney champ; pulled out of London with injury) Peres Jepchirchir (reigning World champ; pulled out of London with injury), Hawi Feysa (2025 Chicago champ; third in Tokyo), Joyciline Jepkosgei (2025 Valencia champ; third in London)

Men

5. Alphonce Simbu
Simbu’s 2:02:47 PB from Boston is slower than a good number of men’s who could claim the fifth spot, but the reigning World champ has finished second in Boston the past two years and most recently beat the current New York Marathon champ, Benson Kipruto, to do it. With no World title to defend this fall, the best way for Simbu to solidify his spot or try to move up further in the ranks would be to find a fast, flat race and target a 2:01.

4. Yomif Kejelcha

You might be surprised to see the second fastest man of all time relegated to fourth. Kejelcha certainly made a splash with his debut, and he currently holds the unique honor of being the only man in history to never run over two hours in a marathon. But he’s also only got a sample size of one, and if he wants to change his track-based reputation as a Silver Surfer, he’s gotta win a big one to move up the list. That being said, his next race will likely be one of the most hotly-anticipated sophomore efforts in history.

3. Jacob Kiplimo

You’ve got to feel for the 25-year-old Ugandan, who ran seven seconds faster than Kelvin Kiptum’s old world record in London but got turned into a total afterthought by Kejelcha and Sawe’s runs. He’s still got an incredible resume, however, with his 2:00:28 supplemented by a win in Chicago and a runner-up finish behind Sawe in his debut. If non-marathoning results were being considered for these power rankings, Kiplimo would probably leapfrog into the #2 spot, given that he’s the world record holder in the half marathon and sandwiched his marathons with his third straight World XC title. Alas, he gets the bump over Kejelcha thanks to his Chicago win but not the bonus of secondary distances.

2. John Korir

Under almost any other circumstances, Korir would be the consensus world #1. He’s won the last four marathons he’s finished (2026 Boston, 2025 Valencia, 2025 Boston, and 2024 Chicago) and run sub-2:03 three times. The one blemish on his recent record is a DNF in Chicago last fall after being outdueled by Kiplimo, but he reclaims the edge over his rival thanks to his stellar course-record run and blistering close in Boston. (We guess having not run sub-two before is technically a blemish here, too.)

1. Sebastian Sawe

This one should come as no surprise to anyone. Sawe is perfect at the two main criteria for greatness—running fast and winning. He’s four for four in marathons, is now the world record holder, and has run 2:02 or faster each time. The one metric he’s yet to prove in his nascent marathoning career is the ability to win on a hilly, unpaced course like New York or Boston, having only run Valencia, London, and Berlin thus far. If he proves just as adept at that, he could very well become the first man to do what even Eliud Kipchoge could not: win all six (or seven or whatever) World Marathon Majors and become the undisputed greatest of all time.

Honorable mentions: Benson Kipruto (2025 NYC champ; third in Boston); Amos Kipruto (fourth in London; 2nd in 2025 Chicago), Tadese Takele (2025 and 2026 Tokyo champ), Tamirat Tola (fifth in London, Doha champ), Alexander Munyao (second in 2025 NYC; third in 2026 Tokyo and 2025 London)

Unlike the shorter track events, the lack of a full World Championship this year doesn’t feel like nearly as much of a loss for the marathon crowd, who’d rather get the big paycheck that comes with a WMM appearance anyway. But more than ever before, all eyes will be on Berlin, Chicago, and New York (and, to a lesser extent, Sydney and Valencia) to see if the best marathoners of 2026 can hold onto their crowns or if a rising challenger will knock them off the throne.

Don’t Let Your Track Past Define Your Marathoning Future 🔮

Galen Rupp enjoyed about the exact degree of marathon success you’d expect from a multiple-time NCAA champ: he was an Olympic medalist, won a world major, and took home a couple of national titles. And yet, he now has a slower personal best (2:06:07) than an American that nobody had ever heard of, set in a race that you didn’t know existed.

Vincent Mauri’s 2:05:53 debut at the Glass City Marathon in Toledo has forced every single mid-pack NCAA runner to look in the mirror and ask, “Could I do that?”

There have been recent accusations that American athletes aren’t brave anymore. But what else do you call a kid who has never even run a half marathon before, who goes out and starts clicking off a bunch of solo 4:45 miles and winds up running the fourth fastest marathon ever by an American… lucky?

Mauri’s best finish at an NCAA Cross Country Championship was 68th, and last year he walked away from a collegiate career that started at Arizona State and finished at Notre Dame with a 5000m best of 13:34.03. Every college coach in the country would be happy to have a guy like that on their roster—three seconds faster than Rupp was in high school. A solid runner who can contribute to the team score at conference and shore up depth at NCAAs in cross. But few coaches would peg him as the next great American anything!

In a way, this feels like deja vu. In February, some dude named Ethan Shuley popped onto everyone’s radar when he dropped a 2:07:14 on our heads in Osaka. He was a strong but not sensational prep runner (4:13/9:07), but his one result from a stint at BYU was an 8:45 3000m.

Last March, Matthew Richtman won the Los Angeles Marathon in 2:07:57. While at Montana State, he was an All-American, finishing 26th at NCAA XC in 2023. In theory, someone of Richtman’s caliber is the perfect candidate to land a day job then continue competing after college in hopes of maybe one day sneaking under 2:16 for an Olympic Trials qualifier. But in Richtman’s case, none of the 25 guys that beat him at NCAAs have ever run faster than he has over 26.2.

Dakotah Popehn went from a 16:45 5000m to an Olympian. Annie Frisbie never made nationals on the track and now boasts a 2:22:00 PB. Elena Hayday only mustered out a 17:10 5000m during her brief time at Minnesota, and she just ran 2:24 in Boston. Maybe the NCAA is actually a quite poor predictor of marathon success?

The longest race that a collegiate athlete (outside of the NAIA) will compete in is 20 miles shorter than where most distance runners’ careers end up. Thirty minutes isn’t long enough to require fueling, and training for that distance is fundamentally different than stacking weeks of marathon-specific work. How many potential 2:05 guys never came to fruition because they were caught in the wrong event, in a system that wasn’t built for them?

Talent comes in all shapes and sizes. Some athletes can come right off the couch and be competitive– the boys who ran sub-five miles in middle school or the freshman girls who were their high school team’s top runner immediately. When we talk about “talent,” this is usually the archetype that comes to mind.

But then there are the workhorses who are built like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable. No matter how much they push, their body can handle it. That’s talent, too. And it’s arguably the sort that lends itself to longer term success in a sport where moving on up isn’t just the chorus to The Jeffersons’ theme song.

That latter category of talent doesn’t always thrive in the NCAA. Athletes like that are constrained by regimented programs with coaches who may be balancing 25+ training plans, which all eventually converge to look the same. For a coach, health wins championships. And exploring the upper limits of a teenager’s ability to withstand mileage is rarely worth the risk of an MRI. Even then, athletes like Shuley and Mauri have robust injury histories—you probably wouldn’t have assumed their futures would be brightened with higher volume and longer races.

So how do you tell who has the long-term potential to be great on the roads? According to a brief text exchange with Steve Magness, who has coached both NCAA standouts and elite marathoners, there are a few indicators. The first is that cross country results matter more than success on the track—that’s not a huge surprise.

But he also called out a third category of talent we haven’t previously addressed: the high responder. Magness described them as, “A grower more than a shower… meaning their talent may not show up initially, but as the training load increases, they keep making jumps.”

This perfectly describes Vincent Mauri. Despite having worked with a long list of great coaches, there were probably too many in too short a short period of time. He never had the chance to build consistently. It took being self-coached for the epiphany… and just as importantly, the sort of free reign to hammer mid-five-minute-pace miles as a default.

Super shoes and fueling made the sub-two hour marathon possible. But it’s stories like this one out of Ohio that will inspire future 32nd place finishers at indoor ACCs to believe they can run faster than their heroes.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– The Kip Keino Classic tends to give us a first honest look at how some of the top sprinters are shaping up, and this year, Gabby Thomas impressed with a pair of wins in the 100m (11.01) and 200m (a world-leading 21.89). Additionally, Canadian hammer dynamos Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers threw world leading (82.43m) and continent all-comers’ records (80.03m), respectively. Sinesipho Dambile ran the year’s second fastest 200m, 19.77, and Emmanuel Wanyonyi took down a solid domestic field over 1500m, going 3:34.11.

– And jumping back to Gabby Thomas for a moment… two days after Kip Keino, she finally dipped under 11 seconds with a legal wind at the Botswana Golden Grand Prix, going 10.95 (-0.4 m/s) for the W.

– The good news is there weren’t any athletes directed off-course; the bad news is that as a result, the U.S. is only sending two men and two women to Copenhagen for the 1 mile race at the World Road Running Championships. Yared Nuguse and Vince Ciattei (3:54.06, 3:54.62), and Addy Wiley and Gracie Hyde (4:25.42, 4:25.64) claimed the top spots at the Grand Blue Mile in Des Moines.

– The World Shot Put World Series was also held in conjunction with the Drake Relays, and Roger Steen’s 73-foot toss won the competition, which doesn’t follow traditional shot put protocol.

– Quincy Wilson and his Bullis teammates won the boys’ 4x400m relay at the Penn Relays, the first time an American school has won the event since 2007—don’t worry Jamaican fans, Jamaican teams won every other high school relay!

– The girls boys are fighting! The bulk of Penn drama came in the collegiate distance-skewed relays. Michigan’s men’s 4x800m squad won in a new meet record (7:09.27), despite a prolonged stretch of taunting from its anchor leg, Trent MacFarland; in the men’s DMR, Oregon’s Simeon Birnbaum held off a hard charge from Villanova’s Marco Langon to nab a wheel for the ducks; Langon flipped the script the next day, outkicking Birnbaum on the anchor leg of the 4xmile; UNC’s women’s DMR team, anchored by Vera Sjoberg, kicked down Stanford for the win—both teams got under the old meet and NCAA records and nobody appeared to want to fight anyone else afterwards.

– Wicked star and aspiring EGOT-er Cynthia Erivo lowered her marathon PB to 3:21:40 at the London Marathon, after being coached by Brooks athlete Erika Kemp, a 2:22:56 marathoner in her own right.

– Cross country rosters could look a lot different next year: The NCAA is in the process of approving major eligibility changes creating a “five in five” system, which would grant all college athletes five years of eligibility regardless of injury or redshirts but only within their first five years of finishing high school or turning 19. Fear not, BYU fans—religious missions are still exempt from the rule.

– And to close things out, Allyson Felix… is back?

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Compiled by Chris Chavez, David Melly, Kyle Merber, Scott Fauble, & Paul Snyder

After Boston 2026, Who’s In The Driver’s Seat For 2028?

The 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials may be less than two years away, but the American marathon landscape is still in flux. The Boston results have only further complicated the question: who are the best American marathoners right now?

The answer comes in the form of our first 2028 U.S. Marathon Power Rankings: a comprehensive early look at who will be in the mix for the LA Olympic team.

Ranking marathon potential two years out is no easy task. How do you measure a proven star against a promising debutant? Do you reward consistency over upside? Recent form over peak performance? What do you do with the runners who’ve shown flashes of brilliance but can’t stay healthy? How much does age on race day factor in?

The list that follows spans Olympians, World Championship team members, and a few track stars who could quickly become a factor over 26.2. Does your favorite make the cut?

Men’s Rankings

15. Emad Bashir-Mohammed – 2:11:24 PB from the 2026 Riyadh Marathon

We had to include at least one name that most readers won’t know. Bashir-Mohammed ran at the University of St. Mary, an NAIA school in Kansas, graduating and debuting in the marathon in 2023 at Chicago (2:17:33). The 23-year-old has since dropped his PB to 2:11:24, finished 10 seconds behind Zouhair Talbi at the 2025 Chicago Half Marathon last summer, and just ran a solid 46:42 at the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler.

14. Daniel Mesfun – 2:08:24 PB from the 2026 Sevilla Marathon

The past two years have seen a career resurrection for Mesfun. He ran 2:10 in 2018 and then didn’t break 2:13 again until going 2:10:56 in Houston last January, then winning the Dublin Marathon in 2:08:51. He also got a slight PR at the Sevilla Marathon in February with a 2:08:24. He’ll be 40 at the Trials, so he’ll be looking to ride the Meb or Abdi trajectory to the team.

13. Haftu Knight – 2:07:38 PB from the 2026 Boston Marathon

The former Texas Longhorn has shown the exact sort of progression you look for in a hopeful U.S. team member, which included a 2:09:38 and 2:11:39 in 2025 before finishing as the sixth American in Boston this weekend. He’ll be 29 at the Trials, entering his marathoning prime at the right time.

12. Wesley Kiptoo – 2:07:55 PB from the 2026 Boston Marathon

Monday’s race was a personal best but not quite aligned with what his ceiling may be as a marathoner, considering that he is in the training group at NAZ Elite that includes Alex Masai (fourth at the 2025 Chicago Marathon) and Mercy Chelangat (fourth at the 2026 Boston Marathon). When he hits it, it could be really good.

11. Hillary Bor – 2:08:40 PB from the 2026 Rotterdam Marathon

Bor had really good fitness heading into his debut at the New York City Marathon last fall but maybe got carried away just after halfway and paid the price as he fell to 12th place in 2:10:47. He just put together a 2:08:40 for 10th place in Rotterdam but was on sub-2:06 pace for a chunk of the race. Though he’ll be 38 on race day, he’s still learning the event.

10. Ethan Shuley – 2:07:14 PB from the 2026 Osaka Marathon

Had we published this list a week ago, Shuley maybe would’ve been higher after his 2:07:14 at the Osaka Marathon took everyone by surprise. Given his injury history, another solid outing in the 2:07 ballpack would do wonders for his prospects.

9. Casey Clinger – 2:08:43 PB from the 2026 Tokyo Marathon

Clinger maybe gets a little bit of a benefit from the company he keeps as a member of the Ed Eyestone training group. Whereas some of the names ahead of him could be looking to hold onto their spots, he’s one with good potential to jump upward soon. Unlike his 2:16:05 debut in Chicago last fall, his 2:08:43 feels more indicative of his potential.

8. Grant Fisher – Never run a marathon

We didn’t place any other track runners who could test the marathon in the coming two years, but the double Olympic bronze medalist has earned a nod. A 1:00:53 half marathon debut in New York was not good by Fisher’s standards. But if it wasn’t enough to delay his marathon curiosity, based on his talent, it would be silly not to put him in the conversation for the Trials. We’ll surely take flak for not putting him higher.

7. Alex Maier – 2:08:33 PB from Düsseldorf 2025

Once Mantz pulled out of the Boston Marathon, Maier was a popular pick for top American. He scared the American record in the half marathon with a 59:23 in Houston and then finished fourth at the NYC Half in 59:51. The DNF in Boston hurts his ranking here but if he can prove he can race well against the top American marathoners in his next one, he can move back up.

6. Joe Klecker – 2:05:56 from Boston 2026

Boston was a big step forward for Klecker in Boston, closing his final mile around 4:39 to break 2:06. He’s yet to realize the world-beating potential some saw in him early, but he’s making progress at a distance many assume will be his best.

5. Ryan Ford – 2:05:46 PB from Boston 2026

It’s a tough call to pick OAC’s best male marathoner, but the current edge may go to the University of Tennessee at Martin alum over the 10,000m Olympian. We’ll weigh Ford’s 2:08:00 in Boston 2025, 2:09:37 in Chicago, and 2:05:46 in Boston a little higher than Klecker’s resume. Boston was the first time the two teammates went head-to-head and Ford got the better of Klecker by 10 seconds.

4. Clayton Young –2:05:41 PB from Boston 2026

11th place overall on paper looks like Young’s worst finish at a World Major since 2022 but he nevertheless got a big PR and finished third American in a deep field. This also came on a shortened build as a result of the worst injury of Young’s career, which forced him to take 16 weeks off. Maintaining healthy training will be key, but over the last three years, Young has been consistently among the top three Americans in each of his marathons and thrives in a championship setting.

3. Charles Hicks – 2:04:35 PB from Boston 2026

Across two marathons, Hicks has gone 2:09:59 for seventh (second American) in New York and 2:04:35, also seventh, also second American, in Boston. One peek at his Strava and you can tell he can handle the training demands to run fast and hold up for the marathon. The former NCAA cross country champion was maybe overlooked coming into Boston but there’s no hiding anymore. At 24 years old, the sky is the limit.

2. Zouhair Talbi – 2:03:45 PB from Boston 2026

Talbi becomes eligible to represent the United States internationally in August 2027 and could be the American record holder by the time the 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials roll around. 2:03:45 is the fastest marathon ever run by an American citizen and his 2:05:45 to win Houston in January was just as impressive. In Boston, Talbi was unafraid to cover the surges by the East Africans and was rewarded mightily for his bravery.

1. Conner Mantz – 2:04:43 PB, AR from Chicago 2024

No one probably had more FOMO from watching Boston unfold than Mantz. Last year, he parlayed Olympic momentum into an American record in the half marathon (after quickly recovering from injury) in 59:17. He ran two seconds faster at the NYC Half just two months later, finished fourth in Boston in 2:05:08, and broke the American record in 2:04:43 in Chicago. Mantz’s 85% is better than a good chunk of this list, but getting to the start line healthy could be the biggest challenge. To make another team in 2028, he’ll also have to face all the newcomers rising behind him. In their three head-to-head marathon battles, Mantz has the career edge on Talbi 2–1, but the latest version of Talbi that we’re seeing appears to have leveled up. Still, Mantz holds the top spot for now until someone knocks him off.

Just outside the top 15: Galen Rupp, Joel Reichow, Nathan Martin, Biya Simbassa, Andrew Colley, CJ Albertson, and Paul Chelimo.

Women’s Rankings

15. Molly Born – 2:24:10 PB from the 2025 California International Marathon

Her marathoning career started off well with a 2:24:10 debut for the win in Sacramento last December. She was also the winner of the 2026 USATF Half Marathon Championships following the lead car debacle.

14. Emma Bates – 2:22:10 PB from Boston 2023

We’ll hold this spot for Emma Bates until she comes back from maternity leave. In 2025, she put together a pair of 2:25 performances in Boston and Valencia. Getting to the 2028 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials could also be extra special after she was forced to scratch from the 2024 edition with injuries, where she would’ve been a strong contender to make that team.

13. Erika Kemp – 2:22:56 PB from Houston 2025

After her 2:22:56 breakout in Houston, Kemp was rewarded with a spot on Team USA for the 2025 World Championships. It was a good sign of her potential at the distance. The Tokyo heat got to her and she struggled to a 2:50:35 for 52nd place. She was a late scratch from the Boston Marathon this past weekend, citing “a sudden series of unfortunate events” on Instagram, but the 31-year-old will have a few more cycles to hone her marathoning legs.

12. Natosha Rogers – 2:23:28 PB from Chicago 2025

Rogers started coming into her own as a marathoner in 2025. Ignoring her rough debut at the Trials in 2024, she recalibrated under coach Steve Magness and pulled together a 2:23 performance in Nagoya and then another for the top American honors in Chicago. She also unfortunately scratched from Boston and has not indicated if she will run another marathon this spring.

11. Carrie Ellwood – 2:22:53 PB from Boston 2026

Ellwood took her time getting back to the marathon after running 2:37:54 in New York in 2024 and then the nearly nine-minute PB in Boston on Monday. She was the runner-up at the USATF Half Marathon Championships following the lead car debacle. We’ll have to wait and see how she backs this performance up.

10. Emma Grace Hurley – Yet to make her marathon debut

Fans will surely be hoping Emma Grace Hurley makes her marathon debut at a race this fall. For what it’s worth, she was posting on Instagram about having FOMO from the Boston festivities. She’s primed to be good for the marathon after podium* finishes in the last two USATF Half Marathon Championships and a 50:42 U.S. title over 10 miles this month.

9. Susanna Sullivan – 2:21:56 PB from 2024 Chicago

We’re chalking up the 2:28:35 for 19th place as a tough day at the office for Sullivan in her return to Boston. Her fourth place finish at the World Championships in Tokyo and 2:28:34 in New York (fifth American) off a shortened build-up are stronger indicators of what she can do, especially in championship-style racing under tough conditions.

8. Taylor Roe – Yet to make her marathon debut

Roe could be higher on this list a year from now. We know what coaches Alistair and Amy Cragg achieved in Fiona O’Keeffe’s development as a marathoner, and could see Roe taking similarly well to the distance. We’re already seeing signs of her track speed translating to the half, after going 1:06:20 in Houston and then 1:06:52 in Valencia this year.

7. Amanda Vestri – 2:24:49 PB from Boston 2026

At 26 years old, Vestri is committed to the marathon and is chipping away at progress. She debuted in 2:25:40 for ninth (fourth American and 35 seconds back of Emily Sisson) at the New York City Marathon. In Boston, she was only the eighth American and 15th overall but managed to run 2:24:49.

6. Dakotah Popehn – 2:24:04 PB from Boston 2026

This one might feel high to some folks because recent performances maybe haven’t aligned with the fitness she shows on Strava. 2:24:20 in Chicago last fall (second American) is the closest we’ve seen to the athlete that surprised many for the third place spot at the last Trials and then took 11th at the Paris Olympics.

5. Emily Sisson – 2:18:29 PB, AR from Chicago 2022

We’re ready to put the “she’s a rhythm runner who doesn’t do great on hills” narrative to bed after a solid 2:22:39 for ninth place and third American in Boston. If there’s one person hoping Phoenix’s flat course gets selected for the 2028 Trials, however, it’s Sisson, who could also get a hometown edge from it. Making a third Olympic team isn’t a given but she’s far from done.

4. Annie Frisbie – 2:22:00 PB from Boston 2026

Frisbie is quietly stringing together strong finishes against good competition. She’s now gone back-to-back years as the second American in Boston and then also second in New York last fall. She’s a tough competitor on hilly courses so maybe compared to Sisson’s Phoenix edge, she’d go for St. Louis’s bid, which is not expected to be flat.

3. Weini Kelati – Marathon debut anticipated in 2026

The U.S. half marathon record holder is poised for a good marathon debut potentially this fall. She rarely has a bad day to finish outside the podium against American competition on the roads. If she chooses to make her debut in Chicago, expect a quick time. If she chooses to make her debut in New York, expect her to try and contend with the best to try and mirror something like her former training partner Sharon Lokedi’s 2022 debut there. By 2028, she should have at least two marathons of experience.

2. Jess McClain – 2:20:49 PB from the 2026 Boston Marathon

Right now, she’s stacking consistency as one of the top Americans while racing against her compatriots. In Monday’s race, she threw caution to the [tail]wind and committed to a full send while trying to race the East Africans. It was her best showing against international competition and that’s coming after a seventh-place finish last year in Boston (top American) and then eighth place at the World Championships (second American).

1. Fiona O’Keeffe – 2:22:10 PB from 2024 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials

Yes, the reigning U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials champion is holding onto the top spot at this time despite scratching from this week’s Boston Marathon due to a hamstring tear. When she’s healthy—which is the key factor before any race of hers—we saw just how much better she can be than the other Americans in Orlando and New York last fall.

Just outside the top 15: Lindsay Flanagan, Keira D’Amato, Ednah Kurgat, Sara Hall, Elena Hayday, Kodi Kleven, and Paige Wood

Don’t Change The Guard Just Yet: “Fast Elaine” Is Back 🇯🇲

2026 is already shaping up to be a year where the young guns take center stage. At this (admittedly early) point in the season, the average age of the world leader across 20 track events is just 22 years old.

The five fastest men in the 100m so far this season were all born in 2003 or 2004. In the women’s 100m, youth is an even larger factor—world leader Adaejah Hodge just turned 20 and three of the five fastest runners this year are 21 or younger.

It’s understandable that track and field’s thirty-somethings may be looking at the meet calendar, their driver’s licences, and the nascent LA28 website and coming to the conclusion that load management is the name. Many of track’s longevity-enjoying stars—like Katie Moon and the now-retired Nick Willis—have talked about how including down periods in training is the key to extended careers. The older you get, the smarter you have to be about allocating effort, both in training and in racing. So it’s understandable that anyone thinking they might want to give it one last go 2028 is working backward and thinking that it may not be worth it to leave it all on the track in 2026.

That opens the door for the new guard to take up all the attention, whether it’s Hodge running rampant over NCAA competition or Jordan Anthony claiming World Indoor gold. These youngsters are fresh, they’re hungry, and they have plenty to prove. It’s easy to start looking at someone like 28-year-old Michael Norman as a Rocky Balboa-type old-timer when the competition is 22-year-old Collen Kebinatshipi.

Last weekend featured one glaring exception to the trend, however. In the second heat of the 100m at a relatively low-key meet in Kingston, 33-year-old Elaine Thompson-Herah won her first 100-meter race in over two years in 10.92 looking relaxed and controlled with a minimal tailwind. After contesting a couple 60-meter rust busters and notching a 200m victory earlier in the spring, this was ETH’s first performance that elicited more than a little fanfare—and it’s understandable why.

Normally, an athlete running nearly half a second off their 100-meter PB wouldn’t be much to write home about, but that’s a pretty misleading stat. Most importantly, this was the five-time Olympic champion’s first sub-11 and fastest time since 2023. And her 10.54 isn’t just any personal best; it’s the second-fastest mark in history. ETH did, however, use Velocity Fest #19 to lay down a perfectly solid 100m opener in mid-April after missing an entire calendar year of racing.

Before injuries kept her out of competition all of 2025, they derailed her attempt to defend her 2020 Olympic titles in 2024. We never got the chance to see how her adjusted training setup had been working out—she changed coaches several times in 2023. But Thompson-Herah wasn’t alone in experiencing setbacks during that stretch. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson were also battling injuries of one kind or another in 2024, and the Paris Olympics was a disappointing one for Jamaican sprinters. Four of the nation’s six medals came from field events—none came from the women’s sprints.

2025 was a much happier story, with Jamaica taking 1-2 in the men’s 100m and the handing of the baton (both literally and metaphorically) from Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce to the Clayton twins, Tia and Tina. But ETH was nowhere to be seen all season and it would’ve been understandable to assume she was quietly riding off into the sunset.

This weekend’s 10.92 puts any suggestions of retirement planning or allegations of washed-upness to rest. In 2023, Thompson-Herah’s last full season, she didn’t break 11 seconds in the 100m until September 4th. In 2021, the year she completed the double-double Olympic gold, her season opener was 11.21.

The historic Elaine season that 2026 most resembles so far is 2022, where Thompson-Herah opened up with a handful of 60ms and a 56-second 400m before running 10.89 on April 16th. While it wasn’t quite the dominant campaign of the year prior, Thompson-Herah still earned two medals at Worlds, took double gold at the Commonwealth Games, and finished the year with season’s bests of 10.79 and 21.97. If she can put up a similar championship season run, four years and a series of health battles later, that would be an incredible feat.

This time last year, it would seem nearly impossible that “Fast Elaine” could realistically contend for a third Olympic berth at 36. And with the likes of the Claytons, Shenese Walker, and upstart 18-year-old Shanoya Douglas coming into their primes, there will be no easy path. But just like the tenth-century English peasant of Monty Python lore, she’s not dead yet. Count her out at your own peril!

An intergenerational battle between promising rookies and gritty veterans is a classic sports trope in both fiction and real life for a reason; it gives fans hope for both a future to come and a comeback to celebrate. Thompson-Herah has the whole season ahead of her to reset the narrative for the better, and after a long two years, it seems like her luck has finally begun to turn.

TLC Debates: How Do We Feel About Supershoes In 2026?

With historic road racing times becoming a near-weekly occurrence, TLC contributors Kyle Merber and Scott Fauble decided it was time to check in and unpack just how shoe technology is changing the sport of marathoning—for better or worse.

KM: Your tweet about super shoes ruining elite marathons ignited quite the conversation in my group chats. Are you just being a curmudgeon because everyone ran fast in Boston and in a slightly different universe you’d be a 2:04 guy?

SF: That is very possible. I don’t think I ever had a 2:04 in the tank, except maybe with that tailwind. Although, in a way, this year’s Boston would have been my nightmare—I feasted on carnage. So there is probably some personal bias and some ‘old guy is mad at change’ in there as well.

On the other hand, I might just start slotting myself into seventh place every year and adjust my mental PR accordingly.

KM: If that helps old guys sleep at night then I see no issue! So what about this year’s race reignited the “super shoes = bad” take? I thought we had exhausted this conversation by now. As a fan, how did you enjoy this year’s race vs. previous ones?

SF: As a fan, I liked it less than in previous years. And maybe this year wasn’t the best time to pop off about the lack of blow-ups because of the tailwind. The tailwind is going to help generally, maybe for the sake of my point I should have waited until 10 guys broke 2:08 on a 65-degree day with more normal wind.

I think my general thesis is that road racing is already a relatively “flat” sport compared to ball sports. There’s only so much differentiation we can have between races or racers given the nature of the running. The ongoing optimization of fueling and equipment and bicarb and wave light and lactate testing and data reduces the impact of a lot of the stuff that makes sports fun, which makes me sad.

I think what ignited the take was just watching the second half and knowing that no one was gonna break. Korir surged ahead and that’s awesome. But I didn’t feel like the group as a whole was riding any sort of line where they might be in real trouble and the parachute might really get pulled if they couldn’t hang.

KM: I get that. It’s fun to watch people blow up because it gives you appreciation for those who didn’t. We are still in the middle of redefining what is considered fast in the modern era of marathoning.

On Monday, 28 guys broke 2:10—that was a really competitive time ten years ago. And readers might think this is insulting, but those guys know that’s not good enough to be in the mix for a top international finish anymore. The clock might say it’s a PB, but you’re not contending for a podium or top American honors. All the more reason to focus more on place than time.

SF: Absolutely no disagreement there. I have no problem with people running fast. My issue is that people can now try to run fast with lower risk. I remember how I felt after marathons pre-super shoes (could barely walk) vs. wearing Alphaflys (could’ve run the next day). I want to see more of the internal battle of people having to calculate and deal with the possibility that going out too hard or covering an early move could lead to their legs giving out or bonking.

Right now is the easiest time in history to get a “B” or a “C” grade in the marathon. “A”s are still hard, but there’s a much lower chance of getting an “F.” That’s what I’m longing for: races where athletes know that putting themselves in a spot to get an “A” might cause them to end up with an “F.”

Look at the guys in the 10th to 15th range. For them, Monday was a day with a lot of small, manageable positive splits. Now there’s less downside for everyone, which means it requires less bravery individually. That used to be something I really respected: when someone went out over their head and faded, but survived the send. Now I don’t really feel anything about those performances.

KM: It is definitely easier to hang on now, but maybe they just need to go out even harder? I think in future years we’ll eventually view a 62-minute first half in Boston as conservative.

I don’t believe this is a universal experience though, because the Japanese athletes have continued to take huge risks early in races. There might just be a misalignment of incentives at the moment where the performance bar has raised, but the standards and the contract bonuses are lagging slightly behind.

Have we circled all the way back around to needing rabbits to entice folks to dream a little too big?

SF: The Japanese style of racing is the one thing keeping me optimistic that my hunch here is wrong.

But I guess I’m less optimistic that going out faster will change that much. Shoe tech has essentially changed the calculus in decision-making. You probably aren’t gonna suffer that much in the second half, and you probably aren’t going to catch people who miscalculated because they aren’t gonna blow up. So why do anything other than the boring, predictable race plan?

Maybe contracts being realigned would change things, but I think we’ve kinda crossed the rubicon. Short of totally changing the way we incentivize racing, we’re just going to see more and more “B” races and less variation.

As far as rabbits at Boston, you can just shoot me into the sun if that happens. My whole argument is against optimization. I want weirdness.

KM: Okay, pacing lights it is then.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– At the Oregon Team Invitational, the meet formerly best known—at least recently—for this, Simeon Birnbaum really redeemed things for Oregon. He won the 1500m by over seven seconds and established a blistering new NCAA record: 3:31.69.

– Olympic and World gold medalist Michael Norman is back! After missing all of 2025, Norman ran a 4x400m leg at the Tom Jones Invitational in Florida, splitting sub-45. Jordan Anthony picked up right where he left off after winning World Indoor gold, running a wind-legal 9.91 100m. San Antonio teen Tate Taylor broke Noah Lyles’s high school record in the 200m, going 20.05 for the win and taking down Alison dos Santos in the process.

– At Mt. SAC, Arizona State’s Jayden Davis broke the 400m facility record, going an NCAA-leading 44.29, while USC’s Madison Whyte (49.64) and Arkansas’s Sanaria Butler (49.86) threw down the NCAA #2 and #3 marks so far this season.

– And of course, at Bryan Clay, we saw the men’s and women’s NCAA 5000m records go down. Habtom Samuel (New Mexico) won the 5000m in 13:03.47 and Jane Hedengren (BYU) went 14:50.50. Though not collegiate records, Colin Sahlman’s (NAU) 1:44.42 and Emmaculate Jemutai’s (Kansas) 1:59.88 800m performances were certainly notable; Louisville’s Geoffry Kirwa went 8:08.10 to win the steeple, and now ranks behind only Henry Rono on the NCAA all-time list.

– U.S. 800m champ and indoor national record-holder Roisin Willis—already a New Balance athlete—has announced she has joined New Balance Boston.

– Iona and Wisconsin coaching legend Mick Byrne has shared that this outdoor season will be his last holding a stopwatch. He led the Badgers to a 2011 NCAA cross country title, and coached seven Olympians during his storied career.

– Gabby Thomas won the 200m at the Addis Ababa Grand Prix in 22.15, and Ferdinand Omanyala took top honors in the 100m, going 9.98.

– Turkey’s attempt to lure a bunch of elite athletes to compete for it internationally has been struck down by World Athletics.

– World heptathlon champ Anna Hall married NFL player Darius Slayton last week on Long Island and got some nice wedding coverage in Vogue Magazine.

– And to close out, you’ve undoubtedly already seen the week’s running clip that hit terminal viral velocity: Joshua Jackon’s wild kick in to sneak past Carson Mello and win the Delaware Marathon.

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A New Era Starts at the Peachtree!

For the first time in more than 50 years, the Peachtree has a new title partner. This July 4, the Northside Hospital Peachtree Road Race marks the beginning of a new era for the world’s largest 10K.

It’s one of the most iconic days in running when 60,000 runners take over Atlanta. If you’ve ever thought about running Peachtree, this is the one! Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday with people from all over the country!

Enter the lottery now until April 21, or skip the lottery and become an Atlanta Track Club member to guarantee your spot.

👉 Be part of the next chapter.

Compiled by David Melly, Kyle Merber, & Paul Snyder

What To Watch At The 2026 Boston Marathon 🦄

It must be April, because spring is in the air, flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, and World Marathon Major season is about to get very, very busy. Tokyo may already be in the books, but the double whammy of the Boston and London Marathons in the next two weeks are poised to really set the road running circuit on fire.

The 130th Boston Marathon goes down this upcoming Monday, and it’s staring sky-high expectations in the face. Last year saw Sharon Lokedi and Hellen Obiri battle their way to a course-record run, with Lokedi persevering in 2:17:22. On the men’s side, Americans had a breakout day as Conner Mantz, Clayton Young, and Ryan Ford all finished in the top ten in 2:08:00 or faster. So it’s safe to say the runners toeing the starting line in Hopkinton this year have some extra-large supershoes to fill.

Both defending champs are back, but this year’s race will be defined, at least in part, by the absence of two big names who competed in 2025. Obiri, the two-time Boston champ in 2023 and 2024, is taking on the field in London this year. Mantz faced injury woes in training during this buildup and had to withdraw. But you’ll barely miss them on race day, because the fields are stacked as ever, with seven sub-2:20 women and ten sub-2:05 men entered.

The other returning main character at Boston shows up a little different every year: the weather. This year it’s looking… decidedly iffy, with a small but nonzero chance of showers in the forecast and wind forecasts still changing hourly. Temperature wise, race day should float in the high-40º to low-50ºF range most of the morning. So if you’re hoping to watch fast times (or are yourself running and looking to set a new PB), it’ll all come down to whether the wind and precipitation break favorably, which right now looks like a coin toss.

Women’s Race

The marathoning resume Sharon Lokedi has put together at 32 years old is one of the best in the world—it just gets overshadowed, occasionally, by her friendly rival Hellen Obiri. There will be no overshadowing on Marathon Monday, however, as Lokedi enters with the fastest PB, the mantle of defending champ, and a giant target on her back.

Across seven career marathons, Lokedi has really never laid an egg. Her lowest career finish was a ninth-place run at the 2024 NYC Marathon, but that was just three months after the Paris Olympics, and when you knock out those two races she’s finished on the podium of every other marathon she’s started. She has two WMM titles, but she’s also finished second or third behind Obiri in three other races. If you take New York in 2024 out of the equation, here’s the list of women who have beaten Lokedi head-to-head: Hellen Obiri, Sifan Hassan, Letesenbet Gidey, Tigst Assefa. End of list. Basically, if Lokedi is on the starting line with a full, healthy block of training in her legs, you’ve gotta be an all-time great to even stand a chance.

All indications suggest that that’s what we’ll see once again, as Lokedi ran 67:10 for second behind Obiri at the NYC Half in her only tune-up race of the spring. Irene Cheptai is the next returner from last year, where she finished fourth, and has the second-best PB. Ethiopian Workenesh Edesa is the rare entrant on her second marathon of 2026 already, as she finished third at the Osaka Women’s Marathon in January—but last year she came back from the same race to win the Hamburg Marathon in around the same timeframe, so she’s shown she can turn it around just fine. And the other most intriguing international name is Mary Ngugi-Cooper, who’s twice finished on the Boston podium and is coming off a fifth-place finish in Chicago last fall.

As far as Americans go, it’s honestly easier to list who’s not competing as the full roster of 2024 Olympians and 2025 World team members are all on the start list. That’s Fiona O’Keeffe, Emily Sisson, Dakotah Popehn, Susannah Sullivan, Jess McClain, and Erika Kemp. Throw in Annie Frisbie, the second American in both Boston and New York last year, and Amanda Vestri, who finished one spot behind Sisson in New York as well, and it’s starting to look more like a U.S. cross country meet than an international marathon. Plus, Sara Hall will battle it out with Aussie Lisa Weightman for top masters honors.

It’s tempting to frame the race as “Sisson takes on the new guard,” but let’s not forget that Sisson is still only 34 years old and theoretically entering her prime marathoning years. The better frame may be “who’s the best American marathoner in 2026,” because every potential contender to that title is heading to the same race, at the same time, to kick off spring marathon season.

Men’s Race

If either John Korir or Benson Kipruto breaks the tape on Monday, a third name will immediately spring to mind: Evans Chebet. From 2022 to 2023, Chebet was on one helluva hot streak, winning Boston, New York, then Boston again before injuries slowed his roll for the next few seasons. Neither Korir nor Kipruto can make it three straight majors with a win, but Korir could defend his Boston title and Kipruto, the 2025 NYC marathon champ, could make it two in a row.

On paper, Kipruto has the benefit of both recency and longevity, as he’s won a WMM in four of the last five years, including Boston in 2021. Korir has the slight blemish of a DNF in Chicago last year on his card, but he bounced back two months later to win Valencia in a new PB of 2:02:24. Chicago aside, Korir has won every race that he’s started going back to 2024, where he finished fourth in Boston, and he beat a strong domestic field in his tune-up, a 10km XC race in Kenya.

Those two are the headliners, but that’s not to say that another strong contender couldn’t take them both down. The second- and third-placers from last year, Tanzanian Alphonce Simbu and Kenyan Cybrian Kotut, are both back looking for revenge, alongside 2024 NYC champ Abdi Nageeye and 2024 Berlin champ Milkesa Mengesha. Two intriguing dark horses are 2016 Boston champ Lemi Berhanu, who hasn’t run a WMM race in four years but has a handful of recent wins at sub-major races like Paris and Prague, and Sydney Marathon champ Hailemaryam Kiros, who doesn’t race often but took second at the Xiamen Marathon in China in January.

With Mantz out, it’s tempting to favor Clayton Young as the top American in the mix, but he’s the third-fastest entrant by PB (and second fastest BYU alum behind Canadian Rory Linkletter). Young does has a decent shot at a top-five finish and top domestic honors, but he’ll have to take down two of the four fastest Americans in history: Zouhair Talbi, who ran 2:05:45 to win Houston in January, and Galen Rupp, who turns 40 in three weeks but still has a lifetime best of 2:06:07 next to his name. Rupp has run well in Boston before, finishing second in 2017, but it would undoubtedly be a surprise to see him get back to that level on Monday.

Rupp’s fellow old-timer Sam Chelanga is also on the start list, competing for top masters honor at 41 years young. Of the other contenders for top American, three guys who finished in the top 15 last year are all back: Ryan Ford, Wesley Kiptoo, and CJ Albertson. But perhaps the biggest threat among the 2:08 crowd comes in the form of 26-year-old Alex Maier, who ran 2:08:33 to win the Dusseldorf Marathon last fall in his second attempt at the distance. Like his Puma teammate Fiona O’Keeffe, Maier’s talent could very well outweigh his relative inexperience.

What will we be talking about next week?

Marathon predictions are a thankless task, as you inevitably end up getting graded along the binary of did you pick the winner, or not. So let’s think about this in a bigger-picture sense: what should we be watching for in Boston, and what will it mean for the sport writ large?

If Lokedi or Korir repeats, the answer is simple: They’ve both been central in conversations around who the world’s best current marathoner is, but another signature win firmly cements them in the category of greatest road runners of their generation. If someone else wins, the more important consideration is how. It’s less indicative of a change in the overall pecking order if someone is able to steal a win with a well-timed sprint in a slow race than if they tear the field apart. Evans Chebet’s first Boston win was a harbinger of things to come, mostly because of the absolutely lethal move he made in the final five miles, splitting 13:55 from 35k to 40k. If we see something similar from a relative unknown, that could be an indicator that they’re about to become a lot less unknown over the next few seasons.

As far as the American race-within-the-race goes, the women’s side is essentially a de facto national championship. A signature performance here from O’Keeffe, Sisson, or anyone else would pretty much solidify their spot atop the ranks of U.S. marathoners for the time being, and the burden would be on their challengers to prove otherwise in the fall. The men’s race, with the absence of the American record holder, won’t be quite as conclusive, but if Talbi can bounce back from Houston with another 2:05 or Young can contend for the podium, surely Mantz’s seat on the throne will start feeling a little warm.

More than anything else, next Monday signifies once and for all that spring racing season is fully underway, and if you’re starting to find yourself bored of watching endless laps around the oval, things are finally getting interesting.

Imagining A Whole New System Of World Championship Selection 💭

DISCLAIMER: These ideas are malleable, open to debate, and far from a hill we are willing to die on. It’s a conversation starter!

Championship racing is fun because anything can happen in a tactical race. Championship racing can also be a difficult way to select a team…. because anything can happen in a tactical race.

At the Australian National Championships, the downsides of a tactical race were on full display as jostling turned to chaos with less than 100m left in a crowded, slow race. Defending champ Jess Hull had a clear line of sight to the finish, but with a small pack still there beside her, Claudia Hollingsworth was full of energy but trapped. That’s when Hull got clipped from behind and went down.

The 21-year-old Hollingsworth closed in a remarkable 56.8 seconds over the final lap and crossed the finish line in 4:17.06 but with a looming sense of worry about what the judges would say. Well, she was DQ’d… initially. Sarah Billings was then determined to be the winner and with it, automatic selection for this summer’s Commonwealth Games. The second (and possibly third) spot would come via discretionary selection. All bets were on the many-time global medalist, Jess Hull, receiving a selection.

From an Athletics Australia perspective, that slow of a race, the fall, and subsequent DQ were not what you wanted. The purpose of having trials is so your best athletes can fairly duke it out to see who has the best shot of earning medals. That didn’t happen here.

It turns out that didn’t necessarily matter, either. Hollingsworth’s disqualification was overturned the next day. In general, we’re ticket-carrying riders on the Hollingsworth hype train, but that isn’t necessarily a decision we agree with at face value: her cut-in was a fairly obvious obstruction that impacted another athlete’s race. Rightly or not, Hollingsworth is now going to the Commonwealth Games through that automatically selected spot.

Beyond feeling bad for Sarah Billings—who for 24 hours thought she was on the team—it’s worth reflecting on the validity of a system where the actual original outcome was clearly so far from what the hoped for outcome was. Are trials races really the best way to determine team selection?

World Athletics is the governing body that, in addition to hosting the World Championships, oversees events and regulations surrounding qualification for the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. The International Olympic Committee and Commonwealth Games Federation are also independent entities, so it’s slightly more complicated in this instance. But for the sake of this argument, let’s just keep it clean and pretend we are discussing sending a team to the 2027 World Athletics Championships.

As things stand today, World Athletics sets the standards and manages the world rankings system that is leveraged for athlete qualification. The limitation to the ranking system is that even if an athlete has reached a certain standard, it’s still up to the federation to select them for its team. And there are 214 member federations with their own unique ways of deciding who gets those coveted spots for Worlds.

For the most competitive countries—where there are usually more than three athletes capable of hitting the standard— the national championships are a really big deal. If you don’t show up on that day, often six weeks ahead of the meet you’re hoping to qualify for, then you don’t go.

The whole system depends on a very basic assumption: that federations should get to set their own rules for who wears the national colors each year. But if World Athletics is in charge of the event and determining who qualifies, why is the team selection outsourced to the federations?

You could, for the sake of argument, view national governing bodies’ role in the process as more of a middleman with a frustrating tendency toward inconsistency. Rather than Team GB holding out developing athletes, shouldn’t it be up to World Athletics to say who’s invited? Instead of Kenya not announcing the Trials location until a couple weeks before, World Athletics would simply give the Kenyan federation a list of accepted names. In lieu of Australia hosting qualifying meets five months in advance, World Athletics could save them the trouble.

Rather than leave everything up to Seb Coe sitting alone in a room with a whiteboard and a telephone, WA could simply double- or triple-down on its touted world rankings system.

The top three ranked eligible athletes from each country are selected. Hard stop.

In that system, athletes don’t have to worry about chasing standards at all. It further deepens the investment in a system that is currently being pushed hard, but not always acknowledged. If fans understand and become invested in the ranking system, if athletes are racing more often, if Diamond League and area races are prioritized over college meets, then the system is working as World Athletics designed it.

Certainly, some logical changes would have to occur. Firstly, national championships should be upgraded from category “B” stature to make them more valuable. World Athletics could mandate that an athlete must compete in their respective event at their national championship, but the finishing result would be more about ranking than qualification. Such a system would, however, open the door to even more gatekeeping by a small handful of WA officials, meet directors, and agents. The Diamond League in particular would need much more transparency around field selection.

And finally, the performance window for the world rankings should open on January 1st of that year. The current system creates a loophole where global championship results can “carry forward” and allow superstars to skip out on much-needed regular season appearances.

Every NFL team understands what needs to happen to play in the Super Bowl; each division doesn’t set its own playoff rules. Similarly, track and field could benefit from a lot more international consistency about “the rules” – and whether or not you think World Athletics should hold all the power, they have the ability to create a system that’s more streamlined for global championships to come.

Trust The Trophy Case Over The Clock 🏆

Depending on your outlook, something awesome or terrible for track and field happened this weekend: a story from our little sliver of niche sport fandom broke containment and wound up aggregated by global outlets as distinguished as The Guardian and as knuckle-dragging as Barstool.

The story in question was Australian teenage sprinting phenom Gout Gout taking down Erriyon Knighton’s U20 world record in the 200m while winning the Australian championship in 19.67—also significantly faster than one Usain Bolt ran as an 18-year-old. That makes for a splashy headline, especially when you are able to cram Bolt’s name into the sentence. Technically, Knighton’s 19.49 from 2022 is faster, but it was not ratified as the official U20 record, so the mark Gout bettered was Knighton’s 19.69 from USAs that same year.

Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies down under. The top seven finishers all PR’d and per LetsRun’s Jonathan Gault, the first five men across the line PR’d by 0.20 seconds or more. The wind for this barn-burner registered at 1.7m/s, within the legal range. But accounts of the race describe a “swirling diagonal breeze” that basically delivered a swift kick in the pants to athletes as they came off the bend. This of course led to another round of “was the wind really the wind” discourse, a debate that’s at least two decades older than Gout himself.

Gout’s wasn’t the only remarkable result coming out of Sydney. His fellow Aussie wunderkind Cam Myers simply ran away from a competitive 1500m field to break the tape in 3:29.85—not a PB for the 19-year-old wunderkind, but a remarkable run in and of itself.

Myers beat out Olli Hoare, himself a 3:29 man and Commonwealth Games champ, by nearly three full seconds in a race that had no rabbit. In fact, it’s the fastest 1500m run with no rabbits outside a global championship since at least 2000. 3:29.85 is the 157th fastest 1500m ever run, but almost all the 156 times ahead of it were run in well-paced Diamond League-type races or World/Olympic finals. It may be the first sub-3:30 under such conditions ever—or at least since at least 1993. Until Yared Nuguse, Cole Hocker, et al show up at this year’s USAs looking to make it quick, that’s a pretty impressive stat. And yet some will still cry “trackflation” and angrily produce a pile of scientific studies touting the effects of carbon plates and sodium bicarbonate.

What do Gout and Myers have in common, besides being Australian teenagers? Winning. Whether or not you think their times are historically great or historically irrelevant, the (1) next to their name is inarguable. Gout Gout actually defended his 200m national title, and while Australia may be 1/10th the size of the U.S., it’s a large enough athletics powerhouse that comfortably winning back-to-back senior titles makes you part of the international conversation. We’ll get a true measure of his place on the global stage in a few short weeks, when the Aussie makes his official Diamond League debut against Olympic champ Letsile Tebogo at the Bislett Games in Oslo.

Halfway across the world, a whole bunch of people threw the discus further than any of their compatriots ever had before, with some help from a friendly headwind—the preferred gust direction of the discus community. Sam Mattis broke the American and area records in Ramona, Oklahoma, finishing fourth overall with a 72.45m toss. Matthew Denny’s 74.04m winning heave set a new Australian and area record, and Jorinde Van Klinken won the women’s competition in a Dutch record of 70.99m.

Because there are no wind limits associated with the throws, basically every all-time toss measured on the Ramona wind tunnel can feel like it comes with an asterisk. But instead, let’s look at it this way: Mattis was nearly two meters up on 2024 Olympic champ Rojé Stona, and just a few centimeters behind 2022 World champ Kristjan Čeh. We’re closing in on a decade since the last American medal in the men’s discus, and Mattis just sent the clearest message yet he’s becoming a podium contender.

The struggle of comparison isn’t unique to 2026 or track and field. In every era, across every sport, athletes have worked to maximize their own outcomes within the context of their circumstances. Bill Rodgers is nowhere near the U.S. top-ten list anymore, but he won eight major marathons across Boston and New York and 2:09 in a pair of shoes that look like they’re purposely designed to give you a stress fracture. It’s not crazy to suggest he could take on Conner Mantz on some time-bending neutral ground.

The clock may be absolute, but it’s not an arbiter of truth by itself. Increasingly, fans contort themselves into knots with mitigating factors and caveats. Parsing the sport’s results this way is exhausting and joyless. Instead, skip the rigamarole entirely and focus on a complementary, but easier to grapple with, truth: who won? That gets us closer to pure sport, where head-to-head matchups and competition are all that matters.

No matter how cynical you might view their recent results, athletes like Gout and Myers clearly possess superstar potential. You don’t need to contextualize and overanalyze their results to prove it—just put them to the eyeball test. Then just back and enjoy the show as they take on larger and better fields to see exactly how long their winning ways persist.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– In big European marathon action, Shrue Demise of Ethiopia lowered the course record at the Paris Marathon, clocking 2:18:34, while Italy’s Yemaneberhan Crippa broke the tape for the men in 2:05:18. Meanwhile, the Rotterdam Marathon saw an Ethiopian sweep, with Guye Adola (2:03:54) and Mekides Shimeles (2:18:56) taking top honors.

– On the general injury front, Peres Jepchirchir has withdrawn from this month’s London Marathon after sustaining a stress fracture late last year; and Jakob Ingebrigtsen—per his agent—is recovering nicely from surgery, and while he has ruled out competing in May or June, July racing appears to be on the table.

– In “horrifying state of geopolitics spilling over into sports” news, the Doha Diamond League meet has been postponed to June 19th. Originally scheduled for May 8th, the organizers—apparently optimistic that one month is enough time for things to cool off—are also relocating the competition to the climate-controlled Khalifa International Stadium.

– The Cherry Blossom 10 Miler, which doubled as the U.S. championship for the distance, produced two new national winners. Emma Grace Hurley went 50:52 to secure what was somehow just her first U.S. champs crown, in the process mixing it up with Ugandan national record-holder Joy Cheptoyek and overall winner Asayech Ayichew, who boasts a 29:43 10k PB. And Graydon Morris— of “Gracie Morris’s brother” fame—took second overall and top American in 46:18.

– Ryan Hagan, a junior at SUNY Geneseo, obliterated the old NCAA Division III 1500m record, going 3:38.67. That mark puts him almost eight seconds up on the rest of the descending order list for the division. Hagan originally enrolled at Georgetown after high school, then transferred back home to New York State ahead of the 2024 cross country season—but if there’s any doubt about his DIII bonafides, please note he was wearing a bandana for this race.

– Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Letsile Tebogo have both shared their intentions to compete at this summer’s World Ultimate Championships.

– The 2026 Global Runner Survey is open for responses! If you’ve got opinions on the state of road racing, this annual Running USA survey is an important one to fill out—lots of races use this data to inform their decisionmaking. As an incentive for participating, you’ll have the opportunity to enter to win one of four sought-after race registrations. The survey is open until July 31.

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