Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i AW - Athletics Weekly Magazine

On August 9, in a mixed race at a British Milers’ Club regional meeting, I ran my fastest 5000m time since the 2021 Olympic Trials. The run of 15:21 was still a good 18 seconds shy of my personal best, but good enough for seventh in the UK this year. I was delighted and, having shelled out on an altitude camp for the following three weeks to capitalise on such long-awaited fitness, I couldn't wait to plan the next opportunity to show it off. It wasn't just an opportunity that I wanted, but moreover desperately needed in order to make up for two seasons of lost ground and give myself a shot at selection for national teams again. We soon found out, however, that finding the next race was going…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 SHA'CARRI RICHARDSON Sha'Carri Richardson is bold, brash and confident. She is outspoken, controversial and, at times, outright rude. She is flashy and colourful. She is impossible to ignore. She is fiercely proud of her roots and everything she represents. She is fascinating. She is divisive. And she is brilliant for athletics. Richardson splits opinion like few other athletes, and for much of her career there has been good reason for people who might feel inclined to ignore a runner whose headlines were gained more for the words that came out of her mouth than the medals she produced on the track. But she is now the world 100m champion and a three-time world medallist. She is going nowhere and – support her or not – she…

Some think comparing any races is futile, especially those from different eras, but as Britain is going through another golden patch, let's consider how the current batch might compare with the all-time greats of the seventies, eighties and early 90s. In terms of time at 1500m they certainly do. Kerr (3:29.05 in Tokyo) and Wightman (3:29.23 in Eugene) set their PBs in championships, which would never have happened in days gone by. Steve Cram won his world title in 1983 in 3:41.59 with a 52 last lap but I would argue the four athletes behind him were better opposition than the top five in 2022 and 2023. Cram's PB was 3:29.67, very similar to our current champions, but it was a world record and the first ever sub-3:30. Seb Coe's…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 BRITISH TEAM Yes, the British team had a great championships, equalling the medal tally of 1993, but does that mean it was right to follow the strict selection process that saw World Athletics invitations for some athletes turned down? Not in my view. Maybe some of those athletes who were high enough in the world rankings to merit an invitation have had a past opportunity and not taken it. I can also appreciate that the World Championships is not a development event and that taking competitors destined to exit at the first opportunity may have had a negative impact on morale in the past. However, I'd argue that too many events featuring no athletes is more demoralising. A total of 14 men's events and six women's…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 FEMKE BOL Femke Bol bookended the World Championships in spectacularly fluctuating style. On opening night, there was the drama of the young Dutch athlete crashing to the ground with Mixed 4x400m relay gold in sight. Then, in the final track action of this athletics extravaganza, she engulfed her opponents with an unforgettable closing surge to clinch 4x400m relay gold for the Dutch women's team. The pendulum swing of emotions involved in going from that painful low to an adrenaline-fuelled high would have been more than enough for most athletes to contend with. Bol, however, is not most athletes. In between her relay performances was the small matter of contesting the 400m hurdles. In the absence of defending champion and world record-holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, the 23-year-old was…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 HIGHLIGHTS EUAN CRUMLEY, Editorial Director One of the sights from Budapest I will never forget was watching Faith Kipyegon and Sifan Hassan slugging it out in the closing stages of the women's 5000m final. Both have been at the forefront of the enormous leaps forward women's distance running has taken and, in the closing 600m of that race, here were two heavyweights going toe to toe at full tilt. Kipyegon did ultimately emerge victorious to complete a unique 1500m and 5000m double, but because of the pressure being applied by Hassan, it took a final lap of 56.59 (which also included a closing 200m sprint of 27.12) to get the job done. It might not be too long until we get to see this duo battling…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 STATISTICS There was one world U20 record, Roshawn Clarke of Jamaica clocking 47.34 in the 400m hurdles 6 thletes were multiple title winners in Hungary The championships produced one world record, when USA won the mixed 4x400m relay in 3:08.80 2100 athletes from 195 countries, plus the Athlete Refugee Team, competed at these World Championships Venezuela's Yulimar Rojas won her fourth world triple jump title Sha'Carri Richardson broke the championship record with 10.65 to win her first global title in the 100m, then anchored the USA team to a championship record in the women's 4x100m relay Seven championship records, 11 area records and 73 national records were set Noah Lyles took gold in the 100m, 200m and men's 4x100m relay Of the 49 champions from Eugene,…

In 2017, Mo Farah achieved his 10th successive global championships win in the 10,000m. A few days later, he finished second in the 5000m to win a 12th successive global medal. It made him the most dominant 5000m and 10,000m racer of all time. The Newham and Essex Beagle, Britain's most successful track and field athlete with four Olympic golds, was unique in setting European records from 1500m to the marathon. As he bows out from the sport, we select his greatest competitions from an international career that started in 1999 when he ran the World Youth Championships. 2001 Grosseto European Junior 5000m: First, 14:09.91 Farah won by almost two seconds from Bruno Saramago. The Portuguese had a less auspicious career, peaking with a 13:59.20 in 2004, ultimately well under…

Just 35 days after the curtain came down on the biggest athletics event of the year in Budapest, the next global championships will unfold in the Latvian capital of Riga. From the top track and field competitors in action last month in Hungary, our attention now turns to the best road runners competing in races over one mile, 5km and the half-marathon on October 1. This inaugural World Road Running Championships has its origins in the World Half-Marathon Championships which was first staged in 1992. Back then it was incorporated into the Great North Run on Tyneside, sponsored by Diet Coke and saw Liz McColgan and Benson Masya emerge as winners. While McColgan continues to enjoy a successful life in the sport, Masya, a former boxer from Kenya, died little…

Tracey is based in London and trains at St Mary's in Twickenham. She spends three to four months of the year training at altitude either in Kenya, Flagstaff or Font Romeu (where she spent her pre-camp for Budapest), depending on the time of year. Each training week incorporates 1 x 800m session and 1 x 1500m session and she complements her running with strength and conditioning (S&C) and yoga. On Saturdays throughout the winter (September – December and March) she does hills ranging from 30-90 second reps, preceded by 10 minutes of tempo on the flat. ♦ Monday: (am) 6 miles steady; (pm) 4 miles steady. “I do my steady running off how i feel,” she says. “If I'm feeling really tired I'll run slow and I won't look at…

“It's been a very weird apprenticeship,” reflects Rory Leonard. “I never learned to race. I went from literally scraping through to English Schools to being ranked second in Europe as an under-18. I had one year where I just had fun with it, then the next year [2018] I made European Youths. You're thrown in at the deep end and you've got no idea what to do, then you keep doing that over and over again.” Nothing worth having comes easy and Leonard knows that more than most. The 22-year-old, crowned 10,000m champion at the European Under-23 Championships in July, is now back in the UK after studying at Oklahoma State University (OSU) in the US since 2021. His gold is a remarkable high point in his career and marks…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 KATHARINE MERRY Well that was amazing, wasn't it? In my view, Budapest was one of the best World Championships there has ever been – and I've run in a few and worked on a few. For a championships to be a success isn't just about people doing great things on the track, collectively everything has to be good and I can't think of anything that the organisers actually could have done better. It helped, too, that there was always some sort of drama or a big story unfolding on the track or in the field. Even the events that were weaker – and there were some weaker events – got caught up in the whole thing. That also helped to diffuse one of the stories which…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 JOSH KERR AND DANNY MACKEY Isla was not happy. She had been in the middle of a peaceful nap when her father came into the room, scooped her out of bed and brought her in front of the TV. Danny Mackey had good reason for waking his little girl, though. Josh Kerr, one of the athletes from the Seattle-based Brooks Beasts group he coaches, was competing in the men's 1500m final at the World Championships and looked like he was about to do something special. “I'm really, really, really strict with the schedule in terms of sleep so for me to wake her up from a nap means there's a hurricane coming or an earthquake,” jokes Mackey. “It got to 500m to go and I saw…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 KATARINA JOHNSON-THOMPSON Katarina Johnson-Thompson could feel the doubts starting to creep in. Three events into the heptathlon in Budapest and she sat fifth, feeling particularly unimpressed about her performance in the shot put. This was a tipping point. Would she choose to allow the negativity in or opt to fight back? The 2019 champion knew the route to gold but it had been such a long time since she had been at the peak of her powers. A ruptured Achilles not long after that golden moment, followed by a calf tear that halted her Tokyo Olympic ambitions and needed surgery, mean that just getting back on the start line took huge reserves of fortitude. Johnson-Thompson was looking for more than that, though. She wanted to be…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 SHARED GOLD To some, it was the highlight of the World Championships – a fine demonstration of sportsmanship at its best. To others, it was as if a crime had been committed. There was even confusion over how it could come to pass that there would be two gold medallists in the women's pole vault. It was a result reminiscent of the Tokyo Olympics men's high jump as Nina Kennedy of Australia and Katie Moon of the United States shared the title in Budapest. Tamberi could not be separated and both agreed to both take gold. Here the same happened again with Kennedy and Moon clearing 4.90m on their third attempts before failing at 4.95m. They could have opted for a sudden death jumpoff but, exhausted,…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 JESSICA WARNER-JUDD By her own admission, Jessica Warner-Judd is not very good when it comes to rest days. Even in the 48 hours which immediately followed her top-eight finish in the women's 10,000m final at the World Championships, she didn't need her arm twisted very far to join some of her fellow British team-mates as they stretched their legs around Budapest. “I love to run and I love to chat,” she laughs. Part of her also simply wanted relive the race of her life. “In my mind, I could hear the bell…” Again, there is a hearty chuckle to accompany those last remarks. With the 28-year-old, a wide smile is never far away. With some athletes, you're never entirely sure what you're going to get during…

ULTRA COURTNEY DAUWALTER Under normal circumstances, Courtney Dauwalter securing her second victory at the classic Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) race at the beginning of this month would have been noteworthy enough on its own. Placed in the context of her year, however, the achievement becomes truly remarkable. This was the American's third 100mile event in 10 weeks and her third victory. To top it off, two of those wins came about thanks to course record breaking performances. Before 2023, the 38-year-old from Colorado had already established herself as one of the best of the current generation of ultra runners. This summer has seen her move into new territory. The first race in the treble was the Western States 100 on June 24. The course, in the Sierra Nevada mountains…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 NOAH LYLES I know how people think they should run the 200m and I know how to run it and that's what makes me so excited about it You suspect Noah Lyles knew exactly what he was doing. He had just become the fifth man in history to complete the 100m and 200m sprint double at a World Championships, and decided to air some opinions. Asked – as he often is – about what could be done to improve the sport he is bending to his will, he decided to turn the focus in another direction. The man who was born in Florida should be a huge star in America, yet still his profile is dwarfed by those who make their living through American football, baseball…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 1500M SPECIAL The men's 1500m final in Budapest was almost like a case of deja-vu. Just as in Eugene the year before, it was a fast-paced race controlled by Jakob Ingebrigtsen where the Norwegian had to relent in the last 200m to an Edinburgh AC athlete who won their first major senior title. Wightman's time was slightly quicker (3:29.23 to 3:29.38) with Kerr having the slightly bigger winning margin (0.27 to 0.24) and because it was a slower earlier pace Kerr ran much the quicker last lap (53.37 to 54.84) and 800m (1:49.23 to 1:51.17). Who do you think would win this battle of the Brits? Get in touch via our social media channels or email haveyoursay@athleticsweekly.com The two races were incredibly similar initially, with almost…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUPABEST 23 GLEN MILLS When it comes to working with Glen Mills, silence is absolutely golden. Two of his star pupils, who are thriving under the man best known for mentoring Usain Bolt, will attest to that. “He's a very hard master and he sees every little detail,” says Antonio Watson, the 21-year-old who became Jamaica's first world champion in the men's 400m for 40 years in Budapest. “He's really hard on his marking. You know you're getting there when you are in a training session and coach Mills doesn't call your name. That means you're on the right path.” Zharnel Hughes concurs. “If you don't hear him make any comments, it means you're doing well,” grins Britain's 100m world bronze medallist. It's at the Racers Track Club,…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 FIELD EVENTS The best athletes know how to win. Irrespective of their form or the situation in which they find themselves, champions still manage to uncover the escape hatch which leads to victory. There were no fewer than four examples in Budapest, when four field event champions took gold with their final jumps and throws of the competition. Plan comes together for Kitaguchi As a child, Haruka Kitaguchi was told during swimming lessons that she had poor coordination. Her legs and arms did not move in harmony and, even when she took up javelin, she was warned she was out of sync. But she began to be coached by Czech Republic javelin guru David Sekerak with additional input from Kazutaka Adachi, a professor of applied anatomy…

WORLD ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS BUDAPEST 23 ROLL OF HONOUR Men 100M 1 Noah Lyles USA 9.83 2 Letsile Tebogo BOT 9.88 NR 3 Zharnel Hughes GBR 9.88 200M 1 Noah Lyles USA 19.52 2 Erriyon Knighton USA 19.75 3 Letsile Tebogo BOT 19.81 400M 1 Antonio Watson JAM 44.22 2 Matthew Hudson-Smith GBR 44.31 3 Quincy Hall USA 44.37 800M 1 Marco Arop CAN 1:44.24 2 Emmanuel Wanyonyi KEN 1:44.53 3 Ben Pattison GBR 1:44.83 1500M 1 Josh Kerr GBR 3:29.38 2 Jakob Ingebrigtsen NOR 3:29.65 3 Narve Gilje Nordas NOR 3:29.68 5000M 1 Jakob Ingebrigtsen NOR 13:11.30 2 Mohamed Katir ESP 13:11.44 3 Jacob Krop KEN 13:12.28 10,000M 1 Joshua Cheptegei UGA 27:51.42 2 Daniel Simiu Ebenyo KEN 27:52.60 3 Selemon Barega ETH 27:52.72 3000M STEEPLECHASE 1 Soufiane El Bakkali MAR 8:03.53 2 Lamecha Girma ETH 8:05.44 3 Abraham Kibiwot KEN 8:11.98 MARATHON 1 Victor Kiplangat UGA…

AGE: 30 COACH: CRAIG WINROW With one national record, three personal best times and two Olympic qualifiers across five rounds in nine days at the World Championships in Budapest, Adelle Tracey was reminded how much she loves championship running. “I think I really thrive in that environment,” she says. “I knew that training had gone really well and all my preparation was there. We'd worked really hard with my mind coach as well, so I was in a really good space. I just wanted to see what all the hard work meant. There are very few times when your body feels so ready, you feel healthy, you're enjoying it, and everything aligns, so I knew I'd be silly not to make the most of that and to see what I…