“The time was three,” McWhirter intoned as he reached crescendo, at which point the rest (presumably “minutes 59.4 seconds” – we’ll just have to take his word for it) was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.

When Lachlan Kennedy ran 9.98 seconds for 100 metres in Nairobi last weekend (31 May), his joy at breaking a significant barrier may have been as great as Bannister’s but he didn’t have a mate on the trackside public address (as far as we know). Nor was his time a meeting or track record, a national record, an area record or a Kenyan all-comers record. The British Empire having joined the dead parrot in no-longer existing, nor was it either an Empire or Commonwealth record.

Kennedy himself summed it up succinctly. And in a manner resonant with McWhirter’s announcement on that momentous mile occasion, it took just one number to do it.

“I can finally say I ran nine,” he summarised. Yes indeed, and just the second Australian to be able to say so. Patrick Johnson’s national record 9.93 may be living on borrowed time. As this columnist observed recently, Bannister is defined by the number three, uniquely so because he was the first to break four minutes. Now Lachie Kennedy joins Johnson in being defined by the number nine. With Usain Bolt’s world record 9.58 so far unchallenged, much less bettered, the Australian pair are likely to be nine-defined by this number for a while yet.

So, what does Kennedy’s performance mean. Many things but let’s have a stab at some. In absolute terms he ran his 9.98 in Nairobi which sits around 1800 metres above sea level. He ran into a 0.7 metres per second headwind. According to the wind/altitude conversions readily findable via your search engines, the two factors roughly cancel each other out though there is a slight net benefit.

The Kenyan all-comers record is held by America’s Trayvon Brommel who beat the third placegetter in Kennedy’s race, Ferdinand Omanyala, by 0.01 in the 2021 edition of the Keino Classic in 9.76. Splitting Kennedy and Omanyala last weekend was South Africa’s Paris Olympic relay gold medallist Bayanda Walaza. Omanyala’s PB is 9.77, Walaza, who won the 100 and 200 metres double at last year’s world U20 championships (beating Gout Gout in the latter), had run 9.94 the previous weekend. Very credible opposition, too.

Ten seconds for men’s 100 (or 11 for women’s) is also the benchmark for true world-class sprinting. Sub-10 puts a male sprinter in almost every Olympic and world championships final ever run (and, as they say, anything can happen in the final). The slight downer there is that the one final of the past four global championships where this did NOT apply was Paris24. It took times of 9.91, or faster, to take one of the two automatic final spots from the three semi-finals while 9.93 was the slower of the two non-automatic qualifiers. But 9.98 would have made the Tokyo20 Olympic final and the world championships final in Eugene and Budapest.

Twenty Feet from Stardom, a film which won the best documentary Oscar in 2014, details the experiences of the back-up singers (overwhelmingly female) who support some of the biggest names in popular music but for various reasons never quite attempt or complete the jump to individual stardom. Twenty feet refers to the distance they stand behind the stars.

At 10-second 100 metres speed an athlete covers about 10 metres per second, one metre per 0.1 seconds, 10 centimetres per 0.01. Before last weekend, with a 10.00 PB, Kennedy was 10 centimetres from stardom. Now, he is in the mix to make the final at the world championships later this year. Not yet superstar status, but in the constellation of potential medallists.

Another positive factor in Kennedy’s sub-10 is it represents the continuation of an upward trend in Australian men’s (and women’s) sprints. Again, Kennedy alluded to this himself in his post-race comments. In short succession Gout Gout has run two just-windy 9.99 times of 9.99 at the national championships, a resurgent Rohan Browning 10.01 to edge Kennedy (also 10.01) to win the senior national title and Kennedy has taken the silver medal in the 60 metres at the world indoor championships and dipped under 10.

Added to that is the 37.87 national record in the 4×100 relay at this year’s Sydney Track Classic. The group of young sprinters – men and women – is nothing if not collegiate and as Kennedy said in Nairobi they all take pleasure from the performance of the others. The men’s 60, 200 and 4×100 national records and the women’s 60, 100 and 4×100 national records have all been broken since the start of 2024 (some of them more than once). Things are bubbling along very nicely indeed.

Australian women have done fantastically well in Olympic and world championships 100 metres with gold medallists in Marjorie Jackson and Betty Cuthbert and further medallists including Marlene Mathews and Raelene Boyle. Men’s pickings have been slim to the point of malnourishment. Stan Rowley was third in the 100 (and 60 and 200) at the Paris 1900 Games, John Treloar a finalist in Helsinki in 1952. Hec Hogan’s bronze in the Melbourne Olympic 100 is our only medal in that event since Rowley and Paul Narracott made the 100 final in the first world championships in 1983.

Nothing since. Can Lachlan Kennedy – anyone, really – turn that around in Tokyo this year.

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Along with the individual performances, the table lists how the result impacts the athlete’s position on the World Athletics rankings. As you may remember, the world rankings now play a major role in determining which athletes can go to the major championships. An individual’s ranking is one of the two ways in which athletes can qualify. The first is by achieving a tough qualifying standard; the rankings then top up the number of entrants in line with the capped entry number for each event.

The aim of the qualifying system is to select half the field through the automatic qualifying standard and half through the next best rankers. The system was first mooted for the Doha 2019 world championships, but the unease generated by its abrupt (and belated) announcement saw it postponed until the Tokyo Olympics. It has been in use since. For better or worse, one could add, but that’s another matter.

The rankings system was designed to further several outcomes. It would generate narratives of its own, follow the progress of athletes as they strive to qualify for the major championship of the year. Not sure what was expected there, but in terms of mainstream media I’ve not seen, heard or read many stories specifically on the rankings. To be fair, there’s not that many such stories in tennis and golf, two other sports with long established rankings which determine entry into events.

It was likewise designed to encourage athletes to compete more. That works to an extent, but once an athlete has achieved the Big Q, the automatic qualifying standard, they don’t have to worry as much about where and when they compete. And the sort of athletes you want competing more frequently – your Duplantises, McLaughlin-Levrones and other meeting headliners – usually don’t have to worry too much about their ranking as the automatic standard is easily withing their grasp.

To make the system more equitable – athletics is a world sport, after all – there has been a proliferation of permit events. That’s broadly a good thing, but the system has a hierarchy of events which might give more equity but doesn’t make more sense. All area championships carry the same bonus points, all national championships likewise, when they palpably should not.

In terms of the automatic qualifying standards, some events offer greater opportunities than others. It’s relatively common for up to 10 (or more) athletes in a Diamond League middle-distance event to better the automatic standard but is someone running fast in tenth place more worthy of being in a world championship field than someone winning their national title.

What the system has encouraged, it appears, is more competitions where the aim is to get a performance than competitions where everyone’s aim is to win.

Anyway, let’s leave the qualifying system and the world rankings to another day. I’ve got misgivings about both but they fly out the window as soon as the weekly update mentioned way up above lands in the inbox. I don’t know about you, but I’ve rarely met a list into which I could resist the urge to dive. Ten best/worst films, 10 greatest albums, best places to travel, best trains to catch – you name it, I’m there.

And the performance update of which we speak is much more than just a simple list of performances. It also tabulates how these performances have impact on qualifying. Is it a Big Q? Does it produce a net improvement of the athlete’s position vis-à-vis getting to Tokyo25 (it’s possible for an individual improvement to actually leave the athlete worse off if they are swamped by a host of other superior performances around the world in the same period). Where does the level of the last athlete currently inside the field cut-off stand. 

Who’s on the rise? Who’s on the wane? On and on it goes until the final date for entries.

And we study the chart in detail. We’ve all become – I don’t know, what’s the word for obsessives who study tables and lists? Chartists? Tabulists?

The rankings update has become the new stock market listings. Or the racing form guide, complete with betting details. You can’t call it a road map; it records the journey without showing the destination.

Whether or not the rankings system is hooking any new fans into athletics is a moot point (probably not, is my best guess). But it’s irresistible bait for the committed fans.

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As I can’t resist the urge to point out every time I have cited that report over the years, the sport did neither. Athletics in Australia didn’t change (not much, anyway). Nor did it die. It’s still very much alive, thriving, in fact. Part of the explanation for this state of affairs is that the 2032 Olympic Games will be staged in Brisbane and, if I’m not telescoping the timescale too much, Sydney was awarded the 2000 Olympics not that long after Landy’s report.

Tentative conclusion then: Olympic Games hosting is an excellent way for Olympic sports to dodge death.

Leaving that aside, however, it seems that we are tossing on a stormy sea of change at the moment. World Athletics has been all activations and innovations for a few years now: I date it back to the world indoor championships in Portland, Oregon in 2016. That was the first time I noticed things like athlete entry to the track being accompanied by a volley of gas guns and selected events being contested outside the stadium, but I may have been slow to notice. Shot putters and pole vaulters nowadays see more of the host city’s squares and railway stations than they do of the stadium.

And to come next year is the Ultimate Championship, a ‘really big show’ as presenter Ed Sullivan would ritually atone each Sunday night in the early days of US network television about the line-up of guests for his weekly variety show. No doubt we will hear more and more of this event as we draw closer to it, but for the minute we must be satisfied – largely – by the assurance that it is ‘the ultimate’.

That’s going along with the innovation agenda as tested in several meetings already and which includes things like a one-metre take-off zone in the horizontal jumps, innovation upon innovation by adding a mixed 4×100 relay to the previously introduced mixed 4×400, tinkering with the false-start rules, the 200 metre hurdles, a one mile steeplechase – the four-minute barrier (for men, anyway) added to the traditional five barriers per lap, and heaps more.

Then there’s Grand Slam Track, which we could summarise as a concept built on providing heaps less. Track events only. Just one thing happening at a time. Athletes running in two events over three days (reduced, already, to a two-day format so now twice in two days). Why no field events? Well, as Michael Johnson put it, he can maybe save track but he can’t save track and field. Not yet, anyway.

Grand Slam Track appears mostly about presenting the traditional elements of track – some of track, anyway – in a more attractive package. More head-to-head competition by signing star athletes to compete a fixed number of times, namely eight over its four meetings in the inaugural season. As mentioned here a couple of weeks back, it already has Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone competing more times this year than she has in the previous two. So, that can’t be a bad thing, although not having Mondo Duplantis compete at all is definitely NOT a good thing.

But, as also mentioned then, it’s too early to judge the impact.

Most of the innovation drive seems directed at getting fans to focus on one thing at a time, focusing attention through presentation and, in the case of GST, elimination of events judged surplus to requirements.

What if, though, part of the appeal of athletics is its ability to showcase several things at once. I was first struck by this thought when I came across a report on Melbourne interclub competition back in the 1950s. This was in the lead-up to the Melbourne Olympic Games, too, reinforcing the suggestion that the way to save the sport is to have the next Olympics.

Anyway, our observer went to an interclub competition in November 1953. Maybe they saw Landy race in pursuit of the four-minute mile. Regardless, it wasn’t any one thing that entranced them.

“No other city in the world can match Melbourne’s weekly, non-stop athletic carnival,” our columnist enthused. “You’ve got to see one of these interclub meetings to believe it. It’s nothing to see five events going on at the same time, with each set of competitors oblivious to the others. But it’s a spectacular sight for spectators.”

Of course, if Landy was there and racing that day, most of those spectators had come to see just one thing. No matter, they were also exposed to the others. You can’t watch five events at once if there is only one going on.

But the writer’s thoughts mirrored my own the first time I attended the Zurich Weltklasse (no events at the railway station that year: Sergey Bubka was in the Letzigrund, contending with several other events). Likewise at my first indoor meeting, the world championships at Maebashi, Japan, in 1999. Or the way the epic shot put battle between Tommy Walsh, Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs at the world outdoor championships in Doha in 2019 grabbed the attention amidst all the potential distractions. That competition was made better by the other events competing for fans’ eyeballs.

Only one opinion, but I reckon the appeal of track and field is first its simplicity – fastest, highest, strongest; the immediacy of the result; then its variety. Something for everyone, every minute. A carnival of excellence competing for our attention.

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Could have been talking about the World Relays.

In the moment, Macbeth, the king of Scotland, is not feared for his own mortality. Not yet, anyway: Macbeth is buoyed by the third of the prophesies with which the three witches egged him on to murder his predecessor and seize power. “No man of woman born shall harm Macbeth.” Seems pretty watertight, but the logic comes unstuck as Macduff informs Macbeth he was “from my mother’s womb untimely ripped.” A premature birth then, reliant on outside intervention.

Which left Macbeth without a leg to stand on, just like Kishane Thompson at the world relays waiting in vain at the last change for a baton which never came. Jamaica’s second runner in the men’s 4×100 qualifying round, Julian Forte, collapsed near the finish of his back-straight leg with a hamstring injury, unable to complete the pass to Yohan Blake which left Thompson stranded. Strangely the same fate had befallen Thompson in the heats, though this time without the explaining factor of injury.

Notionally, at least, Thompson was the fastest man running the 4×100 in Guangzhou. An Olympic silver medallist on the final leg is a priceless asset, but not if the baton never gets to him. You can be DQed or DNF once in the world relays, but even under the relaxed rules which allow that scenario – and enabled the USA men’s 4×400 to qualify for the Olympics last year and the world championships this year – you cannot do it twice.

And with 14 teams – the eight finalists and top six from the second qualifying round – clinching places in the world championships in Tokyo later this year, the Jamaican men will now have to rely on grab one of the two places still left open on fastest times. The Jamaica and US clause, as one wag in our group chat called it.

To summarise to this point then, it seems that the point of the world relays is, or has become, not to win but to qualify for the next global championships, be it the Olympic Games or the full world championships. This wasn’t the case for the first edition in the Bahamas back in 2014 but by the time of the second, also in the Bahamas the following year, the first eight in the world relay (the finalists) qualified for the Rio Olympics.

By Yokohama 2019, two things had happened (three, if you count the fact that the relays had moved from their ‘permanent’ Bahamas home). First, the event had moved to a two-year cycle; second, the number qualifying to the next global titles had increased from eight to 10 (the finalists plus the next two best). Almost immediately, of course, Covid disrupted the orderly two-year cycle.

And now, we have no fewer than 14 of the teams for Tokyo25 being determined at the relays. This is all well and good, but not without drawbacks, which we will get too shortly.

Over time, too, the scope of the event has already grown and now been refined back to just the 4×100 and 4×400 distances contested at the Olympics and worlds. Guangzhou25 brought the introduction of a mixed 4×100, but that was a prelude to its addition to the Olympic program in Los Angeles28. So, it’s 4×100 men, women and mixed and the same for 4×400.

The initial concept was more along the lines of US relays like Penn and Drake. In 2014, the world relays started with 4×100, 4×200, 4×400, 4×800 and 4×1500. The latter lasted just one edition, replaced in 2015 by a distance medley relay – legs of 1200, 400, 800 and 1600. The DMR proved as short-lived as the 4×1500, lasting only one edition. By Yokohama both the 4×800 and 4×1500 had gone, replaced by a mixed 2x2x400 and a 100/110 hurdles shuttle relay, again a mixed relay, two men, two women.

The biggest problem of where the relays are now, however, is that winning has become secondary to qualifying for the Olympics or world championships. Australia took a bronze medal in the mixed 4×400 relay in Guangzhou, for example, gaming the system by running its B-team in each of the men’s and women’s 4×400 heats on day one, and including our two best males – Reece Holder and Cooper Sherman – and best female – Ellie Beer – in the mixed 4×400 heats.

The mixed team qualified for the final, and thus also for Tokyo. So, job done there. Holder, Sherman and Beer then returned to the single gender events on day two, enabling both those teams to likewise qualify for Tokyo from the second round. Fortunately, their replacements – 4×400 heat runners Luke Van Ratingen, Tom Reynolds and Carla Bull – were good enough to help the mixed team to a medal.

No criticism of Australia, who merely joined a list of countries taking advantage of the qualifying system to ensure they guaranteed as many of their relays as possible a start in Tokyo. The problem is you then have several teams making finals and then running their ‘slower’ runners as they use their best athletes to qualify the ‘other’ relay. Championships are supposed to be about the best racing against the best.

Added to this is the absence of big names. Some of the best-known world stars did compete in Guangzhou, equally as many did not, including some who will be the main men or women at the world championships. That standards are slipping is evident from the records, the mixed relays, ‘new’ events after all, excepted. Three of the four championship records in the 4×100 and 4×400 go back to the first two editions. The one exception is the women’s 4×100 which was set at the 2024 relays.

Guangzhou25 was entertaining to watch – relays always are. The outcomes for Australia were very pleasing. Nor is it realistic to expect the world’s top sprinters to be all guns blazing at this time of the year. But a world championship should be an end, not just a means to qualify for something else. Otherwise, what does it signify.

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“Too early to say,” Zhou replied of an event which was approaching its two hundredth anniversary.

That’s inscrutability for you. Readers with keen memories may also recognise it as one of this writer’s favourite hooks, but there you go.

Were he still alive, and a keen athletics fan – one of which propositions is definitely false, the other unknowable – Zhou might make the same comment about Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track project. Launched with great fanfare, Grand Slam Track is two meetings into its first season with two more to come in the next few weeks. Is it the next big thing? A big thing at all? Too early to say.

There’s plenty of good things about it. First and foremost among them that Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone has signed on. SML has already raced four times, twice each at the 400 metres hurdles and the 400, which, not counting heats, is already about as many individual races as she has raced in either of the past two years. Under the GST format, in which athletes have to race twice over three days in each of the four meetings, she will run at least four more. Eight times Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone? Gotta be happy with that.

And with every race being a straight final of eight athletes, the competition is distilled to its essence. Fans have already seen some great racing such as the men’s 1500 in the first meeting in Kingston, Jamaica where Olympic 800 champion Emmanuel Wanyonyi upstaged the specialists.

What’s not to like? Well, the total absence of field events is one. This was pre-announced with Johnson’s observation that “I think I can save track. I don’t think I can save track and field.” That may be true, but from this distance the absence of field events leaves a big hole. One of the most appealing aspects of an athletics meeting – for those spectating live, at least – is that there is something going on all the time and most of the time at least two things at once. Even in a made-for-television window gaps in a track-only program diminish the experience.

And while eight competitors may be ideal for sprints, hurdles and even the 800, it leaves the longer distances – GST has 1500, 3000 and 5000 – sometimes looking critically under-populated. Racing for big prize pools, too, is as likely to dictate caution in the longer races as it is to encourage boldness. There’s only so many exciting last-lap dust-ups one can take.

The other hurdle GST has to jump is that it must continue to attract enough of the highest quality athletes. Some events have, others have not. Of earlier attempts at something similar, the most successful was the International Track Association which lasted four years from 1972 to 1976, attracted good spectator interest and featured many of the champions of the 1972 Munich Olympics. In the end though, ITA foundered on not being able to sign up the projected stars of Montreal 1976 (of course, that was in the amateur-professional era while now athletics is open).

Grand Slam Track has made a promising start and presumably its backers have deep enough pockets to give it time to develop. But does it have a secure long-term future? Too early to say.

We’ve barely recovered from the domestic season, but already there’s a couple of “too early to say” questions floating around. After a 2:33.45 for 1000 metres and a 1:57.83 800 in the first two Diamond Leagues which, in turn, followed her second place behind Jess Hull but ahead of Georgia Griffith and Linden Hall in the national 1500, is 2025 about to be the year we see Sarah Billings fulfil her undoubted potential. Another 1500 in Japan on 18 May may provide further evidence but – too early to say.

Staying on point, what can we expect this year from Linden Hall, Catriona Bisset, Stewie McSweyn and Olli Hoare who are all trying to extend already significant stays in the top echelons of world middle-distance running. Current signs are mixed but, again, too early to say.

At the other end of the spectrum, it seems one of our current crop of male sprinters must go sub-10 seconds soon. Lachie Kennedy has a legal 10-flat, Gout Gout two wind-aided sub-10s while the slightly older Rohan Browning is returning to the form which took him to a 10.01 at the Tokyo Olympics. Any day now, you’d reckon, Patrick Johnson will have company in the sub-10 lists but – it’s too early to say.

Actually, a quote from English marathoner Ian Thompson – Commonwealth and European champion in 1974 – seems apt here. “In a marathon,” Thompson said, “they stretch those last few miles somehow; they must use elastic measuring tapes.”

Thompson was talking about the longest Olympic running distance, Kennedy, Gout, Browning – and several others – are competing over the shortest. But as long as those last few centimetres – in Gout’s case that last puff of wind – continue to confound, it must seem that they, too, are measured with elastic tapes.

Another Aussie sub-10 this year? You guessed it: too early to say 

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Dig a little deeper and you will discover that at the start of the Seoul Olympic year Ondieki (she was Lisa Martin then) set an Australian record 2:23:51 in winning the Osaka women’s marathon, a record which stood for just short of 19 years until Benita Willis broke it in 2006 and which was further improved by Sinead Diver.

What you may not have known, however, is that Ondieki’s performance was regarded by some as a world record.

How so, you ask, given that Ingrid Kristiansen, Joan Benoit and Mota had all run faster: Kristiansen held the world best with her 2:21:06 in London in 1985. The reason why many of us back then thought of Ondieki’s time as a world record was that it was set in a women’s race on a loop course while the others were run in mixed fields in London and Chicago. Furthermore, because the London race started in Blackheath and ended on London Bridge (it’s much the same now except it finishes on The Mall), it was regarded as point-to-point.

Although many famous traditional marathons – Boston, London’s earlier Windsor to Chiswick course on which Jim Peters set three world bests – were point-to-point, as the marathon moved to official world record status loop or out-and-back courses were the only ones accepted as world-record or world-best-eligible. That’s changed now, with the requirement being that the start and finish do not have to be at the same point but can be separated by no more than half-the distance. By amazing coincidence, that made London and New York record-eligible! Boston, which is by no means a fast course, is not.

The relatively short history of women’s marathoning was given impetus not by the marathon’s adoption as a championship race, but rather by the gradual entry of women into mass participation races. Going way back, some pioneers were allowed to start before the men in some of the traditional races. Others ran by subterfuge. Roberta Gibb snuck into the Boston field one year then Kathy Switzer obtained an official bib by entering as ‘K.Switzer.’ The 1982 European championships staged a women’s marathon – won by Mota – Grete Waitz won the first world championships race in Helsinki in 1983 and Benoit triumphed in the first women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984. 

When the International Amateur Athletic Association (now World Athletics) adopted world records for the marathon it recognised that most women’s performances came in mixed mass-participation races so it made no sense to deem such performances ineligible for record purposes. The official women’s world record is that thunderclap 2:09:56 by Ruth Chepngetich in Chicago last year. But World Athletics does still give recognition to the best performance in women-only competition.

That record stood at 2:16:16 to Peres Jepchirchir, set in London last year. Paris Olympic silver medallist Tigst Assefa won this year’s London in 2:15:50, beating Joyciline Jepkosgei and Olympic champion Sifan Hassan.

London has made something of a specialty of the women-only world record since race organisers generously allowed Paula Radcliffe a shot at world record bonus payments following her 2:15:25. The last four improvements have all come in London, Radcliffe winning again in 2:17:42 in 2005, Mary Keitany leaving the pacemakers and everyone else behind with her 2:17:01 in 2017 before Jepchirchir and Assefa in the past two years.

The concept of a women’s world record set in women-only races is well worth preserving replicating, as it does, what happens in championship racing. And the quality of the record-holders is undeniable dating back to Lisa Ondieki’s Olympic silver medal credentials. Paula Radcliffe was a world record breaker. She won the Helsinki 2005 world championship from defending champion Catherine Ndereba. Peres Jepchirchir is the Tokyo Olympic champion and Tigst Assefa was runner-up in Paris last year and set the previous world record at 2:11:53 in 2023.

There’s no mugs among that lot.

Another world best also caught the eye last weekend. That was the 33.05 for 300 metres hurdles set by 4000 hurdles world record holder Karsten Warholm in the opening Diamond League in China.

That’s pretty good. In fact, it’s better than the previous world best of 33.26 set by – checks notes – well, it was Warholm in 2021. That was in Oslo’s Bislett Stadium (but not the Oslo DL) in a warm-up for his 46.70 world record 400 hurdles when the DL meeting did take place a few weeks later. A diligent correspondent for the Athletics International newsletter did put together a world-time list which went all of seven places deep and all the way to a David Hemery (1968 Olympic champ) in London in 1972. For all intents and purposes, though, the history of the 300 hurdles is pretty much the history of Warholm’s participation.

So, it’s with some surprise you read a report that World Athletics will be granting the time-honoured ‘300 sticks’ world record status. Seems like an idea dreamed up on a quiet day in the innovations department. Anyway, as noted, Warholm went on to break the 400 hurdles world record in his very next race back in 2021 which should make his debut over the full lap in the second China DL in Shanghai/Keqiao this weekend (3 May) very interesting indeed.

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A year ago, Mykolas Alekna went to Millican Field at self-styled ‘Throw Town’ more prosaically known as Ramona, Oklahoma (pop. 535 at the 2010 US census), and threw 74.35 metres, breaking a world record set by Jurgen Schult of the former German Democratic Republic back in 1986, the oldest men’s world mark. Twenty-one years old, son of two-time Olympic champion Virgilijus Alekna, Mykolas was born to throw far. But that far?

“Oklahoma! Where the winds come sweeping down the plain,” as the song from the musical of the same name goes. And when those sweeping winds blow in the right direction, you can throw the discus a long, long way indeed. Some expressed misgivings at what they saw as a flagrant exploitation of freakish conditions. The term “weather doping” – seeking out favourable conditions to enhance performance – was heard, but the world sat up and took note.

One of the note-takers was Matt Denny, whose gradual climb through the ranks of the world’s throwers last year brought an Olympic bronze medal in Paris and a second successive victory in the Diamond League final in Brussels. He wanted to see what he could do utilising the conditions on offer in Ramona. Denny skipped the national titles and headed to the US with his coach, Dale Stevenson. The Throws Series runs daily for almost a full month. Denny threw 72:07 in his first competition, before an oh-so-close to the world record 74.25 in his second.

The stage was set for a showdown with Alekna. This clash of titans did not disappoint, though it was settled quickly. Alekna struck first with a world record 74.89 in the first round, then improved to 75.56, another world record, on his fourth effort. Two valid throws out of six, both world records. Denny gradually pushed out from a mid-60s opener to three throws in the 70-72 range and then a massive/not quite massive enough 74.78 in the fifth round. He closed with a 73.36.

Denny’s best leaving Australia was 69.96. In three Throw Town meetings he had 15 of 18 throws over 70 metres, including two beyond 74 metres and three each at 73 and 72 metres. Ideal conditions or no, he pushed the world record holder to a new world record and is now the second-best performer all-time (he arrived in Ramona as number 33).

This display of awesome consistency kicked off an immediate discussion in one of the several groups your correspondent belongs to. One contributor wondered whether Denny was our most consistent thrower ever. Depends how you measure consistency, I guess. Matt has now been top-10-ranked five years in a row by Track&Field News, fourth and third in 2023 and 2024, and will almost certainly make it six in a row in 2025.

But we’ve had some outstanding female discus throwers, too. There’s Olympic silver medallist Daniela Costian and Lisa-Marie Vizaniari for a start, but it’s Dani Stevens who unquestionably stands with Matt Denny at the peak of Australian shades for longevity – though Matt’s not done yet – and matches his consistency. Stevens was the youngest-ever world champion when she won in Berlin in 2009. She got her first world top 10 ranking a year earlier, beginning a run of 11 straight years. In six of those 11 years, Stevens ranked in the top five and she added a world championships silver in 2017 and an Olympic fourth in 2016 to her world championships gold. That’s awesome consistency, too.

And if you want a couple more statistics showing how close Stevens and Denny are, Stevens is still ranked 32 all-time on the world list (Denny was 33 pre-Oklahoma) and her personal best is 69.64 metres (Denny 69.96 pre-Oklahoma). Pressed to choose, I’d still refuse.

I took an earlier look at this whole consistency thing in a column at the end of 2021. Posing the question as to who might be our best athlete, I argued that it depended how you looked at it.

“Some would say it has to be an Olympic or world champion, a world record breaker, or perhaps both. Others might look at longevity, consistent excellence over a period of years. Then there’s the impact of a single performance: Ralph Doubell’s world record-equalling win in the 800 metres in Mexico City, Herb Elliott’s smashing world record victory in the 1500 in Rome, Cathy Freeman withstanding the crushing build-up of pressure to win the 400 in Sydney.

“Not many would suggest Pam Ryan, but for excellence in a single event over an extended period, you could mount a case. Ryan’s signature event was the sprint hurdles, run over 80 metres until 1969 and thenceforth over 100. She was ranked in the world top-10 by Track & Field News no fewer than 11 times – 10 in succession from 1961 to 1970, and again in 1972.

“Ryan also ranks high against other criteria. Though never an Olympic gold medallist she was third in Tokyo in 1964, second in Mexico City in 1968 (both these over 80 metres) and fourth in Munich in 1972 (over 100 metres). World records? Ryan set two over 80 and one over 100 metres.

“In earning 11 world top-10 rankings, Ryan was never lower than fourth. She was ranked number one on three occasions, number two on four, number three once and number four three times. No other Australian comes close to those numbers over a similar period.

“With 95 points in the hurdles Ryan shares top billing all-time in the event with American sprinter/hurdler Gail Devers. She is the only Australian athlete to be number one scorer in a single event.”

Turning to some of our current competitors, high jump pair Nicola Olyslagers and Eleanor Patterson have 33 and 28 points, respectively, javelin stars Kelsey-Lee Barber and Mackenzie Little 35 and 25, Denny 23 and middle-distance star Jess Hull 13. All still going, but a way to go yet.

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Many years of following football teams – Queens Park Rangers, Melbourne Victory, Australia – has taught me one thing: always check the offside flag.

Whether you’re leaping out of your seat with both arms thrown aloft, or slumping down with both arms wrapped around your head trying to ‘unsee’ what just happened, hold your elation or despair in check a moment until you check if the referee’s assistant has the flag up for offside. Of course, then you’ll have to hold it in check even longer if, as the commentators rather puzzlingly put it, “VAR gets involved.”

Sprinting’s own version of the ‘check the offside flag’ rule is the wind gauge. Maximum allowable wind assistance in the 100 and 200 metres and the sprint hurdles is two metres per second. Anything more and the performance doesn’t count for record and/or qualifying purposes. ‘Offside,’ in other words.

In two otherwise incandescent performances within as many hours in the U20 100 metres at the Australian championships in Perth, Gout Gout was flagged offside. Gout (aka ‘sprint sensation’) recorded 9.99 seconds in both heat and final, but he cannot claim a record-eligible sub-10 because the wind gauge readings were 3.5 metres per second (heat) and 2.6 (final). Wind gauges formerly operated by an official are now usually integrated into the timing system and the reading displayed electronically. It was futile to argue with a human, but it’s impossible to argue with a machine.

Oh, the injustice of it all. Up in the commentary box, Bruce McAvaney and Dave Culbert agreed it was a very unfortunate turn of events but from that point their responses diverged. McAvaney insisted we had still seen something special: we certainly had. Big Dave wanted to go out, find a professor of meteorology, and implore them to ‘say it ain’t so’ (much as I sympathise, I’m going with Bruce on this one. To watch Gout run is uplifting, outcome regardless).

An electronic gauge having twice confounded Gout perhaps we should not have been surprised that he would be upstaged a third time within not much more than 12 hours when Matt Denny produced his second national record in four days at a throws meeting in Oklahoma. Not just a national record either; having thrown 72.07 four days previously, this time Denny produced a 74.25 throw, second-longest ever and just 10 centimetres short of the world record Mykolas Alekna established at the same venue last year.

There’s an irony here. Over in Perth, Gout is denied by the wind while half a world away Olympic bronze medallist Denny, exempted (justifiably, we must add) from the very same championships at which Gout is competing, throws the second-longest distance ever in an Oklahoma field chosen precisely because it offers perfect wind assistance to throwers. No offside trap in the discus!

Whichever way you cut it though, Denny has moved to no.2 all-time while Gout – and the open sprinters including Lachie Kennedy who will follow on day two – are aiming for sub-10, a mark that has been breached by no fewer than 200 men since Jim Hines first did it at the Mexico City 1968 Olympics (Patrick Johnson’s national record 9.93 sits at around the 100 mark).

One further point on Matt Denny, while he may have missed the world record by 10 centimetres he did out-perform Mykolas Alekna for consistency. Digging deeper into the stats, Alekna’s series averaged at 71.80 metres. All six throws were legal. Denny’s series – 71.03, 73.46, 74.25, 72.93, 71.14 and 73.56 – averaged almost a full metre further at 72.72. Arguably the best series ever.

Now, back to Perth which again lived up to its reputation as a Mecca for sprinters, albeit with sometimes excessive winds. What the wind gives with consistency, it sometimes takes with being record-illegal.

It was Gout’s misfortune to cop excessive wind assistance twice while the women’s U20 heats and final immediately before his races were comfortably with the maximum legal wind reading as were the other 100s contested on day one of the senior and U20 champs. That’s true enough, but if you look at the horizontal jump wind readings running through the day, most with the advantage of the same winds, there are plenty of jumps there with over 2mps tails.

For what it’s worth, my experience of Perth conditions – the 2010 nationals and several visits for earlier versions of the Perth Track Classic, largely when Linford Christie was part of the action – has been that it is not only the quantity of the wind as expressed in the reading, but also the quality. The wind blows at the same velocity all the way along the straight. Unlike other venues, the wind read at the gauge half-way along the 100 metres will be very little different from start to finish.

This strikes you when you look at the men’s all-time list under all conditions. Patrick Johnson has the fastest times ever in Perth with his 9.88 (wind +3.6) in 2003. He also ran 9.90 (+5.7) that day. WA sprinter Rod Mapstone, a member of the 4×100 relay team at the 1996 Olympics and 1997 world champs, ran a hand-timed 9.7 (+6.6) in 1996. This converts to 9.94 using the standard hand to electronic times formula. Across the other side of the country, Rohan Browning ran 9.96 (+3.3) in Wollongong in 2021 and now Gout has twice run 9.99 (+3.5 and +2.6), again in Perth.

Gout turned 17 in the last few days of December last year and is by some way the youngest of the fastest Australian men in history. One other young man on the all-time, all conditions list is Paul Narracott, a Queenslander who sprang to attention with a hand-timed 10.0 seconds (+1.3) to win the national title in 1978 a few months past his nineteenth birthday. Hines’ 9.95 was still the world record then and remained unbroken until 1983.

Narracott twice ran 9.9 in the next few years and boasted a win over Carl Lewis in an indoor 60 metres in 1984. Of greater relevance here, he made the 100 final at the first world championships in Helsinki in 1983, the only male sprinter to reach a world or Olympic 100 final since Hec Hogan won a bronze medal in Melbourne in 1956.

Can anyone emulate Paul Narracott in 2025.

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Towards the end of the Melbourne’s Maurie Plant Classic meeting last weekend a longtime media colleague asked where I would rank the meeting against previous Melbourne classics.

“It’s up there,” I replied. A simple answer to a complex question. You can rank athletics meetings on many different criteria. Quality of performance is the obvious one but there’s no point using that as the sole criteria as you could answer it easily by compiling performance points from the world rankings. Where the meeting fits is another, but again this is an easy out. Any day at an Olympic Games is more important and reflects a deeper level of world competition than even the best and the brightest one-day event, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground has hosted both an Olympic Games in 1956 and a Commonwealth Games 50 years later. So, there’s your best days right there.

Then, not under consideration here, there’s the best days you’ve had that weren’t one-day meetings. Like running a lap of the Tan with Seb Coe, or being introduced to Steve Ovett in the Olympic Park changerooms, or taking Eammon Coghlan and Dave Moorcroft on our Monday night 10-miler around the Tan and the nearby gardens. Or trying to interview Sonia O’Sullivan during her warm-down after a track session. The hardest question being whether I could keep up and talk at the same time.

Then there’s one-day meetings which were significant enough at the time but became ever more significant in retrospect. Herb Elliott ran his first sub-four-minute mile with his 3:59.9 in January 1958 just a couple of weeks short of his twentieth birthday. By year’s end young Herb was the Empire Games champion at 880 yards and the mile, as well as world record holder in the 1500 (3:36.0) and mile (3:54.5).  Or Cathy Freeman’s first sub-50 400 metres in February 1996, presaging a year in which she ran here still-current national record 48.63 to take the silver medal behind Marie-Jose Perec at the Atlanta Olympics.

All that notwithstanding, Melbourne25 was comparable with any other one-day meeting the city has staged. The weather was OK: threatened rain (mostly) held off, the stands were packed, the atmosphere was electric building up to the final event, the men’s 200 metres, in which Melbourne got its second glimpse of Gout Gout (he ran the 2024 meeting almost unnoticed), but first since he had broken Peter Norman’s venerable national record for 200 metres in the Queensland All Schools championships.

Relative newcomer Lianna Davidson and Olympic bronze medallist Matt Denny got things going in the night’s first two events. Davidson, a Queenslander at the University of Georgia, upstaged world championships bronze medallist Mackenzie Little in the javelin; Denny produced a series of massive throws in the discus.

The old face-new face back-and-forth continued threw the night with victories to Peyton Craig in the 800, Cameron Myers in the John Landy 1500 and Claudia Hollingsworth in the 1500 balanced by Eleanor Patterson’s high jump win. And there was old and new at the forefront of the 5000 where Ky Robinson came back from his world indoor 3000 bronze medal to narrowly defeat emerging star Seth O’Donnell.

And then the climactic 200 metres. World indoor 60 silver medallist knew he had to get a good start to have a chance against Gout who, good start or no, would be flying at him in the closing stages. He flew out of the blocks and clearly had taken metres out of Gout on the bend. Gout, who had looked a little tight to that stage, now relaxed and produced that surge we’ve already come to know well over the last 60 metres. He fell just 0.04 second short at the line, Kennedy running a personal best 20.26, outstanding in the cool and breezy conditions, Gout 20.30.

Long after the event had finished, and presentations been made, Gout and Kennedy were still signing autographs for hordes of young (and older) fans. You got the feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of this on the way to Brisbane2032.

That was Melbourne25 then, a memorable night in front of a full house. If this was not the best ever, with what other events is it “up there.”

Melbourne’s 1996 event boasted more than Freeman. There were many other domestic and international stars besides as Nike got behind Australian athletics in the run-up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Freeman’s run was a national record at the time. Another national mark was set by Rohan Robinson in the 400 hurdles, his 48.87 putting him a couple of strides ahead of current Australian Athletics CEO Simon Hollingsworth’s 49.26.

That night’s young gun was Paul Cleary, who upstaged Kenyans David Kibet and the great Moses Kiptanui to win the 1500 metres. So miffed was Kiptanui that he turned his pacing duties in the 5000 metres just over an hour later into a racing role, taking out the win in 13:20. Even then he couldn’t get top billing, that went to Steve Moneghetti who produced a rare burst of finishing speed to overtake another Kenyan, Paul Bitok, for second place.

Another great day – great Sunday morning, actually – was the IAAF Grand Prix final in 2001. The early start was to avoid a direct clash with an AFL final being staged in the same precinct as the athletics later in the day. Unsurprisingly the early spring weather was uncomfortably cool, cold even for the athletes who had come down from the Goodwill Games in Brisbane the weekend before.

Hicham El Guerrouj may have spent much of the time rugged up and wearing a bean on his noggin, but he was hot enough when the 1500 started. His winning time of 3:31.25 remains the Australian allcomers record. In the 3000 metres Paul Bitok beat a young Ethiopian name of Kenenisa Bekele and two Sydney Olympic throws champions repeated their victories a little further south. Jan Zelezny threw 88.98 in the men’s javelin and Kamila Skolimowska produced a best of 71.71 to win the hammer from Australia’s Bronwyn Eagles.

Finally, the events I would have liked to have seen, the series of twilight meetings in 1954 in which John Landy made repeated efforts to break four minutes for the mile. I was a little young to attend in person but I still remember the front-page pictures of Melbourne trams stranded in the sea of spectators trying to get into Olympic Park. Landy and some of his fellow athletes even had to climb the fence to gain entry to the ground. Can’t see any modern-day athletes having to do that. Up there, but fortunately they got down safely!

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It’s easy to set a world record. Asked once how he felt about doing it, Ron Clarke responded that once you’ve set one it’s just a matter of running a personal best.

Clarke should know. He set anywhere from 18 to 21 world records in his storied career. The first, for six miles in the 1963 Zatopek 10,000 was a simple maths exercise, Judging Sando Iharos’s record as ripe for the picking, Clarke devised a lap schedule and stuck to it. His second record – the 10,000 metres – was almost as easy, just a matter of finishing the race, which he was reminded to do by his mate Neil Robbins.

I started thinking about world records when the bar in the men’s pole vault at last week’s world indoor championships went up to 6.00 metres with both Mondo Duplantis and Emmanouil Karalis tied in the lead. Neither had missed a height and Karalis now elected to pass. I wondered whether anyone had ever passed at six metres before, a mark only 29 men have ever achieved, other than through tactical necessity.

Turns out you only had to go back a couple of weeks to the All Star Perche (French for pole vault) on 1 March, Duplantis won with the latest of his 11 world records of 6.27. Karalis was second, with both men keeping a clean sheet up to 6.02. Neither attempted 6.00, though this was just the set progression of heights – 5.97 to 6.02 – rather than a tactical decision by either vaulter.

But another thought occurs. The 6.27 Duplantis cleared at the All Star meeting is his outright personal best. When Sergey Bubka first cleared six metres in Paris in 1985 he came into the competition at 5.70, just 24 centimetres below his then PB of 5.94. How long, I wonder, before we see Duplantis – or Karalis – enter a competition at six metres. Unthinkable, isn’t it (or wasn’t it).

The question became how to set a world record. Of course, as an Australian distance runner, I’ve got the greatest respect for Clarkie’s run-one-then-it’s-just-a-PB view of the matter, but now I was in the rabbit-hole of pole vault world records, perhaps I needed to look for further clues there.

Bubka cleared six metres forty years ago this July, the fifth of his 17 outdoor world records. France’s Renaud Lavillenie was the first man to go higher when he achieved 6.16 indoors at the pole vault meeting in Donetsk, Bubka’s hometown, in 2014. In 2020 Duplantis cleared 6.17 indoors in Torun, Poland, and he has held the outright world record ever since.

So, for the past 40 years, two men have dominated world pole vaulting. A duopoly broken only by the Lavillenie interregnum. What constitutes the world record has toggled between the highest outdoor vault and the highest vault indoors and out but it has pretty well been only Bubka and now Duplantis at the top.

In Bubka’s time there were separate outdoor and indoor records. He set 35 world records and was an equal opportunity record breaker – 17 outdoor, 18 under the roof. Duplantis, who has competed largely, if not completely, under the outright record regimen, has set 11 world records.

Is there any commonality? A strategy which, properly executed, is more likely than not going to result in a world record. In commentary at the world indoor championships Rob Walker observed accurately that all vertical jumpers expend energy at each attempt and so the fewer jumps you attempt throughout the competition the better. Seems pretty right.

Next, into the World Athletics Progression of World Records book, for detailed stats of each world record competition. For Bubka, I started with his historic six-metres clearance on 13 July 1985, followed his outdoor world record progression to 6.14 before concluding with his final record – an indoor mark – at 6.15. Fourteen in all.

That was Bubka’s only indoor record not matched by one at the same height outdoors. Duplantis’ s first two ‘world records’ – 6.15 and 6.16 – were outdoor competitions but below Lavillenie’s 6.16. His first outright record was 6.17 indoors. All went into the blender.

As already mentioned, in Bubka’s first six-metre jump he came in at 5.70, clearing first time, before going to straight up to 6.00 which he got at the first try. Two heights, four jumps, a 30cm increment up to the record height.

Simple, as was the pattern Bubka almost invariably followed of come in high, split the difference between opening height and world record, then world record. The greatest increment between final and penultimate heights was 33cm when he cleared 5.60, 5.80 and then 6.13. Seven more of his records the height below the record height was 20cm or more. Twelve times he attempted just two heights en route to a record, on one it took three and once, just one.

Six times Bubka took just three jumps to secure a world record. On three more occasions it was four, five once, six and seven twice each. Economy of effort indeed.

Duplantis has been a little more circumspect – you wouldn’t call anything about pole vaulting conservative!. His biggest jump up to a world record has been 26cm, with three others at 20cm or more. He has also jumped at intermediate heights slightly more – never less than three – than Bubka. Against that he has achieved three of his world records at world championships (Eugene, Budapest) and Olympics (Paris). That’s a highly impressive statistic.

In the 6.27 world record Duplantis came in at 5.65 then cleared that height, 5.91, 6.02, 6.07 and 6.27 first time. “I just felt really good. What can I say? I came here to do it. I put everything in place to do it. The runup worked really well. I just did it.” The bit about the runup may have been self-evident!

There you have it then. To set a pole vault record simply start high, clear intermediate heights first time and arrive fresh enough for three tries (should you need them) at the record.

As the great rural philosopher Fred Dagg (aka the late comedian John Clarke): “I’ll get out of your way now and let you get on with it.”

Let us know how you go.

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