London Marathon 2020 will be for elite runners only as organisers abandon mass-participation plans

The 2020 London Marathon will not be a mass-participation event, organisers have announced, and will instead be open only to elite runners. The race route has been redrawn to entail 19.8 laps of St James’ Park before finishing on the Mall, and spectators will not be allowed to attend. The event director, Hugh Brasher, said in a latter to runners that he had little choice in the current climate of the coronavirus pandemic. “We had hoped that by moving our […]

July 25, 2020

Team GB set for Olympics history with more women than men competing at Tokyo

Team GB is set to have more women than men competing at the Tokyo Olympics for the first time in our history. With a year to go to the Games yesterday, proud team chiefs declared it the 'year of the female Olympian'. Based on current predictions, our Olympians will be 52 percent female (194) and 48 percent male (180) next year. In a move towards gender balance, Tokyo will see the highest ever number of women competing in the Games. […]

July 2, 2020

Christian Malcolm backed by Darren Campbell for atop job in UK Athletics rebuild

Darren Campbell says the “time is right” for Christian Malcolm to be handed a top job in British athletics. Malcolm, born in Wales of Jamaican descent, is in contention for the head coach role at UK Athletics. And Campbell insists whether it is that position or another lead role, his former Great Britain team mate should be lured back from Australia, where he heads up their high performance and coaching programme. “Christian has all the attributes you’d want in a […]

June 27, 2020

Dai Greene on athletics’ whereabouts failures: ‘These guys are getting away with it’

“Every athlete has a whereabouts failure at some point,” says Dai Greene. “Maybe there’s a doctor’s appointment you need to be at and you might forget to update the system. That might be once in your career. But three in 12 months…?” Three in 12 months triggers an anti-doping violation, and it is why the world’s fastest man, Christian Coleman, is facing possible a two-year ban. Coleman put out a rambling statement last week taking responsibility for only one of […]

June 15, 2020

London Marathon ‘extremely difficult’ to hold in October, claims Great North Run founder Brendan Foster

It will be “extremely difficult” to hold the London Marathon this year amid the coronavirus pandemic, Great North Run founder Brendan Foster has said. Foster’s event, due to be staged on September 13 with a record 60,000 adult participants, was cancelled on Monday due to the insurmountable challenges posed by the Covid-19 outbreak. A decision on whether this year’s London Marathon – already postponed from April to October – can go ahead is expected to be made on Sunday. Download […]

June 13, 2020

Dai Greene frustrated by lack of athletics and ineffective anti-doping measures

Dai Greene has voiced his frustration at the lack of competition for British athletes and the slow pace at which the sport is returning from lockdown. He has also blasted the “madness” of track and field allowing Salwa Eid Naser to become world champion over 400 metres when the Nigerian-born Bahraini already had three missed drugs tests against her name. Wales’ former world 400m hurdles champion looked on enviously as current No.1 Karsten Warholm headlined the Impossible Games on Thursday, […]

May 29, 2020

Katarina Johnson-Thompson relishing the chance to train on her old stomping ground

Katarina Johnson-Thompson has been enjoying training on familiar territory after escaping her regular base in France during the coronavirus pandemic. The reigning world champion heptathlete has been back home in Liverpool after the strict lockdown that had been in force in France forced her to relocate in order to keep up even basic training. “It was difficult at the start for sure,” the 27-year-old said on Athletics: How Dina and Kat struck world gold, which will air on BBC 1 […]

May 9, 2020

Amy Hunt in fast lane to top and confident Olympic delay won’t slow her progress

Amy Hunt, the teen sensation of British sprinting, has gone from chasing her Olympic dream to being pursued by dogs in a park. The coronavirus arrived in the UK just as the 17-year old powered to 60 metres gold at her first senior British Championships. She should now have been stepping up her preparations for Tokyo whilst cramming for A levels and wondering how on earth she would find a moment to celebrate her 18th next Friday. Instead, the Olympics […]

April 28, 2020

Olympic chief warns Games will be "scrapped" if they can’t take place next year

The boss of the Tokyo Olympics says the Games will be “scrapped” if they cannot take place next summer. Yoshiro Mori was responding to doubts expressed by health experts over whether the Olympics could go ahead without a vaccine or effective drugs to treat Covid-19 . The Tokyo 2020 president insisted there would be no further delay if circumstances prevented the Games, which were due to be held this summer, from going ahead in July 2021. “In that situation, it […]

April 4, 2020

Athletics and rugby union must use shutdown to take stock and come back stronger

Sebastian Coe and Rugby Football Union boss Bill Sweeney insist their sports must use the coronavirus shutdown to take stock and come back stronger. Lord Coe, president of World Athletics, has demanded that track and field reviews what it is doing in the time made available by the postponement of the Olympics and much of the Diamond League. “This is an opportunity to not just tweak at the edges but to really make some changes,” he said. “To figure out […]

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