The 2026 edition of World Women's Decathlon Championships were held in Oberlin (Ohio) on July 8&9. And it was a smashing success. You can find all the details on the Décapassion blog , curated by my friends Frédéric and Pierre Gousset. Just after the first day I exchanged some mail with them and we shared our optimism on a possible 8000+ final score. Unfortunately that was not to be. But still,…
World Athletics loves the word innovation. Type it into the search box on the World Athletics website and you will find articles going back to 2019. (That is already an improvement: until recently, the search function was in shambles and finding anything on the site was an achievement in itself). Unfortunately, the early articles offer little more than polished journalistic blah-blah. Things…
Soutsos’ appeal for the revival of the Olympic Games struck a chord in many Greek hearts. Unfortunately, it did not move those who actually had the power to act, except for one man, and what an exception he was. Evangelis Zappas was born in a village of northern Epirus (a region that today belongs to Albania). As a young man he fought in the Revolution of 1821, and after Greece gained its…
In writing this title, I realized that it may become unintelligible to future generations. As digital clocks replace analog ones, we may need a better term altogether. Mathematics, of course, does not depend on clocks to define the direction around a circle; what we call anticlockwise is simply the positive direction. What spurred this post was an article I came across in which one of the…
This year’s Diamond League season has marked the return of Miltiadis Tentoglou to the top of the men’s long jump hierarchy. His sixth-place finish at the World Indoor Championships in March had raised legitimate doubts: would 2026 extend the disappointing trajectory of 2025? That concern was not unfounded. The 2025 season had indeed been a poor one by his standards. It began with a fifth-place…
This is not the first time I have highlighted this excellent site. I first introduced it in 2022, and returned to it in 2023 following their article on the African Games. Earlier this year, I discussed their “best of the best of 2025” list—an original and refreshing approach that did not follow the usual World Athletics classification of track, field, and out-of-stadium events, nor my own method…
In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius I issued an edict putting an end to pagan festivals. As a consequence, the Olympics, dedicated to Zeus and intertwined with sacrificial rites and festivities, could no longer be held. Modern archaeological evidence suggests that the Games may have lingered into the 5th century, yet they were already in decline, and Theodosius’ decree merely drove another nail into…
When Jessica Schilder threw a world-leading 21.09 m in May, I realized that it had been 15 years since a woman had gone beyond 21 m—the 21.24 m achieved by Valerie Adams in 2011. This brought to mind an article from last year’s Track & Field News, which discussed Chase Jackson’s preparation for the World Championships, where she was aiming for a third title (a goal she ultimately missed, with…
It has been quite some time that my friends Frédéric and Pierre Gousset had not published a long article in their WordPress blog. (Of course, the fact that Pierre was defending his PhD earlier this Spring and is now preparing for a post-doc abroad is reason enough). Well, the dry spell has ended with an excellent review of the Götzis Hypomeeting, by Frédéric Gousset who attended the meeting. I…
It began as a supposed revolution in sport, an enterprise not merely challenging the establishment but seeking to dismantle it altogether. Enhanced is built on a radical premise: that athletic competition should embrace medical science rather than prohibit it. When Aron D’Souza unveiled the Enhanced Games in 2023, the concept was deliberately provocative. Athletes would be allowed (indeed…
The genesis of the ancient Olympics is lost in the mists of time. Pindar, writing whole centuries after the beginning of the Olympics, mentions two myths and they cannot both be true. The best known one involves the demigod Herakles, son of the god Zeus (whom the Greek were also calling Dias and whom the Romans called Jupiter) and Alkmene, who among his labours had to clean the stables of king…
Everybody remembers the Olympic fiasco of 2024; you would have to be living in an alternate universe to have missed it. A boxer, previously barred from women's competitions due to eligibility concerns (translation in plain english: she is male) was nevertheless allowed by the IOC to participate in the female boxing tournament, terrorizing her adversaries and usurping the gold medal. I cannot…
I had not planned to write this article. My intention was to publish a piece on the IOC’s decision to introduce a femininity test. However, during my daily visit to the World Athletics website, I came across an article by none other than P.-J. Vazel. If you follow this blog, you know I am a longtime admirer of his work. His technical articles have been a major source of inspiration for me. Since…
I hadn't followed last year's World Relays. And, to tell the truth, had I done so I would have been irritated at the timorous, fainthearted and borderline cowardly choice of World Athletics concerning the mixed 4x100 m race. Fortunately, somewhere along the line they saw the light and opted for the proper relay composition, the only one I find acceptable: man-woman-man-woman. If you have been…
Unless you are living in an alternate reality you have certainly been exposed to the de Coubertin myth, a myth created by himself, peddled by a bunch of sycophants and sanctified by the multinational mastodon that has become the IOC. He was touted as the founder, father, saviour, reviver, restorer, creator, originator, initiator, pioneer, forerunner, progenitor, innovator, mastermind, prophet,…
That was the only occasion on which I disagreed with Ross Tucker. (If you read my blog, you know he is a leading South African sports physiologist for whom I have the greatest respect). In a post on The Science of Sport (with Jonathan Dugas), titled “The sub-2 hour marathon? Don’t hold your breath, just yet”, he offered a cautious outlook. Admittedly, the article dates back to 2013, but toward its…
From time to time, I publish an article that is not directly related to Athletics but still concerns physical activity. This time, I was intrigued by a striking title: “How we walk might reveal our risk of death”. The piece was written in a popular-journalism style, yet it referenced a scientific publication from a research team at the University of Leicester, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.…
Some days ago, World Athletics published an article about the 2026 World Athletics Race Walking Team Championships. It was accompanied by a photo of race walkers in action, and, unmistakably, one of them was running. The photo was taken at the 2024 championships held in Antalya, in the 20 km race. The athlete caught running was none other than the fourth-place finisher, Yuta Koga from Japan. That…
Let us start with the most important result of the championship, the men’s heptathlon world record. To tell the truth, following S. Ehammer during the event I had my doubts up to the pole vault. I have already seen him foul out in this event but this time he dominated it and went on to break Eaton’s record with 6670 points. He had taken the lead from the first event and never relinquished. For…
The followers of my blog know that I am a fan of the Act of Manliness newsletter. As I explained, on more than one occasions, the AoM site (and newsletter) is not at all macho. It recognises simply that roughly 50% of us are men and share common interests and preoccupations. But this does not prevent the editors from publishing many articles that can be of equal interest to men and women. It's one…
Those who read my blog know that there are certain points on which I am intransigent, and foremost among them is the transgender question. For me, there is no question that men, masquerading as women, should be included in women’s sports categories. I have expressed this view repeatedly in writing on this blog. I have publicly praised Lord Sebastian for his courageous decision to ban transwomen…
Those who follow my blog have noticed that I have a great esteem for Ross Tucker, a renowned sports physiologist. Together with his colleague Jonathan Dugas, Tucker had a blog entitled "The Science of Sport". It was active from 2007 to 2013 and then went silent. The last post in the blog was on the sub-2 hour marathon. And the title expressed clearly the authors reservations: "Is the sub-2 hour…
Some time ago I stumbled upon an article , on BBC of all things. The title was "Why world records seem to be getting harder to beat - according to maths". I was intrigued and I decided to read the article. And once I read it I was really annoyed. How can one pretend, using bogus premises, that mathematics are explaining the new records paucity? But let us start at the beginning. The article starts…
As my regular readers know, I am a fan of scoring tables. And that has been true since a very tender age of 10. I cannot explain why this subject fascinates me, but there we are. Whenever I see a scoring table I feel immediately an attraction. From the outset in this blog, scoring was at the centre of interest. Already the fourth published article talks about scoring, and a whole series entitled…
On several occasions I mentioned in this blog the excellent site " Athletics Podium ". It is run by the turkish sports journalist S.F. Erbay, accompanied by a team of contributing editors. I cannot think of any better athletics-oriented site on the web. My Turkish neighbours are really the best and, on several occasions, they have pleasantly surprised me with the originality of their articles. (I…