Fan spending FOUR days on bus to watch World Athletics Championships July 13, 2022 Dedicated fan bases are what sports are built upon; the desire to be there for your team or player and witness any history they make. But would you spend four days on a bus going coast-to-coast for a few days of sporting action? Because that’s just what Jan Figueroa is doing. The 24-year-old Puerto Rico-born [...]
Eyes on Eugene as gamble on host could impact future of World Championships July 7, 2022 Next week, World Athletics will discover whether its bold gamble on the future of the World Championships might just pay off. A boutique venue in the third biggest city in the 27th largest state in the United States is a radical departure from the editions that have gone before. But it’s no coincidence that Eugene, [...]
‘I’m left wondering what price The Hundred franchises could one day fetch’ June 30, 2022 “What does Ed Warner know about tennis?” What indeed? My critique last week of the Lawn Tennis Association’s performance drew this feisty query in the Sport inc. comment section from Tom (no surname provided). It also garnered a response column in City A.M. from the LTA’s CEO, Scott Lloyd. Both Tom (no surname provided) and [...]
World track and field in need of resurrection ahead of major championships June 27, 2022 The tectonic plates of British athletics shifted at the weekend as favourites fell to underdogs and new records were broken. As Jeremiah Azu and Daryll Neita won 100m British titles, toppled favourites and looked to book spots at this year’s World Championships in Eugene, US, you’d be forgiven for not knowing it was even going [...]
Ed Warner: Wimbledon shows that the Lawn Tennis Association gets too much money June 23, 2022 If you want to know what’s wrong with tennis in Britain, look no further than Wimbledon. Blame the Championships for being such a phenomenal success that they bequeath the Lawn Tennis Association more money each year than it appears to be able to handle effectively, while simultaneously raising the public’s hunger for the LTA to [...]
BBC wins the race for London Marathon broadcast rights for another five years June 20, 2022 The BBC will broadcast the London Marathon for a further five years after extending its long-standing rights agreement with the race’s organisers. The new deal begins with this year’s edition of the 26-mile race, which is due to take place on 2 October, and runs until 2026, marking 45 years of live coverage on the [...]
The race to Eugene is on and men’s sprinting is hotly contested May 10, 2022 The long-standing successes of US collegiate sports are well known. The countless NFL players, the basketball stars and, of course, the seemingly endless prominence in the world of track athletics. This year is no different, and while all of the athletes may not be American in nationality, it’s in the United States where the majority [...]
Ed Warner: Docuseries triumph may drive wedge between media and sport April 14, 2022 “Please please please please just go away!” The letter writer signed off with his PS in green ink, only months into my stint as chair of UK Athletics in the days before tweets were a thing. I wish I’d kept it, the only time I’ve seen green ink scrawled in cliched anger. Sports leaders are [...]
Victoria to become first regional host of the Commonwealth Games in 2026 April 12, 2022 The Australian state of Victoria has been selected to host the 2026 Commonwealth Games. The Games, to be staged in Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and Gippsland, will be the first to take place predominantly in a region rather than a single city. The last edition took place in Australia four years ago and organisers have [...]
Ed Warner: Trans debate has echoes of Semenya legal row but ‘meaningfulness’ may be buzzword April 7, 2022 It’s a pity Emily Bridges was blocked from competing in the National Omnium Championships in Derby last weekend. Yes, the cyclist would have been at the centre of an unsavoury media scrum, but we would have gathered one more valuable data point with which to try and balance the febrile debate about transgender women in [...]