This 12 months has proven athletics to be strong and fast-paced sufficient to cope with the foremost slings and arrows which have headed its approach.
Athletics hasn’t been with out its challenges in 2025 however, once I assume again on the previous 12 months, I’m left with the sturdy feeling that it’s been a very good 12 months general. It very a lot helped, in fact, to have had such a profitable main showpiece – on this case the World Championships in Tokyo – and so they completely nailed it in Japan.
The positivity generated from these 9 days of competitors shone brighter than the damaging headlines that we have now needed to wrestle with, such because the high-profile doping bans, the dreadful concept that’s the Enhanced Video games or Grand Slam Monitor’s failure not solely to realize its intention of fixing the game however even to easily pay the athletes.
I additionally really feel that 2025 reminded us in regards to the depth and breadth of our sport. Whereas we have now firmly established champions in lots of occasions, there have been quite a lot of new names coming via, taking their alternatives, successful medals or making headlines with their performances. Athletics doesn’t stand nonetheless and, due to that, it’s all the time going to throw up new names, new narratives and new conversations.
Innovation and doing issues a bit in a different way has been a recurring theme this 12 months, too. Grand Slam Monitor was purported to be a chief instance of that and there have been some good concepts throughout the undertaking, but it surely properly and really got here up brief.
How damaging has its collapse been? It has been damaging to the people concerned in it and for the individuals who have struggled financially – whether or not that be athletes or different contributors – in consequence. The game as a complete might definitely have completed with out it and, with any innovation, particularly with such a giant identify connected to it, you need it to fly.
However issues transfer on shortly and one of many constructive elements to have come out of the entire affair has been that observe and area has proven itself to be strong sufficient to deal with it not understanding. Grand Slam Monitor definitely didn’t deliver every little thing else crashing down with it and I truly assume that the women-only Athlos occasion in New York on the finish of the season helped to restore among the harm.
Michael Johnson tried to set Grand Slam up in such a approach that it was going to be some nice saviour, but it surely wasn’t and it was by no means going to be. Provided that it was pitting itself towards the well-established Diamond League, it was solely ever going to run alongside or perhaps improve our sport.
And every little thing is so fast-paced now that the main focus has already began to show in direction of subsequent 12 months, and occasions corresponding to World Athletics’ new Final Championships, so it doesn’t take lengthy for individuals’s consideration to be diverted elsewhere.
Wanting even additional forward, there was quite a lot of speak lately in regards to the LA Olympics in 2028, following the discharge of the athletics schedule. One of many most important dialogue factors to come back out of it’s the truth that, in contrast to in years previous, athletics will begin proper originally of the timetable and the opening day will characteristic all 4 rounds of the ladies’s 100m (prelims and spherical one within the morning, following by the semis and ultimate within the night), whereas the lads’s competitors shall be cut up over two days.
I’ve received completely no downside with that plan. Some individuals have stated: “It is not honest that males will not be doing the identical” however why ought to the women and men run on the identical schedule?
For my part, it’s not detrimental for the ladies and I like the truth that you then unfold out the 2 massive finals that individuals all need to watch. Simply because one thing’s been completed a sure approach earlier than does not imply you could’t combine it up and that is why athletics has gone to the start of the Olympic timetable. The game wants eyes on it. It has wanted eyes on it for a very long time and, should you get a chance to doubtlessly showcase a 100m ultimate for every intercourse on totally different days, why would not you be doing it?
Until I’ve missed it, I’ve but to see any feminine athletes claiming it’s a nasty concept, both. I noticed the well-known Jamaican sprints coach Stephen Francis say it is anti-women and that it is a regression, however I do not assume it’s. I have not received a difficulty with it in any respect and the gap means it’s all attainable, too.
Not one of the main gamers shall be concerned within the preliminary spherical in any case and so they’ll be greater than able to breezing an 11.00 or 11.10 within the morning earlier than coming again and smashing the semi and the ultimate. I’m assured that almost all of the opponents shall be comfortable to get the entire thing completed and dusted on day one.
Hopefully there shall be a wholesome British presence in these latter phases and I used to be heartened to see that Dina Asher-Smith has sorted out her long-term coaching scenario. Having left Edrick Floreal’s group final 12 months, she is again in Texas however shall be led by Michael Ford at Baylor College.
That is going to be a captivating interval in her profession. She has simply turned 30 however her superb good friend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce has pushed the boundaries of what’s attainable for a sprinter to realize of their thirties and I don’t see any purpose why Dina can’t proceed to go onwards and upwards. I genuinely imagine we’ll see the most effective of her once more. She nonetheless ran respectable instances this 12 months, even at such an unsettling time, so if she will be able to discover contentment on this new set-up then the outcomes will come.
Her fellow Brit Amy Hunt confirmed this 12 months what might be completed when every little thing is in sync on and off the observe and there’s an exquisite rivalry beginning to construct between the 2 of them. That’s one among simply many subplots that shall be very a lot value following as we transfer forwards. One factor’s for certain – 2026 isn’t going to be boring.
