WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS: The Enhanced Games, the ballyhooed steroid free-for-all, is planning to launch in, where else, Las Vegas (May 21–24, 2026). Reacts WA’s Seb Coe, “If anybody is moronic enough to feel that they want to take part in that… they’ll get banned and they’ll get banned for a long time.”…
Noah Lyles says that he is open to competing in Grand Slam Track, detailing, “There might be a time maybe next year I’ll join, you know, who knows? I’m very open, I’m trying to stay very open ’cause again, like I said, this is the first thing we’ve ever had [close] to a track & field league, and I would truly like to see it succeed.”…
Former Florida State coach Bob Braman has come out of retirement to coach at North Carolina’s Div. II Lenoir-Rhyne. Star junior Alexis Brown scored a 100/200 double at their Nationals…
Arizona coach Fred Harvey has announced that he will retire at the conclusion of the season after 38 years with the Wildcats…
Jefferson Pérez, the ’96 Olympic champion in the 20K walk, has been elected VP of the Ecuadorian Olympic Committee…
Jean Galfione, the ’96 Olympic vault champion, will take over as high-performance director of the French federation after the WC…
European Athletics will stream nearly 40 Continental Tour meets this season on its website and also on YouTube…
Rocker Rod Stewart has reportedly been training to sprint and says he has gotten his 100 time down to 19 seconds. “Now I’m going for 17 seconds,” he said, “which I think would be a World Record for someone my age.” The best for an 80-year-old, though, is 14.21 seconds by Kenton Brown last year…
Audience numbers have been released for the first two Grand Slams, with numbers ranging around 250,000 per session (not including numbers from Peacock). Those are well short of the numbers for a number of longer-established meets (1.3 million for last year’s New York GP, for instance), but a little bit better than the ’23 NCAA (237,000 per day)…
50 days before the London Diamond League organizers announced that all 60,000 tickets had been sold…
An even hotter sales market is Zürich’s. The second day of this year’s DL Final sold out in record time, less than 2 hours. The first day has not gone on sale yet…
The first Chopra Classic javelin competition, set for May 24, was postponed as military tensions between Pakistan and India nearly turned to war. Once tensions calmed, it was rescheduled for July 05…
The next two editions of the World Relays have been set: May 02–03, 2026 in Gaborone, Botswana, and April 22–23, 2028 again in Nassau, Bahamas…
The Keino Classic at the end of May had to be moved to a different stadium in Nairobi because of delays in installing the new track surface…
Kenya will stage its trials for the Tokyo 5000 and 10,000 teams at the Pre Classic, but 20 athletes have been barred after they failed to provide whereabouts for the first non-notice out-of-competition test…
Norwegian prosecutors are seeking a 2½-year sentence for Gjert Ingebrigtsen on child abuse charges…
France did not select Morhad Amdouni for its WC marathon team because of his conviction for domestic violence, calling the crime “incompatible with the ethical charter and the fundamental values upheld by the French Athletics Federation.”…
Africa’s only current testing laboratory, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, had its accreditation revoked by WADA after it failed to address multiple violations of international standards…
Betting on track & field did not come off in a positive light at the Philadelphia Grand Slam, where a man followed Gabby Thomas around the track, hurling personal insults, apparently in an attempt to rattle her so his bet against her would fare better. “Anyone who enables him online is gross,” she said. GST head Michael Johnson said the behavior would not be tolerated. FanDuel, which handles the betting side of GST, promptly banned the man…
Eugene Omalla, who ran on the Dutch gold medal mixed 4×4 team in Paris, has auctioned off his medal. The winning bid was $70,150…
At the Madrid Grand Prix, organizers did a pilot test of an electronic chip that will measure whether walkers lose contact with the ground. The results were not binding, with judges having the discretion whether or not to issue disqualifications using that information…
Sam Woods, the daughter of golfer Tiger Woods, recently competed in the Florida 1A state meet, running on the runner-up 4×8 team. Another progeny of a talented pop is Noah Sanders, son of NFL Hall of Famer Barry Sanders. He placed 4th in the 100 at the Michigan D1 meet in a PR 10.68…
Hotel wages could end up complicating things for LA ’28. A recent city ordinance will incrementally boost the hourly wage for hotel and airport workers from $20.32 to $30 an hour. Now at least 8 major hotels are threatening to pull out of the agreement with Olympic organizers to provide at least 40,000 hotel rooms for the Games…
Getting fans around traffic-heavy LA during the Games will be another challenge. The plan has been drafted called the “Games Enhanced Transit Service.” Now the LA Metropolitan Transit Authority is looking for reimbursement from the Games to cover the $2 billion cost…
LA will reportedly use two stadia for the Opening Ceremony, the Coliseum and the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood…
The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is pushing to have the Olympic rings put back on the Eiffel Tower until the ’28 Games. Not all are in favor of the plan but her office is in talks with the IOC to try to make it happen…
The World U20 pentathlon record of 4556 set by Texas A&M’s Sofia Iakushina at the SEC Indoor will not be accepted by World Athletics. As often happens at collegiate meets, the Russian was not drug tested…
The House vs. NCAA settlement appears to be delayed again. The federal judge on the case asked attorneys to guarantee current athletes wouldn’t be booted because of roster limits. The attorneys wrote in language giving schools the option to grandfather those athletes without making it a guarantee. While Judge Claudia Wilken mulls that one over, she has extended the deadline date by three weeks to June 27…
The U.S. isn’t the only country getting complaints about its visa system. Nigeria withdrew from the World Relays when several requested visas were denied and the others approved just hours before their planned flight. Nigerian officials called it a “devastating blow,” while a Chinese spokesperson blamed a communication problem, saying, “The total time was just too short. Everyone tried their best, including our embassy staff and the Nigerian officials.”…
Division II’s Missouri Western is planning on cutting its track programs, though no end date has been set…
At the Div. III Championships, apparent 10K winner Nathan Tassey of Roger Williams was DQed after he looked over his shoulder on the final lap, lost his balance, and took three steps inside the rail. The win was given to Braden Nicholson of North Central, who finished about 5 seconds behind with his 29:20.59. Nicholson gave his medal to Tassey, and wrote on Strava, “Nathan Tassey is your actual champion. He earned it.” ◻︎
