Athletics 2025

[cdbearsfan]

Silver for Wightman, Kerr got injured halfway through.

[Villa Lew]

Great effort from Wightman, but that was a brilliant finish by the Portuguese guy Nader.

[cdbearsfan]

Colin Jackson explaining that one of the athletes "literally just popped up inside her". Surely that's against the rules?

[Skipper_The_Eyechild]

I think whenever I've seen him jump he's broken a world record.

14 times so far.

I wonder how this happens? How can he be THAT far ahead of everyone? I don't think I've ever heard of anyone breaking a world record 14 times in any discipline.

[cdbearsfan]

Because he raises the bar by a tiny amount each time then stops competing once he has broken the record. There is a cash prize every time he does it so he would be foolish to add fifty centimetres to the record in one go.

Sergey Bubka broke the pole vault record thirty-five times, for the same reason.

[paul_e]

Yep, it's a money thing that makes it a bit silly.

Specific to pole vault it's pretty unique in being an event where equipment plays a vital role but that degree of minute control is possible.

[cdbearsfan]

Happy Femke Bol won, she seems nice and I like her voice.

[cdbearsfan]

Great triple jump final. Gold medal changed hands twice in the final few jumps.

[cdbearsfan]

Silver for GB in the 200, Amy Hunt.

[Brazilian Villain]

Silver for GB in the 200, Amy Hunt.

Pleased for her, she seems nice.

[Brazilian Villain]

Happy Femke Bol won, she seems nice and I like her voice.

Everybody loves Femke, including the other athletes. As an aside, I don't think I've seen a championships with as much camaraderie between the athletes.

[Skipper_The_Eyechild]

Yep, it's a money thing that makes it a bit silly.

Specific to pole vault it's pretty unique in being an event where equipment plays a vital role but that degree of minute control is possible.

I just find it amazing that none of the other competitors get anywhere near him even though they have access (I assume) to pretty much the same level of equipment. I guess these generational talents pop up every now and then.

[paul_e]

Yep, it's a money thing that makes it a bit silly.

Specific to pole vault it's pretty unique in being an event where equipment plays a vital role but that degree of minute control is possible.

I just find it amazing that none of the other competitors get anywhere near him even though they have access (I assume) to pretty much the same level of equipment. I guess these generational talents pop up every now and then.

Oh yeah he's an exceptional talent, his record is 22cm better than anyone else currently competing has ever managed. He's a generation ahead of the competition in a similar way to Jonathan Edwards or Mike Powell and I wouldn't be surprised if his record, wherever it settles, lasts as long.

[Skipper_The_Eyechild]

Yep, it's a money thing that makes it a bit silly.

Specific to pole vault it's pretty unique in being an event where equipment plays a vital role but that degree of minute control is possible.

I just find it amazing that none of the other competitors get anywhere near him even though they have access (I assume) to pretty much the same level of equipment. I guess these generational talents pop up every now and then.

Oh yeah he's an exceptional talent, his record is 22cm better than anyone else currently competing has ever managed. He's a generation ahead of the competition in a similar way to Jonathan Edwards or Mike Powell and I wouldn't be surprised if his record, wherever it settles, lasts as long.

Watching the triple jumpers yesterday, it was crazy to see just how far everyone still is away from Edwards's record. He was before my time, did he go 18+ often or was that out of the blue?

[amfy]

My friend’s daughter - Hannah Nuttall, is in the 5000m final later.

I met her mum, Aly Wyeth on a Southampton City exchange to Linz in Austria. I was running in Southampton B team at the time and we were really short of athletes. She said she’d done a bit of running and agreed to come along to a meeting with me one weekend. She turned out to be ‘quite good’ - later going on to Olympic finals and a commonwealth bronze! 

Through running she met her husband Gary Nuttall (who later left her for Liz McColgan).

It’s a weird thing to think that if I hadn’t met Aly on that trip, she might never have realised how good she was at running, might never have met Gary, and lovely Hannah (& she is lovely as you may see) might not exist!

Looking forward to seeing how she does.