Sebastian Coe promised to be ‘guided by science’ when it comes to sport’s most divisive issue. But World Athletics’ solution is clearly designed to protect it from legal action tooNo female athlete has yet commented. Can you blame them given the vicious amount of social media abuse this issue generates? During a star-spangled athletics career, Sebastian Coe rarely snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The most famous exception came at the Olympic 800m final in Moscow where he made so many tactical missteps that his father and coach, Peter, used a coarse four-letter word to describe his run. However this weekend Coe became reacquainted with similar levels of opprobrium after World Athletics’ proposed solution to sport’s most divisive issue...
Anthony Joshua’s fight in Saudi Arabia this week once more raises questions about the choice of venue for big eventsTwo scenes. Two British sporting icons. Variations on a theme. Scene one: a supremely jet-lagged Anthony Joshua in a Heathrow hotel in September. After several softballs about his rematch with Andy Ruiz Jr, the question finally comes. Why fight in Saudi Arabia when Amnesty International says the regime is using you to sportswash its “abysmal” human rights record that includes using public beheadings as a weapon to crush dissent?“I appreciate them voicing an opinion,” replies Joshua, before stressing he is not a superhero who can zap away the world’s problems by donning a cape. When pressed, he mumbles something about “reforms”...
The IAAF president knows the next four years could make or break the sport as interest declines despite the presence of stars such as Mondo Duplantis, Noah Lyles and Dina Asher-SmithHere is a challenge for anyone with 53 seconds to spare – Google “6.05m slow motion pole vault”. Then try to stop your jaw hitting the floor as the Swedish teenage athlete Mondo Duplantis soars skyward, jackknifes his body, dances his hands up the pole, and flips – just! – over a height greater than a double decker bus. The new super slow-motion footage of his feat at the 2018 European championships in Berlin has been seen 4.5 million times on Twitter in the three weeks alone. The twist in...