Celebrating 200 Laps ⏱️
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Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder
Reflecting On 200 Weeks Of The Lap Count ⏱️
Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton
Well, here we are: the 200th Lap Count. If our “laps” were really 400 meters, we’d be closing out our 80th kilometer this week (also known as 1.4 Sifan Hassans). That might not be a lot for weekly mileage, but it’s a lot for weekly emails.
To put things a bit less esoterically, 200 editions means we’ve officially tied ABC sitcom Coach (starring Craig T. Nelson) in total number of “episodes,” and slipped right past CSI: NY (197 eps). If there was any way for us to make residuals off syndicated newsletter reruns, we’d be set for life.
It’s not lost on us that 200 weeks is a long time, and that some of you have read well over three years’ worth of track and field analysis, opinions, interviews, rants, and digressions. You forgave us for the occasional typo and always let us know when we missed something important. Whether you heeded the call of the wild Kyle Merber’s Twitter account and subscribed for Lap 1 or you just signed up (welcome!), we’re honored and touched that you’re here, sipping coffee with us every Wednesday morning, and want to say thank you.
It’s a very cool feeling, knowing that something that launched as a pure passion project – and has more or less continued to operate as one – now regularly contributes to the discourse around our favorite sport. But rather than get too navel-gazy (and to make sure we don’t cut into too much Christmas and/or Hanukkah present-opening time), we’d rather reflect a little on just how much the sport has changed since TLC was conceived in March 2021.
In many ways, it feels like track and field has entered an entirely new era post-pandemic, and that all the changes, large and small, have added up to a sport that looks very different now than it did three years ago.
We made it through two Olympic cycles.
A lot can change over the course of a typical four-year Olympic cycle. Stars are born, stars burn out, stars tear their hamstrings, and one shining moment can make or break a career. For the athletes themselves, the quadrennial cadence of our Olympic-obsessed sport also forces tough decision-making about training setups, coaches, contracts, or even retirement. After Tokyo was delayed, we learned that a three-year cycle is still long enough for a lot of those same things to happen anyway. Athletes like Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Soufiane El Bakkali, and Sifan Hassan had never won an Olympic title when TLC began, and then-reigning Olympic champions still included David Rudisha, Mo Farah, and Usain Bolt. Shoutout to the special few who were on top then and are still on top now: Ryan Crouser, Faith Kipyegon, and Nafi Thiam.
Notable Centrowitz-shusher Cole Hocker “pulls a Centro” of his own.
Our prime readership demographic (nerds of a certain age) can undoubtedly recall with 100% certainty where they watched Matt Centrowitz put on a tactical masterclass en route to a stunning Olympic gold in the Rio 1500m. You probably got chills and thought some variation of “that was cool and I’m sure something like that will not happen again in my lifetime.” For Gen Z nerds, that special moment may have been Cole Hocker storming to victory at the 2021 Olympic Trials, shushing the crowd (but also maybe Centro) as he crossed the line. Hocker’s legend only grew from there, and in Paris, he secured an Olympic gold medal of his own – albeit in a faster race with a completely different race strategy.
Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton
The Bowerman Track Club moves to Eugene.
When this newsletter began, the Bowerman Track Club was still hoovering up every available North American distance record, and joining the team was one of few avenues for Americans (and Canadians) to land global distance medals. But a high profile doping scandal, numerous key retirements, the team’s departure from its long-term Portland home base, and the coaching staff taking on side jobs at the University of Oregon really scrambled things up in Bowermanland and left the once mighty squad reeling. Change can be good: just ask Grant Fisher, Elise Cranny, and Woody Kincaid. The pipeline of promising young talent hasn’t fully dried up – notably, Kaylee Mitchell and Charlie Hicks have signed up for the Schumacher System – so the club’s best days may not yet be behind them.
On Athletics Club arrives in a big way.
When On Athletics Club was founded in August 2020 on the backs of Dathan Ritzenhein and Joe Klecker, there was a real curiosity to see what, exactly, the company behind the weird-looking Roger Federer shoes would be able to get out of its first real foray into track and field. Fast-forward three years, and the answer is (so far): two Olympic medals, a Commonwealth Games title, World Indoor gold, three World Marathon Major victories, a bunch of national records, and one of the better podcasts in the game. Not a bad return on investment.
Eliud Kipchoge is no longer unbeatable.
When we clicked our first few keys on the Lap Count typewriter, three things in life were certain: death, taxes, and Eliud Kipchoge winning any marathon he started. 50% of the content churned out by the early CITIUS MAG ecosystem was about the inevitability of Kipchoge and much hay was made about his sub-two-hour marathon attempts. There was one small crack in the armor, a sixth-place finish at the weird 2020 London Marathon lap-a-thon, but an Olympic title defense, Tokyo Marathon victory, and lowering of his own world record in Berlin made that one race seem like a blip. But alas, even the Kipchoges of the world eventually turn 40, buckle under the strain of it all, and lose their automatic favorite status whenever they line up. His 2024 season only included two races: a 10th-place showing in Tokyo and a DNF in Paris. Is this the end of the road for ol’ Eliud? We doubt it. But his quest to win every world major is looking increasingly quixotic.
Mondo Duplantis and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone become unbeatable.
It’s easy to forget that two of the biggest track and field stars of the 21st century really only became world-beaters in the past three or four years. Mondo Duplantis was already the world record holder, thanks to his 6.17m and 6.18m leaps in February 2020, but the Swedish (via Louisiana) pole vault sensation had yet to pick up a senior global title until Tokyo (To be fair, he took silver at Worlds in 2019 at the age of 19). Now he’s got four gold medals, eight more world record bonuses, and no viable rival in the sport. Another fellow silver medalist from Doha is a little-known hurdler by the name of Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who was already an Olympian after making the Rio team as a high schooler in 2016 but had yet to get the best of then-world record holder Dalilah Muhammad. She’s now claimed the WR for herself, lowered it nearly two full seconds, and left the competition on hurdle #9.
Photo by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
Name, Image, and Likeness comes to the NCAA.
College athletics looks very different now than it did a few years ago. A slew of changes have hit the NCAA system, some triggered by legal disputes and court rulings and others by the ever-evolving ecosystem of conferences, programs, and procedures that the overlords in Indianapolis work to manage. Perhaps the most dramatic was the June 2021 shift to allow collegiate athletes to financially benefit from use of their name, image, and likeness – for both the changes it brought and its ripple effects it caused. In the track and field world, shoe companies jumped at the opportunity to throw a few bucks and some gear at seemingly every up-and-coming athlete in the hopes of both promoting a new generation of runners and locking the best of athletes into pro contracts with the same brands. For a “non-revenue” sport, it sure seems like NCAA track and field is all about the money these days!
Collegiate distance running goes absolutely crazy.
Blame it on super shoes, COVID eligibility, NIL, international talent, the BU track… however and wherever you want to assign blame, the net result is that the NCAA record books have taken an absolute beating in the last few seasons, particularly in the distance events. We saw the first sub-15 5000m (and second, third, and fourth) and sub-31 10,000m on the women’s side and the first sub-13s and sub-27s performers (two each, actually) on the men’s – not to mention big chunks off the collegiate records in the men’s 1500m, women’s steeplechase, and women’s 800m. The depth has also skyrocketed. To use one hotly-debated example, 38 men broke four minutes in the mile during the 2021 indoor season. In 2024, a whopping 108 men got under the barrier.
Photo by Austin DeSisto / @austin.desisto
Vaporflies aren’t quite the cheat code they once were.
We spent a lot more time going back and forth online about “super shoes” in 2021. Really, it all goes back to 2016, when the introduction of prototype carbon-plate Nike racers at the Olympic Marathon Trials got competitors all hot and bothered and fans studying up on terms like “stack height” and “running economy.” Vaporflies haven’t gone anywhere – just take a look at the start line of any road race with more than a handful of entrants. But the technological arms race of the late 2010s, after spilling over into track spike technology and introducing new “innovation” alongside a $500 price tag, seems to have evened out a bit. There’s a range of pricey but competitive offerings available on the wall at any given run-specialty store, and the results at the top have much more parity: the six U.S. Olympians selected at this year’s Marathon Trials represented four different brands (Nike, Puma, New Balance, and ASICS), as did the six Olympic medalists (Nike, adidas, ASICS, and On).
5 minutes get knocked off the women’s marathon world record.
Remember in 2019, how Brigid Kosgei’s 2:14:04 felt otherworldly when the then-25-year-old Kenyan knocked Paula Radcliffe off the top of the record books? Well that’s practically jogging these days, as Tigst Assefa shaved another two minutes off in 2023 then Ruth Chepngetich took the record places no woman had ever gone before, into sub-2:10 territory. It’s a reminder of how quickly the sport can evolve at times, and also how quickly a shocking outlier becomes a new normal. Sub-2:15 is still quite special, but now the barrier has been broken six different times by five different athletes, and Chepngetich also now claims the mixed-bag honor of holding the fastest non-winning marathon time in history at 2:15:37, which she clocked en route to a second-place finish behind Sifan Hassan at Chicago in 2023.
Photo by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
The price of a USATF membership has increased 37%.
For the bean counters and Max Siegel critics out there, this isn’t exactly a welcome change, but the price of an annual membership to the nonprofit governing track and field in the United States has soared from $44.40 to $60.93 (fees included) in just three years. It’s actually more than doubled since 2019, when a membership cost $30. For those who occasionally wonder why we here at TLC are frequently pogo-sticking on the idea that USATF can, and should, do better by its constituents, a good question to ask is whether the goods, services, and contributions to society they provide have also increased dramatically in quality over that same period.
Money gets poured into new meet formats and docuseries.
Fortunately, the future of track and field is not being built entirely on the wallets of individual members. Since 2021, the sport has seen a huge influx of new dollars in both track meets and their coverage, following successful efforts in sports like Formula 1, cycling, and golf to increase competitiveness and attract new eyes. The Diamond League is no longer the only place for athletes to pick up big prize money on the track, with well-funded efforts like Athlos NYC and the Grand Slam Track league stepping in to keep the DL on its toes. And following the whirlwind success of Drive To Survive, track (and basically every other sport with room to grow) has gone all-in on the docuseries format with Netflix’s SPRINT, Peacock’s Untitled, and Amazon’s Born To Run.
All in all, it’s been an interesting and entertaining 200 weeks together. Hopefully, the last three years of track and field consumption you’ve experienced have been satisfying, and that we’ve been a part of telling new stories, offering unique perspectives, and making silly jokes that have helped increase your enjoyment. Here’s to at least 200 more!
Track And Field: Wrapped 🎁
Photo by Justin Britton / @justinbritton
Move over, Spotify! Give it a rest, Strava! You don’t need some app to compile all your personal data and algorithmic preferences just to tell you that in the last 365 days you listened to way too much Sabrina Carpenter and missed your annual mileage goal by hundreds of miles.
2024 was a big year for track and field on social media, and countless professional, sub-elite, and (sigh) running influencers went viral for everything from pole vault mishaps to allegations of international espionage.
Some of these moments felt more akin to one-hit wonder singles, while others filled the role of no-skips albums you kept on repeat all year. But whether it was your local one-hit wonder making a fool of himself at the Turkey Trot or Noah Lyles solidifying his top spot as the Mariah Carey of online track beef, group chats and comment sections around the globe were kept well-supplied with material.
And since there isn’t one single platform to compile them all, here are a few year-end lists we put together to sum up 2024 in Track and Field (Chronically Online Version).
Top 5 excuses why the race went poorly:
Arguably the most important part of being a professional athlete is having a robust online presence (unless you’re Galen Rupp). And a huge part of being a pro online is always having an excuse at the ready for your post-race photo carousel when things didn’t go well.
Haven’t started speedwork yet. A classic up there with “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid” and “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” No matter how late in the season or why the race was disappointing, the crucial speed workout that would’ve delivered the win is always one week out on the schedule.
Rabbit messed up the pace. Nothing says grace and humility like blaming the unsponsored runner burning off a valuable race effort to drag you halfway through the race at personal-best pace for 100 bucks and parking pass.
Race was too hot/cold/windy. If the race wasn’t on the BU indoor track, it could’ve been better weather. (Even if it was at BU, there may have been a saboteur fiddling with the thermostat!) Surely if it was 53º instead of 57º you would’ve run twenty or thirty seconds faster.
Not enough time to warm up. After Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce at the Olympics, no one else gets to use this one anymore.
Running gear was not up to par. Bad shoelaces, faulty shorts liner, not enough carbon, not enough foam, too much foam… whatever you come up with, just make sure you’ve cashed your latest last check from your gear sponsor before you throw them under the bus.
Top 5 controversies the most annoying guy at run club told you about:
In between huffing and puffing his way through the warmup and mansplaining double thresholds to anyone within earshot, that one guy at run club whose screen time consists of 10 daily hours of message board scrolling will not be shy about filling you in on the latest nonsense.
New Boston Marathon qualifying standards released. Can you BELIEVE one of the most popular and competitive races in the world has the AUDACITY to be selective about its entrants?!
Camille Herron edited a bunch of Wikipedia articles. Okay, this one was mostly just funny. As punishment, Des Linden should get exclusive editing authority over Camille’s page for a year.
The Olympic 10,000m qualifying standards get crazy. The complex mishmash of world rankings, time standards, and moving targets had Chris Chavez out here looking like Steve Kornacki for weeks during the U.S. Olympic Trials.
Sage Canaday hawks overrated energy gels. Canaday, one of the most… persistent content creators in the game… got a bunch of ultra runners and/or nutrition science nerds mad at him for promoting Spring Energy. Yes, it’s exactly as boring as it sounds.
Matt Choi gets banned from the New York Marathon. A huge victory for anyone who’s ever seen a guy running with a selfie stick and thought, ‘I hope the entire running community comes together to condemn this behavior.’
Photo by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
Top 5 track and field feuds:
Why can’t we all just get along? Well, for starters, it would make the sport way more boring. The only thing better than a friendly rivalry is an unfriendly one, and while track and field is generally full of nice, polite, respectful folks, every once in a while we get Hatfield-McCoy-lite feud brewing that generates friction and intrigue both on and off the track.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen vs. Josh Kerr. Instead of making our 75th Challengers reference of the year, we’ll just leave this one at – it’s great for the sport that two of the best 1500m runners in the world race each other a lot and seem to genuinely really dislike one another.
Faith Kipyegon vs. Gudaf Tsegay. More people would watch the entirety of distance races if there was a mid-race shoving match between the biggest names in every Olympic final.
Rai Benjamin vs. Alison dos Santos vs. Karsten Warholm. Okay, this one might not really be a “feud” as all parties have been polite and positive about one another in public, but the three-way battle between the last three global champions in the 400m hurdles came to a head several exciting times this year, most dramatically when dos Santos went to Warholm’s home turf and outleaned him for the win at the Oslo Diamond League meet.
Noah Lyles vs. Jamaica. The king of manufacturing controversy spent plenty of time this year playing heel to Jamaican track and field athletes and their boosters – even if it was Letsile Tebogo who got the last laugh.
Fred Kerley vs. the Haters. Whether it was the starting blocks, his shoe sponsor, doubters online, or his competition on the track, Fred Kerley spent the first half of the year fighting battle after battle against his detractors both inanimate and living… until making his second Olympic team and picking up his second medal in Paris.
Honorable mentions: Noah Lyles vs. ishowspeed, Noah Lyles vs. Tyreek Hill, Noah Lyles vs. the 200m, Noah Lyles vs. adidas, Noah Lyles vs. USATF, Noah Lyles vs. his immune system, Noah Lyles vs. Grand Slam Track, Noah Lyles vs. the 4x400m.
Photo by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
Top 5 truths stranger than fiction:
The most predictable result of any year in track and field is that the unpredictable will happen. Anyone who’s bet a sure-thing five-way parlay on heavy favorites taking gold can tell you that, just because one outcome is highly likely, doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed. And we sure got some weird headlines out of this season.
Noah Lyles wins the 100m and loses the 200m. It’s doubtful anyone had this one on their 2024 bingo cards, but the net result is that the only two 200m finals Noah Lyles has lost this decade have been at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics.
Sifan Hassan triples back to marathon gold. Sifan is no stranger to insane ambitious championship schedules, but even the biggest Hassaniacs probably thought a five-race odyssey ending with 26.2 miles against one of the greatest fields ever assembled would be a bit too much for the Dutch superwoman. And yet, she came home with gold!
A woman breaks 2:10 in the marathon. Somehow, Hassan’s triple was only the second-most unbelievable marathon performance of 2024, as Ruth Chepngetich singlehandedly redefined the possible when she knocked two minutes off the world record in Chicago.
Athing Mu misses Olympic 800m team. We know now that a hamstring tear significantly hampered the 2021 Olympic and 2022 World champion in her buildup to the U.S. Trials, but ultimately it was a trip and fall 200 meters into the final that cost her a spot on Team USA.
Snoop Dogg races Wallace Spearmon. Snoop Dogg probably should’ve read the fine print on his NBC contract, because the 53-year-old rapper somehow got roped into doing more work than a decathlete as the unofficial-official TV ambassador for track and field and, later in the summer, the Olympic writ large. Even if he was paid hourly, he would’ve still ended up with a hefty check!
If track and field in 2024 were a playlist, it would be eclectic and unexpected – but certainly not boring. And if the sport follows other popular music trends, we can’t wait for the remix album in 2025.
Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥
Photos by Kevin Morris / @kevmofoto
– Remember the Marathon Project? Well it’s back and bigger than ever, as the event born of necessity during the 2020 season is being reintroduced in 2025 as an annual event featuring an elite marathon, 1,000-entrant “Gold Wave” marathon, and a community 5k.
– Grand Slam Track has rounded out its roster of Racers for its inaugural season. The final signees for the 2024 Slams are Americans Brittany Brown (2024 Olympic bronze medalist over 200m), Freddie Crittenden (2024 Olympic 110mH finalist), and Caleb Dean (2024 NCAA champion, 60mH and 400mH), Brit Zharnel Hughes (2023 World Championship bronze medalist over 100m), and Ethiopia’s Diribe Welteji (2023 World Championship silver medalist over 1500m).
– This year, USTFCCCA decided to reward athletes whose specialty events take a lot of time to complete – long distance runner Parker Valby and decathlete Leo Neugebauer were awarded the Bowerman in the fifteenth edition of the awards. Valby and Neugebauer are the second female distance runner and second male decathlete, respectively, to win the award after their little-known, minimally-accomplished predecessors: Jenny Simpson and Ashton Eaton.
– New Balance has signed five high school stars to NIL deals. World U20 200m medalist Jake Odey Jordan is the lone non-middle-distance athlete of the bunch, and is joined in this cohort by Stanford-bound Olivia Cieslak, future Washington Husky Josiah Tostenson, US #5-tie all-time 1000m runner Cole Boone, and Oklahoma State signee Elyse Wilmes.
– Congrats to Elle, Jamie, and Ivan St. Pierre on their growing family! The two-time Olympian and reigning World Indoor champion in the 3000m announced that she’s expecting her second child in May – and also that the 29-year-old is not planning to retire any time soon.
– Spanish middle-distance runner Mo Katir just keeps stomping on rakes. The Athletics Integrity Unit, which had previously hit Katir with a two-year ban for whereabouts failures in February, extended that ban another four years for tampering with evidence. The 26-year-old will be out of action until at least February 2028.
– In case you forgot that race walking falls under the jurisdiction of USA Track and Field, Curt Clausen will soon have a huge platform to remind you. The three-time Olympic race walker was elected USATF president at this year’s annual meeting, succeeding outgoing president Vin Lananna.
– Calling her shot! Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson has announced her intention to target the 22-year-old world indoor record of 1:55.82 next February in Birmingham, UK, at an event aptly named the “Keely Klassic.”
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