Were You Bol'd Over? ⏱️
Lap 259: Sponsored by USATF
Sponsored by USATF
Get your tickets for the 2026 USATF Indoor Championships presented by Prevagen.
Use promo code CITIUS10 to save on tickets to the USATF Indoor Championships, where the stakes are high as athletes compete for the chance to represent Team USATF at the World Indoor Championships in Poland.
Feel the energy of the crowd, the speed on the track, and the pride of watching the nation’s best compete head-to-head at Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex in NYC.
The action takes place February 28 to March 1 as athletes battle for national titles. Tickets are on sale now. Grab yours before they’re gone!
Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Chris Chavez
Let’s Break All The Indoor Relay World Records This Year 👯♀️
Last weekend was a quiet one in the track and field world, especially in the U.S. where the big names were all coming down off the high of Millrose and staying out of the cold. Up against college basketball, the Winter Olympics, and the Super Bowl, poor little track and field would’ve had an even slimmer shot than usual at breaking through to the public consciousness under the best of circumstances.
Nevertheless, history was made. Over at the University of Pennsylvania, an institution synonymous with relays, the Quakers hosted the Atlanta Track Club, who broke the world indoor record in the men’s 4x800m. ATC ran 7:10.29 to knock just over a second off the 2018 best of 7:11.30 set by the NJNY Track Club. Clay Pender (1:49.69), Luke Houser (1:47.47), Luciano Fiore (1:47.35), and Sean Dolan (1:45.79) worked together to bump Kyle Merber from the top spot once and for all.
The 4x800m isn’t often run on the college and professional level, but any time a world best gets taken down, especially on a slow news week, it’s notable. More than anything else, however, it opened up a Pandora’s box of what-ifs, namely: how many other indoor WRs are looking a little soft these days?
There’s more than five weeks between now and the start of the World Indoor Championships. With the exception of various national championships, a handful of BU time trials, and three more World Indoor Tour Gold meets, non-collegiate elites don’t exactly have a packed calendar. So why not use the down time to get together a few friends and run faster than anyone else ever has? Of the indoor relay events World Athletics tracks, at least four of them could be broken this year on the NCAA circuit alone, and one more—the women’s 4x800m—could easily go down if any of a half dozen nations bothered to try.
But why settle for just one or two more relay records? There’s a case to be made that 2026 could be the year when every single relay indoor WR goes down in one season. Sure, you might need a magic wand and a fat stack of appearance-fee cash, but the path to an eight-for-eight sweep is there if the right teams step up.
Men’s 4x200m
Current WR: 1:22.11, Great Britain, 1991
This mark is the oldest of the group, and it may be the hardest to break. The 4x200m is rarely, if ever, run on the pro level because doing so would risk turning an indoor track into a demolition derby of limb collisions. But also, Team GB’s mark from 1991 is pretty legit, with a crew that featured Olympic champ Linford Christie and 19.87 man John Regis. If you could somehow wrangle Noah Lyles and Kenny Bednarek onto the same relay, Team USA could take a crack at it… but wouldn’t it be more fun if Jamaica had a second Cool Runnings moment with Oblique Seville, Bryan Levell, Ackeem Blake, and Kishane Thompson getting the job done instead? Sounds crazy, but the latter three have already opened up their 2026 racing seasons in the 60m, so it’s not like they wouldn’t be ready.
Women’s 4x200m
Current WR: 1:32.41, Russia, 2005
If Star Athletics wanted a boost of good PR, this record is theirs for the taking. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Sha’Carri Richardson, Kayla White, and Tee Tee Terry could show off their serious (and law-abiding) speed without even needing to recruit outside the training group. And heck, in a dream scenario, you could field an entire second team of talented Americans to battle it out for the record, assuming you could get Anavia Battle, Brittany Brown, McKenzie Long, and Gabby Thomas together and healthy at the same time. Talk about an embarrassment of riches.
Men’s 4x400m
Current WB: 3:00.77, USC, 2018
Unlike the 4x200m, fast 4x400ms get run every March thanks to the NCAA Indoor Championships. The bigger problem is the top NCAA squads are rarely made up of four athletes who all represent the same country. Technically, USC’s mark from 2018 only counts as a world best, because U.S. Olympic champion Rai Benjamin was representing Antigua and Barbuda at the time. It would be fun to have Benjamin and Michael Norman reunite to break their own record eight years later. But why let the Americans have all the fun? Great Britain, South Africa, and World champs Botswana all had four runners dip under 45 seconds in the 2025 season, and the Brits could easily host their African rivals somewhere like Birmingham for an exciting exhibition.
Women’s 4x400m
Current WB: 3:21.75, Arkansas, 2023
Five of the six fastest indoor 4x400ms this decade have come from two places: the endless 400m factory that is Arkansas, and the Femke Bol-led Netherlands. The Razorbacks don’t have quite the level of firepower this season they’ve sported in the past, but Olympic relay gold medalist Kaylyn Brown is still kicking around, and with Bol focused on the 800m for the moment, the best bet at a record-breaking run would be for Arkansas to be pushed by the likes of USC or Georgia at NCAAs.
Women’s 4x800m
Current WR: 8:05.89, United States, 2018
Keely Klassic meet organizers, listen up: this is a slam dunk waiting to happen. If Olympic champ Keely Hodgkinson returns to the meet-directing game, what better way to showcase British middle-distance excellence and/or the M11 track club than to absolutely obliterate the world indoor best in the 4x800m? Given that two-thirds of the World podium in 2025 came from Team GB and neither of those medalists were Isabelle Boffey, the 2026 world leader at 1:57.43, it feels like the Brits could practically jog this one and still knock a good chunk off the 2018 mark.
Men’s DMR
Current WB: 9:14.10, Washington, 2025
The two fastest DMR performances in history both came last season, but at totally different races. Washington ran 9:14.10 on their home track one week before Virginia ran 9:14.19 in Arkansas. Technically, Gary Martin and the Hoos have the official indoor record because Washington gets dinged for running on an oversize track, but it would have been awesome to see the two teams go head to head. With Nathan Green’s graduation, however, Washington would be fielding a younger team—so instead, let’s reunite the band for an all-star alumni squad featuring some combination of Green, Luke Houser, Joe Waskom, and Justin O’Toole, who broke out big time for Team Canada last summer with a 1:44.42 800m.
Women’s DMR
Current WR: 10:33.85, New Balance, 2022
One of the last big exhibition record attempts in recent memory came in April 2022, when the quartet of Heather MacLean, Kendall Ellis, Roisin Willis, and Elle St. Pierre broke both the indoor and outdoor marks on the then-brand-new TRACK at New Balance. And here’s the thing… every single one of those runners has set new PBs in the years since. Why not just run it back? If the organizers wanted to keep things in the NB family (MacLean is now an adidas athlete), someone like Dani Jones, Emily MacKay, or Margot Appleton could easily step up and fill the 1200m spot. These days, sports marketing is all about nostalgia anyway, so why not cook up some carefully-crafted déjà vu for the fans?
It’s highly unlikely that every single one of these records could get broken in one season, particularly in instances where pro athletes in particular are planning for a long season and only coming out of hibernation for a hefty appearance fee. But here’s the flip side: especially in some of these softer events, you don’t exactly have to be World-Championship-final sharp to show up, carry a baton, and then add “world record holder” to your Instagram bio.
TLC Debates: Did The Femke Bol 800m Debut Live Up To The Hype? 🗣️
Last weekend in Metz, France, 400m hurdles World champ Femke Bol made her 800m debut with a 1:59.07 win, the first step in her much-publicized move to focus on the longer event during the 2026 season. Bol broke the Dutch national record in her first effort and landed at #5 on the 2026 list so far this season.
There’s been a lot of debate over Bol’s potential in the 800m, what her run in Metz indicates, and how excited fans should be about this new move. Kyle Merber and David Melly take the debate out of the group chat and into the newsletter:
KM: I am super impressed—this was an A+ performance by every metric. I can’t confirm the validity of this statement, but that has to be the fastest 800m debut of all-time.
DM: I wouldn’t say I’m let down by her performance by any means, but I’m not entirely sure what the big whoop is. When I woke up Sunday morning, our friend James Rhodes had asked Twitter, “When is the last time there was this much anticipation for a (non-championships) race?” I was like… last weekend, at Millrose? There’s a long history of established athletes trying new events with a wide range of success, from Gwen Jorgensen to Dafne Schippers. But most of the time, a World champion is a World champion in their primary event for a reason and the shift doesn’t yield anything new or exciting.
KM: The offseason in track is normally pretty boring and filled with pointless debates of “what-if” type-scenarios so when Femke Bol announced she was transitioning to the 800m, there was rightfully a lot of buzz. Before she even ran a single step at the new distance, as a fan of the sport, you have to rally behind an athlete at this level going public with their intent to try something new.
To your points of comparison, the marathon gold obviously didn’t work out for Gwen. Dafne had previously run 22.03 to win Europeans, so she wasn’t as much of an unknown entity. Remember last year when Noah Lyles tested out the 400m and only ran 45.87? And the transition from the 400m hurdles to the 800m is a more drastic leap. Now considering that 89 women broke two minutes last year, we can’t hand over any medals yet, but it’s quite obvious we’ve got something here!
DM: I kinda thought Femke would run between 1:58 and 2:00 and that’s exactly what she did. If she’d run closer to 1:58 looking like she had way more in the tank, I would’ve maybe been sitting up a little on my couch. But the problem is that I already think really highly of her – she’s an 11-time medalist, for Chrissake—so anything other than being a legitimate gold medal contender in a new event feels like a step down. And 1:55 missed the podium in Tokyo last year.
KM: The fact that she met the baseline of your high expectations is a testament to the esteem you already held her in. Remember the 2025 season wrapped up at the end of September. Based on my investigative cyber-stalking, she took a nice break and really has only been at it for a few months. Her fitness will continue to improve, and she’ll figure out the event. For better or worse, we saw her go out a bit too hard, back off the pace and then change gears to close it down. It’s a promising sign that her penultimate lap was the slowest—she did have something left in the tank!
Also, let’s not overlook the fact that the four women she handily beat have all run under 2:00 multiple times.
DM: I think a big part of what initially made me think she has great potential in the 800m is that when she runs the flat 400m, she looks like she’s jogging the whole first half. But she also looked like that in the race in Metz on Friday and ran a hefty positive split, so maybe that’s just… what she looks like when she races. I do wonder if some of the hype just comes down to the fact that Femke is a much bigger star across the pond and we’re so Sydney-pilled in the U.S. we don’t think about her the same way. It was wild that she got a splash page on the European Athletics website just for this.
KM: It’s difficult for the American mind to comprehend how big of stars track athletes are abroad. I was in Amsterdam a couple weeks ago and they all know her! But imagine if Rai Benjamin took up the 800m and ran 1:44.5 his first time out—we’d be freaking out.
While the WA scoring tables are not a perfect science, it is notable that this first 800m is dangerously close to the value of her 200m best. The truth is that she really is just not THAT fast from a sprinting perspective, but Femke is strong as hell and that’s where she excels. We saw that with her 500m world record, and Keely’s 1:23.41 is living on borrowed time in the 600m.
DM: Honestly, I’d be more excited to see Rai take a real crack at the flat 400m—let’s see how close to 43 he can get if he really focuses on it. He’s talked about wanting to run the 200m, but I don’t really see a world where he’s contending with Lyles and Tebogo. It’s weird to me that Femke doesn’t see the flat 400m as a race with more upside. Maybe she feels like she’s already maxed out the potential there?
KM: Did you watch the same race in Tokyo as I did? Sydney, Marileidy, AND Salwa… no thank you! But again, I think the 800m just plays more to her strengths. Every athlete keeps moving up in distance until they’re competitive, and in the Netherlands she was already competitive at the 400m as a 15 year old so there wasn’t much of a need to keep going.
DM: I will say, if she sticks with it all year and keeps winning, my tune would change. I can see a path where Femke is winning her way up to a clash with Keely at Europeans, and there’s a real possibility the matchup will be a fair fight. I’m a little worried it’ll be closer to what we saw with Beatrice Chebet in the 1500m last year instead—she’s really, really good and could maybe even medal, but it became clear she’s not beating Faith Kipyegon at every distance and she sorta retreated back to the safety of the 5k.
KM: I think if the barometer of success is, “Does she beat the Olympic champion the first year in a new event?” then we may be setting ourselves up for disappointment. But if I am a world class 800m runner right now, then I am nervous. Keely’s 400m best is only 51.61. Do you remember the advantage a healthy Athing Mu had with 49.57 speed? The last time an indoor 400m world record holder moved up to the 800m was Jarmila Kratochvílová, and she ran 1:56.29 in year one and 1:53.28 WR the following.
DM: That world record has lived long enough and then some. For any multitude of reasons, it would be awesome to see Femke clear that lofty bar. Only time will tell!
What do you think – is Femke Bol the next great middle-distance star, is this an over-hyped Eurocentric stunt, or somewhere in between? Let us know!
Is It Time To Panic Over Ingebrigtsen’s Injuries? 😬
Jakob Ingebrigtsen recently underwent surgery in Palo Alto, California, to clean up scar tissue in the sheath around his left Achilles tendon. From the information Ingebrigtsen’s camp has shared, it doesn’t sound like it was a particularly invasive procedure, and he expects to be back training in a few months.
But you’d be forgiven if you’re skeptical about Ingebrigtsen’s rosy public-facing outlook. Anytime a 25-year-old superstar athlete is forced to go under the knife—particularly when the intervention wasn’t planned and required a trip halfway around the world—there’s cause for at least a little bit of concern.
Ingebrigtsen’s Achilles troubles reached a fever pitch last April, precluding him from racing until the World Championships. In Tokyo he looked like a husk of the world-beating Jakob we’re accustomed to, failing to reach the 1500m final and winding up 10th in the 5000m. He hasn’t raced since, apparently gearing up for some competition this outdoor season, then hit this most recent surgery-requiring roadblock.
The nagging nature of the injury eventually triggered the decision to get that pesky paratenon operated on, but ultimately, this isn’t a bad year to have an unplanned surgery-shuttered season (the World Ultimate Championships are cool, but wouldn’t deliver the same sweetness of a return to the top of the World 1500m podium). Still, losing a second year of your racing prime when setting 10 career world records is publicly on your to-do list… suboptimal.
So back to the question at hand: should you be concerned about Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s prospects once he’s back training?
There’s plenty of precedent in other sports for athletes to return from seemingly catastrophic Achilles injury and pick up right where they left off. Kevin Durant comes to mind, and his full tendon tear occurred when he was 30, meaning he was about two decades older than Ingebrigtsen is now in athlete years. But Durant’s injury felt flukish—a full rupture that required major reconstructive surgery to repair. There’s also Christian Taylor, who underwent Achilles surgery at 29 and was never the same triple jumper after. Ingebrigtsen’s injury appears to be a chronic one—he’s experienced it on his other Achilles tendon as well. When judging injuries, severity isn’t the only consideration.
Let’s not forget that, despite his heap of 5000m golds, Ingebrigtsen’s preferred event is the 1500m. Without diving into the physics or the physiology, the faster and shorter the event, the greater strain training and racing puts on connective tissue like the Achilles tendon.
For plenty of milers, developing a set of injury-prone Achilles sheaves might spell disaster. But Ingebrigtsen is no ordinary miler… in fact, he’s probably more of a distance guy who managed to front-run his way to an Olympic 1500m gold medal. Until we actually witness his return to racing or hear word of another lower leg setback, let’s keep our hands off the panic button for now. But it does feel increasingly likely that a return as a 5000m/10,000m specialist or even a half marathoner is on the horizon.
The standard move when a track-focused distance runner’s tendons become non-cooperative is to head to the roads, where spikes are a thing of the past and the body’s ability to grind at sub-four pace is irrelevant. One of the most fun things about being an Ingebrigtstan, however, is that he does seem to choose his priorities with his heart, not his head. It’s not that he’s lost his wheels or is past his peak—he’s just gotta find the sweet spot, event-wise that he can train for without inviting scar tissue flare ups in that meddlesome sheath. Our money is currently on Ingebrigtsen remaining a threat to win gold in the 5000m in Los Angeles.
The alternative timeline—and not an entirely unlikely one, either—is that we are at the beginning of a frustrating, gradual period of decline for Ingebrigtsten. The injury cycle continues, he misses significant chunks of training, and the Ingebrigtsen that sporadically lines up going forward is more akin to Tokyo ‘25 Jakob than Tokyo ‘20/21 Jakob. That’s not something anyone wants to see, even the most ardent Josh Kerr fan. So here’s hoping this brief surgical hiatus kicks off a new chapter of Ingebrigtsen’s storied career, and that the book isn’t being slammed shut.
Why Is Shannon Rowbury Taking WADA And World Athletics To Court? 👩⚖️
The following is excerpted from this longer article on CITIUS MAG.
Last summer, the International Olympic Committee officially elevated Shannon Rowbury to bronze in the 2012 London Olympic 1500m. This came after Turkey’s Asli Cakir Alptekin and Gamze Bulut, and Russia’s Tatyana Tomashova, were retroactively disqualified. Rowbury crossed the finish line sixth on the day in London, but five of the 13 finalists have been disqualified for anti-doping violations.
Now, Rowbury—along with fellow reallocated Olympic medalists Lashinda Demus, Zuzana Hejnová, Kaliese Spencer, and Alysia Montaño—has brought a case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport against World Anti-Doping Agency and World Athletics, in hopes of triggering structural reform. (A GoFundMe has been set up to raise money for mounting legal funds for the case to be formally considered by CAS.)
Rowbury spoke yesterday with CITIUS MAG to share an update on the state of the case, and discuss the tangible goals of the case.
Rowbury, on the real-world impacts a Clean Athletes Assistance Fund would provide: My Nike contract had a $50,000 bronze medal bonus… we saw in Kara Goucher’s book that when she got bronze at the World Championships in 2007… her next contract was $350,000. So at a minimum, I missed out on $50,000 but it could have been a whole lot more. And then you add that up over the fact that I was a Nike athlete until the end of 2024, but if you add up year after year…it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars…
On fighting for provisional suspension protections: On the surface, it seems as if WADA has a positive test, they hand it to World Athletics. World Athletics hands it to the federation. There’s no clarity on timelines. And there are no levers to ensure those notifications are given promptly and enforced efficiently… So I think this is yet another attempt to formalize the process with feedback loops in place so that it’s not just, “Here’s the information, do with it what you will,” but instead, how do we ensure that this is verified, especially within that Olympic period?
On the need for stronger conflict of interest rules in anti-doping governance: There should be mechanisms where conflicts of interest are eliminated. And when it comes to these very impactful, very important decisions, we can walk away knowing that they’ve been made fairly…I can tell you that the outcomes of those internal investigations seem to solely benefit the business that is conducting them, so they can find their skeletons and try to eliminate them before they become bigger PR or legal nightmares. But that’s not necessarily in the best interest of those they’re supposed to be serving.
More News From The Track And Field World 📰
– Julien Alfred opened up her 2026 campaign with the two fastest 60m runs in the world this year at the incredibly named Woo Pig Invitational in Fayetteville, clocking a 7.04 in the prelims and a 7.00 in the final, both dominant wins.
– It was a good weekend for 1000m superfans, with Mohamed Attaoui setting a new European indoor record of 2:14.52 in Madrid and Cole Hocker winning a Virginia Tech home meet in 2:16.30, once again ahead of training partner Cooper Teare (2:17.76).
– The World Indoor Tour continued to produce world-leading results, this time in Karlsruhe, Germany, where Georgia Hunter Bell ran 4:00.40 for 1500m and Yaroslava Mahuchikh cleared 2.01m in the high jump. It was also nice to see Gabriela DeBues-Stafford return to the indoor circuit after years of injuries with an 8:35.94 win in the 3000m.
– U.S. half marathon record holder Weini Kelati has signed with Nike—she’d been with Under Armour Dark Sky’s squad in Flagstaff since turning pro in 2020. Emily Infeld also returned to the brand after a year with Brooks and a U.S. 10,000m title.
– Ryan Crouser has shared a pre-retirement announcement—his final career throws will come during the Los Angeles Games. Global meet directors, you have your assignment: before every competition he’s slated to compete in between now and the 2028 Olympics, air “Thank you, Ryan!” videos with the aim of making him cry.
– U.S. Outdoor Championships will be held at New York City’s Icahn Stadium from July 23rd to July 26th. We’ve long maintained that Randall’s Island is the Eugene, Oregon, of East River islands, so this feels like a good fit.
– Alysha Newman has been provisionally suspended for whereabouts violations. The 2024 bronze medalist in the pole vault for Canada hasn’t competed since the Rabat Diamond League meet last May.
– Ray Treacywill retire at the end of this outdoor season after 41 years at the helm of Providence College. During his time leading PC, the women’s squad won two NCAA cross country titles, he coached 11 Olympians and 10 individual NCAA champs, and—unrelatedly but historically interestingly—Buddy Cianci became mayor of Providence for a second scandal-plagued stint.
Interested in reaching 20,000+ dedicated runners and track and field fans? Advertise with us here.
Again, another article with Kyle Merber interjecting information about himself: "Nevertheless, history was made. Over at the University of Pennsylvania, an institution synonymous with relays, the Quakers hosted the Atlanta Track Club, who broke the world indoor record in the men’s 4x800m. ATC ran 7:10.29 to knock just over a second off the 2018 best of 7:11.30 set by the NJNY Track Club. Clay Pender (1:49.69), Luke Houser (1:47.47), Luciano Fiore (1:47.35), and Sean Dolan (1:45.79) worked together to bump Kyle Merber from the top spot once and for all."