Losing Is Cool Now ⏱️
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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, & Kyle Merber
Stars Losing Is Good For The Sport 😵💫
Which athlete winning would generate the most chaos? The answer to that question is generally also the most fun athlete to cheer for. We’re in the content business, and a major upset makes for good content!
We love Keely Hodgkinson; her unabashed pursuit of records and fearless racing make her easy to root for. We love Mondo Duplantis; it’s not often in sports you know you get to watch a GOAT at the height of their powers. And although we were not hoping they’d lose, per se, it was certainly exciting to see someone else win two events that have felt rather predictable of late. Sports are supposed to be chaotic! A heavy favorite can dampen the excitement of competition because sometimes it feels like the outcome is already a predetermined conclusion.
Leagues around the world do whatever they can to promote parity between their teams. The NBA is currently experiencing a golden age of parity. With the Knicks and Spurs squaring off in the finals, the winner will ultimately become the eighth new champion in eight years. In that time span there have been a total of 14 different teams that have vied for a title.
The NBA has been able to pull off this balancing act, partly, by implementing a two-apron luxury tax system that heavily penalizes owners for trying to buy successful teams. Rather than just financial punishment, teams in the second apron are limited in their ability to sign free agents, operate in trades, and could even lose draft picks.
It’s why Formula 1 has such strict rules around how the cars are engineered. It’s why baseball is considering a salary cap. And it’s why the worst NFL teams always get the next star quarterback.
From a league’s perspective (remember: leagues are also in the content business) this is a dream—it means more fan bases across the country are engaged on opening day, and remain engaged deeper into the season. That’s because every team… except maybe the Sacramento Kings… could possibly turn things around in the blink of an eye to become a contender.
World Athletics can’t do any of that. The only levers our sport’s governing body can pull are providing resources for youth development, incentivizing top athletes to race against one other, and getting rid of rabbits.
But with so many events, is it even that big of a deal that a few that are being singlehandedly dominated? We don’t hear too many complaints about Faith Kipyegon or Ryan Crouser being bad for the sport (along with Duplantis, they’re the only actively competing athletes who have won five straight global titles). That’s because while leagues and newsletter writers love parity, fans tend to love stars, too. They’re familiar while being historic, and people ultimately like to appreciate greatness.
In a way, the presence of these Old Faithful-esque performers provides a nice contrast to events like the men’s 1500m, which hasn’t had a repeat winner since Asbel Kiprop in 2015. But the unpredictability has made it one of the most interesting events to follow for the last decade, and there’s only so much hype that a growing win streak can generate.
Mondo hadn’t lost a competition of any sort since July 2023. The last time someone else won a global pole vault championship was Worlds in 2019, when Mondo was still a teenager and finished second. While the pole vault has never been this deep—we have 10 active jumpers with lifetime bests of at least six meters—it doesn’t make for the most spirited internet debates when those dudes are all theoretically jumping for second.
If you sat down with Kareem Rahma on Subway Takes and told him, “I think it’s good that Mondo always wins,” then he’d most certainly hit you with a “100% disagree!”
The excitement of just about any Mondo-involved competition at this point hinges on a world record clearance (which, to be fair, he’s done plenty of times). In fact, his era of dominance has been so thoroughly one-sided that it’s tempting to call his performances exhibitions instead. That is, until the unthinkable happened! Kurtis Marschall got one on the board with a 5.90m clearance in Stockholm. He’s a 29 year old three-time global medalist and he only just won his first-ever Diamond League meet.
Had you wagered a parlay on both Mondo and Keely losing in Stockholm then you’d potentially have enough money to get into tonight’s game at Madison Square Garden. Heading into Sunday, Hodgkinson was 12-0 lifetime against Audrey Werro. Although the two have raced regularly since being junior standouts, it was hardly a rivalry. The question leading into the race was not, “Who can beat Keely?” But “how fast can Keely go?”
Faster than ever before, it turns out! Hodgkinson’s 1:54.33 was a personal best and good for number six all-time. But Werro’s shocking finish changed the dynamic of the event. She ran 1:53.98. That means this season is no longer just about Keely breaking records—it’s about who can manage to get under the 1:53.28 world record first.
Another event that has become polarized at the top is the men’s 800m. Similar to the pole vault, the event has never been better. But it’s in need of some new blood. Since the 2021 Olympics, Emmanual Wanyonyi has won 4 out of 5 global championships. And the podium of Wanyoni, Marco Arop, and Djamel Sedjati has recurred three times in the past four years.
Cooper Lutkenhaus’s historic win in his first Diamond League race wasn’t just a huge moment for kids who still have bedtimes, it also cemented Lutkenhaus’s entry into the event’s true upper echelon. Beating Arop in 1:42.70 confirms what most of us already knew—last year was not a fluke. It also means there is a fresh new face in the 800m this outdoor season who could break up the increasingly standard trifecta.
For most readers of this newsletter, it would be an unthinkable delight for Cooper to win the World Ultimate Championships this year, the World Championships next year, and then secure the Olympic title on home soil come LA 2028. What a dream that would be! If the top young prospect in the world delivered on all the promise and expectations, then he should get a Lebron-esque “Chosen 1” tattoo across the top of his back.
After that though… it might be nice to let someone else have a turn. Let’s hope Cooper Lutkenhaus is so fortunate in the next few years of his career that, one day, we celebrate when he loses.
The Best Track And Field Athletes Of 2026 (So Far!) 📈
You thought we were done with rankings… but we’re just getting started.
In addition to World Athletics’s push to use event-specific rankings more for World Ultimate Championships and Beijing 2027, the organization maintains another rankings list that’s more for discourse than for meet selection: the overall athlete rankings.
These rankings try to answer one of the most fundamental track and field questions: how do you compare athletes across events? It’s no easy task. WA does this in a relatively simple, straightforward way—but also one that’s inherently flawed. The “overall ranking” is simply a consolidated list of every athlete’s individual ranking score (their top performances, graded on the World Athletics scoring tables with placing points awarded for bonus). The problem, of course, is that the WA scoring tables are far from a perfect system, and certain events receive disproportionate consideration.
As we mentioned last week, the top three track athletes in the men’s overall rankings are 400m hurdlers. According to Seb Coe, the eighth best male athlete in the world is one who’s never won a World Championship: Greek pole vaulter Manolo Karalis. And because rankings are updated weekly but include the last 12 months performances, the second-best athlete in the world in June 2026 is a woman who’s pregnant and will not compete this year, Beatrice Chebet.
That said, coming up with a better system is no easy task. Contemplating the best athletes using only 2026 results means that, in theory, an athlete like Melissa Jefferson-Wooden is only being judged on two races. World Indoors is the biggest championship that’s occurred so far on the calendar, but many regular-season Diamond League races have stronger fields than Toruń did. Plus, a particular quirk of this year (the lack of a true World Championship and limited events on the World Ultimate program) means that distance runners aren’t exactly climbing over one another to race high-quality 10,000ms or steeples.
We asked the Citius Mag team to rank the top 25 track and top 25 field athletes since the start of 2026, and the range of responses were interesting. Unlike WA’s point system, there were no hard and fast criteria beyond limiting performances to this calendar year, prioritizing high-level professional competitions, and considering event depth. In a phrase, it’s just vibes. Times and places still matter, but the official team position is that running 10.7 in the 100m at NCAA Regionals is still less important than running 10.8 in Stockholm. So without further ado, here they are:
2026 Track Power Rankings
Julien Alfred 🇱🇨
Noah Lyles 🇺🇸
Keely Hodgkinson 🇬🇧
Melissa Jefferson-Wooden 🇺🇸
Cooper Lutkenhaus 🇺🇸
Audrey Werro 🇨🇭
Gabby Thomas 🇺🇸
Busang Collen Kebinatshipi 🇧🇼
Kenny Bednarek 🇺🇸
Alison dos Santos 🇧🇷
Shericka Jackson 🇯🇲
Masai Russell 🇺🇸
Georgia Hunter Bell 🇬🇧
Josh Kerr 🇬🇧
Soufiane El Bakkali 🇲🇦
Jordan Anthony 🇺🇸
Yared Nuguse 🇺🇸
Peruth Chemutai 🇰🇪
Cole Hocker 🇺🇸
Birke Haylom 🇪🇹
Devynne Charlton 🇧🇸
Adaejah Hodge 🇻🇬
Emma Zapletalova 🇸🇰
Kishane Thompson 🇯🇲
Samuel Ogazi 🇳🇬
2026 Field Athlete Power Rankings
Mondo Duplantis 🇸🇪
Camryn Rogers 🇨🇦
Simon Ehammer 🇨🇭
Valarie Sion 🇺🇸
Jessica Schilder 🇳🇱
Ziyi Yan 🇨🇳
Ethan Katzberg 🇨🇦
Yaroslava Mahuchikh 🇺🇦
Chase Jackson 🇺🇸
Molly Caudery 🇬🇧
Leyanis Perez Hernandez 🇨🇺
Sofie Dokter 🇳🇱
Andy Diaz Hernandez 🇮🇹
Kristjan Čeh 🇸🇮
Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage 🇱🇰
Miltiadis Tentoglou 🇬🇷
Joe Kovacs 🇺🇸
Hana Moll 🇺🇸
Jordan Scott 🇯🇲
Matty Denny 🇦🇺
Mattia Furlani 🇮🇹
Daniel Ståhl 🇸🇪
Anderson Peters 🇬🇩
Manolo Karalis 🇬🇷
Nicola Olyslagers 🇦🇺
The most intriguing takeaway from these rankings may be that the women’s sprints are heading toward a clash of the titans. Jefferson-Wooden may be the triple World champion, but she just lost to Alfred over 200m in Rome. Neither is a 200m specialist in the way Shericka Jackson or Gabby Thomas is, so with those two getting back to 100% health and fitness, the battle for best female sprinter could also become the battle for best athlete in the world. And that’s not even including in the X factor that is Adaejah Hodge, who’s currently running rampant through the NCAA but has yet to face professional competition this year.
It’s also worth noting that isolating rankings to calendar-year performances could be a harbinger of a very different near future. Ryan Crouser doesn’t make the top 25 right now—could his imperial reign over the shot be coming to an end? Or what about Yulimar Rojas, whose post-Achilles-surgery triple jumping has been sufficient to land on the indoor and outdoor podium, but not good enough for multiple golds and word records? The back half of the season will let us know whether the first few months of 2026 are a blip to be overcome, or a trend toward decline.
They say you can’t compare apples and oranges, but there you have it. “Who’s the best” is usually just fodder for long run debates and comments sections, but it’s also an official practice of World Athletics—and now the Lap Count. And with the direction the sport is being pushed, get ready for much, much more of this in the months and years to come.
Where’s Track And Field’s Heated Rivalry? 📺
When it comes to the “big four” sports in the U.S., professional hockey consistently ranks last. And yet, interest and excitement in hockey—which, at least for American viewers, still far outpaces track and field—is on the rise, thanks in no small part to the wildfire success of shows like HBO’s Heated Rivalry and Prime Video’s Off Campus, as well as the smutty romance novels on which they’re based.
Heated Rivalry has become a worldwide phenomenon, and Off Campus was renewed for a second season before the first had even premiered. Even before the horny-gay-hockey boom, we’ve been in something of a golden age for sports TV, from Apple’s Ted Lasso to Netflix’s Running Point to the Amazon remake of A League of Their Own. It’s not just that sex sells—there’s a healthy and ample appetite for fictionalized sports drama on the small screen, and burly hockey guys are far from the sole protagonists.
Track and field has its own long history of portrayals in media, but just like the sport itself, we’ve fallen a bit from the 1980s heyday. Classics like Chariots of Fire and Without Limits (or, if you’ve got something against Billy Crudup, Prefontaine) once held a proud place in movie theatres and on VHS shelves, and even more recent efforts like McFarland, USA, or the Jesse Owens biopic Race found niche, but perfectly respectable, success in the mid-2010s.
Heck, track and field even has its own horny gay fantasy: 1982’s Personal Best, a fictional story of the relationship between two women training for the 1980 Olympic Trials. That film was a critical success but underperformed commercially (sounds very appropriate for track and field), but why should its lackluster box office performance stop us from trying to remake it into a direct-to-streaming series 40 years later?
Much like virtually every other aspect of the sport, track and field’s nerdy, old-school fidelity to accuracy at the expense of excitement may be holding us back in the entertainment world. Most of the running films you can think of offhand are biopics steadfastly rooted in faithfully recounting an inspirational, but hardly boundary-pushing, tale. Where are our Rockys? Our Challengerses? At this point, it would even be nice to see a modern remake of 2005’s Fever Pitch where Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney fall in love at Hayward Field instead of Fenway Park.
A great sports movie isn’t about the stats. Even the most diehard of Indiana basketball fans can’t recall the final score of the championship in Hoosiers, and no one is tracking the weekly mileage of the cyclists in Breaking Away. The emotional journeys of the central athletes, the challenges they overcome, and the relationships they forge along the way are all way more important than the minutia of whether or not the main character is doing double thresholds. Track and field’s “passion problem” is sorely in need of a highly-dramatized, fictional shot of adrenaline. And at this point, we very well may need to rely on conventionally-beautiful actors showing gratuitous, albeit tasteful, butt on screen to do it. Beggars can’t be choosers.
So here’s the pitch: two up-and-coming middle-distance runners wrap up their All-American college careers, sign pro contracts with rival shoe brands, and embark on a journey to make a splash on the Diamond League circuit. While they vie for their first U.S. teams, pose for hydration-powder photoshoots, and shuffle in and out of training groups, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another. After a season full of sexual-tension-filled glances across call rooms and slow-motion droplets of sweat flying through the air, they find themselves sharing a hotel room at the World Championships and the rest is history.
If there are any up-and-coming romance novelists and/or successful TV screenwriters subscribed to the newsletter, we’re begging you: please put pen to paper. The sport needs you.
More News From The Track And Field World 📰
– Overshadowed by this past week’s two Diamond League meets, the Paavo Nurmi Games still managed to showcase some rock solid performances: Germans Florian Bremm and Frederick Ruppert went 12:56.80 and 12:57.61 to take the top two spots in the men’s 5000m; Kristian Čeh won a loaded men’s discus with a 69.13m heave; Monae’ Nichols won another long jump competition, soaring 6.88m; Chase Jackson nabbed a women’s shot victory over Jessica Schilder with a 20.66m toss; and Camryn Rogers went 80.09m to win the hammer.
– While insane tail winds rendered the results of the men’s 100m largely moot at the Lone Star Grand Prix (CLASSIC TEXAS!), the gusts cooperated for much of the rest of the meet, and excellent, legal marks abounded. Zimbabwe’s Makanakaishe Charamba won the men’s 200m in 19.88, ahead of teen phenom Tate Taylor, who became the first American high schooler under 20 seconds—he ran 19.97; Jamar Marshall won the 110m hurdles in 13.04, the second fastest mark in the world this year; Curtis Thompson posted a global top-10 javelin mark, 84.88m; 19-year-old Jamaican Sabrina Dockery ran a big PR—10.92—to announce herself as another up-and-coming 100m star; Gabby Thomas ran a world leading 21.70 in the 200m; Shafiqua Maloney won the women’s 800m in 1:57.34; and Demisha Roswell went 12.53 to take the women’s 100m hurdles.
– The NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships start today in Eugene, Oregon. Follow along with the action on the CITIUS MAG Twitter and Instagram.
– Professional and sub-elite marathoners all across America are frantically googling “what is toasted ravioli” after it was announced last week that St. Louis, Missouri, will host the 2028 Olympic Marathon Trials.
– At the U.S. 4 Mile Champs, held in conjunction with the Steamboat Classic in Peoria, Illinois, Ahmed Muhumed (17:57) and Kassie Parker (20:16) were crowned the victors. We don’t know much about Peoria, but as fans of the four-mile distance and steam-propelled watercraft, this race sounds like a great time.
– Agnes Ngetich won the Mini 10K in Central Park, smashing the course record in 30:07 and finishing more than 45 seconds ahead of the next finisher, two-time World Cross Country podium finisher Tsigie Gebreselama.
– TIME Magazine released its first ever sports edition of TIME100, naming the 100 most influential people in sports in 2026. Four track athletes made the list: Sebastian Sawe, Faith Kipyegon, Nikki Hiltz, and Mondo Duplantis.
– The latest influencer foray into the track world features professional dunking (that’s apparently a thing!) YouTuber Jordan Kilganon challenging high jumper Shelby McEwen to a jump-off.
– Very sad news as the Irish Times reported yesterday that 2012 Olympian Ciarán Ó Lionáird has died suddenly at 38 years old. R.I.P.
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