This Is A Pro-NCAA Newsletter ⏱️
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NCAAs Proves Its Own Relevance Once Again 👩🎓
The divide between American track and field fans and international athletics fans might come down to an age-old question of importance: what matters more, an NCAA title or a European Championship?
Traditionalists across the pond will scoff at the notion that a bunch of students meeting up in Eugene should carry the same prestige and clout as a continent-wide professional championship. And World Athletics tends to agree, rating NCAAs a Category “B” meet two rungs below Euros (or, for that matter, NACACs). Some of that, of course, comes down to the long-held beef between World Athletics and the NCAA on drug testing policies. But here’s the thing…
When it comes to the level of competition, particularly in the short sprints, NCAAs is inarguably a world-class meet each year. Only USAs and global championships can consistently claim to be better meets across the board. Diamond League meets are usually better, but… not always.
With the dust settled over Hayward Field, the fastest marks in the world this year in the men’s 100m, 200m, 400m, and 110m hurdles and women’s 100m, 200m, and 400m belong to athletes representing American universities. Now, that’s a slightly misleading stat. The college kids all peaked for June and the pros likely have September circled on their calendars—but the kids are also taking a crack at the all-time lists as well.
Adaejah Hodge’s 10.63 in the 100m prelims puts her at #5 all-time, and her 21.68 winning mark from the 200m puts her at #8 all-time, tying her with reigning 200m World champ Melissa Jefferson-Wooden. Samuel Ogazi of Alabama ran 43.38 for #4 all-time to win the 400m over Georgia’s Jonathan Simms, who equaled the old world lead of 43.92 in second. And then Simms came back to drop a ridiculous 42.99 split on the Bulldogs’ winning 4x400m.
Kanyinsola Ajayi of Auburn followed up his 9.84 100-meter performance at East Regionals with an absurd 9.72 in the final, nudged along by a breeze just over the legal limit at 2.2 m/s. That puts him sixth on the all-conditions 100m list. And of course, Ajayi’s fellow Tiger Ja’Kobe Tharp, who’s already shown he can contend with the best pros by winning USAs last year, delivered the performance of the meet when he broke Aries Merritt’s 12-year-old world record in the 110m hurdle prelims, running 12.75. For good measure, his 12.90 in the final would’ve also been a world lead and all-time top-ten performance.
“But that’s just a few talented future-pros at the top!” you protest in a thick French accent.
That would be true… if the depth weren’t elite as well. Behind Jaiden Reid’s 19.63 collegiate record in the 200m, five total men ran under 20.1. T’Mars McCallum’s 20.09 for fifth would’ve earned him a second place finish if transponded onto the Oslo DL two days earlier. There’s only one meet this year where two women have broken 49 seconds: NCAAs, thanks to Dejanea Oakley and Madison Whyte. No Diamond League has pulled that off in 2026, and in all of 2025, only two—the Rome DL and Worlds—saw multiple women break 49 in the same race.
The distance races are harder to compare apples-to-apples because at NCAAs, races are un-rabbited and tend to play out tactically. But that being said, six women ran 1:58.55 or faster in the 800m final, led by Sanu Jallow-Lockhart’s stunning 1:56.85 collegiate record. The record she broke was, of course, Athing Mu’s, who single handedly proved this premise herself by winning Olympic gold two months after claiming the NCAA title.
At least when it comes to sprints, the NCAA championship is one of the best meets in the world. Amateur competition or not, the meet has earned professional-level respect because the athletes that show up year in and year out are world-class. Winning NCAAs is impressive because you can hurdle a 12.98 or sprint a 48.97 and lose.
In a sense, the best European analogue to NCAAs isn’t Euros; it’s Götzis. The Hypomeeting is an annual pilgrimage for the greatest multi-athletes in the world, and even though it isn’t a championship of any kind, World Athletics has placed it in the “GL” category alongside area championships because the level of competition is so high. On paper, Götzis shouldn’t matter at all, but because the best athletes keep competing there, it merits special consideration.
When you look at the meets in the “A” category one slot above NCAAs, it starts to look a lot more like the collegiate championship’s peer group. Commonwealth Games, regular season Diamond Leagues, WA Continental Tour Gold meets. Maybe the “NCAAs matters more than Euros” argument remains the provenance of angry Twitter users for now, but at least for the sake of rankings, it’s long past time for World Athletics to swallow its pride and bump NCAAs up—particularly if it’s going to move one day toward an all-rankings model.
It’ll always be a little strange that a group of colleges in the U.S. all got together and decided that a huge part of higher education is going to be bringing in top athletic talent from all over the world and attaching a billion-dollar sports league to academic institutions across the country. But that’s the world we live in. NCAAs is an important meet because the athletes’ choice to take their talents to Hayward makes it so, and to pretend otherwise is to live in a fantasy.
The Summer Of The Women’s 800m 🔥
There’s an old saying in running we may or may not have invented: You’re only as good as your second best time.
Rather than listing personal bests on a start list or in meet previews, we might be better served when setting expectations to remove the outlier performances. How many of us really show up as the best version of ourselves on any given day? Now the second- or third-best version of ourselves? Oh yeah, that’s what you’re far more likely to get.
By this rule, it’s now fair to say that Audrey Werro is good enough to be called a 1:54.45 runner. The 22-year-old Swiss star came through the first lap in Ostrava on schedule at 56 seconds and slowly pulled away from the only other person in the field who opted to follow the rabbit, Femke Broeders-Bol. Werro may have surprised Keely Hodgkinson (and all of us) in Stockholm on her path to a 1:53.98 clocking, but now the expectations have risen.
Werro is 22 year old and two years ago she was a 1:57 runner. Now, she’s the fourth fastest woman of all time and has the fastest second-fastest mark ever. For comparison, Caster Semenya’s second-fastest 800m is 1:54.60 and Hodgkinson’s is 1:54.61. Hogkinson is the fastest third-bester at 1:54.74 with Semenya on her tail at 1:54.77.
Back to Broeders-Bol for a moment. If it weren’t for Werro, then all eyes and thinkpieces would be focused on the Dutch 400m hurdler-turned-half-miler’s outdoor debut at her new distance. Unlike Werro, there are only two performances to list on Broeders-Bol’s recent resume: 1:59.07 from indoors and 1:57.13 from yesterday. Given this small sample size and trajectory, it feels fair to say maybe she is better than her second best time.
Behind those two headliners, six other women broke two minutes, highlighting the increasingly obscene depth in the event (more on that in a moment). As Spotify is publishing their predictions for Song of the Summer 2026, we are ready to make a prediction of our own—the Event of the Summer 2026 will be the women’s 800m.
It’s a weird summer because every athlete has their own set of priorities. Is the focus on the Commonwealth Games, European Championships, Diamond League Final, or World Ultimate Championships? There is a high possibility that many of the top athletes pass by each other like ships in the night. (Let’s hope that in the women’s 200m, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Julien Alfred, Gabby Thomas, and Shericka Jackson all find themselves at the same venue at the same time. Sounds expensive…)
But we know that at least Werro, Hodgkinson, and Bol will all meet at the European Championships. The trio are also regulars on the circuit and so the odds of additional run-ins are quite high. Werro has already raced 12 times in 2026, but that’s nothing in comparison to 2025 when she had 29 races. Last year, Femke raced 32 times.
Maybe it’s a rush to include Femke in this group as she just lost by 2.6 seconds to Werro. Yet her background and trajectory adds a must-watch X factor to an event that is certainly not lacking in established star power.
Missing so far in the conversation is the defending World champion Lilian Odira, who ran 1:57.27 to finish third in Rabat behind Werro, and 2024 Olympic silver medalist Tsige Duguma. That’s the nature of the women’s 800m though—anyone can show up on the day. In the past seven years there have been six different global champions, and the only one to repeat is Athing Mu.
In 2023, 59 athletes broke 2:00. The next year, that jumped to 78. Last year, there were 88. And with three months still to go into 2026, there are already 69 women under that barrier.
The entire event is undergoing a major renaissance and the baseline of what was once considered competitive has now shifted. And nothing would signal the end of the previous era like the takedown of Jarmila Kratochvílová’s 43 year old world record.
So get in losers and buckle up, because being the second best version of oneself won’t be good enough this summer.
Catching Up With Caleb Winders Ahead Of New Balance Nationals 🏃♂️
With New Balance Nationals Outdoor set to get underway tomorrow, CITIUS MAG’s Paul Hof-Mahoney chatted with one of the breakout stars from last year’s meet, Caleb Winders. Winders, hailing from Bloomington North High School in Indiana, won the boys’ 800m outright in 2025 out of the “B” heat. Now, the University of North Carolina-bound senior has his sights on another NBN title, this time taking on the other contenders head on.
The following is an excerpt of a longer interview, which you can read here.
CITIUS MAG: This outdoor season you haven’t raced a ton. Out of those few data points you do have, what are you taking away?
Yeah, I haven’t raced too much, I’ve also been dealing with some hamstring issues. That 800m I had against Noah Bontrager wasn’t my season opener, but it was my first time running really fast in the 800m, so that was good to see where I’m at. It was a fast race, I wish I could’ve run a little bit faster, but it was good to see that I’m in 1:47 shape.
[Before that race,] I didn’t know what kind of shape I was in yet. There was a pacer and he took it out in 51… I felt good, came through 600m in like 1:18… I was struggling at the end, I was swimming. With 10m left I see Noah pass me, so I try and throw in another surge but he got me at the end. I wish I had a little bit more, but it was a good race to see where I was at.
During the indoor season, you ran a huge mile PB of 4:02 to win at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix, and you’ve backed that up with a 4:14 outdoors. How will adding a bigger strength component to your skill set help when you get into championship races?
When you get into championship time, you have to run a lot of 800s, so there’s a lot of strength to it. My coach and I knew that I could run one good 800m, but I couldn’t really run a good mile or two 800s well. We really worked on our strength this year and got in a really good race during indoor and ran 4:02. That kinda surprised me, but moving forward I think that’ll help a lot with the 800m.
Was that from a big change in the way you trained this fall? How did you build up that strength?
I’ve done a couple of tempos and a couple of long runs, which I hadn’t really done before, so that helped a lot. I feel like the main thing was actually just the mental side of it. I wasn’t bought into the mile, I just wanted to run an 800m and anything longer than that, I wasn’t really excited to do. So I feel like when I ran the miles this year, I was more mentally in it, and when I started to fall off I just kept on pushing, kept holding on for at least one more lap.
When you get back to NBNO, you’ll be the one with the target on your back after winning last year out of one of the slower heats. Is that pressure and expectation something you thrive off of, or do you try and ignore it?
I love the pressure, I feel like it makes me run better. It’s kind of cool that I have the target on my back. Just compete with the guys, there’s some really good athletes in there so I’m sure there’ll be a lot of competition and it’ll be a really fast race again.
More News From The Track And Field World 📰
– Go ahead and deposit your old World Major medal box in the trash. They’ve added another race to the series, and we’re up to Eight Stars after the announcement that Cape Town has earned World Major distinction beginning in 2027.
– The L.A. Grand Prix, back after a year off in 2025, made a splash in its return. Parker Valby’s comeback tour continued with a 14:39.88 5000m PB; Kenny Bednarek won a loaded 100m in 9.72 (+2.4m/s), ahead of Christian Coleman in second in 9.84, Sam Blaskowski in fourth (9.91) and Letsile Tebogo in fifth (9.95); frontrunning Brandon Miller come from behind win the 800m convincingly in 1:43.94; Tshepo Tshite held off a too-late charge from Cole Hocker in the 3000m, 7:37.57 to 7:37.37; Sha’Carri Richardson was victorious, running 10.99 in her first 100m of the year; Masai Russell went 12.26 in the 100m hurdles ahead of Tara Davis-Woodhall, who ran an impressive 12.47 despite a lousy reaction time—she also won the long jump in 7.25 (+3.3m/s).
– The Oslo Bislett Games, the sixth stop on the Diamond League circuit—and the first with a cool name—was predictably excellent as well. Any discussion of the Norwegian megameet has to begin with Cooper Lutkenhaus’s stunning 800m victory: a 1:42.08 world U18 record that saw him out-lean reigning World and Olympic champ Emmanuel Wanyonyi; Julien Alfred impressed in the 100m, running a wind-aided but dominant 10.76; Chinese teenage javelin star Ziyi Yan’s 67.11m toss gave her the win by over five meters; Tebogo won the 200m in 19.84; Timothy Cheriyuot turned back the clock and won the mile in 3:48.21; Alison Dos Santos claimed the 400m hurdles in 46.89; and Freweyni Hailu took down the 3000m field in 8:24.22.
– World Indoor pole vault champ Molly Caudery will miss the rest of the outdoor season after undergoing emergency spinal surgery.
– Freddie Crittenden, a 2024 Olympian in the 110m hurdles and the 16th fastest man in history, has shared that this will be his final season as a professional track athlete.
– You think your Strava is impressive? It can’t compare to Joabe Barbosa’s, after he became the first known runner to cover every single street in Chicago on foot.
– If you’re looking for a really good read and potentially a really good cry, this interview with Irish Olympian Ciara Mageean, who is battling stage 4 bowel cancer at age 34, will provide both.
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Here in the UK we still occasionally hear Colin Jackson as a commentator on athletics. TV treats him as just another one of the guys and he is perhaps the UK's most under remembered great athlete - only now with Tharp's time has his 12.91 fallen out of the all time top 10 for 110m hurdles.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about drug testing in the NCAA, which makes most people outside that system suspicious. It doesn’t help when someone comes off a drugs ban and immediately posts the fifth fastest 100m in history and eighth quickest 200m…