The typo's gone now.

Anyhow - at 1300 tomorrow on BBC One, there is a programme on the state of athletics entitled 'Can Seb Coe Save Athletics?'; following that, the World Half will be broadcast live for 2 hours at 1330.

Just caught up with Portland. Pretty good championships. Hasn't quite cured me of my aversion to the indoor season as a whole but that was a good watch. Highlight for me was the women's long jump. National record for Spanovic and Reese pulling out the big one with her very last effort.


That should be interesting. I think the short answer is no - but a good Olympic year might.

Seb declared athletics as having a 'boring' image amongst the young.

Could that be mostly the influence of the BBC commentary team, it being in the unusual position of having a whole team of commentary bores?

Not everything is about young people. This discussion has been going on in another area of my interest, theatre, for years. There are plenty of young people's things that don't have a middle/older aged audience and how many young people have got £50 to book a ticket for the Diamond League?

Having said that, whenever I go to athletics I'm always struck by how many families, inlcuding very young children, attend together. I used to watch athletics when I was young with my grandma - if teenagers don't want to watch it I can't see what the problem is with that. I don't want to watch most of the things teenagers are into.

Gah the "Don't write Mo off" talk from Paula is annoying. He's been dropped. He's not superman. I'd love to be wrong but I can't see him closing that gap.

Aha! Sudden typhoon hits Cardiff, should suit the Brits!

Bronze for Mo!

Despite the weather, I certainly don't regret making the trip to Cardiff.

For more reasons than one, the men's race was one for the ages (see LetsRun article). Heavy rain, falling over at the start - it didn't matter. Nobody was getting the better of Kamworor today.

Bring on Kam v Mo in the Olympic 10,000m!

I watched the documentary, and agree it was mainly a puff piece, but I assume it was that or nothing. There was some insight into the IAAF, and an apparent intention to shake things up a bit, and not just about doping concerns.

Seb is right to be concerned about how interested kids and teenagers are in the sport. That shouldn't be at the expense of an older audience, but surely the point of a governing body is to secure the long term future of the sport, which means looking to future fans and crucially, participants. If kids think athletics is boring, who will be our future stars? Moves to make the sport more appealing to the next generation will benefit older fans too. Better coverage through social media is good for everyone with a computer, and will be good for the stars who get a better profile, and therefore better financial support.

In some ways, Seb should be reassured that people will always be fascinated by the idea of who is the fastest man, or who can jump the highest or longest. No matter what the sport goes through, if they can convince people that it is clean in the future, people will be interested. However, I think he made a good point about it being unacceptable for some big stars to simply say they aren't going to try hard one particular year, and that there needs to be more head to head competitions through the year.

I'm bored rigid by football, but one of the reasons they have whole teams of dedicated football journalists is that football is always creating stories, even in the off-season, and any scandal is quickly forgotten about, because there is another match, or another transfer happening before long.

One of the great things that athletics has going for it is that men and women normally compete at the same events, which gives added appeal to families. It's a point that's been critical to the equal pay debate for tennis, and shouldn't be under-estimated, especially as newspapers are beginning to put a bit more effort into covering women's sport. Athletics has always been one of the best when it comes to creating female sports stars.

Speaking of which, full results are available for the 12,068* mass runners that ran the full 13 miles 192.5 yards in Cardiff and have their own World Championship medal to show for it.

[* Out of approx. 16,000 starters]

More athletics coming up this weekend with the first TV marathon of the Spring - the Paris Marathon on Eurosport on Sunday morning.

Cardiff 2016 is done and dusted now, but given how the weather has turned out these past few days (and weeks), it increasingly feels like Easter Saturday's weather was some Welsh deity's idea of a joke.

On another subject...any fans of Orlando Ortega here? It looks like he won't be eligible to compete in Rio...

Good news over on the Broadcasting forum, this summers European Champs will be Eurosport, not the BBC. More importantly, it means they also get the Euro Team Champs, which the BBC regularly made an absolute mess.
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...1#post81987548

Well, not such good news if you don't have Eurosport, but remember it is only a fiver for a month, no long-term contract. I think the EAA events are always live-streamed for free anyway.

I guess the beeb weren't interested in showing this year's champs with the clash with Wimbledon & Euro 2016 plus the British team will certainly be a weakened one.

From what I've read the exclusivity is only for this year's champs so I think there will still be coverage of future stuff. I have to say that so far this year the BBC coverage has been much improved. The Glasgow Grand Prix kept a lot of the chat until the end of the coverage on the Red Button. And for World Indoors & World Half Marathon they just had commentary & no presentation.

Regardless of what one thinks of the BBC coverage it's still much better for the sport for there to be coverage on the BBC as if it's just on Eurosport/streams then only the die hard fans will watch`

Not just the BBC but EAA - in the days of the Europa Cup it used to be a brilliant competition. 12 teams is too many - the relegation battle is too predictable & the A/B races just drags it out unnecessarily. There was talk of changes to the format last year so hope this happens prior to next year's competition

Probably because they had nobody there and it was all done from Salford. I think if there's a commentating presence at the event then there is always a presumption that they will do stuff to camera hence all the unnecessary 'talking heads'.

Anyone know what their plans are for the Olympic trials, just the Sunday and highlights from Friday night and Saturday again?

I never realised if was just for this year.

Looks like they're only going to show it (European Champs) in non Olympic years maybe. In non Olympic years it doesn't clash with Wimbledon so it's not a problem (like Zurich 2 years ago) Non Olympic years will also see a stronger British team.

Crammy & Paula were in Cardiff.

Not sure about Olympic trials coverage. It clashes with Euro 2016 but the knockout stages start that weekend so BBC won't know what coverage they're doing of that until a few days before.

In the Prague Half Marathon, Violah Jepchumba (KEN) has made quite the name for herself.

She ran 10km in a 30:29 WL/PB - fastest performance in 11 years, equal third on the all-time list and just 8 seconds behind Radcliffe's 10km WR...yet the most incredible thing about her performance is that she actually did it as part of a half marathon!!

Incidentally, the time she clocked for winning the women's race was a 1:05:51 WL (and PB by over 3 minutes!) - which makes her the third woman to go sub-66 on a record-eligible course. Runner-up Worknesh Degefa (ETH) clocked a 1:06:14 NR and also gets into the all-time top 10.

Daniel Wanjiru (KEN) clocked a 59:20 PB to become the first man to win back-to-back in Prague.

It's that time of year when it feels like the outdoor T&F season is warming up, but has yet to kick off.

In the Stanford Invitational, Beth Potter clocked a 32:03.45 PB in the women's 10,000m, which means she has an Olympic standard.

Good work, Beth.

The Olympic trials for the 10,000 at the Highgate Harriers Night of the 10,000m PBs (21st May) could be a really good battle for places & qualie standards - Kate Avery, Beth Potter, Gemma Steel (if she can regain fitness & form), Jo Pavey (?), Lily Partridge, maybe Rhona Auckland if she's coming back from America for it, and maybe Jess Coulson if her qualification for the marathon goes awry in London.

Tomorrow's Sunday Times ...

Hajo Seppelt ‏@hajoseppelt 5 hours ago
Doping UK. Many sports in focus. Big storys sunday in print @sundaytimes - in tv @ARD_Presse @sportschau 18.00 and @WDR 22.15 Sport Inside.

Hajo Seppelt ‏@hajoseppelt 5 hours ago
Tomorrow next doping story will come. Big doping scandal in UK. Football involved. In @thesundaytimes and @ARD_Presse @WDR @sportschau.

Is this the same doctor?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...al-cancer.html

Apparently the Sunday Times have no independent corroboration of any of his claims, all looks a bit flaky.

Another Russian banned in the past caught again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/35972794

She's a former world record holder, don't know if these performances still stand.

It doesnt really look good for Russia does it?
Will be interesting to see if its the same drug everyone else is caught for lately (the one that obvi has no actual effect...)

Im still curious whether the Russians are the only ones cheating or the others are just better at it. Have a feeling its the latter...