What do you have to have to get Eurosport?

The new Nike kits are so boring to look at.

You can subscribe online.

http://www.eurosportplayer.co.uk

Jeez, this 110m hurdles is taking an age to get off.

The main programme at the Adidas Boost meeting in Germany starts at 3.30pm our time. Streaming at http://www.leichtathletik.de/termine...enaurach-live/

Timetable (PDF) - 100m, 800m, 1500m & 5k.

The adidas ones aren't much better. Just lots of grey & black all round this year.

Task 1 for Coe - "sort out" doping.
Task 2 - do something about the kit situation. When 90% of a distance race are wearing the same colours, it's difficult even for committed fans to follow properly. It must be really off-putting for the "casual fan". The situation in the sprints isn't much better.

The start of the 800 was a mess, they should have been recalled & restarted. Disaster for anyone like me who had Rudisha as the captain of their Fantasy Diamond League team.

The new field event rules are pretty pointless when they still get very little coverage. Sure the home crowd were delighted when none of their jumpers got to do final 3 jumps.

Gatlin noticeably running slower than this time last year. Wouldn't surprise me if Bromell beat him at US trials

Their Royal blue kit is nice & really stands out but that is only for the reigning world champs to wear

I just think it would totally spoil some of the excitement in those events (if you were in the stadium or if it was covered properly on TV). No longer can you have a slow starter who nails it in the 5th round. I hope the athletes who are usually finishing out of the Top 4 are complaining hard to the IAAF. In the long run you have to wonder how it will affect their motivation to turn up for these meetings, especially meetings on the other side of the world. Much better instead (if you're not totally motivated by the prize money) to go to a World Challenge meeting or a good EAA meeting and get your full 6 efforts?


Is the Royal blue only for Nike athletes though? In the women's 3000 in Doha neither Ayana (definitely adidas) or Cheruiyot was wearing it, and today in the steeple Kiyeng wasn't wearing it.

Apparently there were two high jumpers standing in his lane as he set off.

Just watched today's action - the cumulative breach of the allowable RT by Ortega and Merritt was a hundredth.
McLeod's high speed between the hurdles is bit of a hindrance, which is ironic for a sprint hurdler.

Yep the Nike athletes have a standard B&W kit and then Nike World champions get thee shiny blue kit. So for example Shawn Barber wore the blue & Renaud also sponsored by Nike wore the b&w

The Adidas Boost meeting was OK (I dipped in and out of it for the main races).

World leads in the men's & women's 10k last night

IAAF report of today's events including a WL women's 5k

British athletes:
Desiree Henry 3rd in 11.23 (beating Pinto)
Chris O'Hare 4th in the 800 B race 1:49.4 (his PB is 1:48.2)

I feel that O'Hare really needs to be getting that down to 1:45 if he wants to be a 'contender' at the 15.

Seems like quite a quick track despite being exposed on all sides to the elements. I guess the meeting does have the potential to be a 'European Payton Jordan', but they'd need to open it up to non-Adidas athletes to get much more depth.

Yeah it's not even as if you can say all the athletes in distance races have very distinctive looks. They are mainly from the same two countries and casual fans will not be able to tell some steeplechasers from some 10,000 m runners. It's a joke. It's not about the athlete but about the brand (obviously).
As much as I hate the fluorescent arm bands and the head bands, at least it gives people something to recognise the athlete by. Tony McQuay has stopped wearing his headband for some reason but casual fans may notice Mike Rodgers more than say... Ogunode because he is 'the one who wears the headband'.

What bothers me more than that though is that the colour scheme is so DULL.


How can the pace maker be behind the pack? Bram Som was facing the wrong way for goodness sake! There was a mess last week in the men's 1500m as well.

Highlight of the meet was the men's 4x100 at the end. Not.

Got my times mixed up and so only got to watch the truncated highlights this evening.

For once, the men's 400m hurdles was the highlight, but being a flyaway leg of Diamond League the other races were rather uninteresting and it all got a bit tedious after that. However, a small amount of amusement was felt watching Ace Rimmer defy logic and reason as he travelled to the other side of the world in order to finish ninth.

I can't even get excited about Gatlin. His 9.94 lacked his usual dynamic explosiveness and he'll just crack and get beaten in Rio anyway.

Remember my tip to get in the shake-up for a place on the Olympic 1500 team, Sarah McDonald?

She won the BMC 1500 tonight in 4:10.8, 'blitzing' past Jess Judd with 250 to go. Jess was 2nd in 4:12-ish (results not out yet). A 5 second PB for McDonald (previous PB indoors this year). She seems to be a smart racer who doesn't panic and I think she could have a shot at running the sub-4:07 qualifier and getting the 3rd spot on the team.

Jenny Meadows 2:01.2 followed by Alexandra Bell 2:02-ish & Hannah England 2:03-ish.

Jess Coulson was a no-show for the 5k which is worrying ahead of the 10k OG trials next weekend.

Vincosport slowly but surely seem to be improving their coverage. They had their own on-screen clock tonight (instead of their usual wobbly inset of the stadium clock) and the commentator seemed quite knowledgeable. They even had some graphics advertising up-coming coverage so maybe one day they'll be also be able to show us some startlists and results.

Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake won the men's 200m at the SEC Championships with a 19.95 (+0.4m/s) PB! That's just a hundredth outside the NR.

Amazing run by Mitchell Blake in 200. Trials with him, Adam & Zharnel could be incredible. Dare I say it race could be as exciting if not more so than the US or Jamaican trials race.

Modest opener in the Caymans by Bolt - 10.05. Zharnel Hughes 2nd in 20.70, Francis won in 20.16. Delano Williams 5th in 46.22. Allyson Felix a late withdrawal.
IAAF report
Full results

Slightly off topic but came across a book about Lillian Board the other day. To be honest I'd never heard of her previously which surprised me given her tragic story.

Oh yeah, she shone brightly but briefly and was very famous in Britain, seen as "The Golden Girl" and a great source of national pride. It was that more innocent time just before the DDR & Soviets muscled in on her events and others.

Do you think she would have won gold in Munich?

It was strange in those days, so modest were our expectations - before the real golden age of Coe/Ovett/Thompson etc - that you could become a national hero just by winning a European Championship gold.

But she got Silver in the '68 Olympics 400m the year before too, when still only 19. Whilst I wasn't around then, I believe it was that race that really endeared her to the Great British public. She was leading with about 15m to go but got run down and lost by 0.09s. Decent quality video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A3ryJX4aFc (Lillian is in lane 1)

Remember too that it was still a relative novelty for women to be running such "punishing" events as the 400m & 800m. The women's 800m in the Olympics was first run in 1928 but then wasn't staged again until 1960. The first Olympic 400m wasn't until 1964! That probably also had something to do with the affection the public had for her.

Let's not forget Ann Packer too - Gold in the 800 (in a 2:01.1 WR) and Silver in the 400 in the '64 Olympics.

It would have been very tough for her to even get a medal, I think. Already, by that point, the Eastern Europeans and West Germans were starting to take the women's events to "new levels" . The '72 Olympics was won in 1:58.6, almost 3 seconds faster than Lillian's PB from 1969. The bronze was won in 1:59.2.

Trouble brewing 31 athletes who are still active from 6 sports have failed drugs test following retesting from the Beijing Olympics, not said who yet.