HERITAGE

Council Member Sylvia Barlag at the Heritage exhibition in Ostrava

2012 World Athletes of the Year Allyson Felix and Usain Bolt in Barcelona 

Ed Moses lifts the IAAF World Cup in 1979

It was 40 years ago, at the Jack-in-the-Box Invitational track meet in the San Diego Sports Arena, that Eamonn Coghlan enhanced his reputation as the greatest indoor miler of all time by defeating several of his most distinguished rivals and setting two world records in one race. And yet he expressed disappointment at clocking 'only' 3:50.6. "I was hoping to break 3:50", he said.
As it was, the 28 year-old Irishman broke his own world indoor mile record by a full two seconds, and for good measure lowered New Zealander John Walker's world indoor 1500m record from 3:37.4 to 3:35.6 en route.
The fast times were assured by the early pacemaking of Phil (Tiny) Kane of Villanova University, Coghlan's own alma mater, covering the first half in 1:55.3. Steve Scott maintained the fast tempo but was powerless when Coghlan &ndash; roared on by a crowd of 11,000 &ndash; launched his attack with two laps (320 yards) to go. His prolonged sprint proved too much for Scott, whose American record time of 3:51.8 was also inside the old world figures of 3:52.6 set by Coghlan at this meet two years earlier. Next came Walker (3:52.8) and Coghlan's Irish colleague Ray Flynn (3:53.6).
&nbsp;
<div id="5e3a92373b1a2413381f4442" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/d68663d8-f10e-43de-b962-b97afe08627e.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Eamonn Coghlan on the cover of Sports Illustrated</div>
&nbsp;
It wasn't until 27 February 1983 that, racing in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Coghlan achieved his sub-3:50 goal with 3:49.78, a record which stood for 14 years and a time that still ranks him fourth on the world indoor all-time list behind Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia, Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj and Kenyan Edward Cheserek.
The turning point for Coghlan, born in Dublin on 21 November 1952, was winning a coveted athletic scholarship to Villanova, a Catholic university in Pennsylvania, where he came under the skilled coaching of "Jumbo" Elliott. He went as a 19 year-old 4:10.0 miler and developed into one of the greats in the footsteps of such Irish predecessors at Villanova as Ron Delany, the 1956 Olympic 1500m champion.
Previously over-reliant on his abundant natural ability, Coghlan really buckled down to regular daily training during the winter of 1974/75 - and the outcome was dramatic. He cut his best mile time from 4:00.9 indoors to an outdoor 3:53.3, relieving France's Michel Jazy of the European record. That placed him third in the race in which Filbert Bayi of Tanzania broke Jim Ryun's world record with 3:51.0 and Marty Liquori, another Villanova product, was second in 3:52.2.&nbsp;
In 1976 he won the NCAA 1500m title in a personal best of 3:37.01 and followed that by becoming the first Irishman to win the AAU (USA) championship. He was by then a legitimate Olympic medal contender but the Montreal Games proved frustrating. In a slow final he was the reluctant leader for much of the way but after being boxed in at a crucial moment he placed fourth in a hectic finish, the race being won by Walker in 3:39.17 (25.1 last 200m) with Coghlan finishing 0.34 sec behind.
He captured his first major medal in 1978 when placing a fast finishing second to Britain's seemingly unbeatable Steve Ovett at the European Championships, setting an Irish record of 3:36.57 in the process. It was the highlight of his career to date but he was somewhat bitter about the press coverage back home. "I got second in Prague but the big news was that I didn't win. People don't care if the best man in the world beats you. You just have to win."
Following his world indoor mile record of 3:52.6 he uncorked a 52.7 last 400 metres to take the European indoor 1500m title, prompting John Walker to predict that Coghlan would never equal his indoor record in an outdoor meet. "His small stature and quick strides suit him ideally indoors, but it won't do him all that much good where it really counts."
&nbsp;
<div id="6030dc5205342b0ec058df5e" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/a4f2492e-ca3a-4df9-82d4-66516c55dbbe.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Irish miler Eamonn Coghlan in action indoors</div>
&nbsp;
Coghlan made Walker eat his words during the summer of 1979 as he lowered his Irish record first to 3:52.88, well ahead of fourth placed Walker, and then to 3:52.45, and set other national records at 3000m (7:39.08) and 5000m (13:23.54).
However, the 1980 Olympics in Moscow proved no more fulfilling than Montreal. Deciding to avoid Ovett and Seb Coe in the 1500m, he opted for the 5000m and a superb 3000m victory in Oslo in 7:37.60, the third fastest ever, was a great boost to his hopes. But again a medal narrowly eluded him. He was first to strike for home 300 metres out but Ethiopia's Miruts Yifter overtook him on the inside 50 metres later and sped to victory in 13:20.91. Coghlan held on to third until the final straight but was passed by Finland's Kaarlo Maaninka and his 13:22.74 was good only for fourth. Later in the month he reclaimed the Irish record from John Treacy with 13:20.99 and in 1981 won in Z&uuml;rich in 13:19.13.
Coghlan's speciality remained indoor mile racing and in 1983 he broke through the 3:50 barrier with 3:49.78 at East Rutherford and in 1987 set a world 2000m mark of 4:54.07 (3:59.4 at the mile) which survived for 12 years. However, it was because of successfully pounding the wooden track at New York's Madison Square Garden that he was dubbed "Chairman of the Boards". In 1987 he notched up a record seventh victory in the <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/news/news/eamonn-coghlan-heritage-trophy-spikes-millros">prestigious Wanamaker Mile</a> at the Millrose Games.
Meanwhile, the luck of the Irish materialised at last after just missing out in two Olympics. The occasion was the inaugural and highly successful IAAF World Championships in Helsinki in August 1983. He could hardly believe how easy it proved. Although some 12 metres down at the bell, he drew level with the leader on the final bend and proceeded to pull away for so comfortable a victory in 13:28.53 that he was able to take time out with 70 metres to go to wave to his Irish colleagues in the stands. "I savoured every moment of it."&nbsp;
He bowed out of international competition in 1988 but he still had one more ambition: to become the first man over 40 to run a sub-four minute mile. That he accomplished indoors in February 1994, aged 41, with a time of 3:58.15!
Much later he turned to politics and served as a Senator in the Irish Parliament between 2011 and 2016. His son, John Coghlan, ran a 3:59.32 indoor mile in 2012.
Mel Watman for World Athletics Heritage
<h3> Evolution of world indoor records at 1500m and the mile</h3>
The IAAF, as World Athletics was previously known, did not officially ratify world indoor records until 1 January 1987, so times prior to that date are considered world indoor bests.
1500 Metres - First under 4:00.0: 3:57.0 Joie Ray USA 1920 - First under 3:50.0: 3:49.9 Gene Venzke USA 1936 - First under 3:40.0: 3:37.8 Harald Norpoth FRG 1971 Subsequently: 3:37.4 John Walker NZL 1979 3:35.6+ Eamonn Coghlan IRL 1981 3:35.6+ Marcus O'Sullivan IRL 1989 3:34.20 Peter Elliott GBR 1990 3:34.16 Noureddine Morceli ALG 1991 3:31.18 Hicham El Guerrouj MAR 1997 3:31.04 Samuel Tefera ETH 2019 nb: 3:35.4+ O'Sullivan 1988 not ratified
&nbsp;Mile - First under 4:20.0: 4:19.8 Harold Trube USA 1909 - First under 4:10.0: 4:08.4 Glenn Cunningham USA 1934 - First under 4:00.0: 3:58.9 Jim Beatty USA 1962 &nbsp; Subsequently: 3:58.6 Jim Beatty USA 1963 3:56.6 Tom O'Hara USA 1964 3:56.4 Tom O'Hara USA 1964 3:56.4 Jim Ryun USA 1971 3:55.0 Tony Waldrop USA 1974 3:54.93 Dick Buerkle USA 1978 3:52.6 Eamonn Coghlan IRL 1979 3:50.6 Eamonn Coghlan IRL 1981 3:49.78 Eamonn Coghlan IRL 1983 3:48.45 Hicham El Guerrouj MAR 1997 3:47.01 Yomif Kejelcha ETH 2019

It was 40 years ago, at the Jack-in-the-Box Invitational track meet in the San Diego Sports Arena, that Eamonn Coghlan enhanced his reputation as the greatest indoor miler of all time.

Chairman of the boards puts the record(s) straight

With each passing year, their names, their stories, become more distant relics of the past. But for those whose lives were touched by the most horrifying of atrocities, there&rsquo;s an onus on the rest of us to never forget.
And on this, the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, it&rsquo;s as good a time as any to remind ourselves of their stories.
Among the many millions whose lives were either lost or forever altered during the first half of the 1940s was a horde of world-class athletes. Some of them had excelled on the track or in the field long before Nazi Germany began its mass genocide of European Jews, while others managed to escape the atrocities and later flourished in the world of sport.
One of those in the former category was Lilli Henoch, a Jewish athlete from Germany who set world records in the discus, shot put and 4x100m between 1922 and 1926. Women&rsquo;s events were only added to the Olympic athletics programme in 1928 and Henoch never got the chance to showcase her talents at the Games, but she was a 10-time German champion at various events.
However, her status as a sporting great meant little when, in 1942, the German government deported Henoch along with her brother and 66-year-old mother to the Riga Ghetto in Latvia. She was shot dead in a mass execution by an Einsatzgruppe, a killing unit of the German army, in September 1942.
A few months later, Jozef Noji met the same fate at the Nazi concentration camp in&nbsp;Oświęcim in occupied Poland, better known by its German name, Auschwitz. Noji was one of Poland&rsquo;s best distance runners through the 1930s, winning the Polish 5000m title for five straight years between 1935 and 1939. At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin he finished fifth in the 5000m, just four seconds outside the medals, and 14th in the 10,000m. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Square/996dacc3-d05d-45dc-abe6-126550da72aa.jpg?cachebuster=ada09fc7-9703-4a96-9ba2-cc13bad08c61" alt="" width="600" height="600" /> Jozef Noji
&nbsp;
Not long after World War II broke out in September 1939, he joined the Polish resistance and, according to <a href="https://www.olympedia.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Olympedia.org</a>, he was arrested in September 1940, initially held in Pawiak before being transported to Auschwitz in 1941, where he was shot dead in September 1943 for allegedly smuggling a letter.
Auschwitz also claimed the life of Oskar Heks, one of the best Czechoslovakian distance runners through the 1930s. He finished eighth in the Olympic marathon at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles but, as a Jewish athlete, he chose not to participate at the 1936 Games in Berlin. He was one of the driving forces behind the People&rsquo;s Olympiad, an alternative multi-sport event that was due to be staged in Barcelona as a protest against the Nazi Party. However, the event was never held due to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Another 1932 Olympian, Janusz Kusocinski, lost his life shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The Polish great won gold over 10,000m at the Los Angeles Games, outsprinting Volmari Iso-Hollo of Finland to win in an Olympic record of 30:11.4, and Kusocinski later volunteered for the Polish army. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/LargeL/a7b28f8d-f2d0-491a-8cc6-cf0ef9ad38d4.jpg?cachebuster=28eb055b-6407-4e2e-ac5e-c07cc6cb5e88" alt="" width="600" height="400" /> Janusz Kusocinski (&copy; Koncern Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny)
&nbsp;
During the German occupation he worked as a waiter but was secretly a member of the Polish resistance, which saw him arrested in March 1940 and imprisoned in Mokotow prison. He was later executed in Palmiry, according to Olympedia.org. These days, his memory is kept alive in the sport through the annual hosting of the Janusz Kusocinski Memorial, one of the leading fixtures on the athletics calendar in Poland that draws a host of the world&rsquo;s best.
For other athletes, the horrors of World War II did not spell the end. One of the most famous survivors of the Holocaust in the sporting world is Shaul Ladany, an Israeli race walker who made it through both an internment in a concentration camp in 1944 and the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
Ladany was born in Belgrade, a city the Germans attacked in April 1941 when he was just five years old. After that his parents fled with him to Hungary where, as an eight-year-old, he was captured by the Nazis along with his parents and shipped to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. That was where, in May 1945, Dutch athlete Gerardus van der Wel, an Olympian over 5000m 1920, had been killed.
But Ladany had a lucky escape, and in December 1944 he and his parents were released from the camp.
&ldquo;There was a ransom deal made by Zionists in Hungary to supply 10,000 trucks to the Germans in exchange for releasing 100,000 Jews,&rdquo; Ladany told Sports History Weekly. &ldquo;In the end, no trucks were delivered and only 1700 Jews were allowed to leave. I was one of them along with my parents and we made our way to Switzerland where we stayed as refugees until the war ended.&rdquo;
In an excellent documentary detailing his story, aired by Deutsche Welle last year, Ladany said: &ldquo;In order to survive a person needed a series of lucky events and lucky for me and my parents, we had a long string of lucky events.&rdquo; 
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/D9-0N_awrCs" width="500" height="280" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
 Ladany and his family emigrated to Israel when he was 12 and he started running when he was 15, trying his first marathon at the age of 18. In his mid-20s he switched to race walking and in 1963 he won the first of 28 Israeli titles, while he also won six US race walking titles. At the 1968 Games in Mexico City he finished 24th in the 50km race walk and in 1972 he returned to Germany for the Munich Olympics, finishing 19th in the 50km race walk.
He narrowly escaped capture by the Black September terrorists when they targeted Israeli athletes in the Olympic village, Ladany fleeing the apartment block and alerting nearby teams to the situation. In 2007, he was awarded the Pierre de Coubertin Medal for his service to the Olympic movement.
While Ladany had no choice but to endure the horrors that unfolded around him through the early 1940s, others, like Martha Jacob, were able to escape before her life came under threat. A javelin gold medallist at the German Championships in 1929, an event at which she defeated the world record holder at the time, Auguste Hargus, Jacob spent time in Britain through 1931 and 1932 assisting their athletes in preparation for the Los Angeles Olympics. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Square/4c0bbee4-acf7-40ab-bf89-46ffafaeeeb6.jpg?cachebuster=e03d8674-067e-45db-b5d6-6a66d2f87772" alt="" width="600" height="600" /> Martha Jacob
&nbsp;
She returned to Germany but following the segregation of German sports in 1933, Jacobs and her fellow Jewish athletes were excluded from the Sport-Club Charlottenburg, which led her to return to the UK.
She represented Britain at the Maccabiah Games in 1933 but after being unable to secure a British work permit, she moved to France in 1934 and later to the Netherlands. Wherever she went, she was unable to fully escape the persecution that came with her Jewish background, and in July 1935 when competing in an event back in Germany, she was interrogated by the Gestapo, according to Playing Pasts. That experience led her to leave Germany and Europe, with Jacobs moving to Johannesburg, where she won the South African javelin title in 1937. She died in September 1976 and these days, her memory is preserved through a square named after her in Berlin: Martha-Jacob-Platz.
Belgian Olympian Julien Lehouck is another whose legacy lives on, long after his passing. He competed in the 100m, long jump and 4x100m at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp and later became mayor of Senzeilles in the Namur region of Belgium. When World War II broke out he joined the Belgian resistance and took various action in the years that followed against German forces. In February 1944 he was executed by hanging at the concentration camp in Breendonk. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Square/b3a6c432-ceae-4826-a4c5-dafbb451fd46.jpg?cachebuster=340d78df-b0d4-4782-9528-6215b36278a4" alt="" width="600" height="600" /> Geo Andre (&copy; Gallica)
&nbsp;
There are many more like him, athletes whose lives expired all too soon amid the atrocities taking place across the world. France&rsquo;s Geo Andre, a silver medallist at the 1908 Olympics in the high jump and a bronze medallist at the 1920 Games in the 4x400m, became a sports journalist in later years before joining the French resistance troops during World War II, and he was killed by the SS in Tunis in 1943. Then there is Czech runner Vaclav Hosek, a 1936 Olympic steeplechaser who was shot dead while trying to escape from a concentration camp in Germany in 1943.
In total, 70-85 million people lost their lives during World War II and approximately six million were killed in the Holocaust, about two thirds of the Jewish population in Europe at the time.
Ladany, now 84, is one of the few surviving athletes who experienced those horrors first-hand, and he has maintained his love for the sport into old age, completing an 83km walk on his 83rd birthday in 2019. His world best for the 50-mile race walk of 7:23:50, set in New Jersey, USA, in 1972, still stands today. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Carousel2/ab84f376-46c3-400e-b5d7-fe1912af4922.jpg?cachebuster=536abab3-935e-4a09-aed2-3d14542c7ebd" alt="" width="1000" height="600" /> Israeli race walker Shaul Ladany (&copy; Fritz Cohen)
&nbsp;
His attitude speaks to a man who not only survived the Holocaust, but found a way to thrive in its aftermath.
&ldquo;I will continue to walk as long as I can,&rdquo; he told Sports History Weekly last year. &ldquo;I joke with my daughter that I would like my tombstone to be inscribed with the line: &lsquo;He walked and he walked&hellip;until he walked away.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Cathal Dennehy for World Athletics

With each passing year, their names, their stories, become more distant relics of the past. But for those whose lives were touched by the most horrifying of atrocities, there’s an onus on the rest of us to never forget.

Remembering the star athletes whose lives were touched by the holocaust

Who, back in 1921, could have dreamt that someone born in that year would one day fly in space? Aviation was still in its relative infancy, the fastest speed recorded as the year dawned being 194mph or 313kph. But on 18 July John Glenn entered the world, became a US Marine Corps fighter pilot and in 1962 as one of NASA's original team of astronauts orbited the earth three times.
He became a hero, and so too in a more earthbound manner did eight athletes, born in 1921, who would find fame as Olympic champions or world record-breakers.
On New Year's Day no less, Ali-Mimoun Ould Kacha was born into a poor Arab-Berber family in Le Telagh, a small town in north-western Algeria, in those days a part of France. A promising young runner, he joined the French army in 1939 and fought in France, North Africa and Italy including the notorious Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944. It was there that he sustained such a severe shrapnel wound to his left leg that American doctors considered amputation. Mimoun refused and fortunately a French surgeon saved his leg.
After leaving the army in 1946 he moved to Paris, changed his name to Alain Mimoun, worked as a waiter at the Racing Club de France and resurrected his running career, ranking second in France at 10,000m that year. The following season he was the nation's No.1, although ranked only 27th in the world with 31:21.0. But such was his progress in 1948 that at the London Olympics he finished second to the great Emil Z&aacute;topek, albeit nearly 300 metres adrift, in 30:47.4.
It was Mimoun's misfortune to be consistently overshadowed by his Czech friend, for he finished second to him again at both 5000m and 10,000m at the 1950 European Championships and 1952 Olympics. He improved his best times to 14:07.58 in 1952 and 29:30.6 in 1958.
At the International Cross Country Championships, an event not contested by Z&aacute;topek, Mimoun reigned supreme, winning the individual title four times between 1949 and 1956 and leading France to team honours six times between 1946 and 1956.
Perseverance paid off, though, and at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Mimoun, then aged 35, ran his first marathon ... and won the gold medal, with an unfit defending champion Z&aacute;topek sixth. He became the first person of North African origin to receive the Legion of Honour and when he died in 2013, aged 92, he was recognised as France's athlete of the 20th century. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Square/657aff7b-75d1-4660-aabd-6947ac7607d1.jpg?cachebuster=1ed6a9b3-1ac7-40f4-a374-b550f0ed2bde" alt="" width="600" height="600" /> Alain Mimoun wins the marathon at the 1956 Olympics (&copy; AFP / Getty Images)
&nbsp;
Another early arrival in 1921 (5 January) was US sprint ace Harold Davis, one of those unfortunate stars who, because of the cancelled Games of 1940 and 1944, never had the opportunity to perform on the Olympic stage.
Very quick from an early age, he was only 17 in 1938 when he clocked 9.7 for 100 yards, while the following year he ranked equal sixth in the world over the straight 220 yards with 21.0. In 1940 he ran 9.5 for second on the world list but more impressive still were his three world-leading marks of 10.3 for 100m. He would surely have been favourite for the Olympic gold medal had the Games taken place.
His greatest year turned out to be 1941 when in a heat at California's Compton Invitational he equalled Jesse Owens' world record of 10.2 into a 0.9m/s wind. He also ran the year's fastest legal straight 220 yards time with 20.5, not to mention a 20.2 timing which would have shaded Owens' official world record of 20.3 had he not been blown along by a 4.0m/s wind.
He remained king of the sprinters in 1942 with a 9.4 100 yards which would have equalled the world record but was not accepted by the IAAF as he used a type of starting blocks that had not been officially approved. He also topped the straight 220 yards list with 20.4. In 1943 the &lsquo;California Comet&rsquo; bowed out from elite competition with times of 9.5, 10.3 and 20.2w.
During the four seasons, 1940-1943, he went unbeaten at 220 yards and lost only once at the shorter sprint. That one defeat was to Barney Ewell in the 1941 AAU 100m &ndash; and yet that might have been his greatest run. A notoriously sluggish starter, he was three metres behind Ewell at halfway and yet lost by inches in 10.3. Davis died in 2007, aged 86.
Another brilliant US runner who, like Davis, had no opportunity even to represent his country, was Grover Klemmer, born on 16 March. As a 19-year-old he clocked 47.0 for 440 yards for equal third place on the 1940 world list, while the following year he tied two world records in the space of four weeks. First he matched Ben Eastman's 1932 timing of 46.4 for 440 yards, and followed up with a slightly superior 46.0 400m when winning a closely contested US title, thus equalling Rudolf Harbig's 1939 record.
In between, he anchored (in 46.1) the University of California (Berkeley) team to a world record for the 4x440 yards relay of 3:09.4. Earlier that season he helped his university team to a world 4x880 yards record of 7:34.5, clocking 1:54.0 on the second leg. He went on to serve in the navy but after that glorious 1941 season never ran faster than 48.6 for 440 yards. He died in 2015, aged 84.
The one 1921-born US athlete who did achieve Olympic glory in 1948 was Wilbur &lsquo;Moose&rsquo; Thompson (born 6 April). Shot putters from that era bore little resemblance to today's behemoths and the 1.83m tall Thompson weighed in at about 86kg &ndash; quite a contrast to current stars like Ryan Crouser (2.01m and 135kg), Joe Kovacs (1.81m and 132kg) and Tom Walsh (1.86m and 123kg).
His progress was steady: 15.43m in 1945, 16.22m in 1946 and 16.70m in 1947 to rank third on the world list. The discipline in 1948 was dominated by USA&rsquo;s Charles Fonville (1.88m and 96kg) who smashed the world record with 17.68m in April and posted the 10 best marks for the year. However, a serious back injury held him back to fourth in the US Olympic Trials and he was out of the team for London. Never the outdoor US champion, Thompson peaked at just the right time and at the Games he set an Olympic record and personal best of 17.12m. He died in 2013, aged 92.
The 1948 Olympics saw two others born of 1921 vintage awarded gold medals. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Square/3df84bfd-5f14-449b-a53f-9fb9d9a754fe.jpg?cachebuster=69f9b8a4-799c-4f12-8b3c-bd2fb20573c6" alt="" width="600" height="600" /> The 1948 Olympic steeplechase final, eventually won by Thore Sj&ouml;strand, 357 (&copy; AFP / Getty Images)
&nbsp;
Thore Sj&ouml;strand (born on 31 July) not only won the steeplechase in 9:04.6 but led Swedish runners to a sweep of the medals, finishing more than 20 metres ahead of the unofficial world record-holder Erik Elms&auml;ter, who in 1944 had become the first man to break nine minutes.
Sj&ouml;strand first entered the world rankings in 1941, 11th fastest with 9:34.4. He progressed slightly to 9:30.2 for 10th place in 1942 and then jumped up to second to Elms&auml;ter with 9:17.4 in 1943, 9:06.0 in 1944 and 9:04.6 in 1945.
Five days after winning a bronze medal at the 1946 European Championships in Oslo in 9:14.0, he produced a personal best of 9:02.2 in Stockholm, for third on the world year list headed yet again by Elms&auml;ter (9:01.2). At last in 1947 Sj&ouml;strand led the world with 9:02.4 and in 1948 he followed his Olympic triumph by moving into second place on the all-time list with 8:59.8. He died in 2011, aged 89.
A far more noticeable track winner at Wembley was Belgium's Gaston Reiff (born 24 February). His victory in the 5000m was one of the most talked about happenings at the Games. After Emil Z&aacute;topek created an army of new fans by running away with the 10,000m, he had great support when he lined up on the rain-sodden track for the 5000m final three days later. At the bell the race looked a foregone conclusion for Reiff as he had drawn some 40 metres clear, but Z&aacute;topek was not down and out for he burst into a frenzied sprint and in a desperately exciting finish failed by only a single stride to catch Reiff, (Olympic record 14:17.6 to 14:17.8) who became the first Belgian athlete to win an Olympic title.
Reiff was a brilliantly versatile runner, who set national records at all distances from 1000m to 10,000m. He was credited with three world records: 5:07.0 for 2000m in 1948, a barrier-breaking 7:58.8 for 3000m in 1949 and 8:40.4 for two miles in 1952 &ndash; all previously held by the immortal Gunder H&auml;gg. Reiff had such speed in his legs that after running 4:02.8 for the mile in 1952 he was considered an outside contender to be the first to break four minutes. His other best times included 3:45.2 for 1500m, 14:10.8 for 5000m and 30:18.8 for 10,000m. He died in 1992, aged 71. 
<img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Square/c7be9f93-33b3-48f5-9a5e-683c5c17c114.jpg?cachebuster=5f6175a2-26a4-47d2-baba-ed6dcf3927f9" alt="" width="600" height="600" /> Gaston Reiff after winning the 5000m at the 1948 Olympics (&copy; Getty Images)
&nbsp;
Another, more realistic, prospective sub-four-minute miler was Sweden's Lennart Strand (born 13 June), the 1946 European 1500m champion and silver medallist behind his compatriot Henry Eriksson at the 1948 Olympics.
His career began during the glorious period when H&auml;gg and Arne Andersson were ruling the middle distance world and he paced both of them to world records in 1944 (1:56.0 at 800m in H&auml;gg's 3:43.0 1500m and 1:56.0 at 880y in Andersson's 4:01.6 mile). He himself ran only 3:54.4 that year but improved massively to 3:47.0 in 1945, ranking fourth fastest in the world (and Sweden!) that year. H&auml;gg, his mentor, admitted he could not drop Strand in their workouts and stated &ldquo;he&rsquo;s the one who will beat us all&rdquo;.
Due to being kicked out of the sport for transgressing the amateur rules, 1945 proved to be the final season for H&auml;gg (world record 4:01.3) and Andersson, and Strand began to fulfil his destiny. In 1946 he won the European title in the year's quickest time of 3:48.0, followed two days later by a world-leading 4:06.6 mile. He was the fastest miler again in 1947 (4:07.0) but that paled by comparison to his world 1500m record-equalling time of 3:43.0. He entered 1948 as clear favourite for the Olympic crown but nerves got the better of him and he only just salvaged second place, losing to Eriksson for the first time.
Strand, a talented pianist who released several jazz albums following his retirement from athletics in 1950, died in 2004 at the age of 82.
Finally, to the one woman in this group: Klavdiya Tochonova (born 17 November). Her distinction was to set a world record for the shot of 14.86m in 1949. The Russian would have been fancied for a medal at the 1948 Olympics, ranking third in the world that year with 14.16m, but the Soviet Union did not participate in the Games and victory went to France's Micheline Ostermeyer with an Olympic record of 13.75m. How galling that must have been for Tochonova's compatriot Tatyana Sevryukova who on the day of the Olympic final threw a world record 14.59m in Moscow.
However, Tochonova did go on to win two prestigious medals: silver at the 1950 European Championships and bronze at the 1952 Olympics. She died in 2004, aged 82.
Mel Watman for World Athletics Heritage

Who, back in 1921, could have dreamt that someone born in that year would one day fly in space? 

The class of 1921: athletics stars born 100 years ago

World Athletics is saddened by the news that Bernd Kannenberg, the 1972 Olympic champion in the 50km race walk, died on Wednesday (13) at 78.
Born on 20 August, 1942 in K&ouml;nigsberg, Kannenberg didn't start high performance training as a race walker until 1969 at age 27. Just three years later, on 27 May 1972, he shattered the world record in the 50km race walk by nearly three minutes, clocking 3:52:45 in Bremen.
With the record in hand, Kannenberg started as favourite in the Munich Olympic final just over three months later on 3 September, where he faced the reigning European champion Veniamin Soldatenko of the Soviet Union. Kannenberg was aggressive from the outset, leading from the start, with Soldatenko in tow. He finally shook off his rival after 35 kilometres to finish unchallenged in 3:56:11, an Olympic record and the third fastest performance in history.
Kannenberg's victory came on what was to be dubbed "Golden Sunday" for the host nation in athletics. That same day, Klaus Wolfermann notched an upset victory over Janis Lusis of the Soviet Union to win the javelin and Hildegard Falck won the women's 800m title. Heide Ecker-Rosendahl took silver in the pentathlon behind Great Britain's Mary Peters.
Four days earlier, Kannenberg stumbled and fell in the 20km event just after the midway point, and decided to withdraw to conserve his energy for the longer race.&nbsp;
He competed in both events two years later at the European Championships, finishing second over the 20km distance and ninth over 50km. He made one more Olympic appearance, competing in the 50km race walk in 1976, but was forced to withdraw due to cramps.
He won six German race walk titles, three in the 20km (1972, 1974, 1975) and three in the 50km (1972, 1973, 1975) before chronic injuries forced him to finally retire in 1978.
In 1974 he received the Rudolf Harbig Memorial Prize, an annual honour recognising a track and field athlete who serves as an exemplary role model for young people.
World Athletics
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

World Athletics is saddened by the news that Bernd Kannenberg, the 1972 Olympic champion in the 50km race walk, died on Wednesday (13) at 78

Kannenberg, 1972 Olympic 50km race walk champion, dies

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that British sprints coach Lloyd Cowan died on Monday (11) at the age of 58.
During his 20-year coaching career, Cowan guided many leading British sprinters, including 2008 Olympic 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu, 2010 European 110m hurdles champion Andy Turner and his son Dwayne Cowan, part of Britain&rsquo;s bronze medal-winning 4x400m quartet at the 2017 World Championships.
A talented athlete in his own right, Cowan was selected for the 1984 Olympics in the 110m hurdles but was unable to take his place on the team due to illness. Ten years later, he represented England at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria and narrowly missed out on making the final.
After retiring from competitive athletics in his late 30s, he moved into coaching and soon made a name for himself as one of the leading sprints coaches in the UK.
Ohuruogu was one of Cowan&rsquo;s first major successes. She won the Commonwealth title in 2006, world titles in 2007 and 2013, and the Olympic title in 2008.
Turner, under Cowan&rsquo;s guidance, also became a frequent medallist at major championships. He won European bronze in 2006, European gold in 2010 and world bronze in 2011.
Cowan also coached several national champions and international relay medallists, including European 4x100m champion Bianca Williams, 2008 Olympic 100m hurdles finalist Sarah Claxton, 2012 world indoor 4x400m champion Shana Cox, 2009 world 4x100m bronze medallist Simeon Williamson, European indoor 4x400m silver medallist Amber Anning, and sub-10-second 100m sprinter James Dasaolu.
In 2013 Cowan was appointed lead sprints coach at UK Athletics. Later that year, he was awarded the prestigious Ron Pickering Memorial Award for Services to Athletics, and in 2015 he was appointed MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire).
But it was the success of his son, Dwayne, which made Cowan most proud. A relative latecomer to the sport, Dwayne established himself as one of the top 400m runners in the UK in 2017. He won the 400m at the European Team Championships, clocked a PB of 45.34, and reached the semifinals at the World Championships in London before helping Britain to bronze in the 4x400m, recording the team&rsquo;s fastest split (44.2).
&ldquo;There will never be another Lloyd Cowan,&rdquo; said Turner. &ldquo;He knew me better than anyone. We had some amazing times and even better stories along the way. He made such a huge impact on my life. I owe him everything. I hope he realised how many lives he changed and how loved he was.&rdquo;
World 200m champion Dina Asher-Smith paid tribute to the larger-than-life character. &ldquo;Rest in power, Lloyd,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He was one of the pillars of our community and always had words of calm, wisdom and care for everyone. He knew when to make you laugh, when to be serious and most of all knew how to make you believe in yourself.&rdquo;
&ldquo;A really sad start to the athletics year,&rdquo; added World Athletics President Sebastian Coe. &ldquo;He was a great coach, mentor and teammate. A massive loss to the sport.&rdquo;
World 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce also recalled her fond memories of Cowan. &ldquo;No trip to London would be complete without a conversation with Coach Lloyd,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;His laugh and smile was everything, especially around the discussion of Jamaican food or jokes. You will be missed.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I have so many great memories of spending time with Lloyd on training camps and at championships,&rdquo; added 2012 Olympic heptathlon champion Jessica Ennis-Hill. &ldquo;He always believed in me and gave me some great advice and coaching tips along the way in the hurdles. Pure passion in what he did.&rdquo;
Leading statistician Ian Hodge, who had known Cowan for several decades, added: &ldquo;As a hurdler he was successful internationally, as a coach he reached the absolute peak and as a man he had unmatched influence on those he met in the sport.&rdquo;
World Athletics

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that British sprints coach Lloyd Cowan died on Monday (11) at the age of 58.

British sprints coach Cowan dies

The year is 1921. David Lloyd George is Britain's Prime Minister with Winston Churchill appointed Colonial Secretary, the King of the United Kingdom and Emperor of India is George V, Warren Harding is inaugurated as U.S. president, Vladimir Lenin heads the government of Soviet Russia, Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh) is born, Bill Tilden and Suzanne Lenglen are the Wimbledon champions and Jack Dempsey holds the world heavyweight title. So what is happening in athletics?
Two gold medallists at the previous year's Antwerp Olympics were the brightest stars, and they could hardly have been more different. One was the flamboyant, stocky American sprinter Charley Paddock, the other was the dour Finnish middle and long distance runner Paavo Nurmi.
<h3>For Paddock, 11 world records and bests</h3>
Paddock, 20, set no fewer than 11 world records or unratified world best performances that season. The first came as early as 26 March when he ran 9.6 (actually 9 3/5 as times were recorded then) for 100 yards, incorporating his spectacular trademark leap at the tape which made him such a favourite with the fans. That equalled the inaugural IAAF ratified record by Daniel Kelly in 1906 and tied by Howard Drew in 1914. Competing for the University of Southern California in a match against arch-rivals University of California at Berkeley, Paddock went through his usual routine of vigorously knocking wood before he settled into the holes he had dug at the start line. But that wasn't all, for in the straight 220 yards he was timed at 20.8 (20 4/5) to take a full 0.4 (2/5) from the previous world record.
Just three days later, at Stanford, he clocked the second of five 9.6 timings that season, while the third came at another Californian venue, Redlands, on what was described as a bitterly cold 23 April. On that occasion he didn't just leap forward at the 100y mark but regained his rhythm to take two quick strides before leaping for the tape at 100m, which he reached in 10.4, taking a fifth of a second off the world record. No one would officially run faster until 1930. He also displayed his stamina later that afternoon by setting a world best at 300y (30.2) on the way to an officially ratified world record of 33.2 for 300m.
Perhaps his most extraordinary performance came in his next race, in Pasadena on 18 June. Once again he clocked 9.6 for 100y but on this occasion he ran on to 110y (100.58m) in a sensational 10.2.
Of course it's impossible for any human &ndash; even Usain Bolt &ndash; to cover 10 yards in 0.6 sec, but the great sportswriter Maxwell Stiles, who was present, offers an explanation. "The answer to these sceptics is that 10th-sec watches were not legal in 1921, and all the officials used 5th-sec watches. The writer has little doubt that had there been 10th-sec watches in this race the times would have been a world record 9.5 for 100 yards and 10.2 for 110 yards."
Even so, an 0.7 differential remains implausible and so, correctly, the 10.2 was never granted record recognition. No one ran 100m in that time officially until Jesse Owens in 1936. Paddock ran a second race in Pasadena: 19.0 for a straight 200y despite sustaining a leg injury at the 150y mark (14.2). He concluded his season on 4 July at the national (AAU) championships in Pasadena, completing a 9.6/21.8 double.
So how effective was Paddock's famous leap for the tape from between 12 and 16 feet (3.66m to 4.88m) out? Paddock himself claimed, "I can jump faster than I can run if I have the momentum, because my tremendous leg drive hurls me forward so fast that I can cut my time down a fifth of a second. The longer the leap the better." Paddock's coach, the celebrated Dean Cromwell, begged to differ. "Paddock can gain perhaps 6 inches on his jump, but he can't gain a fifth of a second, or six feet."
<h3>Nurmi, world leader over five distances</h3>
At the other end of the distance scale, 24-year-old Paavo Nurmi not only set a world 10,000m record of 30:40.2 (with an unratified world best of 29:41.2 for 6 miles en route) in Stockholm on 22 June but also topped the world list that year at 1500m (3:59.1), 3000m (8:37.5), 3 miles (14:31.2) and 5000m (14:53.8) and ranked second to Britain's Albert Hill (4:13.8) at the mile with 4:13.9.
&nbsp;
<div id="5ff2db07724e720c74b89e89" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/9b250bf5-d4ad-4b61-8d17-d9715f9dda3b.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Finnish distance running legend Paavo Nurmi</div>
&nbsp;
He also had a gimmick, in his case racing with a stopwatch in hand to ensure he kept to his pace schedule. During his 10,000m record he opened with an extravagant kilometre split of 2:51.5 before settling down with 3:00.0, 3:02.9, 3:04.0, 3:07.7, 3:05.2, 3:05.6, 3:10.2, 3:08.5 and 3:04.6. His five quickest kilometres added up to 15:03.6, and nobody else that year ran that fast for 5000m. His 10,000m time took a whopping 18.6 seconds off the record set by France's Jean Bouin in 1911; alas the Frenchman was killed in action "by friendly fire" three years later aged 25.
Paddock also came to an untimely end, in his case during the Second World War. A field artillery officer in the Great War, he died in a plane crash in Alaska in 1943, aged 42, while serving in the US Marine Corps. His track career had extended to 1929. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris he placed a disappointing fifth in the 100m won by Harold Abrahams but grabbed a silver medal in the 200m, while in Los Angeles in 1926 he ran the first 9.5 100y but under the prevailing rules that was ratified as merely equalling the world record of 9.6.
Nurmi went on to enjoy one of the most exalted careers in athletics history and his name still resonates throughout the sport. As it turned out, 1921 proved to be one of his least productive years. In 1922 he set world records at 2000m, 3000m and 5000m as well as topping the world list at 1500m, 3 miles and 3000m steeplechase; and in 1923 there were world records at 1500m, mile, 3000m and 3 miles plus a world lead at 5000m.
Then, 1924 proved to be his annus mirabilis. After astonishingly establishing two world records within 70 minutes in Helsinki in June (1500m in 3:52.6 and 5000m in 14:28.2) he accomplished a unique double at the Paris Olympics in July with times of 3:53.6 easing up and (the race starting 42 minutes later) 14:31.2. Two days later, in tropical conditions, he won the 10.65km cross country race some 400m clear and the day after that he led Finland to victory in the 3000m team race. And that wasn't all in 1924, for he also came away with world records at 3 miles, 4 miles, 5 miles, 6 miles and 10,000m.
He continued to dominate distance running for several more years, winning the Olympic 10,000m title in 1928 and setting the last of his 29 outdoor world records or bests at 2 miles in 1931. But for being declared a professional he might well have won the Olympic marathon in 1932, but 20 years later he enjoyed one last moment of Olympic glory when, to great acclaim, he carried the torch into the stadium for the opening ceremony in Helsinki. He died in 1973, aged 76.
Mel Watman for World Athletics Heritage

Remembering Charley Paddock and Paavo Nurmi, the brightest athletics stars of 1921

Charley Paddock and Paavo Nurmi - the brightest stars of 100 years ago

Even though North Macedonia has only existed as an independent country since 1991 &ndash; and has used its current name internationally only since 2018 &ndash; the athletics federation celebrated its centenary this year.
In 1920, what is now modern day North Macedonia was part of what was then named the&nbsp;Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, an entity created out of the upheavals of two Balkan Wars, World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire during the second decade of the 20th century.
In such a climate, the opportunity to organise athletics competitions in the conventional sense were very limited but informal activities certainly did take place in the towns and villages.
The North Macedonian athletics historian Miroslav Boskovic has noted that the first competition for which reliable data still exists was a 500m race in 1924 held in the streets of what is now the country&rsquo;s capital Skopje and which featured competitors from three local clubs.
Slowly, athletics started to take a foothold over the following 20 years and competitions continued to be held during World War II despite occupation by the Axis powers.
After the end of World War II, with Macedonia now incorporated into Yugoslavia, an improvement in physical culture became part of government policy and athletics quickly became a popular sport.
<h3>Bare feet but big crowds</h3>
Sports clubs in all the major towns and cities across Macedonia created specific athletics sections and, as Boskovic notes: &ldquo;Athletic competitions in the post-war years were massively watched by the citizens, some of them had audiences of five or six thousand.&rdquo;
Despite the growing enthusiasm, performances were still modest, no doubt more than in part because of the rudimentary facilities, a lack of equipment and proper apparel &ndash; athletes wearing spikes or even canvas training shoes were far from the norm &ndash; and little opportunity to train properly in a region still recovering from the ravages of the global conflict, with competitions often being held in meadows rather than stadia.
&ldquo;On August 21, 1946, the city championship of Skopje was held where several good results were achieved: in the 100 metres race the best was Slavko Matovski with a result of 11.8. The best in 1500m was Lazo Milosevski with a result of 4:51,&rdquo; writes Boskovic in one of his many erudite essays.
By comparison, the slowest competitors in those events at the European Athletics Championships in Oslo a few days later were 11.2 and 4:10.8 respectively.
Nevertheless, performances did steadily improve and the period between 1947 and 1954 also saw inter-republic matches between Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.
<h3>Milosevski makes his mark</h3>
The versatile Milosevski soon found he had greater prowess over shorter distances and became the first Macedonian to go under 50 seconds for one lap of the track. In 1947, he was part of the Yugoslav 4x400m team that won at the Balkan and Central European Games in Bucharest and he also went on to win Yugoslav titles in the 200m and 400m.
At the 1950 European Athletics Championships in Brussels, he became the first Macedonian athlete to participate at the European Athletics Championships.&nbsp;
Milosevski went on to also find fame as a sports journalist and the annual Memorial Meeting Lazo Milosevski inaugurated in 1965, North Macedonia&rsquo;s premier one-day meeting, is named after him.
For the rest of the 1950s, Macedonia&rsquo;s most successful athletes were long distance runners, notably Ljubisa Trboevski who was a regular member of Yugoslavian teams and, for a time, in the latter part of the decade was thought of as the second-best distance runner in the country behind the formidable 1956 Olympic Games marathon silver medallist and 1958 Boston Marathon winner Franjo Mihalic.
The 1950s was also the era in which Yugoslav national championships were sometimes held in Skopje, as well as the 1955 Balkan Cross Country Championships, and thousands would turn out to watch the top Yugoslav runners of that era, especially if Mihalic was advertised as competing, despite the fact that local Macedonian successes were unlikely.
&nbsp;
<div id="5fe066c19eb38e1100c022b5" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/9031a84c-dc58-4a48-9df4-2732ba127a6c.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
European Athletics Congress in Skopje</div>
&nbsp;
Turning the clock forward a little more than a decade and perhaps the best ever female athlete in the history of Macedonian athletics emerged in the shape of the sprinter Vera Veljanovska, who still holds the national 100m and 200m records almost 50 years after establishing them.
Veljanovska finished sixth in the 1973 European U20 200m, a race won by East Germany&rsquo;s four-time Olympic gold medallist Barbel Wockel, although unlike the winner Veljanovska never really fulfilled her youthful promise and her international career had fizzled out by the time Eckert won the 1976 Olympic Games 200m gold medal.
<h3>Macev nearly gets a medal</h3>
However, in 1988 a Macedonia sprinter finally did make it to the Olympics in the famous blue vest of former Yugoslavia when Ismail Macev contested the 400m and 4x400m in Seoul.
Macev &ndash; who sadly died of lung cancer in January last year at the age of 59 &ndash; has a good claim to be the greatest ever athlete produced by Macedonia, competing not only in Seoul but also at three European Athletics Championships and the 1991 World Athletics Championships, where he ran the third leg on Yugoslavia&rsquo;s 4x400m team that just missed out on the medals when finishing fourth.
North Macedonia &ndash; or Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as it was known until 2018 &ndash; first sent athletes to the 1993 World Athletics Championships and 2000 Olympic Games as an independent nation but success has been very modest and the country is still seeking its first individual finalist in a senior global or continental competition.
However, a glimmer of hope that barren streak may come to an end arrived last year with the emergence of sprinter Jovan Stojoski.
<h3>Stojoski sets the standard</h3>
Stojoski twice reduced the 200m national record to its current mark of 21.32 and reached the final of the European Athletics U23 Championships 400m, an event at which he holds the national U23 record of 46.92.
Next year will see Stojovski bid to improve on Macev&rsquo;s national record over one lap of the track which has stood at 46.27 since 1983 and, looking into the crystal ball, who knows what he could achieve at the Munich 2022 European Athletics Championships.
North Macedonian athletics has also been given a boost by the commitment of the national federation to bringing international events to the country in recent years.
After deteriorating for almost two decades since Yugoslavia disintegrated, Skopje's To&scaron;e Proeski National Arena &ndash; which is primarily the 33,460-capacity national football stadium &ndash; underwent a major reconstruction and expansion which included the laying of a new athletics track and adding facilities, and opened for business again in July 2012.
The stadium has since played host to the 2014 European 10,000m Cup and 2019 European Athletics Team Championships Third League and further international competitions are planned.
Phil Minshull for World Athletics Heritage

Even though North Macedonia has only existed as an independent country since 1991 – and has used its current name internationally only since 2018 – the athletics federation celebrated its centenary this year.

Milosevski, Macev and Stojoski: North Macedonia celebrates its centenary

In partnership with Google Arts and Culture, Kenya&rsquo;s Ministry of Sport will next year launch a digital museum to archive the country&rsquo;s rich collection of stories and memorabilia that have made the African nation an athletics powerhouse.
Ranked 34th in the all-time Olympics medals table, and only second behind USA in track and field, of Kenya&rsquo;s 103 Olympic medals, 96 are from athletics.
Some of Kenya&rsquo;s nostalgic Olympic moments were relived on Tuesday (15) when Athletics Kenya celebrated its 70th anniversary at a ceremony in Nairobi where 70 of the country&rsquo;s all-time champions were celebrity guests.
And they brought with them memorabilia that triggered nostalgic tears of joy to guests present, some who vividly recollected Kenya&rsquo;s journey to greatness since 1950 when retired British soldier Archie Evans founded the Kenya Amateur Athletics Association (now Athletics Kenya) and led the nation to its first major global competition &ndash; the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver.
And it was not until 14 years later in 1964 that Kenya won its first Olympic medal, a bronze in the 800m, through Kenya Army man Wilson Kiprugut Chumo.
&nbsp;
<div id="5fdc8e1d9eb38e171c62ab3d" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/eb1ca7ac-4143-446c-99da-c766ef92eeac.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Wilson Kiprugut Chomo, the first Kenyan Olympic medallist (bronze at 800m in 1964)</div>
&nbsp;
Kiprugut was at Tuesday&rsquo;s party - hosted by the Athletics Kenya executive led by the federation&rsquo;s President Lt. Gen. (Rtd) Jackson Tuwei - proudly displaying his bronze medal that any museum of repute would die to house.
There was a near stampede as track and field enthusiasts milled around a temporary display of Kenya&rsquo;s medals over the years, with the gold medals from the 1968 Games in Mexico City and from Munich in 1972 most sought after.
Besides the medals, wooden boards used as the track starter&rsquo;s &ldquo;gun&rdquo; in the 1950s to 1970s were also on display alongside sawdust used for the jump pits and bamboo sticks that would be used for the pole vault.
So rich is Kenya&rsquo;s athletics history and so huge is the collection of memorabilia that the Kenyan government has elected to launch a virtual museum next year.
&ldquo;The Ministry in conjunction with Google Arts and Culture, Google Kenya, Athletics Kenya, the National Olympic and Paralympic Committees and other partners will launch the first and largest digital content feature on Kenyan sports, ever,&rdquo; Sports Cabinet Minister Amina Mohamed told guests.
&ldquo;It will celebrate the country&rsquo;s history, heritage and excellence across disciplines, geography and communities. This project will also give us a platform to store all the turning sporting moments in history.&rdquo;
In a video message extolling the virtues and success of Kenyan athletics, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said:
&ldquo;As a federation, Athletics Kenya has made an indelible mark on the history of our sport and a huge contribution to the development of our sport,&rdquo; Coe said.
&ldquo;Kenya is not just a prominent country in the world of athletics, it is a powerhouse.&nbsp;It is the number two ranked nation in the world behind USA with 151 medals in the 37 years&rsquo; history of the World Championships.
&ldquo;Plus another 96 Olympic medals out of the 103 that Kenya has won in total in all Olympic sports have been won in Athletics.
&ldquo;It has produced some of the greatest athletes in the history of athletics, starting from the first ever Olympic medallist for Kenya, back in Tokyo 1964, the 800m runner Wilson Kiprugut (bronze medallist) and continuing with legends of our sport, Rudisha, Kipchoge, Vivian Cheruiyot, Paul Tergat, Tegla Loroupe and a dozen other athletes who became role models for the generations that followed in their footsteps.&rdquo;
Kiprugut and Tergat, the five-times world cross country champion and currently President of the National Olympic Committee of Kenya, were present at Tuesday&rsquo;s celebrations along with Rudisha, the world 800m record holder whose father, Daniel, was part of the silver medal winning 4x400m relay team at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
And what a glorious moment it was to see Lydia Stephens, Tecla Chemabwai and Elizabeth Chesire &ndash; Kenya&rsquo;s first three female Olympians who made the breakthrough at the 1968 Mexico Games &ndash; reunite to relive their groundbreaking outing 52 years ago.
&nbsp;
<div id="5fdc91ea9eb38e171c62ab43" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/4c39739a-f555-451c-8b96-987b0949f9f6.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
In 1968, from left - Lydia Stephens, Elizabeth Chesire and Tecla Chemabwai, the first three Kenyan women to compete at the Olympic Games</div>
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<div id="5fdc8d659eb38e171c62ab3c" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/20a89eb1-b967-4c01-aae9-ee51d1eae89b.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
And in 2020, From left - Lydia Stephens, Elizabeth Chesire and Tecla Chemabwai</div>
&nbsp;
And they all carried some rich artefacts, including Stephens&rsquo; spikes used at the 1968 Games.
Stephens, 75, spoke passionately about Kenya&rsquo;s unexploited potential in the sprints. She was back-to-back national 100m and 200m champion from 1966 to 1969.
&ldquo;We need to start the children off at an early age. I started athletics at the age of five when I was at kindergarten in Mombasa. That is why I want to urge Athletics Kenya and coaches to cast their nets wider. We can produce great sprinters if we are to develop the talent that is rich across the country,&rdquo; said Stephens.
Elias Makori for World Athletics

In partnership with Google Arts and Culture, Kenya’s Ministry of Sport will next year launch a digital museum to archive the country’s rich collection of stories and memorabilia that have made the African nation an athletics powerhouse.

Athletics Kenya celebrates 70th anniversary, plans for virtual sports museum announced

Naoko Takahashi, the first woman to run a marathon in under two hours 20 minutes, has become the latest athletics star to generously donate a competition item from their career to the World Athletics Heritage Collection.
Takahashi clocked an Olympic marathon record of 2:23:14 on 24 September 2000 to win at the Sydney Olympic Games. It was the first Olympic victory at the marathon by a Japanese woman and her Games record was not broken until 2012.
Takahashi moved to the front of the race at the 20-kilometre point along with her compatriot Ari Ichihashi and Romania&rsquo;s Lidia Simon. Ichihashi dropped off the pace five kilometres later, leaving Takahashi and Simon to battle for the title. The two ran together until 35 kilometres when Takahashi broke away, quickly establishing a 30-metre lead. She extended it over the next five kilometres and although Simon narrowed it slightly over the waning two kilometres, Takahashi, wearing bib number 2338, went on to a comfortable victory.
It is that bib which she has very kindly donated today.
&nbsp;
<div id="5fd78e079eb38e1288499f2b" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/47b50444-b659-45ab-94f9-d2831e6e2943.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Naoko Takahashi and her Sydney Olympic bib</div>
&nbsp;
&ldquo;I am happy to see my Sydney bib join the Heritage collection,&rdquo; said Takahashi. &ldquo;I would like the bib&rsquo;s donation to help increase interest in the marathon, and the challenge and beauty of distance running. It might also help motivate more people to take up running for fitness and fun, or perhaps even competitively, picturing themselves in my shoes.&rdquo;
<h3>Daughter of the Wind</h3>
There was no underestimating Takahashi&rsquo;s national popularity and fame after her Olympic triumph. She was the subject of a comic strip entitled "Kazekko," or "Daughter of the Wind". Launched in May 2001, the strip told Takahashi&rsquo;s life story and at its height attracted 700,000 readers weekly.
Takahashi&rsquo;s career was inspired by the legend of Ethiopia&rsquo;s two-time Olympic marathon champion Abebe Bikila. As she developed as a runner, Takahashi was also impressed by the running of Japan&rsquo;s Yuko Arimori, who raced to Olympic silver in 1992 and bronze in 1996.
Yet it was only when her training partner Hiromi Suzuki won the 1997 world title in the marathon that Takahashi, who had debuted with a seventh place finish in 2:31:32 in Osaka in January of that year, truly believed that her future lay in the marathon.
<h3>Audience of 55 million</h3>
Takahashi, who was coached by the late Yoshio Koide who last year was <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage/plaquedetail/yoshio-koide">posthumously awarded the World Athletics Plaque</a>, won the first of her two Berlin Marathon titles in September 2001 with a landmark 2:19:46 performance, a world best and the first time in history that a woman had broken 2:20 for the distance.
Estimates vary but it is believed that 55 million Japanese, nearly half of the country&rsquo;s population, watched Takahashi&rsquo;s Berlin race on television.
&ldquo;I am really happy about the (Berlin TV audience),&rdquo; Takahashi told The Japan Times in 2003. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an honour that people still remember me, and you can tell that people&rsquo;s awareness of the sport is big.&rdquo;
&ldquo;There are so many different sports these days and the level of viewership is a tribute to the people who came before me and built the marathon up and made it as popular as it is now. Being a part of that is amazing and I am grateful.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Chris Turner for World Athletics Heritage

Naoko Takahashi, the first woman to run a marathon in under two hours 20 minutes, has become the latest athletics star to generously donate a competition item from their career to the World Athletics Heritage Collection.

Takahashi, 2000 Olympic marathon champion, donates winning bib to Heritage Collection

The Kenyan town of Iten and the Fukuoka International Open Marathon Championship have been awarded a World Athletics Heritage Plaque.
Unveiling ceremonies were held in Iten on Wednesday (3) and in Fukuoka on Sunday (6) as both plaques were presented to local dignitaries. These ceremonies follow on from the original international announcements of the awards made by World Athletics on <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage-plaque/news/heritage-plaque-hakone-ekiden-penn-relays">10 May 2019</a> and <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage-plaque/news/heritage-plaque-kosice-bay-turkey-bechovice-c">3 October 2020</a>, respectively.
Since the plaque programme was launched in December 2018 by World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage/plaque" target="_blank" rel="noopener">60 plaques</a> have so far been announced <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage/plaque-locations" target="_blank" rel="noopener">across the world</a>.
The World Athletics Heritage Plaque is awarded for &ldquo;an outstanding contribution to the worldwide history and development of the sport of track and field athletics and of out-of-stadia athletics disciplines such as cross country, mountain, road, trail and ultra-running, and race walking.&rdquo;
The plaque is awarded across <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage/plaque-criteria" target="_blank" rel="noopener">five broad overlapping categories</a>, offering the possibility to honour locations across our multi-layered global sport.
<h3>Athletes turn out in Iten</h3>
<a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage/plaquedetail/iten-kenya" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Iten</a>, the Home of Champions, was awarded the plaque in the category of &lsquo;Landmark&rsquo;.
Ezekiel Kemboi, Moses Kiptanui, Mary Keitany, Irene Cheptai, just some of the distance running legends who hail from the town of Iten, which is also the headquarters of Elgeyo Marakwet County, were among the VIP guests in attendance at the ceremony. Dignitaries included host Governor Alex Tolgos, Kenya&rsquo;s Cabinet Secretary for Sport, Amina Mohamed, and Athletics Kenya&rsquo;s leadership, led by President Jackson Tuwei. The British High Commissioner to Kenya, Jane Marriott, and Brother Colm O&rsquo;Connell, winner of the 2019 World Athletics Coaching Achievement Award, were also present. 
<div id="5fce41163c0e880830af618a" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/4d632e24-3825-44bb-b24c-7164ff2d1925.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Kenya&rsquo;s Sports Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, Moses Kiptanui, Mary Keitany and Athletics Kenya President Jackson Tuwei</div>
&nbsp;
&ldquo;We have unveiled this plaque today because it&rsquo;s an honour to the whole country and subsequently the entire continent,&rdquo; said Cabinet Secretary Mohamed.
&ldquo;Iten has more champions than any place on the earth and this is beyond any reasonable doubt,&rdquo; said British High Commissioner Marriott. &ldquo;That it has been recognised is a great pleasure to all of us who want to be associated to it.&rdquo;
O'Connell added: &ldquo;As someone whose hands have moulded a good number of these successful athletes, this is the proudest moment in my coaching career here in Iten. I will live to remember this day.&rdquo;
The plaque will be permanently displayed in the Governor&rsquo;s office in the heart of Iten town.
<h3>Fukuoka unveils on race day</h3>
The <a href="https://www.worldathletics.org/heritage/plaquedetail/fukuoka-marathon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fukuoka International Open Marathon Championship</a> was awarded the plaque in the category of &lsquo;Competition&rsquo;.
The marathon, which was founded in 1947, was one of the six historic races recently honoured with the World Athletics Heritage Plaque. 
<div id="5fce40e13c0e880830af6189" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/62d30764-3971-4bb7-835f-08e9f2bd007b.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Japanese Athletics Federation President Hiroshi Yokokawa (r) and President and CEO of The Asahi Shimbun Masataka Watanabe (l)</div>
&nbsp;
Appropriately, on Sunday (6), the race organisers took the opportunity of the staging of the 74th edition of the Fukuoka Marathon to hold their ceremony at which their plaque was unveiled.
The ceremony was led by Hiroshi Yokokawa, World Athletics Council member, who is the President of Japan Association of Athletics Federations. He was joined by Masataka Watanabe, President and CEO of The Asahi Shimbun, an official partner of the Fukuoka International Open Marathon Championship. 
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8uWmXWQKNmw" width="500" height="280" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
 The marathon organisers are working with the city to find a permanently public site for the plaque which currently is on display at the offices of the race organisers in Hakata-ku, Fukuoka.
Chris Turner for World Athletics Heritage with thanks to Elias Makori

The Kenyan town of Iten and the Japanese city of Fukuoka – two iconic athletics locations – have been awarded the World Athletics Heritage Plaque.

Heritage Plaques unveiled in Iten and Fukuoka

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that 1960 Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson &ndash; widely regarded as one of the all-time greats in the combined events &ndash; died on Wednesday (2) at the age of 86.
Between his Olympic silver medal in 1956 and his triumph in 1960, Johnson was undefeated in the decathlon. Having been the USA&rsquo;s flag bearer at the 1960 Olympics, the first African-American elected to that honour, Johnson went on to light the Olympic cauldron at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
In an eventful life, Johnson enjoyed an acting career in Hollywood, co-founded the California Special Olympics in 1969, and was one of three men to tackle Robert F Kennedy&rsquo;s assassin moments after the fatal shooting in 1968.
Born in Texas in 1934, Johnson and his family moved to California when he was nine years old. The Johnsons were the only black family in the town of Kingsburg and they would spend hours every week picking cotton to earn a meagre living.
Johnson played baseball, basketball and American football to a high standard in his youth, but athletics &ndash; and specifically the decathlon &ndash; became his main focus at the age of 16 when his then coach, Murl Dodson, drove Johnson to the 1952 US Olympic Trials to watch Bob Mathias compete. According to a 2010 article in Sports Illustrated, Johnson turned to his coach at the end of the competition and said: &ldquo;I could have beaten most of those guys.&rdquo;
Within a few years, Johnson started to live up to his promise. In 1955, aged only 20 and contesting just the fourth decathlon of his career, he won the Pan-American Games title in Mexico City, beating double Olympic pole vault champion Bob Richards in the process.
A few months later, Johnson returned to his hometown of Kingsburg and broke the world record with a score of 7985, adding 98 points to the mark Mathias had set when he retained his Olympic title in 1952.
Johnson started the 1956 season in outstanding form. He set PBs of 13.8 in the 110m hurdles and 7.76m in the long jump, marks that would place him in the top six on the world lists for that season. He also won the decathlon at the US Olympic Trials, beating 1952 Olympic silver medallist Milt Campbell, and placed third in the long jump, earning a place on the Olympic team in that discipline too.
But in the weeks leading up to the Olympic Games in Melbourne, Johnson picked up a knee injury and tore a stomach muscle. It forced him to withdraw from the long jump, but he didn&rsquo;t want to surrender his place in the decathlon. Campbell ultimately won by a comfortable 350-point margin with a score of 7937, just 48 points shy of Johnson&rsquo;s world record.
&ldquo;I lost to a good man,&rdquo; said Johnson, who would never lose another decathlon.
He missed the 1957 season through injury but returned to top form in 1958. Soviet rival Vasilly Kuznetsov broke Johnson&rsquo;s world record at the start of the 1958 season, but Johnson reclaimed it on Kuznetsov&rsquo;s home soil in Moscow at the first USA-USSR dual meet. Johnson&rsquo;s score of 8302 added almost 300 points to Kuznetsov&rsquo;s world record. At the end of 1958, Sports Illustrated named Johnson the Sportsman of the Year.
Johnson was sidelined again in 1959, this time with a serious back injury sustained as a result of a car accident. During that season, Kuznetsov regained the world record with 8357 while Johnson was in a race against time to be fit for the 1960 Olympic Games.
Johnson rehabbed well and returned to action in 1960. But it soon became clear that Kuznetsov would not be Johnson&rsquo;s only big threat at the Olympic Games in Rome later that year. Taiwanese decathlete CK Yang, Johnson&rsquo;s friend and former teammate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was in the form of his life and was Johnson&rsquo;s closest rival at the US Trials that year.
Johnson emerged victorious with a world record of 8683, while Yang finished second with a score of 8426, the second-best mark in history at that time and a performance which made him one of the medal favourites heading into the Olympics.
Yang won the first two decathlon disciplines in Rome but Johnson moved ahead after the shot put, throwing a Games record of 15.82m. Johnson held a slender 55-point lead at the end of the first day, but Yang went ahead again after the 110m hurdles on day two. Johnson reclaimed the lead in the discus, but the contest remained extremely close. By the time they lined up for the 1500m, Johnson&rsquo;s lead was down to 67 points &ndash; roughly equivalent to about 10 seconds in decathlon 1500m terms. Yang, however, was a superior 1500m runner and his PB was 15 seconds faster than Johnson&rsquo;s. 
<div id="54cf4d07eee2ae07d48d60fb" class="dropMedia">
<div style="background-image: url('https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Small/bd198c13-e4f5-4ea9-a50e-35e599e9a93d.jpg');">&nbsp;</div>
Rafer Johnson and Yang Chuan-kwang in the decathlon 1500m at the 1960 Olympic Games</div>
&nbsp;
Johnson doggedly stuck to his friend and rival in the final decathlon discipline. &nbsp;Yang attempted a few surges, but Johnson would not be dropped. He eventually crossed the line just one second behind Yang in a PB of 4:49.7, enough to take gold by 58 points with an Olympic record of 8392.
&ldquo;Ours was the purest of rivalries,&rdquo; Johnson wrote in his autobiography, The Best That I Can Be. &ldquo;We each wanted the other guy to do well, but we wanted even more to win.&rdquo;
At the conclusion of the competition in Rome, Johnson announced his retirement from competitive athletics. He turned down opportunities to compete in other sports and instead focused on acting, landing supporting roles in several movies including the Elvis Presley film Wild in the Country and the James Bond film Licence to Kill.
Johnson met Robert F Kennedy at an awards dinner in the early 1960s and the pair soon became good friends. Johnson became part of Kennedy&rsquo;s presidential rally in 1968 and travelled around the country alongside NFL player Roosevelt Grier. On 5 June 1958, Johnson and Kennedy were on their way out of the Ambassador Hotel in LA when a gunman opened fire and shot Kennedy. Johnson, Grier and journalist George Plimpton tackled the gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, to the ground. Kennedy died in hospital the following day.
In 1969 Johnson co-founded the California Special Olympics and held a competition at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. A decade later, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley invited Johnson to join the board of the committee tasked with bringing the 1984 Olympics to the city.
Johnson, aged 49 at the time, was asked to light the Olympic cauldron during the opening ceremony for the 1984 Games in LA. It became one of the most iconic moments of the Games. 
<iframe style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?height=420&amp;href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsoscsocal%2Fvideos%2F650728668869334%2F&amp;show_text=false&amp;width=500" width="500" height="375" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
 Following his stints as flag bearer in 1960 and cauldron lighter in 1984, Johnson was involved in the international Olympic torch relay for the 1996 and 2004 Summer Games as well as the 2002 Winter Games. More recently, he was involved in LA&rsquo;s successful bid to host the 2028 Olympic Games.
Johnson leaves behind his wife Betsy and children Jennifer and Joshua. Joshua was an accomplished javelin thrower and set a PB of 76.16m in 2003, while Jennifer represented the USA in beach volleyball at the 2000 Olympic Games.
While Johnson was an all-round sports fan throughout his life, track and field remained his main passion.
&ldquo;There was something pure and innocent about the sport,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You ran, you jumped, you threw things, just as young men had done since the dawn of civilisation.&rdquo;

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that 1960 Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson – widely regarded as one of the all-time greats in the combined events – died on Wednesday (2) at the age of 86.

1960 Olympic decathlon champion and former world record-holder Johnson dies

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that USA&rsquo;s 1976 Olympic long jump champion Arnie Robinson died on Tuesday (1) at the age of 72.
Aside from his achievements as an athlete, Robinson will be remembered as a survivor, having defied the odds in a near-fatal collision with a drunk driver in 2000, and after being given just six months to live when diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in 2005.
More than that, though, Robinson will also be remembered as a humble man who dedicated his life to the sport and to helping others.
Born in San Diego in 1948, Clarence Earl &lsquo;Arnie&rsquo; Robinson taught himself to jump using a discarded mattress on the driveway of his family home. As a promising young athlete at San Diego State University, he first came to prominence when winning the 1970 NCAA title.
Just 12 months later, Robinson won at the US Championships &ndash; his first of a record-equalling six national titles in the long jump &ndash; and then took gold at the 1971 Pan-American Games in Cali. He booked his place on the 1972 Olympic team after winning the US Trials and went on to take the bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Munich with an 8.03m leap in the penultimate round.
Robinson improved his PB to 8.30m in 1974, a world-leading mark that year, and took silver at the Pan-American Games in 1975.
He won the US Olympic Trials again in 1976 with a wind-assisted 8.37m, the best mark of his career in any conditions, and he headed to the Games in Montreal in the form of his life. Robinson opened his series in the final with a world-leading lifetime best of 8.35m (-0.6m/s), immediately putting pressure on his opponents, not least teammate Randy Williams, the defending champion. Williams responded with 8.11m, but Robinson backed up his leading mark with 8.26m in round two.
Williams never improved on his first-round leap, while three other men &ndash; Frank Wartenberg, Jacques Rousseau and Joao do Pulo &ndash; only just managed to jump eight metres. Robinson, meanwhile, was relentless and produced jumps of 8.04m and 8.16m in the fourth and fifth rounds to consolidate his lead.
By the end of the competition, Robinson had produced the three best leaps of the final, winning comfortably with a margin of 24 centimetres.
Robinson went on to win the long jump at the inaugural World Cup in 1977 in Dusseldorf before earning his sixth and final US title in 1978. After finishing sixth at the 1980 US Trials, he retired in the early 1980s.
While working as a coach at Mesa College, Robinson dedicated much of his time, finances and resources to helping track and field at all levels in San Diego. He spent more than &euro;35,000 of his own money on timing equipment to be used at youth-level athletics. Not only that, he also spent hours teaching himself to use the equipment so that he could operate it at competitions.
&ldquo;I had no idea who the man was or what his accomplishments were,&rdquo; double Olympic 4x400m champion <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/columnists/bryce-miller/sd-sp-miller-arnie-robinson-olympics-20181007-story.html?fbclid=IwAR29lUhjsk-N-Xy1pmNururRcZBu4BnsEv9yGme-UiN7RCdAPyCQyekh5mA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Monique Henderson told the San Diego Union Tribune in 2018</a>. &ldquo;I just knew this man was making our meets as professional as he could. He didn&rsquo;t have anybody assisting him. You go to a track meet now and there are five guys in a tent running the timing system. It was just Arnie. The time he spent learning the system, it&rsquo;s unbelievable. And Arnie didn&rsquo;t charge any of the youth organisations a dime.
&ldquo;I grew up in a track family,&rdquo; added Henderson, &ldquo;but I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever met anyone who had as big a passion for track and field that he had.&rdquo;

World Athletics is deeply saddened to hear that USA’s 1976 Olympic long jump champion Arnie Robinson died on Tuesday (1) at the age of 72.

HERITAGE

'Progression of World Athletics Records' ebook published

Vaulting pioneer Dragila recalls memories of landmark global title

Remembering the landmark 1991 World Indoor Championships in Seville

Marking the 50th birthday of Johnson, one of the all-time hurdles greats

Olympic legend Ralph Metcalfe and the creation of Black History Month

More News