Hooliganism is not something we associate with running today. The crowds at track meets and road races are some of the friendliest and best natured of any sport. Yet at the dawn of the era of modern athletics running had a serious problem with crowd violence. In fact, the emergence of the modern sport was
Until recently I was sure I knew who the first person to break the four minute mile was. Roger Bannister’s achievement on a blustery Oxford afternoon in 1954 has, after all, gone down in the folklore of our sport. But was he really the first? I thought so, until I came across some research by
These days the pub is probably not the first place that springs to mind when thinking about top class athletics. In fact, going to the pub and competitive running are probably about as culturally – and physically – different as you can get as far as pastimes go. Yet for the best part of a
What’s the most common question you’re asked after finishing a race? In my experience it’s almost always ‘what was your time?’, and talking to other runners it seems this experience is pretty much universal. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an elite athlete or a first time 5k runner, the vital fact is how long it
Today it seems almost unbelievable that it took until 1984 before a women’s marathon was included in the Olympic programme, but from the first modern Games in 1896 until then, only men were allowed to compete at the classic distance. That’s not to say that during these wilderness years there weren’t many women racing in
Sprint superstars like Usain Bolt and Dafne Schippers, with their legions of fans and swollen bank balances, seem like a thoroughly modern phenomenon – a product of mass media exposure and the commercialisation of sport. But surprisingly, this isn’t the case. Research by cultural historian Peter Swain has unearthed the fascinating story of one of
The total length of Britain’s road network today is a staggering quarter of a million miles. That’s about the same distance as from the Earth to the Moon. For many runners, this immense web of tarmac provides the perfect place to practise their sport; roads offer an almost endless choice of smooth, firm and clean
When endurance ruled One hundred and fifty years ago, in an age when sports results were delivered by newspaper and spectators’ attention spans had yet to be eroded by the internet and 24 hour media access, ultra-racing was one of the world’s most popular sports. Some of the most famous Victorian sportsmen were endurance athletes,