Backstraight Boys (& Girl) Athletics Chat

Send us Fan Mail Adam Gemili likes to break records. When he produced a dazzling 9.97 in 2015, he became the first British athlete to dip below the two hallowed barriers of men's sprinting. When he scorched past several of his competitors down the back straight of the Olympic Stadium in the 2017 4x100 final, he helped Great Britain to their first ever global title, and a whopping national rec...

Send us Fan Mail Does Caster Semenya have the raw speed to challenge the world's best over 200 metres? Does Britney Spears..? As the Olympic Games are postponed for the first time in their history, and Mark Dry receives the same length of ban as Ruth Jebet, the world - it seems - has truly gone mad. The only constant right now is that Mo Farah is embroiled in drama, as a new Panorama document...

Send us Fan Mail We'll level with you: this might be a middle distance special, but it's the length of a marathon. It's an hour and forty-eight minutes of athletics chat, including four substantial interviews with a quartet of Great Britain's finest current 800 and 1500 metre racers. You could get half way through the responsibly-spaced queue at your local Tesco's in that...

Send us Fan Mail Mondo Duplantis is making history at whim, Jemma Reekie has stepped out of Laura Muir's shadow and is eating national records for breakfast, and Jessie Knight is laughing in the face of her own previous bests. Oh, and Joshua Cheptegei just dropped a 12:51 5km on the roads in Monaco. 2020 looks set to be epic. Claire's back with the boys this week, with all of the above c...

Send us Fan Mail It's an Olympic year. Mondo has already broken a World Record. Jemma Reekie has broken three British ones. Jeanette Kwakye and Jon Mulkeen are on the pod. Goodness gracious, 2020 really is off to a fabulous start at Backstraight HQ. We've had a wonderful couple of months off, but are back with an absolute bang, and thought this would be the perfect appetite-whetter ahead...

Send us Fan Mail Radzi's back. He's an expert and a professional, who covered - with great warmth and nous, we might add - many of this year's major events. This recording should be plain-sailing... right? Of course not. Radzi thinks Kipchoge's sub-two was a phenomenal athletic performance. Jody and Bayo think it's a gimmick. Chaos ensues. He also thinks Christian Taylor m...

Send us Fan Mail Was Eliud Kipchoge's sub-two marathon an extraordinary athletic achievement? Or was it a technology-doped gimmick? Could it be viewed as both? A little late to the party, perhaps, but full of opinion as ever - we took a look at his history-making run through the streets of Vienna. Within 24 hours of that, Brigid Kosgei was smashing Paula's time in Chicago, and so fell on...

Send us Fan Mail We've had a lovely, restful month off. Unfortunately, the IAAF haven't. They've been busy chopping the triple jump, steeplechase, discus throw, and 200 metres from the 2020 Diamond League. Honestly. You couldn't make it up. Taylor v Claye? Meh. Noah Lyles? We've had enough charismatic sprinters. World records? Completed it, mate. Some of the best discuss-t...

Send us Fan Mail Where do we begin..? With the empty seats? The fainting marathon runners? Alberto Salazar's ban? With the DQs that were and weren't? Or the fact that we missed experiencing Mihambo's 7.30m live because it was necessary to watch (another) Mo Farah montage? OR - how about we talk about the world records? The African fans roaring on their athletes in the distance event...

Send us Fan Mail We’ll level with you. We completely and utterly lost control of this one. Like Eilish McColgan in the British Championships 5000m this year, it set off like a train, and we never stood a chance. We invited Radzi Chinyanganya along to help us preview the 2019 World Championships, figuring that his professionalism would lend polish and structure to our usual ramblings. To our absolu...

Send us Fan Mail The 2019 Diamond League has finished, British Athletics have named their team for the World Championships, and the gang's back together! Oh - hang on - Bayo's running late. Close, but no coconut. Regardless: what an exciting time of year, and how bloody amazing does it feel knowing we've a British women's 100m Diamond League Champion?  With Doha just around the...

Send us Fan Mail Newly-crowned British 100m Champion, Ojie Edoburun said something very wise to us this weekend: ‘you can be a circuit guy, or you can be a championship guy.’  Now, in an ideal world, you’d be both, but that’s no easy feat, and it’s a rare old athlete who’d pick Diamond League consistency over the chance to etch their names into the history books, and clinch silverware when big per...

Send us Fan Mail Claire's away 'doing rugby in France' (close enough, lads; she's been in both Portugal and West London, and is now - terrified - hitting 'publish' on an episode the boys promise needs only a cursory tidy up in edit...), leaving Jody and Bayo to look ahead to this weekend's British Championships.    Last year, we all agreed that the trials were on...

Send us Fan Mail We've two guests this week, and they're on for very different reasons. Double European U23 Champion and enormous talent Jemma Reekie is back (we've had her on before. We adore her), to discuss her history-making exploits in Gavle. Rabah Yousif? Well, he's on because he... Oh - hang on. Scrap that. We mean Youcef Zatat. Or do we..? Basically, British Athletics h...

Send us Fan Mail We've recorded 50 episodes! How on earth has that come about? Thank you *so* much to those of you joining us on our error-strewn, star-sprinkled athletics' romp to date. We've loved every minute of it (especially when Jody made the pacemaker his Fantasy Diamond League captain...). Claire's been away covering the Netball World Cup, but these major international...

Send us Fan Mail 'Distance running isn't sexy. How on Earth are you meant to market it? Does anyone even want to watch races longer than 4 minutes these days? Definitely - DEFINITELY - let's not sell beer at distance running meets, have supporters pack out lane three, nor invite international medallists to thrash it out - screamed on by thousands of cowbell-toting fans - for Europea...

Send us Fan Mail Being a heptathlete (we imagine; we’re hardly speaking from experience here at Backstraight HQ…) requires not only explosiveness, endurance, technical finesse, and sublime co ordination, but nerves of absolute steel. The psychological challenges of the event have proven a stumbling block for many physically-gifted athletes, and to be able to reach into your bag of tricks and deliv...

Send us Fan Mail As gaffs go, we thought we'd be hard-pressed to beat missing the entire Stockholm round of the Fantasy Diamond League this season. Our rankings were decimated; our hearts broken. Our seasons, surely, can be written off just like this year's Nike Elite kit. But then Jody named an actual pacemaker as his team captain, and all bets were off. Oh, how we laughed (Jody aside.....

Send us Fan Mail Caster Semenya is a terrific talent. She is a fierce competitor. She is a dignified presence in a melting pot of opinions: an articulate and inspirational oasis in the face of a relentless tide of ignorance, knee-jerk reactions, and vitriol. We love the light-hearted on this pod, but put our usual flippancy to one side for a moment this week to discuss this historic legal case, an...

Send us Fan Mail 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times' wrote Charles Dickens, but this canonical line could well have been penned by Georgia Nicholson, Lady Bird, or any other coming-of-age protagonist. Adolescence is tough enough without international selection, age group championships, and the expectation of massively-invested athletics' fans to contend with. Being...

Send us Fan Mail More people would watch athletics if there were less of it. More athletes would jump higher, run faster, and throw further if they were under greater pressure (the threat of not fulfilling a lifelong ambition by competing at an Olympics) to do so. More interest could be generated and clarity secured if a global ranking system were put into place. More fans would be able to enjoy f...

Send us Fan Mail All sort's been going on at Backstraight HQ the last few days: Bayo's been kicking himself, out in Rio for the Carnival, getting his time zones muddled up and missing the Glaswegian athletics action he's so desperate to live stream; Jody's been catching up with Nicola Sanders, she of indoor 400m royalty, and utterly bonkers splits; Claire's been having a q...

Send us Fan Mail We had coffee with Holly. We caught up with Guy. We enjoyed a cracking pub lunch (although appreciate that's not entirely relevant here). We screamed Tim onto a gnarly, silver-clinching 1000m personal best. We relished Shelayna's tactical nous. We marvelled at Jamie's classy, canny run. We chuckled at Maria's poker-faced demolition of a high-quality field. We w...

Send us Fan Mail Anyone got Samuel Tefera's number? Would someone please let him know he broke a world record in Birmingham on Saturday? He seemed to have absolutely no idea, as he stopped the clock at a handy 3:31.04... Come to think of it, there have been plenty of pinch-yourself marks, times, and series at this year's indoor meets already: Melissa Courtney's run in Karlsruhe; Hol...

Send us Fan Mail We feel like we're putting away our track and field Russian dolls* here at Backstraight HQ, because the names just keep on getting bigger. The indoor season is just around the corner, at which point we'll be back in studio, bringing you all our usual mispronunciations, irreverence, and analysis, but we've one final interview special for you, and - boy, oh boy - is i...