Ed Warner: Why athletics still hits different at the Olympics

Our sport columnist on attempts to stimulate interest in athletics outside of the Olympics, disarray at Middlesex and British basketball, and Premier League clubs’ latest wheeze.

It takes eight days for USA Track and Field to sift America’s athletes to select the nation’s Olympic team. Eight days of trials with an uncompromising first-three-across-the-line selection process. Such is the USA’s abundance of talent. 

Contrast that with every other nation, all lacking the luxury of over-supply. This weekend’s British Championships double up as Olympic trials, take just two days and lack the US’s selection simplicity.

Nine of the 10 fastest women over 200m in the world this year are American. Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia, fifth on the rankings, is the athlete preventing a clean sweep. 

Team GB’s Dina Asher-Smith, a former world champion over the distance and much touted by the British media as a Paris medal prospect, is ranked 11th in 2024. Not that she’s fazed, such is the levelling effect of the three-athlete-per-nation quota.

“If it was a ranking system based on paper we could save the French government a lot of money, and they could not hold the Olympics and just send the medals in the post. A championship is always there to be navigated and executed. I think the Olympics is open this year and any event always has unpredictable things. That’s why we love it. That’s why we tune in.” Dina Asher-Smith, reported by The Times earlier this month

The Brit neatly encapsulates the appeal of the Games. Her sport continues to struggle, though, to cut through outside of the Olympics and major championships.

The champs in Manchester will be full of jeopardy and go a long way to determining the athletes picked for the British team for Paris, but there are still tickets available for what is only a 6,500 seater venue.

In my years at UK Athletics these national championships were always a hard sell, in part because Britain’s very best athletes often chose to swerve the event in the knowledge that the selectors kept back one of the three places available in each event as their own pick.

In the US, injury, illness or simply a bad day at the office and your Olympic dream is shattered. Here you can always fall back on the head coach’s desire to select his or her possible medallists.

This all makes for potentially messy selection disputes. One of my least favourite tasks at the governing body – not having performed any part of selection itself – was to chair an appeals panel for athletes aggrieved at being overlooked, especially when selectors had chosen not to fill available places.

There were a handful ahead of each Olympics and only very occasionally did an appeal succeed. Here was a very real test of Baron de Coubertin’s ideal about taking part in the Olympics being the thing.

World Athletics, various national athletics federations and now Michael Johnson are seeking to solve the long-standing challenge posed by athletics’ low profile outside the Olympics. Johnson’s answer is a four-event circuit for 96 athletes competing only in track races.

There is an air of LIV Golf about this Grand Slam Track venture, but without either the eye-watering riches or the seismic ructions with the sport’s establishment.

It would be easy to pick holes in Johnson’s model, but this is at least something innovative in a sport in desperate need of fresh ideas. Like many I’d miss some of the field events (but not all), and I’m not sure there is enough depth to justify each Slam stretching over three days.

But the former 400m star is reputed to have secured over $30m of backing, is touting $12.6m of prize money in 2025 and has unsurprisingly been well received by athletes slated to take part. I’d buy a ticket.

Talking of tickets: the women’s 200m semi-finals in Paris will be fiercely competitive. They take place on the evening of 5 August with the final the next night. Tickets are still available for both sessions from €85 a pop. What is it with the French public?

The athletics on the 5th includes the women’s 800m final. Britain’s Keely Hodgkinson is a serious contender, even more so now after American Athing Mu, Olympic champion, tripped and fell in the US trials.

The following day includes the men’s 1500m final, an event in which GB has a genuine over-supply of world standard talent. Expect this race at the British champs to be a cracker.

The final of the 200m at the US Olympic Team Trials takes place at 17:27 Oregon time on Saturday. Dina Asher-Smith is entered in the British equivalent. The final is at 15:55 on Sunday.

Watch Athing Mu’s fall in the US trials here.

Omnishambles squared

Regular readers may remember two situations I’ve glanced off in recent years – a short and ignominious stint wrestling with the politics of basketball and more recently a failed attempt to be selected as chair of Middlesex County Cricket Club. Both appear to remain in a shambolic state if recent news is anything to go by.

The British Basketball Federation, the organisation I briefly chaired, has just terminated the licence of the operators of the professional British Basketball League. Financial concerns are the reason cited.

777 Partners, the chosen bidders for Everton Football Club who failed to complete their purchase, own the London Lions, this season’s title-winning team, as well as 45 per cent of the BBL itself. Basketball once again needs a reset. I hope a resilient phoenix can rise from the sorry ashes of the BBL.

As to MCCC, my eye was caught by this headline in The Telegraph: Middlesex chief ‘groped Pinky the Panther club mascot’. Yet another off-the-pitch heart-sinker for the county’s followers. You can read it for yourself here. Whatever the truth in this specific situation, it was already time for a clean sweep of board and executive.

Both Middlesex cricket supporters and fans of basketball deserve better.

Keepy-uppy!

The latest test of the Premier League’s financial regulations is widely reported to be teams that are struggling to keep within the limits selling “home-grown” players to each other at punchily high prices.

Transfer fees received can be booked as immediate 100 per cent profits, whereas those paid out are spread over the life of the new recruits’ contracts. Such are the wonders of accounting rules.

Clubs mentioned in despatches are Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle and Chelsea. One transfer cited is 20-year-old Tim Iroegbunam from Villa to Everton. A QPR fan gets in touch to say: “Iroegbunam was on loan at QPR the season before last, and if he’s worth £9m we’ve got a £500m squad.”

The Transfermarkt website values the current QPR roster at just £27m. Last month it reckoned Iroegbunam to be worth a little over £3m. Willing buyers and sellers, eh?

Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com