World Athletics & SUAAC.

I start off this week by wishing you all a Happy New Year, although it has to be said we haven't had the best of starts have we? This week I am indebted to club member and quiz master extraordinaire Jon Mulkeen for his insight into his role as Senior Editor at World Athletics. Here is a little bit of history about World Athletics from their website : On 17 July 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden, following the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in the Swedish capital, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) was founded as the world governing body for the sport of track and field athletics. During the 10 decades that followed, athletics underwent many changes which reflected the political and socio-economic evolution of the wider world. Even the IAAF’s name has changed, in 2001 becoming the ‘International Association of Athletics Federations’ to reflect the growth of a professional sporting world which did not exist in 1912, and then again in 2019 to 'World Athletics'. World Athletics was founded to fulfil the need for a world governing authority, for a competition programme, for standardised technical equipment and for a list of official world records. All of these requirements remain today. Amongst the many interesting things you will read about in the article, you will see that in addition to his many roles at World Athletics during 2020, Jon was also largely responsible for setting most of the quizzes in the weekly "Covid Connect" sessions. So when he was setting quizzes for us, it's interesting to surmise that he may well have tried out some or all of the questions on the likes of Mondo Duplantis, WA President Seb Coe or our very own Andrew Pozzi. One of the many things that struck me in Jon's article was that last year, along with the main ‘Athlete of the Year’ honours, World Athletics' introduced an ‘Athletes Community Award’, which was awarded to all athletics clubs around the world. The citation read : “This award goes to all athletics clubs around the world for providing athletes with support throughout the pandemic, negotiating access to training facilities, implementing hygiene protocols and setting up local competitions. Anyone who knows our sport appreciates how the athletes rely on our local clubs and we are so grateful for their continued support.” That rang a bell !! A huge thank you Jon for a fascinating insight. It's the final few days of this month's vShakepspeare race and it's interesting to see that of the results that have been submitted so far, both leading male and female runners, Matt Burdus-Cook and Kate Wright have improved on their times compared to the last 5 mile race in May. They obviously didn't consume as much food and drink as I did over the festive season. Stay warm and stay well Best Wishes David Jones Jon Mulkeen A montage of the 'legends' exercise sessions (featuring Seb Coe, Daley Thompson, Roger Black and Jon Ridgeon) A screen grab of the 'Ultimate…