Athletics<\/a> sometimes resembles a vicarage tea party. This was more like a rave. Mill Hill has surely never seen anything like it.<\/p>\nAfterwards, the Paris Olympic 800m champion insisted that the suit and its aerodynamic design, which also contained openings for her sunglasses and ponytail, had given her an edge. But she could have been running in a thick duffle coat and she would still have won the $65,000 first prize and Tiffany crown with ease.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a mixture of fashion, speed and science all coming together, for maybe the future of athletics potentially,\u201d said Hodgkinson, after winning in 1min 56.40sec, more than 2sec clear of the Swiss athlete Valentina Rosamilia. \u201cWe weren\u2019t sure when we were going to wear it, but in hindsight an all-women\u2019s event, which is all about glitz and glamour and putting eyes on women, was perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was, Hodgkinson acknowledged, a nod to Cathy Freeman\u2019s famous suit worn at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. But she insisted that this was a new version, legal under World Athletics\u2019 rules, and with better technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe material, they\u2019ve learned so much about making skin faster, humans faster, there\u2019s so much science behind it that you wouldn\u2019t believe. Technically, with the air drag you\u2019re slower with your hair out, but I was like: \u2018That\u2019s a non-negotiable.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Traditional track and field fans probably would have hated most of the night, which featured just 42 athletes and seven events. And the long gaps between events surely didn\u2019t go down well on TV. But this was designed for a different audience. When Hodgkinson arrived on the red carpet in a baggy tracksuit, for instance, she was accompanied by the sound of dozens of screaming teenage girls.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting such a warm welcome, but it was fun,\u201d she said. \u201cMy outfit was last minute, but for inspiration, I feel like it\u2019s Liam Gallagher. I\u2019m from Manchester, he\u2019s from Manchester, I feel like I look like him.\u201d<\/p>\nKlaudia Kazimierska, in 4:19.43, just beats Georgia Hunter Bell to win the mile.<\/span> Photograph: Tom Jenkins\/The Guardian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe stadium commentary was very different too. As the women\u2019s mile entered the final lap, the stadium co-commentator Kath Merry asked: \u201cWho wants the crown? Who wants the $65,000?\u201d The race was decent, mind, with the Polish athlete Klaudia Kazimierska winning in 4:19.43, just 0.11 ahead of Britain\u2019s Georgia Hunter Bell.<\/p>\n
Afterwards almost every athlete talked about the fun they had. Several even suggested such events were the future of the sport. But the sober-eyed would have left the StoneX Stadium with plenty of questions.<\/p>\n
Athlos offered a very generous prize fund of more than $1m for this event. But economically it must have stung. Only about 5,000 tickets, the size of the main stand, were sold. And with the event being shown on YouTube, there was no broadcasting rights windfall.<\/p>\n
At the moment Athlos appears to be operating on the Field of Dreams principle: if you build it they will come. Perhaps they will be proved correct \u2013 especially if the sport\u2019s boom accelerates at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. But, as Michael Johnson\u2019s Grand Slam Track has proved, it is fiendishly difficult to build a viable track and field start-up.<\/p>\n
Still, the fans saw some fine performances. Given how cold and late in the season it was, times were expected to be slow. Yet in the women\u2019s 400m Marileidy Paulino ran a lightning quick 48.73, with Henriette Jaeger setting a Norwegian national record of 48.78 just behind her. Sha\u2019Clarri Richardson won the women\u2019s 100m in a very speedy 10.80.<\/p>\n
The night concluded with most of the athletes dancing to Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s Run the World (Girls) on the large stage. Athlos isn\u2019t there yet. But it has, at the very least, attracted a few converts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Athlos arrived in London promising that its all-female spin on athletics would provide a radical departure from the status quo. Long before Keely Hodgkinson stepped on to the track dressed in a hooded black bodysuit \u2013 part ninja assassin, part Catwoman \u2013 it had emphatically made its point. Throughout the two-hour event, the bassline from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6802],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-263329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athetics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}