Before he took up running, Sam Tanner’s No.1 passion was surfing

Gudaf Tsegay, Beatrice Chepkoech and Kibiwott Kandie will go into the Olympic season with recent world records to their names, after their respective marks over 1500m, 5km and the half-marathon were ratified this week.

Linden Hall has made her own piece of Australian athletics history, becoming the first Australian woman to run under four minutes for 1500m in Melbourne on Thursday (1).

Ollie Hoare went to the World Athletics Indoor Tour meeting at Ocean Breeze Athletic Complex on New York’s Staten Island on 13 February to run the 1500m with one thing in mind.

Hungarian 1500m champion Istvan Szogi set a national indoor record of 3:37.55 en route to victory in Vienna in January. But it was actually the sport of competitive kayaking which sowed the early seeds of the 25-year-old’s future running success.

Lemlem Hailu’s world U20 indoor 1500m record of 4:01.57, set last year, has been ratified.

On 21 October 1964, nine men lined up for the Tokyo Olympic 1500m final. Three minutes and 38.1 seconds later, New Zealand’s Peter Snell became the first man in 44 years to complete an Olympic 800m/1500m double.

Three of Kenya’s world champions – Timothy Cheruiyot, Hellen Obiri and Beatrice Chepkoech – were triumphant at the Kip Keino Classic World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting on Saturday (3) as Nairobi hosted its first ever global one-day meet at the newly-refurbished Nyayo National Stadium.

With about 90 seconds to go in the women’s 3000m at the Wanda Diamond League meeting in Doha on Friday (25), it looked as though Hellen Obiri would register a rare defeat in the Qatari capital.

It may have been a far-from-normal season, but the Wanda Diamond League will end on a high in Doha on Friday (25) with what is quite possibly the deepest line-up seen in any discipline this year.

Karsten Warholm wrote a piece of ISTAF history by breaking the 40-year-old meeting record set by 400m hurdles legend Edwin Moses in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on Sunday (13).

Impressive victories by Jacob Kiplimo, Ryan Crouser and Christian Taylor produced the key highlights at the Golden Spike, a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on Tuesday (8).