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• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
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• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

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Albums

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Muslim Shaggan – Asar

Over the populous span of South Asia, a region...

Dave Sewelson, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Steve Hirsh – Murmuration

The Arkansas free jazz outpost Mahakala Music says that...

Klein – thirteen sense

For her last album marked the South London maverick...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’

'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early singles, proved an unexpected commercial flop. It failed to chart upon its release at the onset of 1957 - despite being given prominence by the fledgeling rock and roll feature Rock, Rock, Rock!, which had opened in cinemas the previous month...

Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’

Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an elegy for the pioneering jazz saxophonist Lester Young, who died in March 1959, two months prior to the recording sessions for what would become Mingus Ah Um. A darkly elegant ballad with a lone dissonant note full of pathos...

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

Young Adult (2011)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a 37-year-old ghostwriter for a series of young adult novels soon to be cancelled, returns to her small Minnesota hometown, angling to hook up with her old high school flame, who is married and has just become a father. Her attempts at seduction are already inappropriate, but prove much grosser than this, culminating in a blowout at a birthday party...

The Rules of the Game (1939)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.

October Sky (1999)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - October Sky is a quaint coming-of-age picture utterly characteristic of this period in American cinema: polished but earnest, overtly sentimental, full of local colour, ostensibly presenting some hard-hitting themes without ever straying from the steely confines of quaint. It's in the same mould as films like The Cider House Rules and especially Billy Elliot, which it preceded by more than a year...

The Switch (2010)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...

Tully (2018)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Tully is the third collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, following on from Juno (2007) and Young Adult (2011). All three films deal with the role of women as child-bearers, looking in turn at teenage pregnancy and adoption, miscarriage, and postpartum depression, which in this case borders on psychosis...

World Cinema

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Five teenagers take a road trip to visit an old family homestead in the musty heart of Texas. The radio plays the news, a grim recitation of industrial and environmental disasters and acts of wanton violence. They discuss astrology, retrograde planets and the malevolent influence of Saturn; stop off at the gravesite of a deceased grandfather amid reports of grave robbing; and after passing a slaughterhouse for beef cattle, they pick up a hitchhiker...

Parasite (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A family of four live in a cramped and roach-infested banjiha, a semi-basement apartment in Seoul. They crib free Wi-Fi from unsuspecting neighbours and a nearby coffee shop, and their only source of income, procured by the mother Chung-sook via WhatsApp, comes from the folding of pizza boxes for a local delivery service, a task at which they are only moderately successful...

Kalifornia (1993)

★★½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Brian and Carrie plan to drive from their home of Louisville, Kentucky to the golden state of California, stopping off at renowned murder spots along the way. Brian hopes to gain material for his book, with Carrie providing the photographic illustration. To top up their gas-guzzling Lincoln Continental, their notice for a ride share is answered by a curious couple, the childlike Adele Corners and her ragged minder Early Grayce...

The Sunshine Boys (1975)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In The Sunshine Boys a pair of ageing and increasingly frail former comedians, Al Lewis and Willy Clark (George Burns and Walter Matthau), are brought together eleven years after their acrimonious separation in order to star one more time in a special for ABC. Veterans of the vaudeville circuit, their career together spanned forty-three years and six appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show...

The Switch (2010)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...

The Early Poetry of Mina Loy

When the first issue of Others: A Magazine of...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

James Joyce

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov and Homer in Maps

When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...

Obituaries

Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Nashville, and Network Actor, Dies at the Age of 83

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwyrAS2lU8 The actor Ned Beatty died of natural causes on...

Stephen Sondheim, Who Reinvented the Musical Theatre, Dies at the Age of 91

The composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim died on Friday...

Dean Stockwell, Star of Blue Velvet and Quantum Leap, Dies at 85 Years Old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhPosL3UAN8 The actor Dean Stockwell died of natural causes on...

Kenzo Takada, the Japanese Designer Who Revolutionised French Fashion, Dies at 81

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7E4bITT4t8 With the wet weather and surging coronavirus already putting...

Culturedarm

Subscribe to Culturedarm

A monthly subscription supports Culturedarm while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

placeholder text
3
25
0

Albums

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Muslim Shaggan – Asar

Over the populous span of South Asia, a region...

Dave Sewelson, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Steve Hirsh – Murmuration

The Arkansas free jazz outpost Mahakala Music says that...

Klein – thirteen sense

For her last album marked the South London maverick...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’

Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an elegy for the pioneering jazz saxophonist Lester Young, who died in March 1959, two months prior to the recording sessions for what would become Mingus Ah Um. A darkly elegant ballad with a lone dissonant note full of pathos...

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxhaRgJUMl8 Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...

Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaKy1vM9hs 'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - The hotly anticipated follow-up to what has already become a cult classic, in John Wick: Chapter 2 our eponymous hero goes to Rome, as the series curiously begins taking cues from Dan Brown and all things Da Vinci. There's a dash of Underworld mixed in there too: this is a world where neon store fronts, modern art installations, subways and the original film's streamlined desire for vengeance butt up against cobbled streets and catacombs...

Diego Maradona (2019)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - One of the successes of Diego Maradona lies in how it manages to restore some of the luxe hedonism and heady momentum to a story so often shrouded by bloated excess. A keenly self-conscious Maradona pushes himself through sporting triumphs and binge cycles, as the barrio boy from Buenos Aires in the slum city of Naples embraces the fur coats and neon lights.

Chinatown (1974)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Chinatown is a detective story, loosely inspired by the California water wars which took place between the fledgeling city of Los Angeles and the surrounding Owens Valley in the early twentieth century. The pivotal figure in those wars was William Mulholland, the chief architect of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, whose career came to an abrupt end with the failure of the St Francis Dam in 1928...

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - In 1902 an inscrutable gambler, John McCabe (Warren Beatty), arrives in the fledgling town of Presbyterian Church in the northwestern United States. A hazy rumour has him as a gunslinger, and McCabe uses innuendo and disorder to quickly assert his position in the town, acquiring three prostitutes and opening a whorehouse, to which he plans to add a saloon...

Young Adult (2011)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a 37-year-old ghostwriter for a series of young adult novels soon to be cancelled, returns to her small Minnesota hometown, angling to hook up with her old high school flame, who is married and has just become a father. Her attempts at seduction are already inappropriate, but prove much grosser than this, culminating in a blowout at a birthday party...

World Cinema

The Out-of-Towners (1970)

★★ (2 out of 4 stars) - Imagine Jack Lemmon at his most highly strung, for instance in The Odd Couple, a Neil Simon film from a couple of years earlier, when Oscar Madison arrives home late from work after stopping off at a bar and Felix Ungar's meatloaf has dried out, and Oscar thinks that gravy just comes, and then confuses a spoon with a ladle...

Don Jon (2013)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In Japan grown adult men - thirty, forty, fifty years old or more - lie prostrate in their childhood bedrooms, which they never leave, as their ageing parents push parcels of food beneath the door. On their beds they clutch plush life-sized cartoon figures, somehow prepubescent but boasting ginormous boobs, and between the heaving and moaning they not only cry but orgasm into their pillowcases...

Virgin Mountain (2015)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Fúsi (Gunnar Jónsson) is forty-three years old and a virgin, still living at home with his mother. He spends his days working as a baggage handler at Keflavik airport, his evenings wargaming with his friend Mörður (Sigurjón Kjartansson), as together they painstakingly recreate the Battle of El Alamein, and each Friday he orders Pad Thai and eats cloistered in the same corner of the same restaurant...

Big (1988)

★★ (2 out of 4 stars) - The last of a cluster of movies, all released within the space of a year between the autumn of 1987 and the summer of 1988, to depict youths turning into or swapping forms with adult men - the others were Like Father Like Son (1987), Vice Versa (1988), 18 Again! (1988), and the Italian film Da grande (1987), which is often cited as the inspiration for Big - in Big thirteen-year-old Josh Baskin...

The Sunshine Boys (1975)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In The Sunshine Boys a pair of ageing and increasingly frail former comedians, Al Lewis and Willy Clark (George Burns and Walter Matthau), are brought together eleven years after their acrimonious separation in order to star one more time in a special for ABC. Veterans of the vaudeville circuit, their career together spanned forty-three years and six appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show...

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)

Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...

‘Silentium!’ by Fyodor Tyutchev

Silentium! Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal the way you dream,...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...

James Joyce

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov and Homer in Maps

When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...

Obituaries

Biz Markie, the Clown Prince of Hip Hop, Dies at 57 Years Old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aofoBrFNdg The rapper, DJ, and record producer Biz Markie died...

Charlie Watts, Steadfast Drummer of the Rolling Stones, Dies at the Age of 80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1_6z9oqet8 Charlie Watts, the backbone of the Rolling Stones for...

Brazilian Architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha Dies at the Age of 92

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NidZvaQQrsA The Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha died on...

Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErQ2UB44k-o Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...

Culturedarm

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The 400 Metre Hurdles Has a Moment in the Sun, as Athletics Gears Up for the Tokyo Olympics

Anything you can do, I can do better has been the ethos at the start of the outdoor athletics season. With the Tokyo Olympics fast approaching, the stars who were left spinning their wheels last summer have rolled out of the starting blocks to set a host of historic times on the track.

When Sifan Hassan shattered the 10,000 metre world record last month in Hengelo, the new benchmark stood for just 48 hours. Hassan had knocked more than ten seconds off the previous best set by Almaz Ayana, but on the same track a couple of days later – boasting the same Wavelight pacemaking technology, clad in the same Nike ZoomX Dragonfly spikes – Letesenbet Gidey went five seconds faster, racing home in a new record time of 29:01.03 to lead the Ethiopian trials.

Her efforts over the longer distance opened up the 5000 metres, with Gudaf Tsegay scoring the fifth-fastest time in history ahead of Ejgayehu Taye and Senbere Teferi, who placed sixth and seventh on the all-time list. For the first time three women in the same race had gone under 14 minutes and 20 seconds. But while the likes of Joshua Cheptegei, Beatrice Chepkoech, Gidey, Tsegay, and Hassan vie for record times in the long distance disciplines, star athletes are also breaking boundaries in the sprints.

As the highly competitive American trials reached a climax, at the end of another day of lung-sapping Oregonian heat, the 21-year-old Sydney McLaughlin set a new world record in the 400 metre hurdles. Already one of the faces of athletics, McLaughlin kicked past the reigning world record holder Dalilah Muhammad in the straight to become the first woman to complete the race in under 52 seconds, finishing in a time of 51.90.

The weekend saw record temperatures and race postponements in the athletics bastion of Eugene, with the heat reaching a staggering high of 43 degrees Celsius. A day earlier on the track, Grant Holloway and Rai Benjamin had come within whiskers of world records in the 110 metre hurdles and 400 metre hurdles, with Gabby Thomas in the 200 metres also winding up second on the all-time list. Winning her trial in a time of 21.61, Thomas surpassed the likes of Marion Jones, Dafne Schippers, and Merlene Ottey in the history books, though she remains some way short of the apparently insurmountable record set by Florence Griffith-Joyner back in 1988.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uW1yY9e-Cg

The 400 metre hurdles is having a moment in the sun. Not to be outdone, in Oslo at the Bislett Games on Thursday night, the home favourite Karsten Warholm finally grabbed that elusive world record with a time of 46.70 over the distance, bettering the mark of 46.78 set by Kevin Young all the way back in 1992. Warholm and Rai Benjamin have been locked in battle over the record ever since both men broke 47 seconds in 2019. Speaking prior to the race in Oslo, Warholm had said:

‘Your competitors are what really push you towards bigger things. If it was only me running quick times, I wouldn’t need to push it any further, but with people there running fast times, I need to take a step up as well.’

At the Diamond League meet in Oslo, the Svein Arne Hansen Dream Mile stood as a fitting prelude to Warholm’s hurdle heroics. In the penultimate event on the track, Stewart McSweyn of Australia established a new area record, pressing ahead of Marcin Lewandowski who still managed a Polish record in second place.

Over 3000 metres, Yomif Kejelcha stretched the field almost to breaking point. Kejelcha – who trains alongside Sifan Hassan in the United States – led from the front to register a world-leading time of 7:26.25, enough to place the Ethiopian athlete seventh on the all-time list. In the end his hard work paid off for the rest of the field, as the first eight competitors all came away with new personal bests.

It was a similar story over 5000 metres, as the reigning world champion Hellen Obiri held off a stern challenge from Fantu Worku to head a slew of fast times and personal bests. Eilish McColgan managed to stick with the leading pack of Obiri, Worku, and Margaret Chelimo Kipkemboi, with her reward a new British record as the Scot bettered a mark set by Paula Radcliffe.

Many of the athletes who competed in Oslo made the short trip over to Stockholm, where the Diamond League season continued on Sunday afternoon. In the field Armand Duplantis set back-to-back meeting records, with vaults of 6.01 in Oslo then 6.02 in front of an enthusiastic home crowd. Sam Kendricks and Renaud Lavillenie finished in second and third on both occasions, their vaults of 5.92 in Stockholm serving as new season’s bests.

Daniel Ståhl, the other giant of Swedish athletics, dominated in the discus with one quirk. Despite throwing almost two metres further than Kristjan Čeh over the first five rounds in Oslo, in the winner-takes-all sixth round both men could only muster a fairly mediocre 65.72. After some confusion, Ståhl was awarded the victory based on his earlier throws.

Malaika Mihambo fell victim to the new sixth round format in Stockholm, after Oslo saw the rangy German long jumper ease to success. Instead in Stockholm it was Ivana Španović who came out ahead, as Mihambo’s jump of 7.02 in the third round counted for naught come the climax, which the tough Serbian competitor won with a season’s best of 6.88.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngnN5kWbxJk

Grizzled veterans and aspiring youngsters alike were also rounding into form on the track. The 21-year-old Dutch star Femke Bol was first up in Oslo, and set a new national record in the 400 metre hurdles with a time of 53.33. Bol however is improving with every meet, and her Olympic prospects looked rosier still following her race in Stockholm on Sunday, where she held off the challenge from Shamier Little to smash her own national record in a time of 52.37. The run wedges Bol neatly between Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammad, in second place on the world list.

The ever-present Ivorian sprinter Marie-Josée Ta Lou, now 32 years old, showed that she too will remain in medal contention come the Tokyo Olympics. In Oslo she came through over 100 metres with a winning time of 10.91, and in the 200 metres in Stockholm she recorded another season’s best even as she narrowly lost out to Shericka Jackson.

If Gabby Thomas appears to have the edge in the 200 metres following her historic time in Oregon, she will face stern competition from the Jamaican trio of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson, and Elaine Thompson-Herah, who looked impressive as they competed in their closely contested national trials.

The result was the same over 100 metres and 200 metres in Kingston, with Fraser-Pryce holding off Jackson while Thompson-Herah finished third. Jackson ran a personal best of 10.77 in the semi-finals of the 100 metres, and backed that up with a personal best of 21.82 in the final of the 200 metres, but her stellar form still wasn’t enough. Fraser-Pryce secured an expected victory over 100 metres, sprinting home in a time of 10.71. But it was in the 200 metres that the diminutive Jamaican truly excelled, knocking a whopping 0.30 off her previous best to win the race in a time of 21.79. Fraser-Pryce said:

‘I never ever doubted myself because everything has to do with time and being patient. I’m just elated that I was finally able to break the 22 seconds.’

Over 200 metres, Fraser-Pryce and Jackson will vie for Olympic gold with Gabby Thomas, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, and Dina Asher-Smith. Thompson-Herah, a double sprint champion at the Rio Olympics in 2016, may find better prospects over 100 metres, where Jackson, Asher-Smith, and Ta Lou are strong medal shouts even as Fraser-Pryce heads to Tokyo as the firm favourite.

That status was thrown into sharp relief over the weekend, as the major breaking story in track and field revolved around a positive marijuana test by Sha’Carri Richardson. In her breakthrough season on the track, Richardson registered the sixth-fastest run of all-time over 100 metres, clocking 10.72 in Florida back in April. She backed that up with victory over 100 metres at the American trials, and seemed set to head to Tokyo as the second-fastest woman in the world this year, behind only Fraser-Pryce who registered 10.63 last month in Kingston.

Instead on Friday the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced that Richardson had recorded a positive marijuana test during the course of the trials. According to World Anti-Doping Agency rules, the use of marijuana is prohibited during competition periods, with violations carrying a minimum one-month ban if athletes complete a program for substance abuse and prove that their use of the drug was recreational. The likely one-month ban for Richardson would render her ineligible for the solo sprints at the Tokyo Olympics.

Richardson hinted at the impending announcement with a cryptic tweet on Thursday night which read ‘I am human’. On The Today Show on NBC on Friday morning, she apologised to her supporters while providing some of the context around her actions. Richardson explained that she had been informed of the death of her biological mother during the trials, describing a state of ’emotional panic’ and adding:

‘I was definitely triggered and blinded by emotions, blinded by badness, and hurting, and hiding hurt. I know I can’t hide myself, so in some type of way, I was trying to hide my pain.’

Athletics bans for marijuana consumption increasingly seem like an anachronism, and Richardson was no doubt stricken with grief. The bottom line for track and field however is that the Tokyo Olympics has lost one of its star names, while Richardson has denied herself of the opportunity to prove her talents outside the provincial backwaters of the United States.

Also at the American trials, Trayvon Bromell and Noah Lyles looked strong in the sprints, while Allyson Felix qualified for her fifth Olympic Games at the tender age of 35 following a second-placed finish over 400 metres. The sparkle wasn’t just confined to the track, with the standout performance of the trials coming courtesy of Ryan Crouser, who broke a 31-year world record in the shot with a throw of 23.37. DeAnna Price moved to second on the all-time list in the hammer, and Katie Nageotte moved up to joint third in the pole vault with a world lead and personal best of 4.95.

While the women were excelling in the sprints, there was misfortune for Omar McLeod in Kingston. The reigning Olympic champion in the 110 metre hurdles suffered from cramp and clattered the barriers at the Jamaican trials, finishing last to miss out on the trip to Tokyo. Jamaican hopes in the event will rest instead on the shoulders of Ronald Levy.

In Oslo, the American Kate Grace ran a personal best over 800 metres, small solace perhaps after finishing seventh at the American trials, where Raevyn Rogers and Ajeé Wilson trailed the blistering 19-year-old Athing Mu. In Stockholm there was a return to winning ways for Timothy Cheruiyot over 1500 metres, while Rose Mary Almanza edged the 800 metres in a new meeting record and personal best.

Alison dos Santos kept his name in contention in the 400 metre hurdles, as the Brazilian athlete achieved a new area record with a time of 47.34. Yaroslava Mahuchikh managed a world leading height in the high jump, the Ukrainian soaring clear of 2.03 on her third attempt. Ronnie Baker, Kirani James, and Hyvin Kiyeng won their respective races out on track, while Tajay Gayle went deep into the sandpit with a leap of 8.55 in a wind-assisted long jump.

The qualification period for the Tokyo Olympics drew to a close this week, with competition scheduled to start on 31 July in the Japanese capital. In the meantime the top athletes will head to Hungary on Tuesday night for the star-studded Gyulai István Memorial, with Diamond League meets in Monaco and Gateshead serving as preludes to the Olympics.

Christopher Laws
Christopher Lawshttps://www.culturedarm.com
Christopher Laws is the writer and editor of Culturedarm, currently based in Umeå, Sweden.

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