From the Hardest Geezer to Jasmin Paris: The best running moments of 2024
An Olympic year always provides more than its fair share of running highlights, but the battles for medals in Paris this summer were far from the only things worth getting worked up about in our sport.
Social media users were glued to an increasingly scraggly Hardest Geezer’s updates from Africa. And while trying to keep up with the limited information available about the enigmatic Barkley Marathons is much harder, that didn’t stop mainstream news outlets from publishing plenty in the aftermath of Jasmin Paris’s long fought for success. All that, and we had a worthy reason to celebrate the ongoing existence of our local parkruns.
The running world has boomed this year and here’s the proof. Happy Christmas – here’s to an equally exciting 2025.
The Hardest Geezer runs the length of Africa
If there was any lingering doubt about social media star Russ Cook’s self-proclaimed status as the ‘Hardest Geezer’, him spending 352 days covering 10,000 miles on foot across 16 African nations confirmed that Worthing’s premier redbeard is seriously uncrackable.
He ran from Cape Agulhas in South Africa to Tunisia’s northernmost point, Ras Angela, enduring a gunpoint robbery and an apparent kidnapping along the way. It didn’t dent his upbeat attitude, his fondness for strawberry daiquiris or his ability to raise funds for The Running Charity and the organisation supporting Saharawi people, Sandblast.
Since he completed the challenge in April, donations are still coming in and have now passed one million pounds.
Jasmin Paris completes the Barkley
You don’t generally expect a 60-hour-long race to go to the wire, but Edinburgh-based ultrarunner Jasmin Paris’s nail biting finish in March’s Barkley Marathons was extraordinary, edge of the seat stuff. She became the first woman ever to complete five loops of the infamous Tennessee course, known as ‘The Race That Eats Its Young’ within the cut-off time, appearing in an iconic finish line photo in a state of total exhaustion.
Two years after she managed three loops, and a year after completing a fourth just outside the cut-off, she returned to touch the famed yellow gate in 59:58:21. Probably the best news, on top of her subsequent MBE, is that now she doesn’t have to come back and do it again.
Keely Hodgkinson wins Olympic gold (and Sports Personality)
Being named BBC Sports Personality of the Year this month is a deserved finale to a spectacular year for the first British track athlete to take an Olympic gold since Mo Farah in 2016. Manchester’s Keely Hodgkinson, 22, had risen through the middle-distance ranks rapidly, but not quite to the top until now. After 800m silver medals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 followed by World Championship silvers in 2022 and 2023, in Paris she led Ethiopia’s Tsige Duguma and Mary Moraa from Kenya almost from the start, finding a powerful additional gear to come home the clear victor in 1:56.72. Next up: the World Record...
Ruth Chepngetich sets female marathon record
Scoring her hat-trick of Chicago Marathon victories would have been impressive enough, but in October, Kenya’s Ruth Chepngetich went even further by obliterating the women’s world record by nearly two minutes and becoming the first ever woman to break the 2:10 barrier. After coming home in 2:09:56, wining $100,000 for her victory and an extra $50,000 for breaking the course record, Chepngetich dedicated her win to her countryman Kelvin Kiptum. He broke the men’s world record in Chicago in 2023, but tragically died in a car accident in February.
Sifan Hassan does a ‘Zátopek’ in Paris
Not since the Czech Emil Zátopek took three astonishing golds in Helsinki in 1952 has any athlete won medals in the 5000m, 10,000m and marathon at the same Olympic Games. Ethiopia-born, Netherlands-raised runner Sifan Hassan came away from Paris with two bronzes on the track, followed by an incredible marathon victory, setting a new Olympic record of 2:22:55 less than 48 hours after the 10,000m final.
‘From the beginning to the end, it was so hard,’ she said after the marathon. ‘Every step of the way, I was thinking, “Why did I do that? What is wrong with me?”’
Men’s Olympic 1500m final
In this supposed two-horse race, few eyes were on surprise third horse Cole Hocker, the American who stormed through on the inside in the final seconds to take a remarkable gold in 3:27.65, breaking the Olympic and North American records for the distance.
All the drama in the run-up had been provided by the rivalry between the cocksure Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Scottish sunglasses enthusiast Josh Kerr, who had clashed on the track before and genuinely seemed to dislike each other. Ingebrigtsen characteristically led for almost the entire race but couldn’t match the finishing kicks of Hocker, Kerr (silver) and Yared Nuguse (bronze).
840,318 people apply for 2025 London Marathon
At RW, we recently published an entire issue of our magazine declaring that the world is experiencing a third running boom. Perhaps the most convincing proof was the headcount for the latest London Marathon ballot. Following the 2024 race in April, 840,318 people signed up in hope of a place at the 2025 event. That’s a whopping 261,696 more hopefuls than the year before.
What’s more, the stats show the closest equality between female and male entrants ever, with 49% of names on the list being women.
Parkrun celebrates its 20th anniversary
If you're a runner, you've probably done a parkrun at some point during the last 20 years. From inauspicious beginnings in Bushy Park, Teddington, in October 2004, when it was only meant to be a way for injured runner Paul Sinton-Hewitt to spend some social time with his mates, there are now 2,500 parkruns in 22 different countries.
As well as this anniversary, the Bushy Park event recently took place for the 1,000th time, and new locations are still popping up regularly. The free 5k’s habit-forming simplicity has changed British running culture profoundly and made runners out of many who never would have thought it possible.
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