An OpenTrack Festive Treat: The Year in Review
With 2023 almost over, there’s no time like the festive season to look back on a bumper year of athletics
As the year draws to a close, we’re proud of another year of growth, as we’ve helped more countries, athletes, and athletics fans than ever get closer to the athletics action.
With that in mind, a look back at the year that was can hardly go amiss - whilst you relax over the festive period, take some time to check out the best 2023 had to offer on OpenTrack.
Top Performances
Track
While Mizan Alem Adane’s sub-30 minute clocking over 10,000 metres is by far and away the best track performance of the year, there’s plenty to look back on, with athletes from 14 nations featuring.
Laura Muir’s 8:34.39 run indoors over 3000 metres easily ranks in the top 50 performances of all-time, while Olivia Fotopoulou’s 11.25 (+1.6) to win the Cypriot championships was an equal national record at the time.
The Balkan Senior Championships saw many of the best performances, with nine track bests coming during the July event, as top-tier athletes from 20 European countries went head-to-head.
Former European champions Milan Trajkovic (13.28, +0.9) and Yasmani Copello (48.71) ensured championship records were set in both of the men’s sprint hurdles distances, the former coming within three-hundredths of his 2017 personal best.
Field
Just 18 years of age, Serbian high jumper Angelina Topić has had a mightily impressive season, but one of her most impressive performances of the year came in January.
Daughter of Serbian men’s record holder Dragutin Topić (2.38 at his best), the youngster raised the women’s national record indoors to 1.94 during the triangular match with Croatia and Slovenia.
Olympic champion in 2021, a world gold medal had eluded Miltiadis Tentoglou until 2023, a dramatic last round leap of 8.52 securing the silverware.
A small but nonetheless important step on the Greek’s journey to the title in Budapest was his 8.26 in still conditions to win the Cyprus International Athletics Meeting, opening his season in style.
Generating major interest
Most Viewed Competitions - Home
It should come as no surprise that the competition that reached the most eyeballs this year was the Night of the 10,000m PBs (288,000 pageviews), but it might be slightly more curious that second and third spot respectively are occupied by the British Masters Outdoor (221,000) and Indoor (169,000) Championships.
Most Viewed Competitions - Away
On the continent, Serbia-hosted Balkan Championships took top billing (338,000 pageviews), with the Nordic U20 Match, in Norway’s Bislett stadium (237,000), and February’s Belgrade Indoor Meeting (123,000) following behind.
Most Results
The British Masters Outdoor Track & Field Championships generated the most results of any competition on OpenTrack this year (1630 unique performances), as the United Kingdom’s finest masters athletes took to the track at Moorways Stadium, Derby.
Bookending the year were Norway’s Pingvinlekene (1580 results) in February, and Serbia’s AK Karanovac meeting (1402) in early December.
Not just what, but where
In a shameless plug for our new-look venue pages, it’s also worth highlighting the rather useless statistic of the venue with the most competitions held this year.
That honour goes to Malta’s Matthew Micallef St. John Athletic Track, with 26 competitions across a very busy season, while the venue page that received the most attention over the last 12 months was that of the Lee Valley Outdoor track in the UK — feel free to click through and add to the interest!
A few highlights of our own
While we’re happy to deal in superlatives, we’re equally pleased to have had many major events on OpenTrack over the course of the season.
As well as too many national championships to count, we’ve played host to major internationals in the form of the Balkan Senior Championships, the International Island Games, major World Athletics calendar events like the Cardiff Cross Challenge and Belgrade Indoor Meeting, and massive league competitions on and off the track, with the National Athletics League and Surrey and Oxford cross country leagues.
From all of us at OpenTrack, we hope that you have a restful festive period and come into 2024 feeling refreshed and ready for another stellar year of athletics.
As always, if you have any feedback, requests, or want help bringing your athletics into the 21st century, feel free to get in touch at info@opentrack.run - but if you wait until after the new year we probably won’t mind!