OpenTrack's Year in Review: 2024 in Athletics
A round up of everything that happened on OpenTrack in the past 12 months
With another year of top-tier athletics under our belt, we’re thrilled to have had another successful year of making athletics simpler for more athletes, competition organisers, and countries than ever before.
It’s easy to say that each year is better than the last, but we have the stats to prove it, all included below as part of a festive whistle-stop tour of the year that was.
In this update:
Top performances, top performers
Keeping people engaged
A few OpenTrack highlights
We hope that you have a restful festive break, and enjoy reading through the best that 2024 had to offer on OpenTrack — you’ll hear plenty more from us in the new year!
Top performances, top performers
This year’s leading performances have more of an international flavour than ever before, with athletes from 23 countries delivering their bests in competitions across 11 countries, both new highs.
Track
Serbia have a strong record of delivering top-tier events on the World Athletics calendar, and this year’s Belgrade Indoor Meeting and Serbia Athletics Meeting were no exception, with all but one of the fastest women’s times from 60 to 800 metres set at those meetings.
Pick of the bunch came from eventual Olympic silver medallist Tsige Duguma, whose 1:59.66 for 800 metres at the Belgrade Indoor Meeting was a meeting record at an event due to hold its tenth edition in 2025.
If slightly longer races held your interest this year, then the UK was the place to be, with Megan Keith (31:03.02) and Mohamed Ismael’s (27:22.38) victories at the Night of the 10,000m PBs topping the 10,000 metre lists ahead of a year off for the competition in 2025.
Equally impressive was Aron Gebremariam’s 7:52.54 over 3000 metres at Birmingham University, placing the 18-year-old as the 15th-fastest U20 in the world this year.
As for those racing over barriers, Milan Trajkovic had another of his ever-consistent years, with a strong victory in still conditions (13.50, ±0.0) at the Cyprus International Athletics Meeting.
Field
Last year’s field roundup led with a mention for Angelina Topić, and the Serbian youngster has earned another this year. World U20 gold and European senior silver were her 2024 highlights, but 1.95 to win the Serbian U20 Championships saw her lead the way among female high jumpers on OpenTrack.
Still only 25, Kristjan Čeh scarcely threw beneath 67 metres this season, including during May’s Estonian Cup (67.92). Though the Slovenian missed out on an Olympic medal, coming an agonising fourth in Paris, he led in Tallinn by over ten metres.
Plenty of athletes performed well on home turf in 2024 — at the Boysen Memorial, Norwegian Thomas Mardal set a season’s best of 77.20 to top a strong hammer field featuring six 70m+ men, whilst Bulgarian athletes Bozhidar Saraboyukov (16.45) and Gabriela Petrova (14.38) led the way in both men’s and women’s triple jump with their national championship performances.
Keeping people engaged
Most Viewed Competitions — Home
For organisers, one of the most valuable things is seeing growth year-on-year, and this year was no exception for the three most-viewed competitions in the UK.
Highgate Harriers’ Night of the 10,000m PBs saw a six-figure jump, retaining its spot as the most-viewed competition on OpenTrack (397,000 pageviews, up from 286,000 in 2023).
A slightly more modest improvement saw the British Masters Outdoor Championships retain second place (238,000, up from 221,000), while the Welsh Senior and Junior Championships slotted into third (212,000).
Most Viewed Competitions — Away
Abroad, Norway’s U20 and U23 Championships (214,000) led the way, with Bulgaria’s U18 Championships Outdoors (171,000) and Indoors (162,000) filling out the podium, ahead of either country’s senior championships — best to keep an eye on the youth of the future!
A few OpenTrack highlights
It might be self-indulgent, but after rightly celebrating the competitions and their competitors, we think we’ve earned the right to have a quick look back at our year.
In the past 12 months, we’re thrilled to have signed contracts to help make athletics simpler in Albania, Bulgaria, Gibraltar, and Moldova, and to have supported more competitions in person and online than ever before.
We were thrilled this year to continue working with the UK’s National Athletics League and Oxfordshire Cross Country League, cutting hours of admin time, and to have helped deliver a stellar Championships of the Small States of Europe.
Our stable of meetings on the World Athletics Indoor, Continental, and Cross Country tours continues to grow, and we can’t wait to help more competition organisers deliver top-tier athletics next year.
It’s not all about OpenTrack though, and while an increase in user traffic of over 25% is great news for us, it also means more eyeballs on the performances, athletes, and competitions at the heart of the sport — we can’t wait for more in 2025!
We’re off now for the Christmas break, but when we come back, indoor competitions will be coming thick and fast, including the Balkan Indoor Championships for both the senior and U20 age groups.
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!