Best of British
By Michael Weadock, June 2023
35 different national champions have been crowned at the 2023 British Athletics Championships held in Manchester. Some received their applause in bright sunshine whilst others huddled under an umbrella to grab their medals and dash for shelter as thunderstorms and lightning affected both days.
This was an event which used to receive terrestrial television coverage, but can now be found to watch online or hidden behind the red button. It’s a shame for athletics which has lost two days of live coverage which showcased most of the sport’s biggest names as the event usually doubles up as a trial for an upcoming Olympic Games or World Championships.
This year, the buzz word was Budapest. The capital city of Hungary will host the World Championships in August and those with the qualifying mark knew a top two finish would put them in the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team.
As European Indoor Champion Jazmin Sawyers said in the build-up – the British Championships are her favourite event, because whilst the World Championships are massive, you have to get there first. For the record, Jazmin got there, and you can hear from her in our recent podcast wrapping up all the action
I was in Manchester for the event working for talkSPORT. On Sunday afternoon, I was part of Sam Matterface’s Sunday Session programme which sounded brilliant bouncing around the country on a massive day for sport in the UK. There was more reaction to England’s men winning the European under 21’s football, live cricket from Headingley where England’s men kept the Ashes alive, tennis from Wimbledon and the Formula 1 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.
Athletics in this country should be delighted that talkSPORT – a national radio station with millions of listeners – deemed the British Championships an event worth covering in equal measure to those others listed. And, if you wanted to hear interviews with the likes of Dina Asher-Smith and Zharnel Hughes, I was the only broadcaster on site doing this for national television or radio!
Of course, when the next World Championships or Olympic Games come around, the BBC will be back trackside grabbing those breathless, sometimes triumphant, occasionally banal and often emotional chats and we’ll be waiting our turn somewhere in the line to make a few enquiries of our own. And it’s then that you hope Dina, Darryl, Zharnel, Jazmine and the others remember who it was who stayed in the monsoon conditions of Manchester and helped give their sport a national spotlight.
