Adharanand Finn's Blog

It’s got billionaires, world champions and director Ridley Scott on board. But would an athletics competition where taking drugs is encouraged put the honesty back in sport – or cause rifts, risks and addictions?

It’s summer 2025. A large athletics stadium somewhere in Europe buzzes with crowds of people. Down on the track, eight men line up for the 100m final. Eight men pumped full of performance-enhancing drugs. Up in the control room, director Ridley Scott is asking for closeups on their faces...

I’ve been running uphill for over an hour, scaling this narrow mountain trail, when we pass through some trees. This must be the top, I’m thinking, hopefully, as we crest the pass. But alas, rising up on the other side are more hulking mountains and snaking up through the middle of them, like a line of ants, are the tiny dots of the runners ahead of us.

“Putain,” swears the French runner behin...

I have always wanted to be a diver. So at the centre where Tom Daley once trained, I aim to graduate to a five-metre board – arms locked, bend, one, two, go …

I’m standing on a five-metre diving board – about the height of a two-storey building – preparing to throw myself off, headfirst. And I’m terrified. I take a determined step towards the end, lock my arms above my head and begin to tip forward.

I have always admired people who can dive, and secretly wished that I could do it. I watch them tak...

After 21 competitors died during a 100km mountain race in Gansu province earlier this year, the Chinese government suspended all extreme sports. But those who love ultrarunning insist it can be safe – and has changed how they see the world. What keeps them coming back?

This week we are revisiting some of our favourite episodes from the year so far. This episode was first broadcast on 8 June.

To most people, the horror of 21 lives being lost during a race across 100km in a Chinese mountain range wi...

After 21 competitors died during a 100km mountain race in Gansu province, the Chinese government last week suspended all extreme sports. But those who love ultrarunning insist it can be safe – and has changed how they see the world. What keeps them coming back?

To most people, the horror of 21 lives being lost during a race across 100km in a Chinese mountain range will have been amplified by how obscure the sport seems to outsiders. But ultrarunning has boomed in popularity in recent years, with ...

Inspired by a 90-mile run to the Peak District, These Hills Are Ours explores the joys of trail running – then invites its audience out for a jog

Daniel Bye is twisting in his seat, recalling the day he set out from his home in Lancaster, ran through the city’s streets and then up the nearby peak of Clougha Pike. “It was like I’d left one world, and entered another,” he says. Cue a song from Boff Whalley – the former guitarist of anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba – who is sitting in the chair next to...

Inspired by a 90-mile run to the Peak District, These Hills Are Ours explores the muddy joys of trail running – then invites its audience out for a jog

Daniel Bye is twisting in his seat, recalling the day he set out from his home in Lancaster, ran through the city’s streets and then up the nearby peak of Clougha Pike. “It was like I’d left one world, and entered another,” he says. Cue a song from Boff Whalley – the former guitarist of anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba – who is sitting in the chair n...

An inspiring study by an international runner and anthropologist who goes to Ethiopia to find out why east Africa’s long-distance runners lead the world

If you watch any major marathon in the world, almost without exception you will see a group of Kenyan and Ethiopian runners battling it out at the front. What is it that propels so many athletes from this corner of east Africa to dominate the sport of long distance running so completely?

Out of Thin Air is Michael Crawley’s account of living for 1...

A race around the capital lures Adharanand Finn to Jamaica, but it’s the friendly island that is the real winner

If you’re looking for a challenge to really fire up your new year fitness regime, you may want to consider taking on a spring marathon. While many of the world’s biggest races, such as London and Boston, will have filled up long ago, one marathon still with places is the Kingston City Marathon in Jamaica, to be held on 15 March 2020.

Jamaica is not exactly renowned for its...

The news that – according to a recent survey of 2,000 people in the US – people feel they are too old to start exercising at 41 would raise a few eyebrows in Fauja Singh’s house. He took up running at 84, and ran his first marathon aged 89. He went on to run a further seven marathons, including one at age 100 So if you have just turned 41 and think you’re too old, think again.

Rangan...