52 blog posts, 13,037 photos and an Instagram reel with 12 million views… here’s our highlights from 2024.
What a year for Australian athletics! At the Olympics, the best results since the 1956 Games, with Nina Kennedy winning gold. A world record from Jess Hull in the 2000m. A trailblazing World Junior team to continue the success over the next decade. The emergence of Gout Gout, breaking Peter Norman’s long standing national 200m record.
You could go on and on and on.
We’ve delved into our website and social media stats and reshare with you some of our most popular content from the year.
Blog
We managed to blog once a week on average during 2024, again covering each of the big domestic meets of the year with editorial coverage. Thanks to Fred Etter, Ben Levy and Jeff Wray for their sensational photos.
Our fortnightly tracking of the qualifying path for the Paris Olympics was our most popular content of the year, followed by a summary of Australia’s Olympic marathon selection dilemma (prior to selection! – our summary of the appeal process also saw high interest) and Athletics West’s move to end its affiliation with Little Athletics Australia.
Photo Competition
The fourth edition of our annual Photo Competition, held in April, saw $700 in prizes shared by some of Australia’s most passionate athletics photographers. The competition will return again in 2025 for its fifth edition.
Photo Galleries
>> Click here to view all of our photo galleries from 2024
With over 13,000 photos (and huge thanks to Fred Etter for contributing the lion share of these images) here’s a few of the most visited galleries and images of the year.
There was also strong interest in other galleries from the XCR series, including Hanging Rock and Bundoora.
The single most viewed photo was Ben Levy’s pic of the women’s 100m from the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne.
We’re not super active creating content just for social media, but we had a bit of a play with a short video from Box Hill Athletics Club’s awesome initiative to introduce pacing lights at their track. It excited the algorithm, with 6.7 million people watching it over 12 million times. A little crazy – but great recognition for the club.
Australia’s Favourite Athletics Track
Being an Olympic year we re-ran the competitions that we first held in 2021 – Australia’s Favourite Athletics Track.
People are really passionate about their local tracks… the volume of correspondence received, including from local councils querying if their venue could be included in the finalists, was a great reminder of the importance of great places to connect people to our sport.
After 16,000 votes were cast the winner was… Queensland Sport & Athletics Centre.
A new website – run2.au
After tinkering at the concept for about six months in June we launched a new website: run2.au
It’s a directory based website with the aim of better connecting the millions of Australians who run each year with the deliverers of the sport: events, parkrun and run clubs. We’ve learned a lot while testing during the site’s first six months and look forward to expanding it in 2025.
If you’re interested in Australia’s running boom check out our recent article about the 15% increase in finishers that Australia’s 10 largest events in 2024 enjoyed.
