By Audrey Allen and Paul Hof-Mahoney

New Year’s resolutions aren’t just about aspiration; they’re about accountability. Laying out a beautifully thumb-tacked vision board and mapping out your next 365 days in your training log only works if you’ve taken stock of what worked—and didn’t—in the year that just wrapped up.

And while we’ll probably be writing the wrong year on the date line until the U.S. Championships roll around at the end of July, we won’t soon forget some of the most memorable words captured on camera or posted online by the most vocal yappers on the track and field circuit. After all, they just might hint at what we can look forward to both on and off the track in 2025 and the seasons to come.

So here’s a handful of The Lap Count’s favorite quotes from track and field athletes that we aren’t leaving behind in 2024:

“Three down, seven to go!” – Jakob Ingebrigtsen

After running 7:17.55 at the Silesia Diamond League in August, Jakob Ingebrigtsen added a third world record to his already illustrious resume (which also now includes “father to Filippa”). He took to Instagram to announce his plans to chase the rest of the best marks in the distance history books. 

While it’s no secret that his white whale is becoming the first man in the 3:25s over 1500m, if Jakob wants to complete the full distance gauntlet, it would call for a lot more than just a perfect three laps of pacing. He’d also have to bring back his teenage steeplechase days and start signing up for a lot more road races than a lone poorly-paced half marathon.

“I want my own shoe.” & “I truly would like to take a shot at the world record if I decide to move to the 400m.” – Noah Lyles

Lyles has been one of the sport’s most outspoken athletes since he first arrived on the scene. When he won the Olympic 100m crown in August, it catapulted his voice to the most prominent position that a track and field athlete can find themselves in. Frankly, this entire list could be quotes from Lyles throughout 2024, but we narrowed it down to two of his most intriguing.

When making his case for a custom sneaker (he was very clear he doesn’t want a custom spike) at the Olympic press conference, Lyles claimed that Michael Johnson never had his own shoe, but it’s a commonality for top athletes in other sports. While that isn’t exactly true, it still would be a huge step forward for Adidas to release a signature shoe for the most talked about man on the track.

The second quote requires a lot more context, which Anderson Emerole thankfully gave to us right after Lyles’s appearance on the “Nightcap” Podcast with Shannon Sharpe and Chad Johnson. Basically, he’s not saying he can approach Wayde Van Niekerk’s 43.03 mark right now, and he’s not saying he’s going to try in 2025. But the eternally self-confident Lyles thinks that if he sets his mind to it somewhere down the road, he can do anything—a self-belief half the track fandom seems to love and the other half can’t stand. (It’s worth noting that Lyles started making similar claims about the 100m long before he was an international contender in the shortest sprint…) What this coming year will hold for the Olympic and six-time World champion remains to be seen, but it’s almost a guarantee he’ll be back in this segment next January.

“It scares me. The value of college athletics was never about making a dollar.” – Oklahoma State coach Dave Smith

As the springtime implementation date for impending changes from House vs. NCAA nears, many collegiate coaches, athletes, and their fans are not anticipating the rollout of new roster sizes and scholarship limits with anything other than dread. 

This revenue-sharing, business-driven approach to collegiate athletics has the potential to completely change the landscape of the sport we know and love, in doing so, maybe even unraveling the battle-proven system being the success of American teams on the world stage (We’re talking about 10-man cross country teams in the SEC and roster cuts so deep that 25+ athlete women’s teams might become a relic of history).

While the second-most talked about sport in this newsletter might be basketball, our calendars circled for April 7, 2025 aren’t for the NCAA March Madness championship game but instead for the court hearing for final approval of this case. Hopefully the broader public’s understanding of the possible implications won’t come until it’s too late.

“I think in the modern social media age that field events are going to emerge as almost more of the pinnacle of the sport.” – Ryan Crouser

If you’re an active competitor in—or fan of—the field events, 2024 gave you plenty of reason for pessimism. Despite historically great performances and scintillating Olympic competitions across nearly every discipline, new endeavors (and a lot of money) introduced to the sport began to leave the field events by the wayside. While the collective tone among the best jumpers and throwers in the world was justified frustration, Crouser decided to take matters into his own very large hands.