You know what they say: good newsletter writers borrow, and great ones steal. So in the spirit of outright theft… uh, we mean being great, we’re taking inspiration from our friends at the Gray Lady who named seven New Yorkers who made the city a better place, by shouting out a group of track and field figures who contributed above and beyond results this season. Don’t get it twisted—they still produced incredible performances of their own, but for these ten athletes and coaches also helped make track and field a more exciting, inclusive, and global sport with their contributions.

Julien Alfred: From making her World debut in a nondescript black kit because her country didn’t have uniforms to winning Olympic 100m gold, Julien Alfred has almost single-handedly put St. Lucia on the map, athletically. It’s one thing to win your country’s first Olympic medal; it’s another to get it done by defeating the reigning World champion in the sport’s marquee event.

Gabby Thomas: The Harvard and University of Texas grad is no stranger to high achievement off the track, but this year the Olympic champion also got into the meet-organizing business with the all-female Athlos NYC exhibition alongside Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Oh yeah—she also picked up three Olympic titles along the way.

Nikki Hiltz: Hiltz, already a fan-favorite for their barrier-breaking performances as the first openly non-binary runner to win a U.S. title, quickly became one of the most visible LGBTQ members of Team USA as well this summer, following up their second national 1500m title with a seventh-place finish in the Olympic final.

Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall: The unofficial First Couple of track and field has been making headlines for years with their cutesy online presence and Davis-Woodhall’s showboating antics on the runway. This summer, they leveled up even further by picking up a pair of gold medals in the long jump and the T62 400m, the perfect representation of the symbiosis between the Olympics and Paralympics.

Quincy Hall: If there’s one athlete who embodies the Frank Sinatra mantra of “I did it my way,” it’s Quincy Hall. The former hurdler picked up an Olympic title in his new event, the flat 400m, in wildly dramatic fashion, his exaggerated running style and grilled grimace fueling his come-from-behind victory.

Yaroslava Mahuchikh: The 23-year-old high jump wunderkind has been a bright light in a long period of darkness for her home nation of Ukraine these past few years. In 2024, she continued her incredible run of dominance over the volatile event, including an Olympic title and a new 2.10m world record, breaking a mark that had stood since 1987—13 years before Mahuchikh was born.

Mary Ngugi-Cooper: A consistent presence on the roads for much of the last decade, Ngugi-Cooper finished sixth in Boston this spring before winning the Great North Run in September (and unfortunately, dropping out of Chicago). But Ngugi-Cooper has also experienced tremendous adversity, including the death of her husband Sammy Wanjiru in 2011 and the tragic loss of her friend and countrywoman Agnes Tirop to domestic violence in 2021. Inspired to create safer training spaces for Kenyan women and girls, Ngugi-Cooper founded the Nala Track Club this year and has been a champion for women supporting women in elite running.

Vin Lannana: The head coach at the University of Virginia has been a force for good in the sport for a long time, but as his term as USATF president comes to an end it’s worth tipping our proverbial hats to the man who, admittedly, has no other hobbies besides improving the sport.