Is athletics stuck in the dark ages by asking athletes to wear paper bibs on their singlets?

Do today’s leading athletes still need to wear their name or number on a paper bib on their competition clothing? The debate emerged on social media this month and seems to divide opinion.

Athletes such as Noah Lyles, Rai Benjamin and Jazmin Sawyers got involved with the latter saying: “Pins just feel needlessly fiddly and bad aerodynamics!”

A short poll on our Instagram channel showed that 49% are in favour of wearing numbers with 51% feeling it is unnecessary. I didn’t vote but, if I had, I would probably have tipped the results so that they would have ended up 50/50.

Should athletes wear bibs when competing? ?

Olympic and double world 400m hurdles silver medallist @_Kingben_ raised the question this week ?️ pic.twitter.com/hwUcr0F6cs

— AW (@AthleticsWeekly) April 12, 2023

Putting your number on to your singlet is a pre-race ritual I wouldn’t like to see disappear. Yes, we’ve been doing it for a long time and it might feel dated but why change a winning formula?

In some ways it’s been around longer than you can imagine too. Much of the debate centres around the use of the humble safety pin, but did you know this small metal device was created long before the first ancient Olympics in 776BC was created and dates back to unknown Bronze Age inventors in Greece.

In AW we even ran a feature in our magazine on the use of safety pins in 2011 and wrote: “The basic design is brilliantly simple – a straight pin looped in the middle to form a spring with one end bent into a hook to hold the other sharp end, with tension from the spring holding it safe and secure.”

As for the paper numbers themselves, they’re important for sponsors’ logos and spectators (as you see in the main image above, AW has even featured on them in the past), plus of course runners will often be asked to write medical details and emergency contact details on the back.

Of course there have been improvements over the years. For a long time athletes only wore numbers on their singlets, which meant you could only identify them if you had a list of competitors to refer to. But gradually over the past 20 years we have seen numbers replaced by the athlete’s name.

This month, for example, saw the 20th anniversary of Paula Radcliffe’s amazing 2:15:25 marathon in London and the images from 2003 remind us that she wore “101” on her singlet. Checking back at photos from that period, I see some (but not all) of the top athletes had their name on their singlet in 2004, whereas by 2005 it was even more widespread.

Paper bibs are a big part of the sport’s history. If you’re in any doubt of this then pay a visit to the Museum of World Athletics and you’ll see find paper bibs in abundance alongside spikes and shoes and other track and field paraphernalia.

As a teenage runner in the 1980s I was fascinated by leading runners like Rob de Castella (below, No.25) cutting their number to the bare minimum and inserting holes in it to enhance the breathability before tackling major marathons in hot weather such as the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

In 1985 Steve Cram and Said Aouita broke the 3:30 barrier for 1500m in an epic race in Nice, but one of the enduring memories is Cram starting his long run for home with his number on his back flapping around loosely like a tail.

One type of paper number I’m not a fan of are the ones that organisers insist on sticking to the side of athletes’ legs. Much of the time they simply fall off.

As for the main name or number on the athlete’s chest, though, I’m firmly in favour of its survival.