This week, the Diamond League released it’s schedule of events for 2011. Once again featuring a series of “half” meets. A regular occurrence in the sport of track and field – and one that has become a pet peeve of mine.A recent Track and Field News editorial on the inaugural season of the Diamond League discusses the editor’s reasoning as to why he feels it is difficult to contest full meets in today’s sport Read More...

The recent retirement, then retractment, by Haile Gebrselassie got me thinking about who the greatest athlete has been in this sport. Primarily because that could be Haile himself – if nothing else, he is probably the greatest distance runner of all time.Of course, track and field has a very long and storied history, so trying to determine the Greatest Of All Time is really a rather daunting task – especially given the various changes/stages that the sport has gone through Read More...

I’ve talked before about what I feel is the need for the United States to be host to a World Championships. The sport’s biggest event has been around since 1983 and not once has the United States served as host. A travesty IMHO that the world’s greatest power in the sport has yet to host a Worlds Read More...

Once upon a time, when the Olympics were all there was, athletes’ lives revolved around the Olympic cycle. And, in general, athletes had roughly two cycles to accomplish their goals or leave the sport.That’s because prior to the 1980’s and “professionalism”, when track and field was truly an amateur sport, money was a scarce commodity in track and field Read More...

The big event this past weekend was the New York City Marathon. An event won by Ethiopia’s Gebre Gebremariam in 2:08.14 – unspectacular when many of the world’s top races are being won in times of 2:04 / 2:05. The big news coming out of New York, however, was not who won, or even the results of the those that finished Read More...

As I continue to take a look back at the 2010 season, I’ve looked at some standard “awards” (Athlete of the Year) as well as some not so standard (Top Breakthrough Americans).This is another of those non standard awards. Though I think there should be some way of  evaluating how well our meets do every year Read More...

At the beginning of his short reign as CEO of USATF, Doug Logan set 30 medals as a goal for the US squad at the 2012 London Olympics. That bit of goal setting was the impetus for the creation of my “Thirty Watch List” – to  monitor our progress towards that goal.With Logan’s departure as CEO, I’ve asked myself if I should continue with this list Read More...