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2012 Outdoor Preview – Hurdles
If you like speed and competition then you must like the hurdles. Unlike the pure sprinters, who seem to avoid each other as much as possible until forced to toe the line for championships, the hurdlers compete often and face each other with regularity. The sprinters tend to get more publicity but of the four hurdle events three of them have legitimate shots at having WR’s broken – two by more than one individual. The hurdles are among the hottest events in the sport, with some of it’s best athletes. If you’re not watching the hurdles you’re missing some of the best competition the sport has to offer. Here’s…
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Memories of the Games – Paula Ivan
Before I take a look at the hurdles events for 2012, I want to go back to the middle distances for a moment. Because as I was looking at this year’s women’s 1500, visions of one of the most gutsy performances in Olympic history were running through my mind. I’m actually a big fan of the mile/1500 meters, I grew up during the era of Jim Ryun, Kip Keino, Ben Jipcho, John Walker, and Filbert Bayi – milers that ran fast and competed strongly. Having cut my teeth on competitors like these, I’m often disappointed by the slow, tactical affairs that milers often produce – especially in championship settings. Back…
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The Outdoor Season Kicks it Up a Notch
It was only a couple of weeks ago that we were talking about the Indoor World Championships, yet here we are in the month of March and we have our first “sub” of the season! Sub meaning a mark under a typically accepted elite threshold – like a sub-10 100 for men, sub-4:00 1500 for women, or a sub 27:00 10,000 for men. Typically I would run a poll around the end of the month asking which event would see the first “sub”, but I won’t be doing that this year because we already have our first “sub” of the year courtesy of Mr.Wallace Spearmon (USA)! Scanning the results earlier…
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2012 Outdoor Preview – Middle Distances
The middle distance events (800 / 1500) should be very interesting this year. There is the potential of a world record, some very competitive women’s events, and the potential for a sweep. Above all, however, I expect them to be very exciting, both during the season as well as in the Games themselves, as middle distance competitors tend to compete fairly often and we should see some solid matchups outside the Games, as opposed to the sprints where we may see only one loaded race all season. So let’s take a look at the players in the middle distances. Men’s 800 – Can Rudisha be challenged? David Rudisha (KEN)…
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2012 Outdoor Preview – Sprints
Now that we’re completely done with the indoor season, it’s time to start taking a look at how this outdoor season might possibly shape up. More importantly, at how the Games might shape up. So as I go through the various events on the Olympic slate, I’m going to try and Identify those individuals that I feel as of today ill be in the mix – the contenders and potential contenders. I’m going to start with the sprints because they tend to get going a bit earlier than other events. And this time around they’re already pretty well defined, as we have a large group of veterans that “should” be…
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Here’s What Everyone is Trying to Achieve
It’s time to start laying out the upcoming Olympic season – who I feel the contenders are as we start the road to London. Before I do that however, I thought it might help if we knew what everyone was gunning for. Ultimately the goal is gold, as in gold medals in London. Short of gold everyone would like to pick up some sort of medal – silver or bronze. In order to do that you have to get into the finals, but you can’t get into the finals unless you get a spot of the team – and every nation is limited to a maximum of three athletes per…
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The Transition to Outdoors Begins
The World Championships was a great way to to end the indoor season. There was lots of great competition and performances. Now, if you’re like me, you’re chomping at the bit for more action. Unfortunately this time of year is sort of like dawn – that time of day where yesterday ends and today begins – because the outdoor season is just waking up as we put indoors to bed, and there just isn’t that much real action yet. So over the next couple of weeks or so, as things heat up, I’ll be taking a look at trying to preview the outdoor season. I’ll do that in sections –…
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Will These Athletes Find Success Outdoors?
Finally, it’s time to head outdoors, where the Olympic season will begin to gear up in earnest. But before I say goodbye to the 200 meter ovals, I want to point out a Baker’s Half Dozen (7) athletes that showed serious growth this indoor season. Good enough that I want to keep an eye on them as the year moves forward. Indoor track and outdoor track tend to be two different animals. If you remember earlier I listed the Indoor Champions from ‘08 to see how they faired in Beijing. While all of these athletes did not win gold in Istanbul, all had indoor seasons that if duplicated could at…
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NCAA Indoor Championships Review
I know it’s taken a while to get around to this meet, but reality is that the colleges have really suffered from a lot of youngsters going pro early last year, in addition to the normal graduation attrition. The result is that a lot of star power has left college campuses since this time last year. When you lose athletes the caliber of Kirani James, Christian Taylor, Will Claye, Ryan Whiting, Jessica Beard, Lakaya Brookins, and Phoebe Wright among others, there’s bound to be a huge letdown at your championship meet. The meet itself was exciting as always – there’s something exciting about track and field when we start judging…
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More Thoughts on Championship Weekend
Like I said yesterday, there was just too much to say after the weekend to put into one post, so I’m back to continue the conversation – and I think I’ll start with Sally Pearson (AUS). I didn’t include Sally yesterday because frankly she just didn’t have any competition – none. Yes there were other women out there, but we all knew she was running a time trial – and what a time trial! One meet, that’s all she’s had indoors all year. One meet and she clocked 7.73 making her equal 4th all-time – and she was only .05 off the WR! This woman is on track to do…