Now that the National Championships are done, and the teams for the World Championships are set, the European season gets under way in earnest today in Oslo. The second stop on the Golden League Oslo has a rich history of fine distance running, and should live up to that today. Potential highlights:

Men’s 800 – Abubaker Kaki (SUD) v Yuri Borzakovski (RUS). Borzakovski is a fine kicker but Kaki has been the dominant 800 man the past couple of seasons. Could be an early picture of the final in Berlin.

Women’s 5000 – Merseret Defar (ETH) takes to the track once again in search of a World Record. Defar has a history of running fast in Oslo, having set a World Record here back in ’07. She was supposed to meet rival Tirunesh Dibaba, but that fell through when Dibaba pulled from the meet with an injury earlier in the week. Still expect Defar to run fast as several Kenyans remain in the race.

Dream Mile – One of the long standing traditions in Oslo, we should not be disappointed this year as world leader Augustine Choge (KEN) leads a strong field in one of the meets signature events.

Men’s 5000 – We get a chance to see Kenenisa Bekele (ETH) in action. Bekele is the World Record holder in the event and will be looking for his first sub 13:00 clocking of the season. His chief competition should be Ali Abdosh (ETH) who currently sits in the #2 spot on the yearly list (12:59.56) just ahead of Bekele (13:00.76).

Men’s 100 – They do sprint in Norway, and their top sprinter Jaysuma Saidy Ndure will take on the challenge of some of the worlds best. Lead by former World Record Holder Asafa Powell (JAM), the field also contains Olympic finalist Churandy Martina (AHO) who has been running well in ’09, and rising star Daniel Bailey (ANT).

Information on the meet can be found here

Many individuals have had their investment portfolios hit hard during the recent economic downturn. So much so that it has become common for people to avoid opening their financial statements to so as not to see the latest bad news. Given the performances of some of the sports biggest names in the past couple of seasons, one can only imagine how those that write the checks to some of the sports highest paid stars are feeling these days about their investments in the sport Read More...

The US National Championships concluded yesterday and all the results are in. With the meet serving as the selection process for August's World Championships, the immediate question is - how will we do? There are six weeks until the start of competition on August 15th - so relatively speaking its just around the corner Read More...

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While scanning the internet for articles on this week's National Championships, I came across an article in the Oregonian that really took me by surprise. While host city Eugene prides itself as being "Track Town USA", the primary paper in the larger City of Portland talked about the National Championships and our top athletes as if this were the opening night of a theater production!The writer, Ken Goe, calls several athletes "arrogant and short sighted" because they are not competing in their primary events, or in some cases only one round, because they have byes to the World Championships as defending champions! He says, sarcastically that "If the people who have packed into Hayward feel cheated, well, hey, the athletes have their own careers to think about" Read More...

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Willie Davenport, Rod Milburn, Greg Foster, Roger Kingdom, Edwin Moses, Kevin Young. The US has a long a rich tradition of hurdlers in international competition. Eugene will see some fierce competition among those who want to be next in line to continue that tradition. Along with the sprint events, the hurdle events provide us with a large majority of medals in the Major meets Read More...

An area where we once could count on medals internationally, in recent years we've come up dry. Bernard Lagat becoming an American citizen provided us with 1500 gold in Osaka in '07, but prior to that we have to go back to the 1999 World Championships to find a World Champs medalist, or even finalist as Jearl Miles Clark was 4th in the 800 and Regina Jacobs won silver in the 1500 Read More...

When looking at the US medal count in the Olympic Games or World Championships one of the most critical areas is the sprints - along with the hurdles. We tend to be out matched in the middle and long distance events, but regularly garner medals in the shorter events. So performances in Eugene in these events will go a long way towards how many potential medals we will pick up in Berlin Read More...