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Trials Day 4 – Half Way to London
Heading into the midway break, Monday was the first really "quiet" day of the Trials. But then, how do you compete for headlines with Eaton’s WR, Dead Heat Gate, and the returns of Justin Gatlin & Tyson Gay? After all that excitement Monday was rather tame. With most of the London berths in the day’s field event finals already decided based on limited numbers of individuals with "A" standards, the"drama" for the day was produced by the two 800 finals. Alysia Montano took the guess work out of who would win the women’s race as she went immediately to the front; opened up a sizeable lead; and cruised home to…
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Farah Sharp at “Hi Performance” Meet
The year’s best gathering of middle/long distance runners took place this past weekend in Southern California at the “Oxy Hi Performance” meet. But after all the races were run and the results came in, I’m still in the dark as to how things look for American distance running – and we’re only a month out from the Trials! Don’t get me wrong, there were some solid performances. Best of the bunch was Mo Farah (GBR) who turned in a 3:34.66 / 13:12.87 double with less than an hours rest between the two events – and won both! Farah starts off his season in fine shape – and I have to…
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Interesting Results Out of Stanford
On Saturday the speed burners did their thing at Penn and Drake. On Sunday it was the distance runners turn, as several took to the track Sunday evening in the cool weather in Palo Alto. The results produced several world leaders and some interesting stories. First the new world leaders: 4:07.00 – Anna Pierce (USA) 3:35.19 – Andy Baddeley (GBR) 14:43.11 – Sally Kipyego (KEN) 13:11.63 – Lopez Lamong (USA) 31:15.97 – Betsy Saina (KEN) 27:27.96 – Cameron Levins (CAN) Those are the new leaders, now let’s take a look at the results – because some good stuff happened at Stanford – especially for middle distance runners. I’m going to…
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Mt SAC Match Ups
What’s a sign that this is an Olympic year? That the Mt SAC Relays are loaded. Several fields have multiple world class/ranked athletes scheduled to compete, and the overall level of athletes is as high as I’ve seen in a while. Below is my list of names and events that I think deserve more than a causal look – and there are plenty. This could end up being one of those “memorable” meets. So much so that that I expect that we’ll have LOTS to talk about when this meet is over. For example, take a look at the men’s 400 where Jeremy Wariner will be competing against US indoor…
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USA Track and Field Needs a TEAM Not a Superman
As I noted in my previous post, we lack a leadership presence from our former star athletes within the political structure of American track and field. Whereas other countries have former stars that are active within their federations and/or the IAAF, we have yet to capture any of that talent as we look to move the sport forward in this country. Given that we are at a crossroads at USATF – i.e. in between CEO’s. It would seem that now is the time to look at how we might be able to recruit and incorporate the talents of former athletes, as other countries have done with Sebastian Coe, Sergey Bubka,…