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Olympic Trials Part 1 – Upsets & Speed
We’ve finally arrived to that part of the season that really matters – Olympic team qualifying! That means EVERYONE had to show up. That means some of the best competition of the year. That means watching track and field the way it is supposed to be watched – in a stadium; with ALL of the events represented! And guess what? No one leaves early. No one is worried about "attention spans". No one needs bands playing in the parking lot, or portions of the meet in the street! Why? Because when you get the best athletes available to compete, the sport in its purest form is as good as ANY…
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World Championships Review–Individuals Pt1
Now for the fun part, looking at individual performances – and there were certainly some very good ones. First however, let’s get a bit of perspective by taking a look at medal counts. The double digit medal earners: United States 25 total, 6 gold, 14 silver, 5 bronze. Russia 17 total, 7 gold, 4 silver, 6 bronze Kenya 12 total, 5 gold, 4 silver, 3 bronze Ethiopia 10 total, 3 gold, 3 silver, 4 bronze As expected Russians performed well at home. While traditional European power Germany continues to have difficulty getting back to Eastern Bloc prominence. In general there was no core of dominant nations, but a relatively even…
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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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The Pieces are Coming Together
The great thing about the Penn Relays is that it’s the first time we get a large gathering of top athletes together at the same meet. The tough part is that they aren’t competing head to head and they’re not competing in individual events – so "evaluating" where they are can be a bit more difficult. And with the Trials less than two months away, and the Games within there months, trying to figure out the pecking order of the top athletes is on everyone’s mind. Well I think several athletes had great early auditions yesterday in Pennsylvania. On the men’s side the US won both "heats" of the 4×1:…
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What Will Our Male Middle Distance Presence be in London
Looking back on 2011 & Daegu, and forward to 2012 & London, I find three areas in the U.S. that concern me. One is the men’s sprints & hurdles which I recentlytouched on. Another is our field events in general – something I’ll be talking about in the very near future. The other, that I’ll be addressing today, is our male middle distance runners. I say this in spite of Matt Centrowitz’ surprise bronze in Daegu, because it was just that – a surprise. Because right now there is only one middle distance runner that we can count on to produce when needed – Bernard Lagat – and his career…