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Can The Men’s 100m Record Be Broken
Track and field is in high gear now, as just about everyone expected to be in contention for medals has begun competing. This weekend we get the second Diamond League meeting in Shanghai/Suhoux China. Watching the press conference for the meet, the first question that was asked was to Christian Coleman regarding the current WR in the men’s 100m. Simple question, can it be broken. A fair question given the length of time the record has been on the books. Christian did his best to answer, but I think this record is a little more “complicated” than saying, we’ve got some guys that can run that fast. Especially when we’ve…
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Time for a Worlds Revision
The World Championships have concluded and everyone is already looking forward to Paris 2024! Because that is the event that EVERYONE puts stock into. So much so, that several high level athletes bypassed this year’s World Championships in favor of preparation for the Olympics. You see, in the days leading up to Worlds, much of the buzz was not about the impending matchups but discussions about who wasn’t going to compete. As many of the world’s top athletes declared out of Budapest for various reasons. There were those that were out due to suspensions. Primarily from the Athletes Integrity Unit, for either whereabouts violations or use of prohibited substances. This…
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US Relay Thoughts Heading Into Budapest
Now that teams have been selected for Worlds, one of the biggest questions roaming the internet is, who will represent the US in the relays? Relay selection for us is nearly always controversial. While most countries either know exactly the composition of their squads, or have a pretty good idea who will represent them. Our selection process leaves us with new squads every year. In some cases with repeat members. Sometimes with completely new squads! In the 4×4 it’s easily manageable, because exchanges are simple. In the 4×1 it is a bit more problematic however, because passing the stick requires more coordination and timing at those speeds. And in general…
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How About a Real World Championships?
It’s funny that one of the first things written about the sport in 2019 is about the addition of mixed relays to the World Relays event and to the World Championships. Funny, ha ha, in that they are being added ostensibly to make the events more interesting for “fans”. How about we make the World Championships really interesting by having it be about THE BEST track and field athletes in the world? My point being that it’s time to have a true world event and not the knock off of the Olympics that we’ve been running since 1983. The Olympics were created as a “feel good” global competition. As such,…
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The World Championships Hottest Matchup
What makes the World Championships THE hottest competition of the year is the matchups. The best of the best, gathered in one place to determine the best in the world in each event. In a meet of matchups, one should stand head and shoulders above the rest – the men’s 400 meters. It was the hottest matchup in Rio and fittingly produced the hottest result of the Games – three men under 44.00 and a world record 43.03! Incredibly, in spite of losing one of last year’s medalists to injury, the 400 is once again shaping up as the hottest matchup of the meet. In Rio we were looking at…
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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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World Championships Review, Events
As I said previously, this meet lacked the "Championship" feel for me. I think some of it had to do with the negativity leading up to the meet – the bans. But the competition/performances were lacking. In retrospect it’s what I predicted early on – a transitional championship dominated primarily by youth. When your meet is dominated numbers wise with youth, you don’t get the "peaked" performances of veterans. So many events were/felt down compared to other major championships this time around. We did however, get a lot of good competition lead by the veterans in most cases – age it seems does have its advantages! And with a championship…
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World Championships Review, Overview
It came, they competed, it’s over. After the wait and the build up the World Championships have come and gone. A little over a week of solid track and field, and a lot happened. Normally I would try to comment as things happen, but this year’s meet came at an odd time. School starting for my kids; one starting college; a trip cross country – and that’s just the peripherals. So I decided to try something different this year. Watch all the action; take notes; and then review. As I did this I began to look at the meet a little differently. I started grouping events and individuals. There were…
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Worlds Preview – Sprints & Hurdles
The preliminaries are done and now it’s time for the main event! The World Championships are about ready to begin and it’s crystal ball time. Although I’m not sure how well a crystal ball is going to work for this meet with so few sure things heading into Moscow. But this is the fun part, so I have to give it a try. I’ll start with the sprints, hurdles and relays – the speed events. Of all the events these are generally the least predictable as the margin for error is small and this time around we’re dealing with a lot of unknown entities as a lot of top talent…
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Looking Ahead to Moscow
I’m rather looking forward to the World Championships in Moscow in large part because the US missed out on the opportunity to attend the Olympics there way back in 1980. A lot has changed since then. Track and field is now a professional sport – sort of. The Eastern Bloc is no more. And our current war in Afghanistan has surpassed Vietnam as America’s longest war. Some things never change however, one of them being the competitiveness of athletes when they’re on a global stage. That and the fact there’s still something mystical about the idea of competing in Russia. Russia is one of those countries that does very well…