{"id":313,"date":"2010-04-26T06:51:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T13:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=313"},"modified":"2010-04-26T06:51:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T13:51:00","slug":"weekend-review-penn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Review \u2013 Penn"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float:left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/default.aspx?term=allyson felix&#038;iid=8627610\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/7\/a\/c\/2\/Track_and_Field_de4c.JPG?resize=234%2C336\" width=\"234\" height=\"336\"  border=\"0\" alt=\"Track and Field: 116th Penn Relays\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear:left;height:0px;overflow: hidden;\"><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/PicAppPIS\/JavaScript\/PisV4.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>As excited as I was that Penn was finally here, I feel somewhat let down now that it\u2019s over. Yes, there was a Bolt sighting. And yes there were huge crowds. But there were several things that I found disappointing. <\/p>\n<p>There were highlights. The Tennessee Lady Vols picked up where they left off last year winning three titles this year taking the 4 x 800, 4 x 1500 and distance medley relays. A tough feat to achieve at any meet, let alone Penn. The men\u2019s distance medley relay had one of the closest finishes of the meet as American\u2019s David Torrance (4:00.47) and Leonel Manzano (4:00.04) gave serious chase after Kenyan Josephat Kithii (4:00.61) as Kenya (9:24.97), USA Blue (9:25.02) and USA White (9:20.04) finished closer than most of the sprint relays!<\/p>\n<p>Which is where my disappointment starts \u2013 our sprint relays. The big attraction at Penn is supposed to be USA v World with a big focus on the 4&#215;1 and 4&#215;4 relays. Yet I found myself very disappointed with what we put on the track. As I stated prior to the meet we put a lot of effort into \u201cbalancing\u201d out our squads. With Usain Bolt in attendance this year \u201cbalance\u201d wasn\u2019t what was needed! Nor was the manner in which we put our teams together, as neither 4&#215;1 was put together to win in my humble opinion. <\/p>\n<p>Two men\u2019s squads, and on both squads we placed athletes on the second legs noted more for their starts than their finishes (Travis Padgett &amp; Mike Rodgers)! Then for an odd sort of consistency both squads started individuals more noted for their finishes than their starts (Walter Dix &amp; Ryan Bailey)! The result? We looked good coming into the first handoff, then got blitzed down the backstretch. Our weak finishers had trouble pushing the third legs through the zone making for poor exchanges. Third legs couldn&#8217;t catch up and Bolt received the baton slightly ahead and the race was over! Running 8.79 on the anchor the last thing that Bolt needed was for us to hand him victory on a silver platter! So we got waxed by a Jamaican team starting Mario Forsythe (bests of 10.16\/20.84) and with no Asafa Powell (more MVP v JAAA issues)! <\/p>\n<p>The women won their \u201cshowdown\u201d, but only because injury to Sanya Richards moved Allyson Felix from third leg (she\u2019s a HORRIBLE turn runner) to second leg where she\u2019s one of the best in the world \u2013 because from what I hear she was originally slated for third leg duty! Call it fate, but Allyson did what she does \u2013 blazed the straight and gave us a solid lead. From there it was a matter of holding the lead and giving it to Carmelita Jeter who was NOT going to be caught by anyone. So, yes a win, but what are the people in charge of our relays thinking? We have gone the last two majors without setting foot in the 4&#215;1 final for either the men or the women. Yet we invite our chief competition here to compete against us and treat it like a pick up race on a playground. We have some serious work to do, and I didn\u2019t see it being done at Penn. <\/p>\n<p>For example, Jamaica beat us in the women\u2019s sprint medley. But could we not find two 200 meter runners for the first two legs? We ran two quarter milers Natasha Hastings and Dee Dee Trotter and it showed as Jamaica\u2019s Kerron Stewart \u2013 Olympic 200 bronze medalist \u2013 wiped us up on the second leg. Then to add insult to injury we anchored our most competitive half miler (Anna Pierce) on the \u201cB\u201d squad. So while Sheena Tosta put us back in the game on the third leg 400, Jamaican anchor Kenia Sinclair had no challenge and ran away and hid.<\/p>\n<p>And while we won both 4&#215;4\u2019s, our men\u2019s squad looked almost like a \u201cB\u201d squad as we had no Lashawn Merritt and no Jeremy Wariner. We won with two 400 hurdlers (Bershawn Jackson &amp; Angelo Taylor) leading the way on the final two legs. Not how you want to go against \u201cThe World\u201d. I\u2019ll be looking at our 400 situation later this week. We have work to do or we will suffer again come Daegu and London. Unfortunately we don\u2019t get many opportunities to work on it so we can\u2019t afford to waste any of them. But Penn seems like an opportunity wasted. <\/p>\n<p>I was also very disappointed in the telecast by ESPN. We got TWO hours \u2013 a biggie for track and field. But we got maybe an hours worth of track. We got a segment on Sanya Richards and her off season marriage though she didn\u2019t compete. We got a segment on Lashawn Merritt\u2019s suspension and Doug Logan\u2019s comments \u2013 does the average or casual fan need to hear this, I thought we were trying to ATTRACT people to the sport! And we got to see the Jamaican victory in the 4 x1 about 4 times! As I have said before, if we can only sell our competitions based on a single individual then we have lost the battle for fans and viewers. We have to start to sell the public on multiple stars or we are doomed! I mean, quiet as it\u2019s kept, Allyson Felix was the only elite athlete to take home two wins at Penn (4&#215;1 and 4&#215;4). And where was all the collegiate action?<\/p>\n<p>I will end my conversation on Penn on a high note. The coverage from Flotrack was AWESOME! Thanks Flotrack I got to see the college competition and the high school competition. I actually got to see Tennessee complete their triple win. I got to see Ryan Baily pick up another win (10.15) \u2013 out of lane 2. I got to see Mississippi State and Florida go toe to toe in the 4&#215;2 with Tavaris Tate (MsSt) just out leaning a hard charging Calvin Smith (Fl) for a .04 win! I got to see all the heats of the 4&#215;1\u2019s and 4&#215;4\u2019s and distance and sprint medley\u2019s \u2013 high school, college and elite!<\/p>\n<p>An outstanding job that was only interrupted when they had to shut down temporarily for the USA v World events as they were prohibited from showing them. If you haven\u2019t seen their web casts check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flotrack.org\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">flotrack.org<\/a> they stream several meets live and then have event by event archives. Next best thing to being there. They and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.universalsports.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Universal Sports<\/a> have become two of my favorite weekend stops when I can\u2019t be there!<\/p>\n<p>May is around the corner and the sport will be changing gears. Collegiate conferences and regional meets. The Diamond League will get started with the Doha meet. Some smaller invitational meets, and high school state meets. So we will start to see the best of the high school and collegiate athletes, and the elites will start to show up for some individual work \u2013 finally!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As excited as I was that Penn was finally here, I feel somewhat let down now that it\u2019s over. Yes, there was a Bolt sighting. And yes there were huge crowds. But there were several things that I found disappointing. There were highlights. The Tennessee Lady Vols picked up where they left off last year [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa3DCY-53","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}