I had expected to see a few bombs dropped by this point in the season. But aside from L.J. Van Zyl running first 47.66, then 44.86, the season has been rather somber so far. <\/p>\n
The Florida Relays had some promising entries early on \u2013 Tyson Gay in the 4×4, along with the seasonal debuts of Justin Gatlin, David Oliver and Xavier Carter. All pulled out prior to the start of the meet, however \u2013 none yet ready to display their wares. <\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just the sprinters and hurdlers. The top middle distance runners have yet to step to the track, as neither have the top distance runners, jumpers or throwers. In short the world\u2019s elite are clearly eyeing The World Championships in August and are being very careful not to debut too early. Or more precisely, being careful not to establish a peak that they must ride too long. <\/p>\n
Watching the competition over the last half decade or so I can understand the hesitation. The men\u2019s 100 and 110 hurdles both boast the 3 fastest men in history. The women\u2019s 100 should have at least three women that have run under 10.80 competing this season. Last year there were seventeen men under 13:00 in the 5000 and seven women broke 4:00 for 1500 meters. <\/p>\n
In short one must be at one\u2019s absolute best come championship time if you want to have any hope at taking the gold medal \u2013 or any medal for that matter. And given the recent triage list of athletes during any recent season, some of the most oft injured have been those in what I will call the \u201cmedal bracket\u201d. Athletes like Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay, Dayron Robles, Sanya Richards, Kenenisa Bekele, along with many others. <\/p>\n
So after watching the first few weeks of the outdoor season unfold, it is my guess that we are going to see a lot less of the stars this year, but with a high level of quality when we do. Because quality racing\/competing requires more rest in between outings than frequently competing at more reduced physical levels. And given that this is a livelihood for these athletes, I would expect that most of that competition will take place in more lucrative surroundings such as the Diamond League events. <\/p>\n
Now that doesn\u2019t mean that there isn\u2019t quality track and field going on. In spite of the cancelations Florida saw some outstanding performances. Minus Gatlin and Carter, Florida\u2019s own Jeff Demps blitzed a slightly windy (+2.2) 10.07, marking himself early on to repeat as NCAA champion. Florida State\u2019s Maurice Mitchell ran a world leading 20.36 in the 200 as did Natasha Hastings (USA) with a 22.77 in the women\u2019s event. <\/p>\n
Ashton Eaton, who is certain to make an impact in the decathlon this year, set 3 personal bests (shot put, javelin, and discus) while competing in a small meet at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And Tabarie Henry (ISV, 44.83) and Rondell Bartholomew (GRN, 44.65) ran the world\u2019s two best 400\u2019s in Baton Rouge LA, and Lubbock TX, respectively this weekend.<\/p>\n
So the competition is still hot! But expect most of the competitive excitement to come from the college ranks. As it looks like we may not see true \u201cdebuts\u201d of the elite until after the beginning of May, with the Diamond League kicking off in Doha on May 6. <\/p>\n
Of course fresher athletes should mean extremely high level performances. I\u2019ll take that trade off. Especially since the level of track and field at the NCAA level is very high itself. And with most of the top NCAA teams already looking strong \u2013 i.e. Florida, Texas A&M, LSU, Florida State, Oregon \u2013 on both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s side \u2013 it should make for a great \u201cearly\u201d season. <\/p>\n
Which should in turn lead into what I\u2019m hoping is an improved Diamond League. And then of course what should be a very exciting World Championships. If we can get the majority of our elite athletes to the line healthy in Doha, there should be some very exciting fireworks! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had expected to see a few bombs dropped by this point in the season. But aside from L.J. Van Zyl running first 47.66, then 44.86, the season has been rather somber so far. The Florida Relays had some promising entries early on \u2013 Tyson Gay in the 4×4, along with the seasonal debuts of […]<\/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-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa3DCY-7x","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","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=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trackchill.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}