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Women's 800m World Champs Preview: An 'Unkown' Favorite
The 800 is one of our favorite events to watch as it's the hardest event to predict. On paper, a slew of women could win the 2007 world champs. However, in our mind, the favorite is someone who was basically an unkown at the beginning of July - Ukraine's Yuliya Krevsun. The 26-year old had never broken 2:00 until July 7th of this year when she ran 1:59.60 to win her country's nationals. The runner who had the best series of races in the European circuit this summer was Jamaica's Kenia Sinclair. In fact, Sinclair has had an all-around fine 2007. Outdoors in 2007, she has lined up 10 times and has won 7 times including wins her last 3 European 800s in July in Lausanne, Rome and Greece, including a 1:58.67 in her last win. Her pr came last year and it was 1:57.88. Despite the fact that Krevsun appears to be in unreal form, we're picking Sinclair for the win though for one reason - her strength. Sinclair ran a fine 4:05.56 1,500 to win the adidas meet in May. We'll take strength over speed every time (plus we don't like picking people not running Grand Prix's who are coming in with 2+ second prs). It's important to realize that when Krevsun won the University Games, she blistered the first 400 in 56.17. Good luck winning worlds wire to wire like that. Sinclair
can sit on her and pick her off at the end. Defending champ Zulia Calatayud of Cuba can't be totally discounted. However, in 2005, she raced heavily and world's was her 10th race. This year, she has only run two races that we can find record of- both at Pan Ams where she ran 2:00.34 for third on July 24th. We're not sure why she would open so late but clearly her form is probably a lot better now than it was a month ago. Still something must have prevented her from racing more so we don't think she'll successfully defend. LetsRun.com Predictions: 1) Sinclair 2) Krevsun 3) Kotlyarova
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Cross Country Spikes
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