2011 USA Nationals Prediction Contest Recap

By LetsRun.com
July 8, 2011

One of the best parts of our world-famous LetsRun.com predictions contest is learning about the winners, who usually are super interesting people who are representative of all the interesting people who make up the greater LetsRun.com community.

We've had national champions, rocket scientists, 8th grade soccer players inspired by their coach to enter the contest, and even a guy who has MS and can't run anymore but is giving back to the sport every day win our prediction contests.

Our 2011 USATF Nationals prediction contest winners are no different.

And The Winners Are ...

Our winner was 54-year-old Greg Diamond of Cortlandt Manor, NY. Greg is pretty hard core in the running world as his email address ends with the domain @runner.org. Pretty cool. That's actually the domain name of his running club, the Taconic Road Runners Club.

Greg, an opthamologist in the real world, has been a runner since 1980 and got hooked on the sport by watching the Olympics. Greg and his wife (the very elite of LRCers have actual real-life wives or girlfriends) have to been to watch the World Championships in Edmonton, Canada and the US Trials in Sacramento. To come out on top in our contest, Greg paid attention to what's going on in our sport. We are proud to report Greg went to the most recent adidas GP Diamond League meet in New York. He then studied our form chart, and then he said, "And then I must have gotten lucky." We doubt it.

Greg's dream job would be to be Amby Burfoot (Boston Marathon champ and editor at Runners' World) as he'd "love to just live running like you guys."

Greg's picks were pretty good (his picks are at the bottom of this article), as he got 3 events perfectly correctly and picked 7 of the 10 event winners.

Greg wins a $150 Gift Certificate from our longest standing partner at LetsRun.com - Road Runner Sports. If you'd like to save up to $30 from Road Runner Sports, click here.

The runner-up in the contest and winner of the largest group in the contest is Nate Houle and he wins $100 cash.

Not only is Nate a good picker, but he's super honest. We said we'd give the winner of the largest group in the contest $100 cash. Quickly some smart aleck one created the aptly-named group, *biggest group, and everyone started signing up for it. When we told Nate he came out on top in the group, he immediately told us he did not enter the group until halfway through the contest. However, our rules clearly stated that the largest group would be closed when we cut off the group entries, so what Nate did was perfectly fine by us.

Nate is 26 and has been a runner since the age of 7. A state 800m champion in high school, he ran at Southern Utah University, and recently founded the post-collegiate team Utah Elite (they have a guy who had cancer recently win the Ogden Marathon).

As for Nate's picks he said, "Picks were just my best guess. Eventually you learn that some athletes just don't lose (Flanagan) and others just can't catch a break (Russell Brown). The rest is pure luck since who knows if Lagat will double up with the 1,500 or not. My biggest weakness with these things is being too quick to call an upset."

So congats to our winners and to everyone who played. We'll have a blowout contest for the World Championships in August, so get ready.

If you entered the contest and want to check your scores, click here. If you didn't play and want to see the top scores, click here.

Winner Greg Diamond's picks below.

 

Events
1st
2nd
3rd
Points
Men's 800m
Nick Symmonds 
Khadevis Robinson 
Cory Primm 
5
Men's 1500
Bernard Lagat 
Lopez Lomong 
Leonel Manzano 
2
Men's 5000m
Bernard Lagat 
Chris Solinsky 
Galen Rupp 
8
Men's 10,000m
Galen Rupp 
Chris Solinsky 
Tim Nelson 
4
Men's Steeplechase
Dan Huling 
Kyle Alcorn 
Bill Nelson 
3
Women's 800m
Alysia Montano 
Maggie Vessey 
Alice Schmidt 
8
Women's 1500
Morgan Uceny 
Christin Wurth-Thomas 
Jenny Barringer-Simpson 
5
Women's 5000m
Molly Huddle 
Jenny Barringer-Simpson 
Lauren Fleshman 
4
Women's 10,000m
Shalane Flanagan 
Kara Goucher 
Jennifer Rhines 
8
Women's Steeplechase
Bridget Franek 
Sara Bei-Hall 
Emma Coburn 
2

*To Save Up To $30 From Road Runner Sports, Click Here

Quantcast



Tell a friend about this article
(Dont worry we won't email your friend(s) again. We send them a 1 time email)
Enter their email address(es), separated by a comma.
Enter your name:

Don't Worry: We
Back to Main Front Page
Questions, comments or suggestions?Please email the LetsRun.com staff at suggestions@LetsRun.com.



Runner's World &
Running Times


Combined Only $22

a Year
Save $87



Running & Track and Field Posters


Search the Web
or LetsRun.com
Google

Web

LRC


Offers of interest: Nike Lunar Glide Discount
Discounting on this shoe not allowed until recently.


Back To Top