3rd Golden League Meet, Golden Gala Rome *Results
LRC Recap Tyson Gay 9.77 Over Asafa Powell 9.88, Kerron Stewart 10.75, Maggie Vessey Golden League Win, Christin Wurth-Thomas 3:59.98, Dorian Ulrey "A" Standard It was a great day for the 100m sprinters and for American female distance runners. Tyson
Gay blitzed a 9.77 =AR to get the win over Asafa Powell, while Kerron Stewart ran 10.75 on the women's side. In the distance races, Christin Wurth held on to become the 2nd American sub-4:00 in 2009 (and 3rd ever without a drug conviction). 800m sensation Maggie Vessey stunned the women's
800m runners with a come-from-behind win, her second major victory in 2009. On the men's side, Arkansas stud Dorian Ulrey got a near 5-second PR to run 3:35.23 and get the World Championships "A" standard. In other action, Dwight Phillips jumped a long way in the long jump and Kenenisa Bekele and Yelena Isinbayeva stayed alive in the Golden League chase.
*Bahraini Maryam Jamal Excited By
Her Fitness After 3:56 1500 In Rome Imagine how good the Ethiopian team would be if Jamal still ran for her native country. They'd be 1-2 in the women's 1500m.
*Dorian Ulrey Completes US Trio For Berlin Kids, watch what you put on Facebook - this article features comments from Ulrey's Facebook page.
*Post Race Interviews
LRC Rome Threads: *Young Aussie Riseley 3:32.93 in Rome!!!!
*Maggie Vessey making some noise in the 800... could do great at Worlds
*dorian ulrey does it!
*2nd in 3:59.98 1500 in ROME!!! - holy Wurth-Thomas
*Phillips winning jump
*Dorian Ulrey in Golden Gala
Pre Race Coverage
- RRW's Mid-D And Distance Preview: Kenenisa Bekele's Quest For Jackpot Continues As Kenyan Greats Clash At 1,500 Kenny B will face his Ethiopian rivals at 5k while the 1,500 that is a preview of the Kenyan Trials as it includes world leader Augustin Choge and Olympic champ Asbel Kiprop, as well as the new junior world record holder William Biwott. American fans will get to see Dorian Ulrey step up big-time in that 1,500, as well as Hazel Clark and Maggie Vessey in the women's 800, Delilah D in the steeple and Wurth-Thomas in the 1,500. Late change: RRW is incorrect; Choge isn't on the start list.
- NEW Could Sprinting Get Any Better? Tyson Gay Still Confident He Can Beat Bolt At Any Distance First we'll see a showdown in Rome between Asafa Powell (who says he's 85%) and Tyson Gay at 100m.
- Bolt Says: "I Didn't Think It Was Possible To Get So Much Pleasure Running In Those Conditions." Click through these awesome pictures to find an amazing photo of the conditions for Bolt's 19.59.
- Dwight Phillips vs. Irving Saladino vs. Mokoena The long jump is one of the most exciting events this year.
- Sanya Richards vs. Allyson Felix Richards is in the jackpot hunt, can the 2007 world champ Felix trip her up? Probably not.
- With Jepkosgei And Jelimo Struggling Badly, Women's 800m Is Wide Open
- In Depth: Jana Rawlinson Set To Compete In Rome The current world champion's career and social life has been all over the place ... and the tabloids.
News From Ethiopia And Kenya
- Meseret Defar Trying Desperately To Secure World Spot On 10,000m Team What an amazing situation. 5,000m WR holder Mesy Defar desperately wants to run the 10,000m/5,000m double in Berlin, but needs a fast time to make the Ethiopian team as her compatriots, led by Meselech Melkamu, have run 29:53, 30:11 and 30:48 this season while Defar has not broken 31. She'll go for it at the Aviva meet in UK.
- Kiprop's Newly-Won Olympic Gold Will Be Kenya's 6th - Their Highest Mark In History Asbel Kiprop will return to action in Rome on Friday vs. Augustine Choge.
- Article On Geb And Bekele's Effect On Ethiopian Youth
- 1992 Olympic Medalist Bayisa (Ethiopia) Arrested After Trying To Shoot Wife He did what untold numbers of spouses have contemplated doing in the course of human history.
Gold For Kiprop, Ramzi B Sample Positive
LRC Boards: Ramzi
B sample positive
LRC's Crackin' Recap: USAIN BOLT 19.59 MIND-BLOWER IN LAUSANNE *Results *Message Board Thread Bolt 19.59! What a meet in Switzerland as the rainy conditions couldn't stop Usain Bolt from lighting up the night with one of the greatest sprint performances of all time. His 19.59 in the rain, into a 0.9 headwind marks the 4th-fastest wind-legal run of all time. In other events, Steve Hooker and Dayron Robles returned to winning form by narrow margins, Bernard Lagat got crushed in the 800, Ethiopian mid-d star Deresse Mekonnen
smacked down Kenya's best in the 3k, Gelete Burka did the same in the 1,500, and the USA 1-2-3 sweep in the 400m Hurdles promised by Angelo Taylor looks pretty unlikely thanks to Jamaica's Isa Phillips clobbering Kerron Clement in another fine performance.
*Bolt Clocks 4th - Fastest 200m Of All Time
*Usain
Bolt To Run 100 And Relay In London Weekend Of LetsRun.com Founders Day (July 24) The London Meet has big bucks and it shows. Bolt doesn't come cheaply.
*Usain Bolt Street Race To Be Shown In England Theatres In 3D
*Bolt,
Phillips And Powell Dominate World Class Athletissima Fields Lausanne was a very, very good meet for the Jamaican sprinters. They won just about every sprint save the 100 hurdles and 110m hurdles.
*Pat Butcher Blogs About Lausanne History and Bolt's Re-Writing Of It
*Flashback: Bolt
Promising Hard Effort And Fast Time In 200m In Lausanne On July 7 He came through on that promise!
Great Article On Nate Jenkins From Running Times We read this in print a while ago and liked the article. Jenkins is known for his incredible work ethic and durability. His work has paid off with a 7th at the 2007 Olympic Trials and a spot on this year's USA World Championships Marathon Team. If you're looking for training advice, we'd say Jenkins' biggest weakness is allowing himself to recover, but his persistence and toughness make anything possible.
LRC Boards: Video Of Tola DQ Surfaces *Video Link Tadese Tola was DQed for actions in the final meters of the Peachtree Race on July 4th. See for yourself.
*"Tola is not very efficient in his mechanics, so his arms were spinning left and right." Hussein Makke, agent of Tadese Tola, on why Tola hit a passing Boaz Cheboiywo in the final 20m of the Peachtree Road Race.
*Tadese
Tola Disputes Elbowing DQ - Watch Video For Yourself We think Cheboiywo definitely should have been awarded the place ahead of Tola; the DQ is a tougher decision. It's a harsh punishment to erase a hard 10k performance for a split-second decision in the final 5 seconds of the race, but you can't have people shoving each other around with thousands of dollars on the line, so we agree with the DQ.
LetsRun.com Goes Global LRC's Ethiopian Correspondent: Double Olympic Champ Tirunesh Dibaba Back In Training - Optimistic About Chances in Berlin Yes that's right. We now have an Ethiopian correspondent who periodically is going to give us insight on the stars from Ethiopia. In his first piece, he catches up with Dibaba at practice and also sees Sihine, Defar and others. Article + photos.
Meseret Defar 29:59 10k Super impressive effort. The Ethiopian 10k team at Worlds' worst runner will be a 30:11 10ker.
LRC: "The Only Thing More Boring Than Track? Field." Our sport, with Usain Bolt's stunning 19.59 in the rain, made SportsCenter this week and a lot of you weren't happy because the highlight was accompanied with the quote above. The quote was from former University of Missouri track and field captain and Sportscenter anchor John Anderson. The problem was, many of you thought it was from SportsCenter anchor Scott Van Pelt (SVP) and you directed your ire at him. In the end, SVP sent us a nice email clarifying things and even mentioned it on his radio show. We clean things up and discuss how boring our sport is.
Merritt vs. Wariner In Athens Monday Along With Kiprop In The 800m Finally the best 400m runners in the world will actually race one another, joined by FSU and Belgium star Jonathan Borlee, the 2009 NCAA champ. With several of the world's best half-milers injured, Asbel Kiprop might be able to pull off the 1500m/800m double in Berlin if he wanted to.
UK Champs *Results
Recommended Read: European #1 200-Man Started Track After Being Spotted Chasing A Bus In 2006! After the bus-chasing incident, England's Jeffrey Lawal-Balogun was convinced to come out to track practice and coaches had him run a 150m. He smoked everyone despite wearing trainers and never having trained
before. Now he has a 20.38 200m pb.
*Mark Lewis-Francis Glad To Be Back Running Again As Dwain Chambers Leads 100m Qualifiers
*UK Athletics Fighting Sponsor Battle With Athletes In Money Crunch
*Jessica Ennis On Top Of Heptathlete World
Oregon All-Comers Meet: Stephen Pifer Runs 3:38.06
End Of An Era
Dick Booth Let Go At Arkansas It only took one year, but now Arkansas is officially 100% Chris Bucknam's team. Without Booth, it seems like winning will be very hard.
*Message Board Thread
Tim Layden Of Sports Illustrated Lists His Top-10 Track And Field Moments Usain Bolt is only #7 so #'s 6 - 1 must be amazing.
World Games For Young People
*Kenyan Distance And Sprints Have Highlights At World Youths
*Japanese Women Sweep Half Marathon Medals At World University Games
Recommended Read: Fam On His Win-Win 5k Defeat At The USA Champs Anthony Famiglietti focuses on the process, not the result.
Recommended Read: Amazing Story Of Ultra Runner Diane Van Deren An excellent story from the New York Times on a woman whose brain surgery both strengthened and weakened her.
Brief Chat With Alberto Salazar's Newest Charge Dathan Ritzenhein Ritzenhein and family are moving again, this time to Portland to be with Salazar, where he will be focusing on the 10,000m world championships in the short term. Quite a good read.
Rupp Named ESPN The Magazine's All-Academic NCAA Athlete Of The Year His 3.89 GPA in business administration at Oregon made him the best academic/athletic combination in the NCAA.
Semi Running-Related
- Unusual News: 67- and 81-Year-Old Couple Bought California Property To Build Themselves A Pole Vault Pit Quote: "O'Connor, 67, and her partner, Held, 81, were looking for property two years ago that would allow them to build a pole-vaulting pit near their home in Del Mar - not for their grandchildren, not for their children, but for themselves."
- Science Today: Why Trying To Suppress Thoughts Doesn't Work, Sort Of When an athlete says, "No, I'm not thinking about the championships any differently than any other race," studies show that usually they're wrong.
- USA Today Story On Fired-Up Michael Phelps At American Championships Thank God they haven't invented some track suit that makes running easier as guys are PRing by 8 seconds in 2:00 events just by wearing a buoyant suit.
World Youth Championships (16&17 Year Olds)
- Travis Smikle Of Jamaica Wins Their First Ever Throwing Medal At World Youths
- Jamaica Loves The 6-Foot Shy 17-Year-Old Discus Thrower
World University Champs
- South Africans Boys Go 1,3 In 10k 28:20 was the winning time in a surprisingly fast race in Italy.
- Japanese Sprinters Take 2 Medals In 100m, Fall Short In Quick 10,000m
Somewhat Running-Related
- Wall Street Journal: Bad Economic Times Mean Good Marathon Times? Some laid off guys and gals and spending more time training and less time finishing marathons.
- NYC Marathon Spectator Had Her Wallet Stolen 27 Years Ago. So What? Well, It Was Just Found In A Central Park Tree Wacky.
- Big Brown's Trainer Rick Dutrow Finally Suspended For Illegal Use Of Clembuterol Dutrow pushes the steroid/EPO envelope in an industry that essentially requires it.
- USOC TV Channel To Debut In 2010 The channel will cover Olympic sports around the clock. Soon you'll never have to leave your living room couch!
Great Reads On Young Kenyan Stars
*Phil Minshull Of IAAF Sits Down With William Biwott Tanui, Who Says His World Junior Record Was Not A Surprise
*Good Article From Kenya On Their Lone 10k Entrant At Worlds, Linet Masai Masai is running great and somehow Kenya doesn't have another women's 10k runner to toe the line with her in Berlin.
US Athletes
- News We Missed: Ilsa Paulson Was First US Woman At Peachtree The former Oregon prep ran 90 seconds faster than she did last year to finish 13th overall.
- Super Prep Curtis Beach Blogs For Dyestat About Day With Doug Logan Gatorade Athlete of the Year Beach is US prep decathlon record holder.
Maggie Vessey's Win in Rome
Tyson Gay 9.77 Over Powell's 9.88
Usain Bolt 19.59 In The Rain!
The Only Must Read In The Industry
LRC Week In Review LetsRun.com's Rojo is on vacation so Employee #1 and Wejo take a crack at recapping the week's action on their own. Without Rojo's guidance, they discuss the important issues of the day like ultra running, the paralympics, and human psychology. But they do discuss what happens to junior miling phenoms, looking at the careers of Alex Kipchirchir and Alan Webb to give guidance to the latest sensation William Biwott Tanui, (aka WBT). Plus a 12-year-old girl runs 2:06, some training advice for everyone, Jordan Hasay, the Runner of the Week, and Ryan Hall's 4:41 mile with his dog. Plus we have an email from a race director to settle once and for all whether Usain Bolt is awesome or an ass.
US Officially Names Coaches For Berlin World Champs No offense to the coaches, but we could coach the team and it would probably do as well. The coaches at a global championship largely are ceremonial. The coaching that matters most is the private coaching leading up to the Games and USATF is letting our top coaches go to Britain.
Educate Yourself On the New Star Sammy Kitwara (Story And Interview Here) Or Watch Below
Great Resource For Kids
Carol Goodrow's Kids Running Log Your kids run a half mile, fill out the paper log, mail it in and get a free bookmark via Carol and USATF. Plus, there are a couple of good books for kid runners which we reviewed here and here.
Final Week To Sign Up
LetsRun.com Summer Training 2009 Program Originally designed for high schoolers but we've opened it up to everyone.