September 19, 2015 Homepage Archive

Hard To Believe, But It’s True

LRC Investigates Defying His Drug Ban, Banned Doper Continues To Coach At UVA – Gets Honored By Coaches Association As Regional Coach Of The Year A person serving a doping ban is supposed to be forbidden from all track and field activity during that ban. Any athlete working with him or her is subject to their own ban. Yet in Charlottesville, VA, banned Olympian Martin Maric has been coaching collegians for more than year. Amazingly, the coaches association thought it was a good idea to honor him as the regional coach of the year.
*MB: UVA Coach Serving Doping Suspension

More Drug News: David Epstein: Average Guys Who Just Want To Have Bigger Muscles Drive The Steroid Business

Legends In The News

Former Arkansas Razorback Great Niall O’Shaughnessy Passes Away At 59 He ran 3:55 way back in 1977. John McDonnell: “He truly was the ultimate teammate and one of the finest I have ever coached. He helped start the winning tradition at Arkansas.”
*Recommonded Read: Former 2-time world indoor 3k champ Frank O’Mara’s tribute to Irish mile legend O’Shaughnessy O’Shaughnessy walked away from the sport and declined a spot in the 1980 Olympics to focus on engineering.
*MB: RIP – Niall O’Shaughnessy
Free History Lesson Checking In With The Chairman Of The Boards – The Legendary Miler, Now Graceful Ambassador For The Sport – Eamonn Coghlan What a career. So many Millrose victories, the first sub-3:50 indoors, the first world title at 5,000 and the first sub-40 by a 40-year-old.
Columnist Is Mad Stadium Is Being Named After Usain Bolt In Jamaica “Why is there such an unholy haste to name things after athletes who are still competing and are not even 30 years old as yet?”

Odds And Ends

Dutee Chand Clinches Gold In National Open Athletics In India In “Women’s” 100 She only clocked 11.68 seconds, not far off her 11.62 PR.
30k Japanese Road Race To Offer $16,000 Bonus For New Course Record By A Japanese Citizen

News From Kenya

Geoffrey Mutai And Wesley Korir Are Running Half Marathon In Kenya This Weekend First place is $1,421.79.
Geoffrey Kamworor Will Race XC Meet In Kenya On October 4th As Part Of NYC Marathon Preview
Edna Kiplagat To Defend Her Title At The Great Scottish Run On October 4th
*It’s Haile G’s Last Competitive Race And You Could Start With Him All you have to do is submit your question for Haile and if it’s picked, you start with Gebrselassie.

US Pro News

Sarah Brown Is Pregnant And Due March 2016 She admits this wasn’t a planned pregnancy as it will obviously impact her buildup for the 2016 Olympic Trials, but she plans on still competing for an Olympic spot.
*MB:Sarah (Bowman) Brown Pregnant – Baby due March 2016
LRC Weekend Result We Missed: 2015 DécaNation Results: Donn Cabral And Katie Mackey Get Wins To Help Team USA Take The Overall Title Cabral won the steeple and Mackey the 1,500. Robby Andrews and Chanelle Price were both runners-up in the 800.
Nick Symmonds Does Video Interview With Universal Sports’ Podium 360 About USATF Nike Gear Dispute

2015 NCAA XC *This Weekend’s Results

LRC Women’s Pre-Season Rankings

LRC 2015 Women’s XC Preview: #1 New Mexico And #2 Colorado Colorado adds a ton of reinforcements, including redshirts Carrie Verdon and Melanie Nun and stud freshmen Brianna Schwartz and Dani Jones. However, none of those additions can match New Mexico’s acquisition of Courtney Frerichs (13th last year for UMKC) and Scot Rhona Auckland. Auckland was top 20 at 2015 World XC in the pro race and could put the Lobos over the top in their quest for the program’s first national title.
*#3 Stanford And #4 Georgetown
*#5 Oregon And #6 Iowa State
*#7 Providence And #8 Michigan State
*#9 Michigan And #10 Arkansas

Women In The News

Genzebe Dibaba Says She’s Planning On Doing 1,500/3k Double At World Indoors But Won’t Double In Rio In Rio, the 5,000 heats are the same day as the 1,500 final. We think she’s so good the 5,000 heats wouldn’t deny her gold in the 1,500.
Lauren Fleshman Has Achilles Tendon Surgery And Is Thrilled – “I feel 100% confident I am on the right path to running pain free and fast again.”
Fiona Benson Thinks She’ll Ultimately Focus On The 1,500 As It’s Her Favorite
After Appearing In ESPN Body Magazine, US Olympic Hammer Thrower Amanda Bingson Is Now Starring In Plus-Size Photo Shoots

Odds & Ends

Wayde van Niekerk Actually Got A Big Airport Reception Upon Return Home The article on the irate Facebook poster got it wrong as Wayde was simply connecting flights at the first airport.
New Balance Opens New World Headquarters At Boston Landing*AP
Firm That Designed Initial Tokyo 2020 Olympic Stadium Pulls Out Of Redesign Contest As It Can’t Find A Construction Firm To Do It Cheaply
Study: A Single Ankle Sprain Can Haunt You For Life Not sure what you are supposed to do with that info.

Olympics – Boston May Not Have Wanted Them, But LA Hopes To Turn A Profit

Why Los Angeles Might Actually Make Money Hosting The 2024 Olympics The key is expenses will be low – $4.1 billion dollars – much less than London’s $10.4 billion and Beijing’s $44 billion.
Swimming Federation Is Unhappy Rio Organizers Have Reduced Capacity Of Pool From 17,500 To 13,000 “Providing less available space for TV, media, athletes and spectators, this will naturally have its negative impact in terms of the coverage of the Olympic competition and in terms of working conditions for all those using the venue.”

News From Europe

Former FSU Star Susan Kuijken Admits She’s Not Actually Dutch Royalty She had told people (as a joke) she was at FSU and it stuck.
2015 World Mountain Running Champs Are Saturday In GBR – Race Previews
*British Champ Sarah Tunstall Says Brits Are Stronger Than Ever

All-African Games *Full Results

Kenya Beats Botswana For 4 X 400 Gold In 3:00.34
Alice Aprot, Younger Sister Of former World XC Champ Joseph Ebuya, Wins Surprise Gold In Women’s 10,000 At African Champs She wasn’t even entered in the event but took home gold, as did Nijel Amos in the men’s 800.
Isaac Makwala Wins African Games 400 In 44.35
IAAF Recap:First 3 Days Of All-African Games In The Books: Ben Youssef Meite (10.04) And Marie-Josee Ta Lou (11.02) Dominate The 100m For The Ivory CoastMekonen Gebremedhin (1,500) and Tsebelu Zewude (10,000) get wins for Ethiopia. Sofia Assefa and Hiwot Ayalew also went 1-2 for Ethiopia in the steeple.
Caster Semenya Wins 800 Handily At African Champs Second place was more than a half second back as she ran 2:00.97.
Kenya Sweeps Women’s 5,000 Medals At African Champs And Takes Top 2 In Men’s SteepleMargaret Chelimo and Clement Kemboi were the winners.
South Africa’s Friedrich Pretorius Shows Guts In Winning Decathlon Bronze At African Games Pretorius wanted to quit after a day in a competition that saw brutal heat and up to 8 athletes having to share one pole in the PV, but came through with the bronze.

Long Live Soft Surfaced Trails: Runners Limit Paving Of Towpath In Central New York After Protests Most of the 4.5 mile trail was still paved, but 1.6 was left untouched.

Olympic News

IOC President Thomas Bach Confirms Five Cities Bidding For 2024 Games – LA, Rome, Paris, Budapest, Hamburg A final decision will be made in September 2017.
USA Today Opinion Piece: “Why The Olympics Will Come Back To The United States In 2024” Get the low-down on each city and why LA should win.
Joint Decision Made Between Baku And IOC Not To Bid For 2024 Olympics – But Possibility Remains For 2028
Tokyo 2020 Appoints Committee To Select A New Olympic Logo

This Weekend’s Road Action

Sunday: LRC2015 US Road 5k Champs Feature Loaded Fields – Watch It Live Sunday At 11am ET The names are big – Flanagan, Huddle, Sisson, Conley and others for the women – Estrada, Huling, Chelanga, Torrence and others for the men. The men also features three names that would have crashed our website had this taken place 5 years ago – Ritz, Solinsky and Fernandez.
*Q&A With New New Balance Pro Emily Sisson
Sunday: After DNF At Worlds, Wilson Kipsang Says He’s Ready To Run And Win Dam tot Damloop 10-Mile Race Update: Galen Rupp is now out of the race. *MB:Rupp out of Amsterdam 10 mile.
Oljira The Favorite For Bogota’s Carrera de la Mujer
New Champions To Be Crowned At The Beijing International Marathon

News From Canada

Canada’s Shawn Barber Explains Why He Decided To Turn Professional Following Pole Vault Gold At World Championships He’d done it all at the NCAA level and won Canada’s first gold at Worlds since 1993.
A Review Of Matt Hughes’s Excellent 2015 Season The 8th placer at Worlds in the steeple did everything but improve his steeple PR.

News From Jamaica

Usain Bolt Donates $10,000 And Equipment To His Old School In JamaicaIt sounds much more impressive in Jamaican currency as that’s $1.3 million Jamaican.
18-Year-Old Martin Manley Goes Pro He ran 45.89 in 2013 age age 16 but only 46.41 this year.
Who Is Jamaica’s Female Athlete Of The Year? We assume it will be SAFP but 100H champ Danielle Williams had a great year.
Warren Weir Reflects On Injury-Plagued Year But Vows He’ll Have Big 2016

More Sprint News

South Africa’s Wade van Niekerk – 43.38 PR – Returns Home To South Africa To Reception By Zero Media And Fans – Only His Mom Showed Blame his agent?

2015 TCS New York City Marathon

2015 TCS New York City Marathon Women’s Field Released – Mary Keitany Headlines, Sally Kipyego (And Laura Thweatt) To Debut The defending champ is back to take on a field that features three sub-2:20 women and 10 sub-2:25 women, double the 5 sub-2:25 women in Chicago.
*Men: Wilson Kipsang And Meb Keflezighi Lead Men’s Field For 2015 TCS New York City Marathon

Week That Was

LRCPaula's Blood Values, Asafa Powell's 100th Sub-10, Doping, Animal House And Nike, Props To The NYRR And Kyle Merber, Knockout Races And More

We had the Diamond League finale and the 5th Avenue Mile last week, but there was a ton of other interesting news and we break it down for you.

The Integrity Of The Sport Is At Stake – Mike Rossi Is A Marathon Cheat And Should Have Been DQed From The 2014 Lehigh Valley Marathon

Lehigh Valley Got It Wrong: The Evidence Is Conclusive: Mike Rossi – The Viral Boston Marathon Dad – Is A Marathon Cheat And Should Never Have Been On The Starting Line In Boston In April, Mike Rossi gained international fame for his snarky response to a letter from his kids’ principal scolding him for taking them out of school for several days to watch Boston. A LetsRun.com investigation has revealed that Rossi’s principal was correct, the kids should never have been in Boston as the evidence is conclusive – their father didn’t legitimately qualify for the 2015 Boston Marathon. How confident are we that Rossi cut the course when he “ran” his 3:11:45 BQ qualifier at Lehigh Valley? Extremely. We’ll pay Mike Rossi $10,000 if he qualifies again in the next 12 months – and the qualifying time is 13+ minutes slower – 3:25.
*MB: Did Mike Rossi (viral marathon dad) cheat his way into Boston?