June 26, 2016 Homepage Archive

BAA 10k *Results

LRCPure Brilliance - Shalane Flanagan Runs 30:52 To Break American Record And Dominate B.A.A. 10K In Her Final Race Before Rio

Flanagan is on fire, and so is training partner Amy Cragg, who set another PR, and Dathan Ritzenhein returned with a good run.

Looking Ahead

AP Looks At The Biggest Stories At The US Olympic Trials, Which Start Next WeekAllyson Felix‘s quest for the double, Jenn Suhr‘s last hurrah, Marquise Goodwin‘s quest for gold, Molly Huddle‘s quest for redemption and Boris Berian running for whomever he pleases all make the list.
What’s Next For 19-Year-Old Justyn Knight After His Best-Ever 5,000m?
TFN Predicts Jamaica Will Win 11 Athletics Medals In Rio

Previous African ChampNews

African Champs: Semenya Rocks 1,500, 19-Year-Old Baboloki Thebe Shows He’s Legit And Wins 400 In 44.69 Thebe had run 44.24 earlier in the year at altitude but was only 6th at the Birmingham DL in his DL debut.
Pre-Race: Semenya Is Doubling At African Champs To See If She’ll Double In Rio

Previous Interesting Reads

RR Abrahamson: Connecting The Olympics With Brexit And The Rise Of Donald Trump
Toni Reavis: Are America’s Best Athletes Actually In Track And Field? We highly doubt it.
Say It Ain’t So Track & Field News Projects The US Will Win Zero Medals 800-Marathon In Both Genders In Rio

Nike Raised The White Flag

LRC David 1, Goliath 0: Nike Has Dropped Its Lawsuit Against Boris Berian Berian is now free to run for whomever he pleases at the 2016 US Olympic Trials.
*Keflezighi Tells Bloomberg Berian’s “First Preference” Is To Now Sign With New Balance

*Out Of The Goodness Of Their Hearts? Nike Says It Dropped Their Lawsuit To “Eliminate The Distraction” For Boris Berian Ahead Of The Trials We’re sure eliminating all the bad publicity was among the considerations as well.
*The Oregonian:“Nike, Facing Skeptical Judge, Drops Endorsement Lawsuit Against Berian” This a day after Nike told the federal court it would suffer “irreparable harm” if Berian went to NB.
*Ken Goe’s Take On The Case Before Nike Dropped The Suit“I don’t understand … why Nike wants to force Berian to stay in the fold if he doesn’t want to be there. Let him go.”

More Late-Week Action *Meeting Madrid Results

Meeting De Madrid Recap:Amel Tuka Wins 800 In 1:45.23, Beating Antoine Gakeme (1:45.24) And Mo AmanRosemary Almanza won the women’s 800 in 2:00.22. Venezuela’s world indoor champ Yulimar Rojas set a TJ NR with 15.02m.
*HepsTrack:Cornell Alum Bruno Hortelano Breaks Spanish NR With 10.06 The Iran NR also went down as Hassan Taftian won in 10.04.
African Championships Day 1-2 Recap:Ivory Coast Sweeps 100m With Murielle Ahoure (10.78) And Ben Youssef Meite (9.95) Breaking The Tape Kenya’s Margaret Chelimo took the 5K in 15:05 while SA’s Stephen Mokoka ran 28:02 to beat Kenya’s Wilfred Kimitei by only .21. *Live Results

Olympic News – Rio And Beyond

NY Times:“LeBron James Opts For Summer Vacation Instead Of Summer Olympics” He said, “I could use the rest.”
USA Today:Zika Among Reasons Many American Tourists Are Skipping Rio Games Original estimates had about 200,000 Americans expected to travel to Rio, but that number is now closer to 100,000.
NY Times:“As The Olympics Near, Brazil And Rio Let The Bad Times Roll” Another “doom and gloom” piece about how bad things are in Rio as they suffer from issues with the economy, political corruption and Zika.
Kuwait Launches $1 Billion Lawsuit Against The IOC Excluding Them From The Olympics The IOC suspended Kuwait for “undue government interference.”
Rome 2024 Dismisses Claims Bid Is In Danger As Result Of Virginia Raggi’s Election As Mayor Well, it definitely doesn’t help your bid when your mayor says you can’t afford it.

A Lot Being Made Over Whether Russian Flag Will Be In Rio

WADA President Craig Reedie Backs IAAF In Disagreement With IOC Over Whether Russians Should Compete As “Neutral” Athletes In Rio The IAAF are keen for neutral participation primarily in order to find a way for Yulia Stepanova to compete.
USA Today Writer Accuses Thomas Bach Of Appeasing Vladmir Putin Because Of Russian Money
Nancy Armour: “The IOC Caved”
USA Today Podcast:“Weighing In On IOC’s Softened Stance Towards Russia”

Once A Doper …

2008 Olympic Race Walk Champ Alex Schwazer Fails Drug Test Just 6 Weeks After Returning From 3+ Year Ban This from the guy who got his girlfriend banned for helping him evade drug tests and broke down in apologetic tears after testing positive in 2012. Pathetic.
*Schwazer Claims He Was Sabotaged, But Aussie Jared Tallent Isn’t Buying It Schwazer returned from his doping ban to beat Tallent at the World Race Walking Team Champs last month.
*AP article

Mid-Distance Stuff

Boris Berian Defense Fund Launched Berian and his team are trying to raise $25,000 for his legal fees to defend the lawsuit filed by Nike. The hearing scheduled for today in federal court got pushed back until tomorrow. Being in federal court sucks and is expensive.
After Not Getting The 1,500 Olympic Standard, Clayton Murphy Will Focus On Making Rio In The 800 However, he says he plans on also running the 1,500 even if he makes the team in the 800.
Emma Coburn To Be In ESPN’s Body Issue Comes out July 6th.
*MB:Emma Coburn is going to be in the ESPN body issue.
Q&A:Evan Jager Confident But Not Cocky Heading Into The Olympic Trials The qualifying round will only be his second steeple of the year, but Jager “feels really good” about his fitness right now.
High School 400H Record Setter Sydney McLaughlin Beats Out Kate Murphy (4:07 1,500) And Mikey Brannigan For USATF Athlete Of The Week Brannigan broke the Paralympic American record in the 800 with a 1:52.44.

What Makes Asbel Kiprop So Good? We Try To Tell You

LRCA Week With The World's Best Miler: An Exclusive Look At Asbel Kiprop's Last Two Workouts Before The Pre Classic

The Pre Classic is this weekend and the Bowerman Mile is LOADED with Olympic champ Taoufik Makhloufi, all three medalists from Worlds last year, plus studs like Matthew Centrowitz, Silas Kiplagat and Ayanleh Souleiman. But the headliner is Asbel Kiprop, and our man on the ground in Kenya, Andy Arnold, says hand him the victory and world record later this summer after getting a behind-the-scenes look at his preparation for Pre.
*MB: The secrets of Asbel Kiprop revealed - Our man on the ground in Kenya says hand him the gold and WRecord

LRC Matthew Centrowitz And Brittney Reese Go #1 Overall In 1st-Ever Professional Track And Field Draft Track and field has entered the modern world.

2016 USA Juniors *Schedule, Results And Streaming

Day 2 Sammy Watson Runs 1st Career 2:02 And Wins 800, Kate Murphy Beat Katie Rainsberger In 3k Plus the boys 800 is in the books as well as 5,000.
Day 1 Recap: Fiona O’Keeffe (15:56), Candace Hill (11.09) Set Meet Records On Day 1 The HSer O’Keeffe beat Notre Dame’s Anna Rohrer. Noah Lyles (10.08) won the men’s 100.
DyeStat’s List Of Who Made The US Team For 2016 World Juniors
DyeStat’s 10 Story Lines To Follow At 2016 USATF Juniors
A List Of All Collegians Competing At USATF Juniors

2016 British Championships / Trials Have Begun ResultsTV & Streaming

James Dasaolu Wins Historic 100 At British Champs 3 Brits broke 10.00 in the same race for the 1st time in history and two more ran 10.02. 38-year-old Dwain Chambers was 6th in 10.11.
British Athletics Recap Of Day 2 Of British Champs Sisters Tiffany Porter and Cindy Ofili went 1-2 in the hurdles, Tom Farrell booked a ticket to Rio as runner-up to Andrew Butchart in the 5,000.
Christine Ohuruogu Withdraws From British Championships With Virus She’s still expected to go to Rio.
Several Athletes At British Champs Complain That Britain May Break Up After Brexit You’d think they’d be for it as it would be way easier to make the Olympics for England than GB.
Jessica Ennis-Hill Did Well (3,990) On Day 1 Of Her 1st Multi Since Last Year’s Worlds Her total is 15 points less than what she scored in Beijing last year.
Athletics Weekly Preview Of The British Trials “Any athlete with two qualifying performances who finishes in the first two places is guaranteed selection for Rio, while there are also European Championships places available.

Sunday In Boston: 2016 BAA 10k With $10,000 For 1st Is Loaded With Flanagan, Cragg, Ritz, Abdi, Mutai, Edna Kiplagat And More Daniel Salel and Mary Wacera are the defending champs.
*IAAF Preview
*Ritz Would Like To Run Under 28:15

Doping News

Q&A With David Torrence About What He Found Suspect About Jama Aden’s Group
Ethiopia Reminds Everyone That Jama Aden Had No Relationship With Its Athletics Federation
WADA Suspends Accreditation Of Rio Anti-Doping Laboratory With Less Than Two Months Until Olympic Games It’s not a big deal, as for the Brazil World Cup, the doping samples can be shipped overseas, but it is embarrassing for the cash-strapped Brazil, which spent $60 million on training people and retrofitting the facility. *NY Times

Random

Amazing:Catching UpWith World Mountain Champion Annie Conway, Who Had Never Run Until 6 Years Ago
Analysts Are Bearish On Nike Stock, Which Is Already Down 16% This Year Don’t feel too bad for them, they are planning on increasing their sales from $30 billion to $50 billion by 2020.
Brazil Has Passed Laws Outlawing “Ambush Marketing” At The Olympics
2004 Olympic Hammer Champ Koji Murofushi, 41, Only Finishes 12th At Japanese Champs, Likely Will Re-Retire He had come out of retirement to seek a 5th Olympics.
Donavan Brazier, Edward Cheserek And Jarrion Lawson Are Men’s Finalists For 2016 Bowerman Award

US Distance News

Worth A Read:Drew Hunter Is Recovering From A Bout With Lyme Disease Hunter was dealing with the effects when he ran 3:58 at the Bowerman mile, but didn’t know he had Lyme. Might he go pro straight out of HS?
Luke Puskedra Shares Good News As His Baby Daughter Is In Remission From The Childhood Cancer Neuroblastoma She received two rounds of chemo, but now doesn’t need any additional treatment. Puskedra says he’ll race Chicago in the fall.

Junior / NCAA News: 2016 USATF Juniors Live Results Meet Home With Schedule, Entries And Other Info

DyeStat USATF Junior Champs Preview: 10 Storylines To Follow The girls 1,500 will be great with Alexa Efraimson, Kate Murphy and Christina Aragon.
12-Year-Old Grace Ping Runs Two Single-Age Group World Bests At 5,000m And 2 Miles Ping, who recently started being coached by Tom “Tinman” Schwartz (Drew Hunter‘s coach) ran 16:44 and 10:28.
Eight Medalists (Four Champions) From Last Year’s World Youth Champs Lead Kenyan Team For World Juniors They actually have several sprinters on the men’s side.
Chilean Thrower Natalia Duco Reminisces About Winning SP Gold At The 2008 World Junior Champs Duco went on to finish 9th at the 2012 Olympics.
Courtney Okolo, Keturah Orji And Raven Saunders Are Women’s Bowerman Award Finalists

The 2nd-Fastest Man In World History Is On The Comeback Trail

LRCThe Rebirth Of Yohan Blake

Last year, on the comeback trail after hamstring surgery, Yohan Blake, the second-fastest man in history, was running and losing "B" heats in Europe. Now, the man formerly known as "The Beast" is back in form, having exorcised his demons. "The nickname was holding me back. I keep on getting injured and it was related to the beasts in the Bible ... God didn't like it, so I had to change it."

The Latest Russian Doping Updates

IAAF Publishes Its “Exceptional Eligibility Guidelines” By Which Select Individual Russian Athletes Can Regain Eligibility
*Full PDF Document Many factors will be considered including past doping history, association with banned coaches and doctors and having testing outside of Russia.
Yelena Isinbayeva “Optimistic” Of Competing At Rio 2016 After IOC Decision Saying Russians Can Compete Under Their Own Flag
Russian Athletes To File Class Action With CAS Next Week The Russian Athletics Federation has hired a group of lawyers to work for them.
Alan Abrahmson Blogs Against The Russian Ban: “Guilt By Association Is Not Cool” Supporters of the ban might argue it’s not guilt by association, rather guilty until proven innocent.
Russia, Kazakhstan And Belarus Weightlifting Teams Could Be Banned From Rio The International Weightlifting Federation said it would ban any national federation that had three or more doping positives from 2008 and 2012 re-tests.
Vitaly Mutko Calls Weightlifting Ban A “Psychotic Episode”
CAS To Consider Russian Weightlifting Bans On July 6th

Distance / Mid-D News

Good Read:Even After Running 4:07, Kate Murphy Says She “Has A Lot More Left” And Can Go Faster With Competition The HS junior will line up at this weekend’s US Junior Champs before running the OT next week.
RRW:Mary Keitany Gets Back In Action at Mattoni Olomouc Half-Marathon on Saturday Keitany was named as a reserve for the Kenyan Rio marathon squad, but she revealed that the team might not be finalized yet with another decision coming July 1st.
David Rudisha Was Inspired By His Olympic Silver Medal Winning Father, But Is Having More Trouble With His Own Kids Rudisha admits that his daughter told her, “Dad, I don’t like running,” but she likes to imitate his drills and exercises so there is hope for her yet.
Runner’s World Looks At The Rise Of Sacral Stress Fractures Among Elite RunnersMolly Seidel, Ryan Vail, Kara Goucher, Emily Infeld and Tim Ritchie are some of pros who’ve been afflicted with this slow-healing injury.
Three Things You Didn’t Know About Jenny Simpson Simpson admits to hardly knowing her PRs and often accidentally giving stats in interviews that are incorrect.
Kenyan Junior Championships In The Books Some winning highlights included Kipyegon Bett‘s 1:44.4 and Rodgers Chumos‘ 28:26. *Results

LetsJump.com

Recommended Read:Bills WR Marquise Goodwin Doing Everything He Can To Be In Gold Medal Contention In Rio Even If It Means Risking His NFL Career Goodwin will miss pre-season training, is eating an organic and vegan diet to slim down for track and says it “confuses the hell out of him” why he can’t get a sponsor.
Yelena Isinbayeva Sets Pole Vault World Lead In Her First Competition Since 2013 She cleared 4.90m to win Russian Champs.
Sandi Morris Recovering Quickly From Breaking Her Wrist Last Month She’s been doing modified training avoiding using her left hand and still hopes to make the team for Rio.
2012 Olympic Long Jumper George Kitchens Arrested For “Committing Terroristic Threats And Acts” Kitchens barricaded himself in his home after threatening to harm himself and his family.

Stumptown Twilight *Results

LRCJustyn Knight Outkicks Galen Rupp, Former NCAA Stars Greer, Fleet, Wheating, Soratos Come Up Short, Centro Is Back And Is Mary Cain As Well? Galen Rupp lost in the 5,000, beaten by Knight and Woody Kincaid. Centrowitz crushed everyone in the 1,500 as Andrew Wheating ran 3:40, Edward Cheserek 3:41 and Mary Cain 4:13. Becky Wade didn’t get the USA qualifier in the steeple.

LRC Mary Cain: “The reason I’m relaxed is I’m finally in a place where I see it’s going to happen again … I know it’s going to happen and I know it’s going to be better than 4:03.” Cain talks like she’s definitely on the way back.

LRC Andrew Wheating: “Eight years ago I was just a boy, now I’m a man taking a different approach.”

LRCVideos: Centro, Cain, Justyn Knight, Wheating, Quigley, Cuffe, Soratos And Kincaid Talk After Portland Stumptown Twilight Meet

What Are The Toughest National Teams To Make For Rio? USA women’s 100 hurdles tops the list with 37 women who have the Olympic qualifying standard. Kenya’s men’s marathon and Ethiopia’s women’s 5,000 squad also make the list.

Doping Updates

Kenyan President Signs Anti-Doping Measures Into Law To Avoid Olympic Ban
Banned Turkish 1,500 Olympic Champ Runner Asli Cakir Alptekin Wants Her Doping Ban Cut For Providing Evidence About The IAAF Blackmail Attempt Her appeal to try to “stop” her 8-year ban is on July 4th.
The Guardian Article On Russian/Kenyan Individual Application Process To Be Cleared For Rio

Random Road Race Stuff

Interesting Case:Marathon Investigator Derek Murphy Goes The Opposite Route And Helps A Marathoner Get Un-Disqualified From The London Marathon London organizers DQed the 18-year-old runner for missing a timing mat, but Murphy helped prove it was a chip malfunction.
Are Beer Mile Races Risking Lawsuits? Two competing beer mile series don’t penalize runners for not finishing their beers or even for skipping the drinks altogether.

WADA Head Craig Reedie Catching Flack

Handwritten Letter From WADA President Craig Reedie To Sergey Bubka Suggests Questionable Motivation To Expose Cheats Reedie is getting a lot of criticism after the note made him appear more concerned with “damage” to the sport’s image rather than fighting corruption.
The Independent: WADA Defends Craig Reedie After Secret Note Revealed A spokesperson said Reedie never meant to imply he “wouldn’t want doping issues to be exposed.”

Jama Aden Doping Updates

Judge Takes Jama Aden’s Passport And Requires Him To Return To Court In One Month(translated)
Ayanleh Souleiman Says Jama Aden Was Released “Free Of Charge”“My coach and fellow teammate were taken from us and we were saddened as the world turned against us. However, I can safely say that none of the athletes on the team had been doped …”
*MB:Jama Aden and athlete set free with no charges?
Qatar’s 1:43 800 Runner Musaeb Abdulrahman Balla Arrested In Connection With Jama Aden Balla was 5th at Portland World Indoors and 6th at Beijing Worlds last year.
*MB:First Aden athlete arrested
Ethiopian Federation Says Genzebe Dibaba Hasn’t Reported To Them Why She’s Been Pulling Out Of Meets They said she’d be on the team for Rio “if her results meet the minimum criteria.”

Jama Aden Gets Arrested

LRC Jama Aden Doping Raid Update: How Might The Raid Impact Mo Farah, The Dibabas And Nike?Today, we look at some of the connections between Aden and the sport’s biggest names like Genzebe Dibaba, Tirunesh Dibaba, Mo Farah, and Nike and wonder what type of impact, if any, the scandal will have on them. We also reveal for the first time in the English press that Mo Farah trained in Sansabell, Spain in 2014, a fact his agent didn’t even know, but claimed to be more than 100 miles away in France. Why?

LRC Everything You Need To Know About The Jama Aden Doping Raid That Took Place With Three Dibaba Sisters Being Present We give you the scoop on the biggest doping scandal in distance running’s history and the biggest non-country-related (i.e. Russia) doping scandal since BALCO. In the near future, we’ll have much more for you, including “What does this mean for Nike, Mo Farah and Alberto Salazar, who all have ties to Aden?”