November 6, 2016 | LetsRun.com

2016 TCS NYC Marathon Tracking & Live Results TV & Streaming Info Men’s Preview Pt. I & Pt. II Women’s Preview Pt. I & Pt. II

MB: Official 2016 TCS New York City Marathon Live Discussion Thread

LRC Defending Champion Stanley Biwott Drops Out Just Before 15k

LRC “We Are Clean” – Dr. Gabriele Rosa Talks About Turning Stanley Biwott And Jemima Sumgong Into Marathon Stars And Doping In Kenya The 74-year-old is thriving after coming out of a mini-retirement. Want the inside scoop on doping (or the lack thereof) in Kenya? Read this.

International Men’s Press Conference LRC Stanley Biwott Is Ready To Repeat, Lelisa Desisa Is Feeling Fresher Than Ever And Ghirmay Ghebreslassie Compares The Olympics To A Long Training Run Winning an Olympic medal is the ultimate dream for most runners but Ghirmay Ghebreslassie said it felt like a long training run.

International Women:
LRC Mary Keitany Has No Idea How Many Miles She Runs But Is Ready, Sally Kipyego Ready For Marathon #2, Lanni Marchant Has Recovered From Olympic Double With Burgers And Beers, Diane Nukuri Keeps Getting Better

US Men’s Press Conference LRC Ritz Is Running To Win, Abdi Is On The LRC Training Plan & 5 More Observations From Talking To The Top U.S. Men In New York Also included: Meb Keflezighi (who is not running NYC) discussing his recent problems throwing up in races.

US Women’s Press Conference LRC Molly Huddle Isn’t Dreaming Of The Win, Kim Conley Loves Marathon Training, Kids Are Slowing Sara Hall Down And 3 More Observations From Talking To The Top U.S. Women In New York

Complete Coverage in our 2016 NYC Marathon Special Section

Sports Admin / Politics

Who Could Be Better? Halie Gebrselassie Running For Ethiopian Athletics Federation President Elections take place tomorrow.
*Seb Coe Backs Halie G For President
USA Today: There Is Concern A Trump Persidency Would Hurt LA’s Olympic Bid Chances Four IOC members spoke on the condition of anonymity and said a Trump victory would be a “catastrophe” for LA.
New “Revolutionary” Ranking System To Be Implemented For Qualifying For European Championships Rather than time/distance standards, qualification will be based on head-to-head results and will require athletes to compete more often. Interesting concept, but might it just see some of the biggest stars skipping European Champs?
Yes, This Is Still Going On: Prosecutors’ Appeal Against Oscar Pistirous 6-Year Jail Sentence To Be Heard In Open Court
Russian Athletics Federation President Dmitry Shlyakhtin Hopeful Russia Will Be Cleared In Time For Euro Indoors In March He might not even be the president by then though as Yelena Isinbayeva will challenge him in an election on December 9th.
Parliamentary Committee Report On NOCK Rio Scandal Will Be Heard On November 15th The Kenyan Olympic Committee is still disbanded, but new elections and a new constitution are planed before the end of the year.
Tokyo Government Task Force Blames Huge Olympic Budget On Lack Of Leadership Apparently there is no one in charge with the authority to manage the budget.

More NYC

Recommended Read: The New Yorker: George A. Hirsch Gives A First-Hand Account Of The Founding And Running Of The First NYC Marathon Frank Shorter having to hitchhike and Bill Rodgers having to get his car out of a police impound after the race are just a couple of the interesting insights into the “first five-borough” marathon.
Pretty Cool: 2:17 Marathoner (15th Place In Boston) Harbert Okuti Is A Psychology Researcher Studying The Mental Side Of The Marathon Okuti will get some first hand research done on Sunday as he shoots to break 2:17 in NYC.
Daily Relay Q&A With Kim Conley Ahead Of Her Marathon Debut Conley ran every part of the course except the first 8 miles when she visited last month.
RW Infographic Comparing The Best Performances Of Molly Huddle, Deena Kastor And Shalane Flanagan The three stack up pretty evenly, which bodes well for Huddle’s debut … although Kastor crushes the other two in road race earnings, which is not surprising as she had almost a decade head start.
Forecast Still Looking Good For Sunday, Although It Might Be Windy A low of 48 and high of 59 is decent temperatures, but there could be gusts up to 20 mph.
USA Today: Mary Keitany Chases Piece Of NYC Marathon History She’ll try to become only the third woman (after Grete Waitz and Paula Radcliffe) to win three or more NYC Marathons.
Apparently Celebrity Chefs Also Love Running Marathons Four will be in NYC on Sunday.

Doping News

CAS Sets Hearing Dates For Papa Massata Diack, Former IAAF Treasurer Valentin Balakhnichev And Russian Coach Alexei Melnikov The three will appeal their lifetime bans from the sport on November 14-17th.
Russian Parliament Approves Anti-Doping Bill Which Criminalizes Doping The bill introduces prison terms and large fines for coaches/doctors found guilty of encouraging their athletes to take PEDs.
More Than 4 Years Later, Irish Racewalker Rob Heffernan Finally Receives His 2012 Olympic Bronze Heffernan finished 4th in the 50K race walk, but was elevated when a Russian tested positive.
RRW: Cubs Magic On Their Minds, Craig Leon & Molly Huddle Ready for TCS NYC Marathon Leon is a lifetime Cubs fan and said he will try to emulate their team motto on Sunday which is, “‘We never quit’ and ‘Try not to suck!'”
NY Times: “Russian Sports Agent And U.S. Marathon Officials Under Federal Investigation” The FBI suspects that Russian agent Andrey Baranov may have bribed US marathon organizers (including NYC Marathon officials) to allow his athletes to use PEDs at their events. Baranov is the agent who last year complained that he could get his clients into many big city marathons, but not NYC.

College / HS News

Updated Men’s D1 Poll Has NAU Still Ranked #1 With Colorado Moving From 7th To 2nd BYU, Stanford and Syracuse fill ranks 3-5.
Women’s D1 Coaches’ Poll Still Has Colorado Ranked #1 With NC State Moving Into #2 Providence, Washington and Michigan are 3-5.
Debate: Does Title IX Need Reform? Read two arguments, one for and one against reforming Title IX. We’d say it could definitely use an update as things are a bit different now than 1972.
High Schooler With Autism Assaulted During XC Race Apparently the man who shoved him thought he was trying to take his wife’s purse. *MB Thread
*USA Today: After Judge Initially Denied Application, Warrant Issued For Man’s Arrest
Edward Cheserek Named PAC-12 Athlete Of The Year After Becoming First To Win Four PAC-12 XC Titles The women’s athlete of the year was Washington’s Amy-Eloise Neal.

Small Russian Doping Updates

Russian Parliament To Consider Proposed Bill Which Would Criminalize Doping At least they’re acting like they’re trying to clean up doping.
Russian Bobsled Federation President Dismisses Claims World Championships Should Be Moved As Call For Boycott Grows Some athletes have threatened a boycott as Worlds is there next year despite Russia not having a working anti-doping agency.

Previous NYC Marathon Headlines

Good Read: Deena Kastor, Kara Goucher And Shalane Flanagan Talk About “The Magic” Of Making Their Marathon Debuts At NYC They each reminisce about their debut and share some pointers for the next class of marathon debutantes, Molly Huddle and Kim Conley.
NYC Marathon Forecast Calling For Good Conditions A low of 45 and a high of 54 with partly cloudy skies.
Chris Chavez Writes About Running The NYC Marathon From The Perspective Of A Spectator, Runner And Journalist

Cheats Of All Kinds In The News

43-Year-Old Kenyan “Wins” Nairobi Half Marathon After Jumping Into The Race At The End John Mwangi Nyaruai broke the finish tape, but thankfully was exposed as a cheat and DQed.
Pathetic: After Being Caught Doping, Rather Than Return Her 2008 Olympic Silver Medal, Cuban Discus Thrower Yarelys Barrios Appears To Have Sold It On Ebay For $11,655 Barrios was caught in this summer’s doping re-tests of frozen samples.
Writer From The Guardian Rips The IOC For Their Reaction To The Independent Anti-Doping Report From RIo 2016 Ridiculously, the IOC ignored the many downfalls and negative takeaways and came out with a statement praising the “successful anti-doping program” in Rio.
WADA President Craig Reedie Calls Independent Anti-Doping Report From Rio “Alarming” The report found that more than a third of the athletes in Rio hadn’t been tested once in 2016.
Russian HJer Anna Chicherova Appealing Against IOC Decision To Strip Her Beijing 2008 Bronze Medal Chicherova, the London 2012 Olympic champ, was caught in re-tests of her frozen samples.
Over-Dependence On Government Funding Identified As Key Reason For Kenyan Rio 2016 Corruption A report claims that key government officials lobbied for paid positions on the Kenyan Olympic Committee thanks to the amount of money they had given.

RRW Do nn Cabral, Bjerkeli Grøvdal, Win Abbott Dash To The Finish Line 5-K Eric Jenkins only ran 15:07 and Mary Cain only ran 16:32.

International Distance News

Halie Gebrselassie Elected New Ethiopian Athletics Federation President Great news, but unfortunately it came too late to save Kenenisa Bekele‘s 2016 Olympic ambitions.
November 13: Imane Merga And All Three 2015 World XC Women’s Medalists Lead Fields For Cross de Atapuerca XC Meet In Spain World XC Champ Agnes Tirop and bronze and silver medalists Senbere Teferi and Netsanet Gudeta will get a World XC rematch.
Athletics Weekly Recap English XC Relays Olympians Steph Twell, Laura Weightman and Andy Vernon competed.

More NYC Coverage

Recommended Read: “A Former NYC Marathon Champion-Turned Cabbie Struggles To Get His Family Out Of Strife-Ridden Ethiopia” Tesfaye Jifar won NYC with a CR in 2001, but now he works up to 16-hours a day as a cab driver in Boston, waiting for his wife and children to get their visas approved to join him in the US.
The NY Times Breaks Down The NYC Marathon Course Mile-By-Mile
Running Cartoon In The New Yorker: “A Somewhat Accurate Guide To The Marathon”
Top Americans Share The Hardest Workouts They Did Ahead Of The NYC Marathon Check out these impressive workouts by Molly Huddle, Dathan Ritzenhein, Kim Conley and more.
Why Did American Men Run Faster In New York Decades Ago? Five of the nine fastest US times were in the 1980s or before and the other four are Meb Keflezighi‘s. Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar, and Ken Martin theorize why.
Good Read: AP: “NYC’s 5-borough marathon reaches milestone 40th anniversary” NYRR chairman of the board George Hirsch talks about giving “under the table” payments to Bill Rodgersand Frank Shorter since back then you had to maintain your “amateur” status.
Sally Kipyego Says DNFing New York Last Year “Inspired” Her To Do Another One “It made me realize this in not a 10K. You can’t just come in with running 80 or 70 miles [per week] and get away with it.”
NYC Course Record Map See the breakdown of Geoffrey Mutai‘s 2:05:06 from 2011 in terms of pace, elevation and position on the course.
RRW: Four Years On, Tim Ritchie Energized for TCS NYC Marathon Debut Ritchie is hoping the third time’s the charm after missing the 2012 and 2014 NYC Marathons due to Hurricane Sandy and a stress fracture.
RRW: Loving The Marathon, Sara Hall Ready To Tackle NYC Hall explains how a freak knee injury in 2012 set her on the path towards the roads and the marathon.

The Past, Present And Future Of Sprinting

+1 For The Sport: Usain Bolt Spearheading New Nitro Athletics Track Meet In Melbourne, Australia This February Bolt will captain the “Bolt All-Stars” as six teams of 24 athletes compete for the overall team title in a slew of traditional and unique track events.
*IAAF Article This will be Bolt’s first-ever race in Australia.
New York Post: “Usain Bolt’s Halloween – Women, Twerking And A Drug Test” Bolt had a typical “Bolt like” holiday, sending out pictures of himself with some female friends as well as a doping control form.
Andre De Grasse Hopes Bolt Reconsiders Retiring After 2017 “I love racing with him and he makes me better.”
IAAF First Impressions Q&A With Andre De Grasse You’ve all seen Centro’s tattoo, but you might not know De Grasse has his mom’s name tattooed on his chest.
“Did You Know” Interview With Andre De Grasse De Grasse talks about music/learning the piano, jewelry and his personality type.

Previous NYC Headlines

After A Heartbreaking DNF At The Olympic Trials, Dathan Ritzenhein Shooting For A Podium Finish At NYC Ritz says his fitness is “as good as ever” and wants a top-3 finish. He also says the 2020 Games are still a possibility for him.
Good Read: WSJ: “Why Marathons Are Tougher Than Triathlons” Since winning Olympic gold in Rio, triathlete Gwen Jorgensen has been training for her marathon debut in NYC. While she’s not making any bold predictions, it’ll be interesting to see how she fares.
Gwen Jorgensen’s Longest Run Training For NYC Has Been 16 Miles And She Has “No Idea” At What Pace She’ll Go Out In her buildup, Jorgensen ran 3 x 7K at just under 5:40 pace (2:29 marathon pace) and her 3rd place finish time at the USA 10 Mile Champs is worth about a 2:29:23.

Team GB News

Interesting Read: The Telegraph: “Where Do British Olympians Go After Glory? To A Unique Kind Of Job Fair” The “Athletes Future” job fair helps retiring Olympians figure out after a lifetime of sports “what the hell they’re going to do next.”
Former World Indoor Champion Sprinter Jamie Baulch Says Don’t Write Off 400 Hurdler Dai Green Just Because He Lost His Funding “I’ve seen it time and time again when lottery funding gets stripped from an athlete and a year later they come out and run better than ever. Talent doesn’t go anywhere.”
Brits Adam Gemili And Katarina Johnson-Thompson Still Searching For New Coaches They each left their UK-based coaches after last season and are considering moving to the US. *2nd Article
Young Heptathlon Duo Ready To Take Over For Retiring Jessica Ennis-Hill 23-year-old Katarina Johnson-Thompson and 19-year-old Morgan Lake have potential, but will need to step up a lot if they’re going to get to Ennis-Hill’s level.

Looking Ahead On The Roads

December 4: Former WR Holder Patrick Makau Returns To Fukuoka To Shoot For A Hat-Trick Victory Makau has won the past two years, but will face two others with sub-2:05 PRs, including World silver medalist Yemane Tsegay (2:04:48) and James Kwambai (2:04:27). Field also includes Yuki Kawauchi, Eritrean record holder Yared Asmerom, Poland’s Henryk Szost and 2012 Olympic 10,000 bronze medalist Tariku Bekele in his debut.
December 4: Olympic Champ Jemima Sumgong Vs. Two-Time World Champ Edna Kiplagat At Montferland Run 15K In The Netherlands
Seb Coe Will Be At The Beirut Marathon Next Weekend

Week That Was

LRC Mark Wetmore Works His “Magic,” Foreigners In The NCAA, What Rita Jeptoo’s Doping Suspension Means For Her Coach And Agent + American Marathoners Bobby Curtis And Lindsay Flanagan In Frankfurt Colorado shined at PAC-12s. Is the Colorado magic really magic or just about developing talent? Plus a look at Rita Jeptoo‘s doping suspension, the number of foreign studs in NCAA XC, and the Americans at the Frankfurt Marathon.

Admin / Corruption News

Canadian Olympic Committee Announces 4-Year Investment Plan To Boost Olympic Medal Prospects Maybe they can use some of that money to actually send some of their top marathoners to Worlds.
Trump Hotel Used For Officials At Rio 2016 Implicated In Brazil Corruption Investigation Two businesses controlled by the Trump Organization are under investigation for diversion of pension fund money.
Russian Paralympic Athletes Facing A Bleak Winter As Still Banned From Five Of The Six 2018 Paralympic Sports This means they might not even be able to qualify for the Winter Games if their bans aren’t lifted in time.
Wood From Disaster Hit Areas In Japan To Be Used To Build Tokyo 2020 National Stadium
Minsk, Belarus To Host 2019 European Games

2016 TCS NYC Marathon Previews *Streaming Info

LRC U.S. Women’s Preview: Molly Huddle Makes Her Long-Awaited Marathon Debut As Does Olympic Champ Gwen Jorgensen In the past, US distance stars Kara Goucher and Shalane Flanagan had excellent debuts in NY. Will that trend continue in 2016? Huddle, Jorgensen and Kim Conley certainly hope so.

LRC International Women’s Preview: Mary Keitany Tries To Embarrass The Kenyan Selectors By Winning Third Straight Title Can anyone stop the great Mary Keitany – a woman who has lost a grand total of 7 races over the last 8 years?

LRC U.S. Men’s Preview: What Has To Happen For An American To Win For The First Time Since 2009 With only four men in the field who have broken 2:10 in the last three years, it’s not totally crazy to think an American could win NYC on Sunday, particularly since Dathan Ritzenhein has had a great buildup.