December 31, 2016 Homepage Archive

Where Your Dreams Become Reality

Archived Homepage For December 31, 2016

We Call Her Hero

“That girl is a traitor. She blackened our government and the whole country. Yuliya was taking those drugs herself and now she tries to look whiter than white!”

– A random elderly woman in Kursk giving her opinion to the BBC about Yuliya Stepanova. We 100% disagree. Stepanova is one of the biggest heroes in the history of sports. We agree with journalist David Walsh, who says, “There’s nobody who has done more for the anti-doping movement. No whistleblower comes within a million miles.”

LetsRun.com’s World And US Rankings

LRCMen’s 3,000/5,000: Mo Farah Is #1 Again; Paul Chelimo Tops U.S. List After Shock Silver In Rio Farah’s presence at the top of the podium in Rio was no surprise, but few envisioned Chelimo, who was just 11th at USAs last year, winning America’s first Olympic medal in the 5,000 since 1964 and two other Americans cracking the world top 10.
*MB: What a year for Team USA! Three American men make our World Top 10 in our 3000/5000 rankings.

LRC Women’s 3,000/5,000: Almaz Ayana Is World #1; Shannon Rowbury Or Molly Huddle For U.S. #1? Ayana may not have earned Olympic gold in the 5,000, but she was utterly dominant apart from that, breaking 14:20 three times in 2016 (before this year, it had been done six times, total). U.S. #1 was a tough choice as Shannon Rowbury earned 3k bronze at World Indoors and set the American 5k record while Molly Huddle crushed everyone in the 5k at the Olympic Trials.
*MB: And the bad news: Zero US women crack the world top 10 in our 3k/5k rankings

Previous LRC Rankings:

*Men’s Steeple: Men’s Steeple: Conseslus Kipruto Ascends To #1 After A Year To Remember; Evan Jager (#2) Leads Americans Again
*Women’s Steeple:Ruth Jebet Leads The Way; Olympic Medallist Emma Coburn Tops U.S. List For Third Straight Year
*Men’s 1,500: Olympic Champion Matthew Centrowitz Is Our World #1
*Women’s 1,500:Faith Kipyegon Unseats Genzebe Dibaba As World #1; Jenny Simpson Back On Top Of U.S. Rankings
*Women’s 800:Caster Semenya Is the Clear World #1; Kate Grace Finishes A Shocking Year As U.S. #1
*Men’s 800 David Rudisha Is On Top For 2nd Year In A Row; Olympic Bronze Medalist Clayton Murphy Leads The Americans

IAAF End-Of-Year Reviews: *Jumps *Throws *Multis *Hurdles *Relays *Racewalk s *Mid-d *Long Distance *Road & XC

New Track And Field News: Wayde Van Niekerk Named Track and Field News Athlete Of The Year Mo Farah #2, Usain Bolt #3.
*Hammer Thrower Anita Włodarczyk Named Track And Field News Female Athlete Of The Year And we bet 95% of track and field fans couldn’t name her. Almaz Ayana 2nd, Elaine Thompson 3rd.

Athletics Weekly‘s Rankings:Top 3 International Rankings For All Women’s Events You can see their top 10 rankings by purchasing a digital copy of their bumper 112-page end-of-year stats special.

The Ageless Wonder

Ed Whitlock – 85-Year-Old Marathoner – Gets Nearly 1,500-Word Feature In NY Times By Jere Longman The title of the article is appropriately, “85-Year-Old Marathoner Is So Fast That Even Scientists Marvel.”

2-Hour Marathon

Ian O’Riordan Takes A Look At 2 Hr. Marathon: It’s The Last Everest Of Athletics He notes some sports scientists don’t think it will be broken until 2075. He also wonders if Athletics Ireland should have a concerted effort to break John Treacy‘s Irish record of 2:09:15.

End-Of-Year Awards And News

Coach Ben Rosario Of HOKA ONE ONE Northern Arizona Elite Wins $25,000 2016 Allan Steinfeld Development Award From Running USA Rosario does a Q&A and shares his favorite moment from 2016.
Jerry Schumacher Edges Alberto Salazar For FloTrack American Distance Coach Of The Year – Wins $10k
Fair Or Foul? International Writers Name Usain Bolt, Not Michael Phelps Or Lebron, The 2016 Athlete Of The Year
And The Opposite Of An Award On Official IOC Website, Mo Farah Was Stripped Of His Two Gold Medals From Rio Temporarily After Hackers Got InDavid Rudisha also temporarily lost his gold.
Scientists Look Back On The Year A Look Back At What Scientists Discovered In 2016 Can Make You A Better Runner From drinking cherry juice and coffee before you run to doing weighted squats, the scientists (who set distance running back 15-20 years in the ’80s) weigh in.

The Latest On The Anti-Doping Front

Awesome Development Ethiopia Is Going To Try To Hand Out Lifetime Bans To Drug Cheats
NYT Affirms The Accuracy Of Russian Doping Story – “All quotes in our story are accurate.”
Professor: Sports Federations Will Face Obstacles In Sanctioning Individual Russian Athletes “I think what will be a problem is individual cases with individuals pleading I was forced to do it or I didn’t know how it was done,” said Dionne Koller, director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore.
Lance Armstrong Says His #1 Goal For 2017 Is To Rejoin The Cancer-Fighting Community As A Difference Maker

Galen Rupp’s Future Isn’t On The Track

Ken Goe Exclusive Galen Rupp’s Days As A 5,000m Runner Are Over, 2017 Looks To Be His Last At 10,000m Ken Goe reports, “Salazar said Rupp would continue to compete in the 10,000 through 2017, but would concentrate on marathon training.”
*MB:Discuss

More US News Of Note

Looking Ahead To 2017

Bolt To Focus On Enjoying 100 In Final Season Without Too Much Stress “I think we have done the bulk of the work over the 10 years we have been working, so now it’s my last season. The focus is on the 100m, and I will just be trying to enjoy the season, not too much stress”
After World Indoor Gold, Olympic Bronze Kiwi Shot Putter Tom Walsh Looking Forward to 2017 “I wouldn’t be doing this sport if I didn’t think I could break the world record. So I want to give it a real go and it’s been around for too long.”

Upcoming Action

Olympic Champ Omar McLeod Will Face Jason Richardson At Millrose Games The meet is Feb 11th this year.
Liberty University’s New $30 Million Banked Indoor Track Looks Great, Set To Open January 7
Elite Field For January 29th’s Osaka Women’s Marathon Released – Field Includes American Serena Burla
Olympic 400H Champ Dalilah Muhammad Will Compete In Europe Indoors For 1st Time In 2017 At Birmingham’s Müller Indoor Grand Prix In Feb. The Birmingham meet is one of 5 meets that are part of the IAAF indoor tour. The series kicks off with the NB Indoor Grand Prix in Boston (Jan 28th) – the only US meet in the tour.
*Eilidh Doyle Will Face Muhammad

Week That Was

LRC WTW: Europe’s Teen Phenoms Appear To Be The Real Deal And Buzunesh Deba Breaks The Boston Marathon Course Record We look at foreign transplants, junior phenoms and note it’s been 975 days since an American went sub-2:10 in the marathon. We also discussed the ailing Miruts Yifter, the 1980 Olympic 5k/10k champ, who passed away on Thursday.

End-Of-Year Cheer

Farah_MoBot5kA-Rio16 Mo Farah Is Knighted And Jessica Ennis-Hill Becomes A Dame It’s Sir Mo Farah from here on out.

New Zealand: Valerie Adams Becomes New Zealand’s Youngest Dame She’s only 32. For more on Dames and Knights, click here.

She Said Yes: Wayde van Niekerk Gets Engaged And Is On Cloud 9 A great year for the South African with a world record, gold medal, and engagement.

A New World Record Was Set This Week / Jordan Who?

Poland’s Konrad Bukowiecki Smashes His Own World Junior Shot Put Record With 22.96m Heave Considering he’s an Olympic finalist with a 23.17 outdoor PR, it’s not a shock. Jordan Geist has his work cut out for him.

New York News

Jeff Benjamin Offers A Humble Solution To “Eugene Fatigue” For 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials – Hold It In NYC We 100% agree and think it’s absurd that every major meet is held in Eugene.
Olympic Champ Omar McLeod Will Face Jason Richardson At Millrose Games The meet is Feb 11th this year.

Russia Sort Of Confesses – Or Does It?

This story is getting major traction as it's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal Russia’s New Anti-Doping Chief Admits To NY Times There “… was an institutional conspiracy” To Dope, But Denies It Was State-Sponsored And Wants Everyone To Pay Attention To Fancy Bears

Hold On: Kremlin Responds By Saying It Wants To Check Veracity Of Russian Official’s Doping Comments In NY Times “We are not inclined to consider this information as first hand,” as they want to confirm the quote and check the context of the quote.
Kremlin Says Russian Admission Of Doping In NY Times Was “… distorted and taken out of context.”
NY Times Fires Back: NYT affirms accuracy of Russian doping story – “All quotes in our story are accurate.”

There Was A Lot Of December 26th Action In The UK

A Recap Of The Many Boxing Day Races In England The biggest news from a US perspective was that NCAA indoor 5,000 leader Marc Scott of Tulsa (13:38) ran a 29:33 10k.

NCAA XC
Prediction Contest

LRC Scandal? Rigged!? LetsRun.com’s Jonathan Gault Wins LetsRun.com Running Warehouse XC Prediction Contest Insiders dominated the RunningWarehouse prediction contest as in addition to Gault’s win, a guy coached by Karissa Schweizer‘s grandfather won as well. Another winner wrote one of the greatest emails we’ve ever received.

Upcoming

Random

Local Govts. In Japan Are Fearful They’ll Have To Foot The Bill To Build Temporary Olympic Venues
IAAF Has 6th Most Twitter Followers Of All The Olympic Sports FIFA has the most – and it’s not even close.

2016 Is Almost Over – 2017 Will Be Here Before You Know It

US Distance Stars Share Their New Year’s Resolutions From do more yoga (Huddle/Linden) to write a handwritten note every month (Centro), RW has you covered.
British Athletics Stars Share Their New Year’s Resolutions
Runner’s World‘s 10 Most-Read Stories Of 2016 Game of Thrones fans, RW’s article on Margaery Tyrell‘s 3:51 showing at the London Marathon cracks the list.
Gabriele Grunewald Is Meg Bellino’s 2016 Human Of The Year For Her Cancer Fight
BBTM The Best Mile/1,500 Moments Of 2016 From Drew Hunter and Genzebe Dibaba‘s exploits indoors to Matthew Centrowitz‘s gold outdoors, it was quite a year.
Might A Legendary HS Record Fall In 2017? After Massive Indoor Heave, Jordan Geist Admits Michael Carter’s Legendary Outdoor Record From 1979 is “… sitting in the back of my mind.”

More Look Backs At 2016

Good Read Nikki Hamblin Says Helping Abbey D In Rio Won’t Define Her “If the same sort of scenario happened in the street you wouldn’t just get up and walk away. It just so happens that it took place for me in front of a few hundred TV cameras.”