March 26, 2018 Homepage Archive

2018 World Half Champs Results TV & Streaming Women’s PreviewMen’s Preview

LRC Geoffrey Kamworor Splits 13:01 5k – Yes, 13:01 – At End Of Race To Win 3rd Straight World Half Marathon Title In a performance that will be remembered for years to come, Geoffrey Kamworor got his hat trick. What a sick performance.
*RRW Recap With Quotes From Kamworor: “I can say I was really prepared for this race and I had no pressure.”

LRC Netsanet Gudeta Kebede Of Ethiopia Sets Women’s-Only World Record Of 66:11 At 2018 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships Ethiopia won both team and individual gold.
*RRW Recap With Post-Race Quotes From Gudeta And Jepkosgei

World Half Message Board Talk

Full Coverage In Our2018 IAAF World Half Champs Special Section

News From Oregon

Recommended Read:Register-Guard:2012 Olympic Silver Medalist Nijel Amos Is On The Fast Track With OTC Elite Amos had a rough 2015 and 2016, but now Mark Rowland at OTC has got him back in the right direction. He says he’s feeling good and is even talking about a WR attempt this summer.
Ken Goe:“Passion Flares Over Size, Scope And Secrecy Of Hayward Field Renovation Plan” The renovations that were supposed to begin in 2016 are expected to begin this summer, but with no plans having been made public, many are nervous about what the new stadium will be like. Goe writes, “They worry about Hayward’s atmosphere disappearing, swallowed up by a glitzy stadium with thousands of empty seats.”
Andrew Wheating Is Now On Portland Track’s Board Of Directors Portland Track puts on the Portland Track Festival and Stumptown Twilight meets. Wheating is also involved with a comical track YouTube channel called, “Tracklandia.”
University Of Portland Getting A Brand New 8-Lane Track In 2019

Usain Bolt Had His Soccer Tryout

Usain Bolt Pleases 1,400-Strong Crowd That Showed Up To Watch His Dortmund Soccer Tryout In Germany Bolt apparently made a couple of errors, but made up for it with a “terrific header into the corner of the net.”
Usain Bolt Says Soccer Tryout (With A Team Also Sponsored By Puma) Isn’t Just A Publicity Stunt: “I really want to try and make it professionally, to play at a high level.” Bolt gave himself a “seven out of ten” for his tryout and admitted he has to work on some things, including his fitness. He’d like the team to sign him, but “wouldn’t want to play in a lesser league” for their reserve team.

Bolt’s Soccer Dream Becomes Reality?

Usain Bolt Has His Soccer Tryout With German Club Dortmund On Friday It’s been debatable if Bolt was serious about this, but if he’s flying to Germany he must be, right? The tryout will be open to the public.
Instagram Video:Watch Usain Bolt Swap Track For Soccer As He Prepares For Charity Soccer Game Against Mo Farah We’re not going to lie, we’d like to have seen less of him stretching/drinking Gatorade and more of him actually playing soccer. He does score a goal, though.

African Distance News

Can He Still Be Relevant?Marathon World Record Holder Dennis Kimetto Will Line Up For The Vienna City Marathon On April 22 Kimetto hasn’t finished a marathon since London 2016, where he was 9th in 2:11:44, but says he wants to break the Vienna CR of 2:05:41.
Reuters Headline Says Dennis Kimetto “Snubs London For Vienna” More likely London didn’t want to pay a big appearance fee to someone who DNFs most of his races since 2015.
Bedan Karoki Now Focused On Preparing For The London Marathon After Withdrawing From The World Half Champs With A Hamstring Injury
After Winning African XC Champs, Celliphine Chespol Targets A Commonwealth Games Title The world junior steeple champ wants to win a senior title to go along with it.
Joyciline Jepkosgei’s 64:52 World Half Marathon Record Ratified By The IAAF

More Weekend Distance Results – What’s Up With Centro?

Sweden’s Kalle Berglund (14:15) And GB’s Emillia Gorecka (16:00) Win Carlsbad 5,000 Gorecka beat out US’s Sarah Brown by one second. *Results
MB: Matt Centrowitz ran 1:53 for 800 in Australia on Thursday He was the last place finisher as the winner was 1:47.53.
Wilson Kipsang Races Another Marathon; Wins The Tokushima Marathon In Japan With 2:19:35
Kenya’s Felix Kibitok (60:11) And Ethiopia’s Sutume Asefa Kebede (70:54) Win Stramilano Half In Italy
Ethiopia’s Meseret Legese (2:28:55) And Kenya’s Kennedy Cheboror (2:13:41) Win At The Chongquing Marathon In China
Double Kenyan Victory At The Warsaw Half As Ezrah Sang (61:37) And Pauline Njeru (70:02) Get The Wins
MB: No one finishes Barkley Marathon; Gary Robins goes home devastated again

Non-Distance News

NZ’s World Champ Tom Walsh Breaks His Own Oceanian Shot Put Record With 22.67m Walsh is now #6 all-time and you have to go back to 1990 to find someone who’s thrown farther. This is his 8th consecutive victory of 2018. Valerie Adams won the women’s competition in Auckland on countback with 18.48m.
Usain Bolt Says That When His WRs Are Broken, He Hopes Its By A Fellow Jamaican He expects them to go down “in the future, but not anytime soon.”
MB:Pole Vault Star Mondo Duplantis Runs 10.69 For 100m
Short Video:Sandi Morris Shows A Tough Hip Mobility Drill With Hurdles And A Medicine Ball
MB: Allyson Felix and Bolt ranked on ESPN’s most dominant athletes of the last 20 years

NCAA News

Robert Johnson Calls Oregon’s Indoor Season “Unacceptable” On the Oregon women’s 5th place and the men’s 13th, Johnson said, “Hurts my heart to say those numbers.”
Three Nation-Leading Marks Highlight FSU Relays Another interesting note from the meet: Florida State “retired the jerseys” of alumni Walter Dix and former 400H WR holder Kim Batten. We’re not sure how you retire a track singlet, but still sounds cool.
Men’s Pre-Season NCAA Rankings Have Oregon On Top Despite Their 13th Place Finish Indoors Texas A&M, Houston and Florida are ranked 2-4.
Women’s NCAA Outdoor Pre-Season Rankings Have Arkansas #1 And Oregon #2
Michigan State Grad Assistant Kassie Powell Resigns In Protest Of The University’s Handling Of The Larry Nasser Sex Abuse Scandal She writes that MSU “staff and administration failed to do their jobs, allowing myself and hundreds of other young girls and boys to be abused by now, inmate Nassar.”
FloTrack’s Johanna Gretschel:“It’s Bullshit That USC Doesn’t Have The 4 X 4 World Record” USC’s mark is not eligible for a WR because one runner, Rai Benjamin, represented Antigua & Barbuda as a youth athlete, although he is a US citizen. *Ken Goe Agrees
NAU’s Brooke Andersen Throws 6th Best NCAA Hammer Mark Of All-Time With 70.98m
USTFCCCA:Changes Abound To The Collegiate Indoor Record Book 15 of the 34 recognized indoor NCAA records have been set since 2017.
The Bowerman: 2018 Men’s Post-Indoor Watch List

More Upcoming Distance Action

Sunday:Elite Fields Set For The 2018 Carlsbad 5,000 The women’s race has GB’s Emelia Gorecka (15:07 PR) and the men are led by Swedish 1,500 NR holder Kalle Berglund and Denmark’s 7-time national champ Nick Jensen.
Sunday:Course Record Holders Victor Kipchirchir (59:31 PR) And Pauline Njeru (68:20 PR) Return To The Warsaw Half Marathon
June: Emma Coburn Commits To The Oslo Diamond League Meet So too was a local steeple star in Norway’s Karoline Grovdal, who ran her first steeple in six years in 2017 and set a 20-second PR with 9:13.

Week That Was

LRCWayde Van Who? Clarence Munyai Runs 19.69, Scott Fauble Interviews Himself, Americans Dominate NYC Half, And A Last Hurrah For Caster Semenya?

Clarence Munyai and Caster Semenya put on a show at the S. African Champs, the Americans did well at NYC Half, and a look back at some splits from World Indoors.

Problems In Kenya

Russian Athletes Suspect Fraud After “Fake IAAF Officers” Took Doping Samples In Kenya The Russians became suspicious as the “officers” showed their ID cards on a phone. Were these good samaritans just trying to make sure the Russians were clean?
Recommended Read:Kenya Standard Digital: “Athletes Race From Rags To Riches And Back To Rags” Kenyans use running to escape poverty and gain a fortune, but with no education on how to manage their wealth, many can end up right back where they started.
Athletics Kenya Cracking Down On Officials Accused Of Molesting Female Athletes They’ve changed the management of training camps, now having them run by schools rather than individuals.

IAAF News

That’s A Significant Zero:IAAF Hopeful Missing $150,000 Sent To Nigeria By Mistake Will Be Reimbursed Soon Last year the IAAF sent the Nigeria Athletics Federation $150,000 instead of the $15,000 due to be awarded all national federations.
Seb Coe To Be A Commentator For Australian Broadcaster Channel 7 During Next Month’s Commonwealth Games

Women’s Distance News

Caster Semenya Fails In Attempt To Break Zola Budd’s South African 1,500 Record Semenya ran 4:02.50, just .70 off of Budd’s 4:01.80. Former NCAA champ Dominique Scott-Efurd was a distant second in 4:08.6. In the sprints, Luxolo Adams won the men’s 200 (20.01) and Carina Horn the women’s 100 (11.12).
Laura Muir’s Coach Says She’s A Victim Of Having To Face “Some Of The Best Distance Runners Of All Time” He also said that “in a matter of weeks” she could go out and break the British 10,000 record if that’s what she wanted.
Reddit AMA With Olympic Triathlon Champ And Now Marathoner Gwen Jorgensen “Marathon training’s biggest hurdle has been staying injury free. There are more days I wake up and limp than days I wake up and feel good.”
RW:“Why US Women Marathoners Are Having A Moment” Four of the 10 fastest Americans have run their PRs in the last 14 months. Comparatively, American men only have one new name on the top 10 list in the past five+ years.
Queen Elizabeth II Named Official Starter Of The 2018 London Marathon
Laura Muir Excited At The Prospect Of Winning More Medals At A Home Championships At Next Year’s Euro Indoor Champs In Glasgow

Russian Doping Updates

WADA Says Russia Ignored Four Requests To Inspect Moscow’s Anti-Doping Lab WADA president Craig Reedie says Russia still needs to acknowledge its state-sponsored doping and allow the Moscow lab to be inspected.
Russian Sports Minister Claims Pyeongchang 2018 Doping Cases Are “Senseless”Pavel Kolobkov said he is “outraged” about the two Russians who failed drug tests at the Winter Games and that hr has “no explanation of how it could have happened at all.”
BBC:Craig Reedie Says Russian Participation At Major Events Still In Doubt

Non-Distance News

Christian Coleman Thinks He Can Become The Second-Fastest Man Of All Time This Year Coleman says he wants to get Tyson Gay‘s 9.69 American record, but admits Usain Bolt‘s 9.58 is out of reach.
Christian Coleman Confirms He’ll Return To London For The Anniversary Games On July 21-22
IAAF Inside Athletics:Ato Boldon Video Interview With Venezuela’s World Triple Jump Champion Yulimar Rojas
Renaud Lavillenie And Sam Kendricks Lead Stacked Pole Vault Field For Pre Classic In May Also Olympic champ Thiago Braz and Mondo Duplantis.
Loaded Men’s Javelin Field Announced For Pre Classic With German Duo World Champ Johannes Vetter And Olympic Champ Thomas Rohler

2020 Olympic Trials News

Judge Orders Mt. SAC To Halt Stadium Work, Potentially Putting The 2020 Olympic Trials At Risk The college and the city of Walnut are in a legal battle over whether the stadium reconstruction is complying with regulations protecting water quality. Mt. SAC is also dealing with a civil suit which is arguing the cost of the stadium shouldn’t be covered by public funds.
*Ken Goe’s Take And Comparison To Hayward’s Issues

Older Trials News We Missed
Atlanta Track Club Surprised USATF Selection Committee By Bringing In Meb To Endorse Their Bid For The 2020 Marathon Trials Meb likes the Olympic tradition of Atlanta, saying he still has a T-shirt a teammate brought him back from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and will be working with the ATC in the future. USATF will decide in April between Atlanta, Austin, Chattanooga and Orlando.