USATF Prediction Contest

Our $25,000 USATF nationals prediction contest was the most successful contest to date at LetsRun.com.  316 hard core track fans filled out their entire forms correctly and battled it out to see who knows most about the sport (or is really lucky).

In the end, as in our other contests, a truly hard-core track fan came out on top.  The winner,Greg Hipp, is as involved in the sport as anyone we have ever seen.  Greg is the webmaster for xctrack.com, a middle school track coach, a meet director, a meet official, and somehow he also finds time to attend college and run on the cross-country and track teams at Appalachian State.But most importantly, he is a "professional track handicapper" of sorts, as this was not the first picks contest he has won.  While in high school he attended the Bob Kennedy/ Todd Williams Step Ahead Running Camp, and won their 1997 USATF nationals contest.

Greg came out on top thanks to his picks in the women's events. He picked the winner correctly in every women's event which is pretty impressive.  As Greg said, the women's events are a bit more predictable than the men's, but nonetheless Greg's picking skills were pretty impressive.

And for coming out on top Greg unfortunately does not get an autographed pair of Bob Kennedy's spikes like he did when he won the contest at Kennedy's running camp, but he does get a great prize, a year's subscription to track and field news.  (If you don't get track and field news, which is the magazine for serious fans of the sport, or want to extend your subscription at a low price only available to LetsRun.com viewers click here.)

In the King of the Distances competition, "Highlander" came out on top (if you are highlander, please email us as you have not returned our emails).  We're not sure who this guy or gal is, but he or she did is truly amazing: picking 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the men's 1500, 5k, and 10k perfectly correctly.  Perhaps, Highlander hacked his way into our database and that is why we haven't heard from him.  Highlander will receive the new hardcopy of the critically acclaimed book, "Running with the Buffaloes" by Chris Lear.

And in the team competition, the group Middle Distance (For Fans of the Middle Distances) came out on top (of groups with 5 or more people in them) with an average score of 62.4. And the last place group? MERVS for fans of Mervsrunning.org with an average score of 56.0. But to be fair, they did much better than the people not in any group at all.

Overall the average score for everyone in the contest was 57.9.

Click Here to see the top 25, and their picks.     Click Here to login and check your scores.

Have any suggestions for our World Champs contest?  Did you like our new color coded scorer?  Email us and give us your suggestions and feedback.

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