REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK - INDOOR NEWS & NOTES
By David Monti.
(c) 2010 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved
January 12, 2011
NEW YORK (12-Jan) -- Yesterday's luncheon of the New York Track Writers at the New Balance Track & Field Center at the Armory produced a burst of news on the nascent indoor season:
NEW BALANCE GAMES TO FEATURE TOP TALENT IN INVITATIONAL EVENTS: The New Balance Games, scheduled at the Armory for Saturday, January 22, will include six invitational events in addition to the central high school program, according to Ian Brooks who coordinates elite athletes for the meeting. "I've got to tell you that this year I've been inundated (with
athlete requests)," Brooks, an Englishman, told reporters. Brooks has 14 women lined up for the invitational mile, led by former NCAA star Jenny Simpson, the former Jenny Barringer, who will be making her Armory
debut. Others entered in the women's mile include Canadian Olympians Carmen Douma-Hussar and Megan Wright; Ireland's Ciara Mageean, the reigning IAAF World Junior Championships silver medallist at 1500m; Serbia's Marina Muncan, the 2009 World University Games 1500m champion; and Americans Frances Koons, Lindsay Gallo and Brenda Martinez. Brooks will also have an 800m invitational for women, a new event, led by two of the seven USA women who broke two-minutes for that distance last year, Maggie Vessey
(1:57.84 PB) and Phoebe Wright (1:58.22). "The new event may be the race of the day," Brooks asserted. The meet will also have invitational 400m races for both men and women, and an invitational
mile and 1500m for men.
NEW BALANCE GAMES TO FEATURE TOP TALENT IN INVITATIONAL EVENTS: The New Balance Games, scheduled at the Armory for Saturday, January 22, will include six invitational events in addition to the central high school program, according to Ian Brooks who coordinates elite athletes for the meeting. "I've got to tell you that this year I've been inundated (with
athlete requests)," Brooks, an Englishman, told reporters. Brooks has 14 women lined up for the invitational mile, led by former NCAA star Jenny Simpson, the former Jenny Barringer, who will be making her Armory
debut. Others entered in the women's mile include Canadian Olympians Carmen Douma-Hussar and Megan Wright; Ireland's Ciara Mageean, the reigning IAAF World Junior Championships silver medallist at 1500m; Serbia's Marina Muncan, the 2009 World University Games 1500m champion; and Americans Frances Koons, Lindsay Gallo and Brenda Martinez. Brooks will also have an 800m invitational for women, a new event, led by two of the seven USA women who broke two-minutes for that distance last year, Maggie Vessey
(1:57.84 PB) and Phoebe Wright (1:58.22). "The new event may be the race of the day," Brooks asserted. The meet will also have invitational 400m races for both men and women, and an invitational
mile and 1500m for men.
ARMORY BUSIER THAN EVER: The Armory has become the busiest venue in the United States for indoor track and field, according to Dr. Norbert Sander, the 1974 New York City Marathon champion who is the president of the Armory Foundation. The sprawling facility, which also houses the USA National Track & Field Hall of Fame, will host over 150 meetings during the 2010/2011 season. "The Armory, I have to say, has become the national center of track and field in this country," Sander said yesterday. The Armory's official website is located at http://ny.milesplit.us which features a full meet schedule.
MURPHY TO RECEIVE SAPLIN AWARD: Dr. Sander also announced yesterday that Walt Murphy would receive the 2011 Stan Saplin Sports Media Award, presented annually to "a journalist, public relations professional, executive, filmmaker or broadcaster who has made a significant contribution to the promotion of the sport," according to the Armory website. Murphy, who publishes the respected newsletters Eastern Track and X-Country X-Press, is best known as the man behind the facts and statistics television audiences hear when they tune into track and field broadcasts in the United States, including the Olympic Games and IAAF World Championships. Murphy is the fifth recipient of the Saplin Award, named after the late athletics journalist and statistician Stan Saplin who died in 2002. The previous recipients were writers Frank Litsky and Bill Miller of the New York Times; photographer Bill Moore of the New York Amsterdam News; and writer Ed Grant of the Newark Star-Ledger.
JORDAN NEW MEET DIRECTOR OF MILLROSE GAMES: Tom Jordan, the longtime meet director of the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., is the new meeting director of the Millrose Games, Dr. Sander announced. Jordan has introduced some new events for the Jan. 28 meeting, including the Millrose Multi Challenge, in which three of the world's best decathletes --Olympic champion Bryan Clay, world champion Trey Hardee, and heptathlon world record holder Ashton Eaton-- compete in the shot put, 60m hurdles, and high jump. Jordan has also introduced the USA vs. Jamaica Challenge sprint competition, a points competition where three Americans will race against three Jamaicans in the 60m dash. Two-time Olympic gold medallist Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica and three-time world champion Lauryn Williams of the USA have both been confirmed. Jordan has also added a two-mile which will feature multiple NCAA champion Galen Rupp, formerly of the University of Oregon.
INTEGRATED HIGH SCHOOL INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS REPRESENTS BIG BREAKTHROUGH: This year will be the first in recent memory that the United States will have an integrated indoor athletics championships for high school athletes, the New Balance Indoor Nationals set for March 11-13 at the Armory. Two separate and competing meets, the National Scholastic Meet in New York and the Nike High School Indoor Championships in Boston, previously divided the nation's best prep athletes into two camps, sometimes bitterly. "The stars were in alignment," explained Paul Limmer, the director of special events for the National Scholastic Sports Foundation, as to how the two meets finally merged. He largely credited Josh Rower, running marketing manager at New Balance, for making the merger happen. "The Nike contract had to run out (in Boston)," Limmer continued. "Josh Rowe had to get the means to fund the event." Limmer pointed out that doing business in New York was more expensive than in Boston, but that the meet had set aside funds to assist athletes with travel and hotel expenses. "We did spend considerable sums of money getting here," Limmer concluded. "Finances should not be the reason that they (athletes) don't get here."
FIRE FIGHTERS AND POLICE TO CLASH AT MILLROSE GAMES: A new exhibition event, The Bravest vs. the Finest, will be contested at the Millrose Games. Cristyne Nicholas, the former president and CEO of NYC & Company and now an independent public relations representative for the Millrose Games and the Armory, said that the event was particularly relevant considering that 2011 represented the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Four-man teams from both the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) will compete in a four-lap sprint relay of the 145m Madison Square Garden track. Nicholas also reminded reporters that the biennial World Police & Fire Games would also be held in New York City this summer.
HARRISON LOOKING FORWARD TO FIRST FULL PROFESSIONAL SEASON: Hurdler Queen Harrison, the 2010 recipient of the Bowerman award as the top collegiate track and field athlete in the United States, will begin her first full professional year of competition at the Millrose Games. Harrison, who won all three 2010 NCAA hurdles titles (60m indoors, 100m and 400m outdoors), told reporters via a Skype video call that she was excited to get back into competition, especially now that she doesn't have to spend time on her studies. "I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do when I'm completely focused on track," said the Virginia Tech graduate who earned a sociology degree. "I was actually born in New York. What better place to start my season than where I started life?" Harrison also told reporters that she just gotten a puppy, a Scottish Terrier named "Scotty." The 22 year-old athlete, who is one of nine children, then picked up the dog off the floor, and held him up to her computer camera for reporters to see.
|
|
|
|
|
|
