Quote Of The Day

"I finished seventh at the NCAA meet and everyone ahead of me was using steroids. I had friends at USC and UCLA. Their coach would give steroids out by the handful. But, [Payton] Jordan was afraid of all the long-term health aspects of steroids. I know three or four runners from UCLA who are dead now because they used steroids. Coach Jordan helped me stay drug-free."

- 440 Yard Runner Jim Ward on his former Stanford coach Payton Jordan, who passed away this year at the age of 91. More from Ward: "Coach was the first person in my life I had met that had a moral and ethical balance. He taught me to focus and be confident."

3 Highly Recommended Reads

*Outstanding Read: Lopez Lomong Gets His Brothers And Brings Them To The US This article is a once-in-a-lifetime read.
*Great Article Remembering Payton Jordan
*Recommended Read: Michael Johnson Answers Readers Questions From BBC It only took a couple of questions before a LetsRun.com thread was mentioned: *LRC Thread: Bolt vs. Bekele Over 600m (MJ says Bolt would take it easy, we disagree) Also Read: Michael Johnson On Dwain Chambers' Talk Of Beating Bolt

Mary Wittenberg Courting Radcilffe, Wanjiru And Others For Another Stellar NYC Marathon *Photos

Interviews With College Runners

*Flotrack Interview With New Mexico's Rory Fraser
*Interview We Missed With Princeton's Mike Maag

Events To Honor Fallen Heroes

*Great Event: May 17th Sydney Half Marathon Will Be Held In Honor Of Kerryn McCann
*Elite Hammer Throwing Competition Held In Honor Of Deceased Thrower

Bolt Is OK - Won't Race This Weekend *Photos Of The Car And His Million Dollar Feet
Message Board Update: Bolt Doing Fine After Car Wreck Word from his agent Ricky Simms.
*In-Depth Read On The Fallout From Bolt's Car Wreck Manchester meet organizers are worried about Bolt being able compete mid-May while others worry about the World's Fastest Man's lifestyle in the fast lane.
*"Me all right, a just few cuts man, me all right." - Usain Bolt To Jamaica Observer
*Ricky Simms, Bolt's Agent, Says He Will Cancel This Weekend, The Future Is Not Yet Clear

Quotes From Today's Track And Field Buzz

1. "When I think of these athletes who win by cheating, they get a lot of kudos and probably a lot of sponsorship and accolade that comes with it, and you can't ever take that back. So the cheats do momentarily prosper in this system. All we can say is that we believe Nick is a genuine champion and we are mighty proud of his bronze - and now his silver." - New Zealand Olympic Committee secretary general Barry Maister

2. "Honestly, track and field didn't need another blow like this. Our reputation is truly depleting and it doesn't help when fans who have long loved the sport begin to doubt what they see." - Dee Dee Trotter

3.  "I found it too distressing to stay in England after what happened in Athens – I felt like I'd let the country down. I decided I didn't want to live somewhere where I was recognised all the time." - Paula Radcliffe in an interview with The Telegraph

4. "He is not seriously injured and therefore Jamaica can collectively breathe a sigh of relief." - Andrew Holness, the leader of Jamaica's parliament

New Shoes, New Marathons, And Bucknell Masters Keep On Truckin'.

*Group Of Bucknell Masters Win American Odyssey Relay Their beloved former Bucknell coach Art Gulden would be proud.
*Chicago Marathon's 45,000 Spots Have Filled
*Virgin London Marathon On Its Way To Selling Out
*Dutch Company ECCO Announces New Shoe
*Need A Vacation And A Marathon? Go Cheap To Costa Rica

A Must See And A Must Bookmark - Amazing Marathon Research Published See the top 200 performances in the marathon from 1940-2008. There's an amazing amount of information on this site.

 Regional Track Meets In Texas Are Casualty Of Swine Flu

NCAA

1. Latest Men's Track NCAA Rankings - Florida Overtakes Oregon For Top Spot

1a. Texas A&M Stays On Top In Women's NCAA Rankings

Discus News

Announcements

Must Read
LRC: The Week That Was We give you insights into Boston, London and Penn Relays. In between emphatically telling you whether Ryan Hall's start in Boston was too fast and wondering what Doug Logan thought of the US team's relay success at Penn, we ponder whether Kara Goucher should have run London and show you that Meb and Ritz aren't in the same class as Hall. Additionally, we present for the 1st time the LRC Maxim For Distance World Records.

Drug News
*Retest Nails Olympic Track And Field Gold Medallist For Blood Doping CERA A male Olympic gold medallist likely is going down. Seems most likely to be a distance runner. Glad to see the new test is nailing people and the cheats are still stupid. Anyone with a brain had to know they were going to test for CERA at the Games. Two unnamed Medallists busted and 6 overall.
*No Brits Among Positives

Post-Brutus Hamilton News
*Photos From Brutus Hamilton Meet
*Jenny Barringer Rightly Named Big 12 Athlete Of Week Thanks To Her 4:08 School Record

Post-Penn/Drake Relays News
*Jamaica Dismisses Penn Loss In 4 x 100 As It's Revealed Asafa Powell Will Be Ready For Super Grand Prix On May 8th Powell was injured heading into Penn but said he wanted to run. Jamaican coach: "We ran 37.10 last year and we (Jamaica) will run 36 seconds in August."
*Quotes From Alan Webb And Others After Drake

Brits Are Pumped For Mara

News From Africa

More Buzz Post-London

Elite Results From This Weekend

*Abraham Chebii's 28:08 Leads 19 Kenyans In The Top 20 In Big-Time Germany 10k XC Race Kenyans have another great weekend on the global scene.
*Hamburg Marathon Results Another race where the rabbit almost won and hung on for 2nd.
*Scotland's Andrew Lemoncello's 27:57 10k At Brutus Hamilton Excites Great Britain Much like Wejo's 28:06 excited all Americans back in 2003.

London Marathon: Top 20 Results And Splits
Video from Our Partner Universal Sports: *Men's Highlights *Women's Highlights *Full Race
Photos: *Women's *Men's

Payton Jordan Cardinal Invite Saturday Night *Live Results *Stanford Heat Sheets *Schedule *Flotrack Live Coverage

"I used to play judo and the art of playing judo is take the force and pressure on you and return it to throw your opponent - and this is the moment for the Olympic movement to throw its weight behind that brand and reaffirm its values." - Seb Coe's take on how the Olympics fighting cheating in sports can be a model to fight cheats in all walks of life.

Lots Of Interesting Drug News/Reactions

*Phil Hersh Says It's A Good Thing They Caught Ramzi And A Good Thing It Wasn't Bolt Read the comments below his article to see how people react.
*Jason Stewart Says He And Nick Willis Had Their Suspiscions About Ramzi ... and pretty much everyone else who follows running.
*Seb Coe On Recent Frauds And London's 2016 Preparations Worth a read.
*European Union and WADA Battling Over Right To Test Athletes
*Seb Coe Really Upset At Ramzi Positive Result
*As A-Rod Gets Set To Return To Yankees' Roster, Book Claims He's Been Juicing Since High School Makes us glad our sport actually tests, bans and punishes its stars who are exposed as cheats.

This Weekend's Action

*Kipruto Crushes French Road 10k In 27:43
*Deena Kastor Is Running In Scotland This Weekend Plus See Her Race Plan For The Rest Of The Year *Deena Kastor Will Run Bolder Boulder Says Race Director
*Go See Tyson Gay Saturday At The Texas Invite In Austin If You Can
*Japanese Team Abandons Stanford Plans Due To Swine Flu
*Matt Tegenkamp Returns From Injury And Offseason This Weekend In Stanford 5k
*Hasay Running 1,500m At Stanford She ran 4:17 last year.
*Oregon's Preview To Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational See what their studs are running.
*Day 2 Ethiopian Championships - 1500m Heats And More
*A Whole Bunch Of Top Sprinters Will Face Off In Kingston, Jamaica
*John Lucas And Others Hoping To Run 2:19 At Eugene Marathon

Nick Willis' Father Not Surprised By Ramzi's Positive Test
*It WAS Ramzi! Bahrain's Gold Medalist Rashid Ramzi Busted For CERA EPO After Olympic Retest  Thread Here The LetsRun voters had this one with no problem as our poll shows that >70% of you apparently were never fooled by Ramzi's performances. See the 2008 Olympic 1,500m final results here. See our photo album from the Olympic 1,500m final here.
MORE: *All 6 CERA Cheats' Names Published
*Kenya's 6th Olympic Gold Is Coming Soon
*Picture Of Croatian 800m Runner Whose A-Sample Came Back Positive For CERA
*Italian Cyclist Busted For CERA Calls For Retest
*IAAF Issues Statement On Drug Test Results

Today's Interviews

*Paula Radcliffe Does An Interview Totally Focused On Questions Of Finance
*Great Brief Chat With Nick Willis The chat took place before the Ramzi results came out.
*Interview With Aussie Coach Sean Williams

*World XC Champ Gebremariam Wins 10,000m On First Day Of Ethiopian Championships
*Kenya Names Their 10-Person Berlin World Championship Team Hello Sammy Wanjiru. Not sure why his name is on there, other than they really hope he runs for them despite announcing he's running Berlin City a little over a month later.

Kenya's Preliminary WC Squads:

Men:
Sam Wanjiru
James Kwambai
Duncan Kibet
Daniel Rono
Emmanuel Mutai

Women:
Agnes Kiprop
Helena Kiprop
Irene Limika
Catherine Ndereba
Salina Kosgei

Men Alternates:
Luke Kibet
Abel Kirui
Martin Lel
Robert Cheruiyot
David Kipkorir

Women Alternates:
Martha Komu
Risper Jemeli
Lydia Cheromei
Edith Masai
Irene Mogaka

Other Quotes & Excuses Of The Day From Wednesday

1."The Bahrain Olympic Committee apologizes for receiving such news from the IOC since it ensured Ramzi went through all the necessary doping tests before the games and they were all negative." Well, isn't that wonderful. What does the Bahrain Olympic Committee do? Item 1: Buy athletes from other countries. Item 2: Make sure they're doped to the gills.

2. "I would venture that no Brit, apart from Radcliffe and Yamauchi, and certainly no British man will get near to winning London in at least the next quarter century." - Pat Butcher in his latest Butcher's Blog entry.

3. "I don’t see why I should take a path that would ruin me or my image. I don’t know if I’ll still be able to race, but I will always ride because cycling is my life." - Italian cyclist Davide Rebellin. Maybe you shouldn't have taken CERA.

4. "I know I am clean and have not done anything that would contradict that. I haven’t used anything different than I did in 2007." - Dominican weightlifter Yudelquis Contreras. Of course, they didn't test for CERA in 2007.

News From The UK

*Recommended Read: Pat Butcher On Sad State Of GBR Men's Distance Running Lots of bashing of Britain's men's marathoners this week.
*Brief Chat With Miling Stud Lee Emanuel If German Fernandez ran the indoor NCAA mile, Emanuel's life probably would be a lot different right now. He skipped 3:39 and 3:38 and went right to 3:37.99 last weekend after winning the indoor mile at NCAAs.
*British Olympic Association Confident Their Athletes Are Clean Total media spin. The implied meaning: "We're confident most of our athletes didn't test positive or skip multiple tests this year." They were probably saying they were confident back when Dwain Chambers, David Millar and Christine Ohuruogu were getting banned and admitting to their offenses.

Your Olympic 1,500m Runner-Up And Champion
 

Asafa Powell, Micah Kogo, Allyson Felix And Others To Compete At Reebok On May 30th Powell will bring in a big Jamaica crowd. Kogo just set the world record for the road 10km and won the bronze in Beijing.

Couple Takes Detour To Church To Get Married During London Marathon

Field Event News
*Korea's Eun-Ji Lim Resetting National Pole Vaulting Records
*Dick Fosbury Still Teaching The High Jump, This Time In Scotland
*TJumpers Steal Show In Cuba

Benita Johnson Will Compete For 4th Consecutive Freihofer's Win On May 30th

Better Late Than Never
*Victah Sailer's Photos From World XC

2004 Olympic Gold Medallists: Justin Gatlin, Shawn Crawford, Jeremy Wariner, Liu Xiang, Felix Sanchez, Yuriy Borzakovskiy, Hicham El Guerrouj, Kenenisa Bekele, Stefano Baldini, Ezekiel Kemboi.