US News

• USATF Board Of Directors Responds To Extreme Backlash For Rejecting Membership IAAF Council Vote Many spoke out after the USATF board of directors rejected the 85% membership vote which chose Bob Hersh for IAAF Council and instead chose Stephanie Hightower.
  *MB:USATF BS Letter to its Members
  *MB:USATF Board overturns 392-70 vote
  *Lauren Fleshman And David Torrence Twitter Reaction
  
• Recommended Read:Oregon Prep (Now Age 85) Never Got Credit For Breaking Louis Zamperini’s National High School Mile Record In 1946George Fullerton ran 4:20.5 when Zamperini’s record was 4:21.2, but the mark wasn’t counted because it was ran in a race with both high school and college runners.
• Chris Solinsky And Fellow William And Mary Coach Natalie Hall Win Christmas Town Dash 8K At Busch Gardens Solinsky with 25:14 and Hall 29:43.
• RRW:Autistic Teen Josh Manning Set For Marathon Debut In Honolulu Josh has finished a 50K and multiple 30Ks, but this will be his first stand-alone 26.2. He’s hoping to break 3 hours.
• Sad News:Track Official Dies At Cornell Indoor Meet After Throwing Accident

News From Kenya

• Interesting Read:Commonwealth 10,000 Champ Joyce Chepkirui Making Her Marathon Debut Sunday At The Honolulu Marathon She will be paced by her husband Eric Kogo. While being elite runners, the two also own and work their own farm.
• After Weekend Marathon Wins, Patrick Makau And 41-Year-Old Former Barber Kenneth Mungara Hoping To Be Selected For Kenya’s 2015 World Marathon Squad

News From Europe

Seb Coe Says Russia Could Be Banned From International Competition If Doping Allegations Are Proven Coe’s got a good point.
*IAAF Head Lamine Diack‘s Son Papa Massata Says He’s Not Involved In Covering Up Doping, But Admits He Has Dealings With Head Of The Company Involved In Cover-Up
*Sergey Bubka “Deeply Shocked” By Russian Doping Claims He shouldn’t be. “Doping” and “Russia” go together like “wedding” and “cake.”
*Sebastian Coe Wants Independent Drug Testing Body

Non-Doping News: 

• Olympic TV Channel Secures Unanimous Approval By IOC Committee Members Former sprint great Frankie Fredericks expressed concerns that the $100 million annual costs would take away from money that would go to athletes.
• 40-Year-Old Jo Pavey Is “Sentimentalist’s Candidate” To Receive BBC Sports Personality Of The Year Award
• European XC Champs Are This Weekend In Bulgaria And Bulgaria’s Mitko Tsenov Has Great Chance For Gold In U-23 The 21-year-old 8:20 steepler got silver last year. Amazingly, Bulgaria only has full teams in the junior races.
• Spikes Mag Tells You Why Renaud Lavillenie Was Deserving Of IAAF World Athlete Of The Year Award
• Irish Walking Star Rob Heffernan Finally Figures Out What Caused Him To Drop Out Of Euros Mesh from a previous hernia surgery was cutting into his nerves.  “I felt a cloud lift off me straight away.”

Three Interesting Reads

• Unreal:Winner Of Singagore Marathon And $50,000 Was A 41-Year-Old Kenyan Who Only Started Running In Mid-30s He was a barber to many runners up until then. “I looked at those little guys, and thought, I can beat them.”
• Japanese federation is despondent no Japanese runner than 2:09:06 at Fukuoka They probably should pick up a copy of Sports Gene as 2;09:06 isn’t too bad – it’s a time only 5 American born runners have EVER eclipsed.
  *MB: Japanese fed. is despondent no one ran faster than 2:09:06 at Fukuoka – Has Sports Gene been translated into Japanese?
• Good Profile Of Zhang Guowei: His Idol Is China’s High Jump Legend Zhu Jianhua, But He’s Llearned It’s Best Not To Imitate Him The 23-year-old 2.34m jumper saw his improvement stagnate when he tried to imitate the form of his idol. “I took it for granted that if I copied the way he jumped then I could jump as high as he did. In 2009, I started to literally imitate Zhu. I imitated the way he approached, took off and crossed the bar.”

• Q&A With Alan Webb About His Transition To The Triathlon Webb finds it funny to compare how carefully he used to tie his shoes before races to how fast he tries to do it now during triathlon “transitions.”
• David Rudisha Puts His Support Behind Seb Coe For IAAF President
• Scotland Athletics Federation Wants To Send Their Own Separate (From The UK) Teams To Some Events Like Euro XC Champs If they’ll actually send a team to World XC Champs (unlike the UK), then we say let them.
• Race Videos And Interviews From 2014 Canadian Cross-Country Championships

Russian Doping Updates

• Russian Athletics Federation Considering Legal Action Over German Doping Documentary Whenever someone accuses you of something: Step 1 – Deny. Step 2 – Threaten to sue.
• Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) Launches Investigation Into German TV Documentary Claims
• Former WADA President Dick Pound Blasts IAAF “If the allegations are proved with sufficient certainly, the IAAF, WADA and IOC could say the Russians are non-compliant and that they’re suspended from all competitions until they clean up. What I don’t know is if there are sufficient balls within these organisations to make that happen.”
• UK’s Dai Greene Not Surprised About Russian Doping Allegations He says many athletes already suspected the Russians since they often don’t race at all on the circuit and then just turn up at major championships.
• UK Anti-Doping Chief Andy Parkinson Says “Clean Athletes Shouldn’t Lose Heart”