15 Minutes Of Fame – 51 Seconds Of Fame (Shame?)

LRC51 Seconds Of Fame (Shame?) - Oregon's Tanguy Pepiot Gets Skewered On ESPN's Pardon The Interruption

Sh&t Just Hit The Fan In Kenya *Discuss

• Athletics Kenya Bans Two Agencies, Rosa & Associati And Volare Sports, From Representing Athletes For 6 Months (link fixed) AK is investigating the two agencies run by Italian Gabriele Rosa and Dutchman Gerard van de Veen, for possible connection with the rise in Kenyan doping cases. Rosa previously represented dopers Rita Jeptoo and Matthew Kisorio and currently has Asbel Kiprop and Eunice Sum. Van der Veen represents Dennis Kimetto, Wilson Kipsang and Geoffrey Mutai.
• Isaiah Kiplagat Says Van der Veen Has Current Doping Cases In His Group, But Couldn’t Reveal The Names While Investigations Are Ongoing There were rumors of this last week.
• Isaiah Kiplagat Steps Down As President Of Athletics Kenya For Three Months To Campaign For IAAF Vice President He said even if he doesn’t win the IAAF vice president spot, he might not come back to AK. Lt Gen. Jackson Tuwei will fill in as interim president. *2nd Article
• AK Will Take Over Duties Of Agents Leaving Athletes Like Asbel Kiprop Rightfully Concerned Kiprop: “We don’t what to do now since we don’t have a manager. … the managers will not be affected. Rosa will stay in Italy and Gerard in Netherlands. It is we who will suffer.”
• Kenyan Training Camp Closed And Coach Banned For Life For Having Inappropriate Sexual Relations With Junior Athletes Coach Charles Ng’eno denies the allegations, however, claiming that a rival is trying to sabotage him. AK also announced they are investigating another coach for his connection with young athletes changing citizenship to Qatar and Bahrain.

HS / College News

• Jamaica’s World Junior Champions Michael O’Hara And Jaheel Hyde Banned From Penn Relays They both received sponsorship deals with telecommunications provider LIME and therefore broke the rules of amateurism.
• Video: Duke Runner Makes Funny Track Parody Music Video From Bloodhound Gang’s “Bad Touch”
• 2015 Pepsi Team Invitational At Oregon Has Lowest Spectator Attendance Since 1994 Oregonian’s Ken Goe asks “Where were the fans?”
• Texas A&M Men And Women Stay On Top Of Latest DI National Rankings

Cherry Blossom 10 Miler *Results

LRC Stephen Sambu And Mary Wacera Win Cherry Blossom 10 Mile Sambu finished 8 seconds ahead of runner-up Jacob Riley. Other top Americans included Girma Mecheso (5th), Jared Ward (10th) and Luke Puskedra (12th). For the women, Wacera was given the same time as runner-up Cynthia Limo. Serena Burla was the top American in 6th.
*MB: Cherry Blossom 15K The course was short as it had to be changed at the last minute due to a car accident.

Not A Good PR Day For UAF

• Olympic/World Marathon Champion Stephen Kiprotich Speaks Out Against Ugandan Athletics Federation Kiprotich opens up a lot about UAF and the current sexual harassment scandal with Peter Wemali. He also brings up times UAF has wronged him in the past (by kicking him off teams) that he has never publicly mentioned until now.
• How Does This Happen? Police Reveal They Investigated Coach Peter Wemali Last Year When Accusations Of Sexual Harassment Began They apparently put out a report last year saying that he didn’t rape anyone, but “lured a female runner to his house and attempted to make sexual advances but he failed.” And yet he kept his job until recently when three women testified they were raped.

Weekend HS Action *Arcadia Results

• Arcadia (The Stanford Of HS Distance Running): DyeStat Highlights: Jesse Reiser Wins Boys 3,200 In 8:52 As Top 19 Total Go Under 9 Minutes Dani Jones won the girls race in 10:09.58. Michael Norman ran  45.91 in the 400. *Results
• Allie Ostrander Quadruples At Meet In Alaska With 9:59 3,200, 2:12 800, 4:49 Mile And Another 2:17 800

International Track/Road Results

• Usain Bolt Wins First 200 Of The Season With 20.20 In Jamaica He wasn’t thrilled with it, saying it didn’t feel smooth and he was hoping for under 20 seconds. 2nd place was Nesta Carter (20.60). Elaine Thompson ran a world lead in the women’s 100 with 10.92. *MB: Bolt runs 20.20
• Full UTech Classic Recap: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Ran 22.96 In The 200 To Beat Sherone Simpson By .01 400 hurdler Keliese Spencer was 2nd in the 800 (2.08.44).
• Kenyan World Relay Trials In The Books: Asbel Kiprop, Olympic 800 Bronze Medalist Timothy Kitum And WJ Champ Alfred Kipketer Lead 30-Strong Squad In the men’s 4 x 400, Botswana beat Kenya by .01 with 3:04.87. On the women’s side, Nigeria dominated in 3:31.27 (Kenya was 3:35.83).
  *Women’s Squad Of Relative No-Names, With Eunice Sum And Janeth Jepkosgei Not Included AK head Isaiah Kiplagat seems to be sending a message as he said, “We cannot have people waiting to be added to the team because they are champions. We will take this largely unknown team and they will perform.”
• Gemma Steel And Japhet Korir Win Great Ireland Run 10K Steel beat Ireland’s Fionnuala Britton by 4 seconds while Korir won with 28:15 in windy conditions. Leonard Komon was back in 4th (28:28). *Full Results
  *Elite Mile Won By UK’s Johnny Hay In 4:12 As Mark English Drops Out At 1,200
  *Fionnula Britton Says She’ll Skip 2015 World Champs To Focus On Marathon Training

Sports And Politics

• Video: Barack Obama Visits Jamaica And Does Lightning Bolt Pose With Usain Bolt
• Special City Council Panel Will Hold Four More Public Hearings Debating The Pros And Cons Of Hosting The 2024 Olympics
• Svein Arne Hansen Of Norway Elected As President Of European Athletics *EA Twitter Feed

Have You Ever Attended World XC? These Guys Have And They Tell You What It Was Like

Recommended Read: The Race Of A Lifetime: Blog By One Of The American Super Fans At 2015 World XC The duo were treated as celebrities and had their picture taken roughly 500 times, but their cheering couldn’t stop the African domination. “As the races continued, it became clear that East Africa hadn’t come to compete. They’d come to dominate.”

Proof – Size Doesn’t Matter

A Look At The Rise Of St. Kitts And Nevis – Population 46,000 – As A Sprint Power

Proof – Doping (Sometimes) Has Consequences

Good Read: Should Runners Who Have Served Drug Bans Be Welcomed At Races? 
MB: Good for him: Christian Hesch says he should never be eligble for prize money again

The Next IAAF Head?

Good Read: Mike Rowbottom Breaks Down Sergey Bubka Vs. Seb Coe For IAAF Head

Bizarre, But Interesting

• Man Breaks World Record For Running Around The World – Did It In 621 Days Running 26 miles per day for 621 days in a row is impressive, particularly since Kevin Carr didn’t have a partner and pushed all of his equipment. He beat the old record by a few hours.
• Researchers: Super-High Mileage Won’t Kill You (And Is Good For You) 25 mpw does seem to be better for you, though.
• Research Paper: Distance Running May Be An Evolutionary “Signal” For Desirable Male Genes
  *Why Super-Fast Marathon Men Get All The Women
  *Why Long-Distance Runners Make The Best Partners
• Why Is There A Track In Narita Airport Terminal 3? Designer Naoki Ito Explains
  *MB: Pretty Sweet: Tokyo’s Narita Airport Terminal 3 has indoor track lanes to take you between gates.
• Australian Discus Record Holder Benn Harradine Wants To Hold A Meet In An Airport Hangar He’s got some good ideas to make meets more interesting – including no distance races.

Justice In Uganda?

Great News: Ugandan Coach Peter Wemali Faces Arrest – After 3 Girls Testify They Were Raped “Wemali is like any other person in this country and if he has committed rape, defilement and assault like these young girls are testifying we are going to have him arrested and charged,” said a police commander. “He (Wemali) lured me to his house one day and raped me. I feared to scream because there was a panga and knife in the house. He also had a pistol,” said a victim.

Distance News

• May 30: Genzebe Dibaba Leads Stacked Field For 2015 Pre Classic 5,000 As She Faces Vivian Cheruiyot, Molly Huddle, Sally Kipyego And Faith Kipyegon Kim Conley, Jordan Hasay, Laura Thweatt, Marielle Hall also in field.
• Father Of The Year: New York Olympic Trials Hopeful Bryan Morseman Wins Three Marathons In 8 Days To Make Money To Pay For His Son’s Spina Bifida Treatments He ran 2:24:40, 2:32:39 and 2:24:10, winning $5,750.
  *MB: Man wins 3 marathons in 8 days. Uses prize money for son’s illness
• Missed Results From The Weekend: German Miler Homiyu Tesfaye Wins Osterlauf 10K In 27:54 Ethiopian Sutume Asefa Kebede won the women’s race in 31:49 while the half marathon was won by Abraham Yano (61:06) and Maryanne Wangari Wanjiru (71:12). At the Giro Media Blenio 10K, Victor Chumo (28:19) got the win.
• Evan Jager Gets New Website; Doing Open Twitter Q&A Today From 3-4PM ET
• Hoka One One Middle Distance Classic (Formerly Oxy) Set For May 14th The meet will be streamed live on USATF.tv. *Meet Site/Info

News From Kenya

• Another Big Name Going Down? Kenyan Press Reporting That A “Fairly Famous” Marathoner Has Failed A Drug Test They say this athlete has won two major marathons in the last year (although it’s unclear if they mean WMM).
  *MB: Another prominent Kenyan gets popped?
• Respect The Distance: Florence Kiplagat Out To Overcome Her Marathon Fears At London 2015 “I have a mental or psychological problem when it comes to marathon. One has to run 42km before finishing, it is so tiresome. I always lose hope towards the finish but this time, I will try to do my best.”
• Kenyan World Relay Squad Looks To Be Led By David Rudisha And Asbel Kiprop The full teams will be decided at a trial meet this week which includes 80 athletes, but some big names, including Eunice Sum and Mercy Cherono, were already left out.
• 42-Year-Old Former WR Holder Catherine Ndereba Running Her First Marathon In More Than 3 Years At The Nagano Marathon Next Weekend April 19th She ran 2:35:08 in her last marathon to finish 22nd in Nagoya.
• World XC Champ Agnes Jebet (Tirop) Now Focused On Winning World Champs She’ll work on her speed by running the 1,500 at the Shanghai DL meet on May 17th.

Throws News

• High School Javelin Record Holder Haley Crouser Among Several Athletes Leaving The Oregon Track Team Also distance runner Ryan Pickering.
• Official At Meet In New Jersey Impaled In The Heel By A Javelin Firefighters had to cut the javelin with a saw before he could be put into an ambulance. His injuries weren’t considered life threatening.