Latest Doping Stuff: Mo Farah Takes Some Shots

• Mo Farah Calls Out Spain’s Alemayehu Bezabeh For Doping; Says He Wants Lifetime Bans For Drug Cheats Bezabeh beat Farah at the 2009 Euro XC Champs and was later banned for 2 years for doping.
• Steve Magness Criticizes Seb Coe, Saying His Relationship With Nike Put Him In Denial Magness thinks Coe and others at the IAAF ignore what they don’t want to hear and spend too much time in “politician mode.”
• IAAF Will Face More Criticisms From WADA Report This Week, But They Won’t Be Banned Dick Pound: “Like all organisations, there’s an effort to try to distance the organisation from the conduct that occurred … I’m sorry, but these are not people unrelated to the IAAF … this is an IAAF problem. It’s not just a couple of bad people.”
• IAAF Urges Any Witnesses With Knowledge About Extortion Of Moroccan Or Turkish Athletes To Come Forward
• GB Marathoner Disillusioned By Doping Scandals And No Longer Advises Young Runner To Aim For “Hollow” Olympics The 2008 Olympic 6th placer was satisfied when she ended her career, but now looks back in disgust at the areas where she was cheated.

Olympic News

• Protests Against Rising Transport Prices In Rio Grow Violent Masked protesters threw rocks at police, who in turn used tear gas, stun grenades and pepper spray on the protesters.
• Italy’s Premier Matteo Renzi Reiterates Support For Rome 2024 Bid

Sprint Stuff

• Who Will Replace Usain Bolt As The Top Jamaican Sprinter When He Retires? Yohan Blake is clearly the most likely candidate if he can get (and stay) healthy.
• Usain Bolt-Signed Shoes Stolen From A Car In Southern England The victim had paid a lot of money for the spikes at a charity auction and for some foolish reason, left them overnight in his car.
• David Oliver Shares Some Random Facts About Himself He’s big on DIY projects, started track as a terrible LJer, was really shy as a kid and “not a super popular dude in high school.”
• Justin Gatlin Explains How He Used To Long Jump With An Unorthodox Technique He based his form off of the well known Michael Jordan “Air Jordan” logo.
• A Historical Progression Of Sprinting Top Speed World Bests Bolt is obviously the fastest recorded at 12.35 m/s (27.63 mph).
• UK’s Richard Kilty Wants To Become Only The Second Person To Win Back-To-Back World Indoor 60m Titles

Hosting News – Is It Worth It?

• Will Spending $45 Million In Public Money On The 2021 World Championships Generate $568 Million For The Economy? That is what TrackTown USA is trying to convince Oregon government officials of anyway.
• Small Fire In Rio Olympic Park May Have Been Started On Purpose The fire happened after a demonstration by former workers who were laid off without receiving their last month’s salary or severance pay.
• Tokyo 2020 Logo Contest Down To A Shortlist Of Four The original logo was scrapped due to plagiarism.
• Preliminary Entries Of 699 Athletes Set For Portland World Indoors

February Will Be Here Before You Know It

• Molly Huddle And Andre De Grasse To Star In 2016 NYRR Millrose Games On Feb. 20th Can Huddle challenge Shalane Flanagan‘s 14:47.62 AR?
• Marathoner Aaron Braun’s Baby Is Due The Day Before The Olympic Marathon Trials

Track Town Poland FTW

• Bydgoszcz, Poland Named Host Of 2016 World Juniors That’s Being Stripped From Kazan, Russia *LRC Bydgoszcz Photos
• More On Bydgoszcz – Track Town, Poland Bydgoszcz has hosted a lot of big events in recent years, including World Youths, World Juniors and World XC twice.

Doping News: IAAF Officially Bans Russian Doping Scandal Officials

• IAAF Ethics Commission Bans Four Senior Officials Involved In Russian Doping Cover-Ups – Three For Life Papa Massata Diack, Valentin Balakhnichev, Alexei Melnikov get lifetime bans and former anti-doping director Gabriel Dollé ridiculously only gets 5 years. *IAAF Statement *WADA Statement
  *Full Decision Text “In GD [Dollé]’s case such ban is also appropriate but in his case for five years only; his sins were those of omission, not commission.”
• One Week To Go: Second Part Of WADA Doping Probe To Come Out On Thursday Next Week Dick Pound will once again present the findings which will center on the IAAF and Kenya.
• Russian Deputy Sports Minister Loses Place On WADA Foundation Board Pavel Kolobkov is barred from participating until RUSADA is compliant again.
• Former Blood Doping Cyclist David Millar Says That The IAAF Knew Back In 2009 That Track Was “Riddled” He claims they knew, but did nothing about it.
• IAAF Ethics Commission Appoints Two New Members; No Longer All Male Council Justice Catherine O’Regan is a former South African judge and Annabel Pennefather is a distinguished Singaporean lawyer.

More Distance Stuff

• Sara Hall Now Being Coached By Husband, Ryan Hall In this interview with Carrie Tollefson, Hall talks about her training/strategy for the OT and adopting her 4 Ethiopian daughters.
• Imane Merga And Alice Aprot Win Campaccio XC Meet In Italy Merga just beat out Yasin Haji as they had identical times with Jarius Birech and Thomas Longosiwa 3rd and 4th. Aprot beat out Ruth Jebet by 4 seconds as Linet Masai and Mercy Cherono were 3-4.
• February 14: Meseret Defar And Brenda Martinez Announced For New Balance Indoor Grand Prix Trayvon Bromell in the sprints.

Olympic News

• Rio Olympic Stadium Administrators “Fire 75% Of Staff” Only 8 Months Out From Rio 2016 The goal is to cut costs while the facility is under Olympic control.
• Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve: Take A Look At What Would Have Been Hamburg’s Olympic Logo If They Hadn’t Pulled Out Of The 2024 Bid

Will You Run More Than Mark Zuckerberg In 2016?

• Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Wants To Run A Mile A Day In 2016 LRC message boarders were quick to call him out on a number of points.
• Mark Zuckerberg Wants Us To Run A Mile A Day In 2016, But He’s Doing It All Wrong Blogger points out that Zuckerberg is heel striking and being over optimistic when he says it’ll take less than 10 minutes.
• MB: Is the Mark Zuckerberg running challenge real?

Radical Group Wants Referendum On Rome 2024 Bid

Kenya’s Stars Are Already Locked In On Rio

• Geoffrey Kamworor Says He’ll Do World Half – Where He Wants WR – And Then Olympic 10,000 – No Spring Marathon A smart plan as there is little chance Mo Farah is losing unless Kamworor is 100% ready.
• Vivian Cheruiyot Says She’s Going To Double In 2016 And Thinks She Can Win Gold In Both “I feel strong and focused on the task ahead, which is to double in the two races. I have the strength and stamina to weather the storm and win.”

Field Event News

• 2016 World Indoors: Ashton Eaton, Brianne Theisen-Eaton To Compete Eaton hopes to break the WR.
• Ashton Eaton Shares His First Impressions – Everything From His 1st Car, 1st Interview, To His 1st Mile
• Finland’s Wilma Murto Breaks European Youth Pole Vault Record With 4.45m Clearance

Last Weekend’s Top Action

Jacksonville Half Marathon: 27 Men Go Under The 65:00 Trials Standard As Jonathan Grey Wins In 62:47 Over Fernando Cabada (63:25) And Chris Derrick (63:41) The top 14 women went under the 1:15 standard as Stephanie Dinius won in 1:13:27.
*MB: 27 sub-1:05 at Jax half
*43-Year-old Kevin Castille Qualified With 1:04:33 Castille was our QOD earlier this week.

Japan’s Biggest Race: Aoyama Gakuin University Becomes First School In 39 Years To Lead Hakone Ekiden From Start To Finish A freshman with no 10k or half marathon experience and only a 14:15 5k PR ran the opening leg on day 2 and came away with a leg course record.

Indoor Track: *Abbey D’Agostino Races Men And Runs 8:51.88 3k Training partners Liz Costello (9:01) and Cory McGee (9:16) were also in her race.
*Brian Herron Runs 21.84 And 48.76 Indoors In Alabama To Break Two Freshman High School National Indoor Records

2015 In Review And An Obituary

• Elaine Thompson Went From Unknown To 5th Fastest All-Time At 200m In 2015  Thompson ran 21.66, while Dafne Schippers ran 21.63, the fastest time in 17 years. Allyson Felix‘s PR is 21.69.
• Blogger Mark Cullen Picks Emily Infeld And UW Alum Meron Simon As His 2015 Athletes Of The Year Do you remember what they both have in common? Read to find out.
• Track & Field News Chooses Ashton Eaton’s And Genzebe Dibaba’s Decathlon And 1,500 WRs As Top Performances Of 2015
• IAAF 2015 Diamond League Review – Part 1 Read the highlights from Doha through the adidas GP in NYC. *DL Review – Part 2 Paris through Brussels.
• RIP: Obituary On Sylvester Stein, Anti-Apartheid Author, Running Journalist, And Masters Sprint Champ He had an interesting life to say the least.

2016 Has Begun

• Mike Kigen Dominates San Silvestre Vallecana 10K In 27: 35 As Evan Jager Finishes Runner-Up (28:54) Ezekiel Kemboi was a non-factor as he finished 21st. Linet Masai won the women’s race in 31:38.
  *MB: Jager vs Kemboi in road 10K for New Years
• Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola (28:28) Beats Out Muktar Edris (28:44) And Imane Merga (28:56) To Win Boclassic New Year’s Eve Race In Italy Steepler Jarius Birech and NZ’s Zane Robertson were 4th and 5th. World XC bronze medalist Netsanet Gudeta won the women’s 5K (15:57) over Janet Kisa (16:02) and World Champs 4th placer Viola Kibiwot (16:02). *Full Results
• RRW: Daniel Winn And Sarah Pagano Win NYRR Midnight Run Winn beat out Louis Serafini and Joe Stilin while Pagano won over Katie Matthews with UK’s Lisa Dobriskey 5th.
  *MB: So who won the midnight race in Central Park?
• Kenya’s Vincent Kipruto (2:10:18) And Ethiopia’s Worknesh Edesa (2:24:04) Win Xiamen Marathon In China The men’s race came down to a final 200m kick with Kipruto beating out Ethiopia’s Shura Kitata by only 2 seconds.
• Jan. 30th: Lolo Jones And Kristi Castlin Racing Over 60H At Camel City Elite Meet