The Week That Was

WTWMeet Germany's Teen Phenom, How Not To Run A Marathon, The End Of The Diamond League In New York, And Praise For Doper Maria Sharapova

2016 NCAAs Are Also Fri. & Sat. *Schedule *Streaming

LRC NCAA DMR Preview: The Deepest Men’s Field In History Is Led By Oklahoma State Six of the 12 fastest men’s teams in NCAA history will compete on Friday. Will they be good enough to hold off Stanford and Washington and their 3:53 anchor legs, Sean McGorty and Izaic Yorks? Will Oregon dare to run Edward Cheserek just 30 minutes after the 5k?

LRC NCAA DMR Preview: The Women’s Race Should Be A Stanford-Georgetown Duel Stanford and Georgetown already raced once this year and just .19 separated. They are the class of the field and should battle it out again on Friday.

Previous M 800 *W 800 *W Mile *M Mile *W 3K/5K *M 3k/5k *Men’s Team Analysis *Women’s Team Analysis

A look at what the top collegiate programs are feeding their runners now that they can give them unlimited stuff Univ. of Oregon offers Generation UCan, a letsrun sponsor, to its athletes.

The Latest On The Corruption Front

Educate Yourself Watch the English Version of the Latest ARD Doping Documentary — “Russia’s Red Herrings”

• Abebe Aregawi B Sample Is Positive We’re pleased to see that Aregawi has admitted to taking the drug and supposed a doctor is in jail.
• Alan Abrahamson rips media for acting like the Olympics are going to be a disaster 5 months before every single Olympics We agree.
• Kenyan Authorities Are Demanding Answers From Nike Over Alleged Athletics Kenya Corruption “Why was such a huge sum of money paid as commitment?” said one of the detectives. “It’s only Nike who can tell us.”
• UK Athletics Head Says Lord Sebastian Coe Will “Face Ridicule If He Lifts Russia Ban” Before Olympics After Latest ARD Report We still don’t think it will happen (even if it probably should). Money talks. Can someone imagine the financial hit to NBC if it was the USA that was banned?
• Four More Russian Athletes Test Positive For Meldonium

Russian-Related Doping Headlines

• Maria Sharapova Tests Positive For Meldonium, The Same Drug Which Caught Abeba Aregawi She admitted to taking the drug since 2006, saying she didn’t know it was banned and had it prescribed by a doctor. The fallout has been quick as Nike already “suspended its relationship” with her, but her lawyer is hoping that she won’t get any sanction.
  *MB: Sharapova busted for meldonium
  *MB: What do we know about meldonium (drug Aregawi was busted for)?
• UKA Chairman Ed Warner Says Seb Coe Will “Face Ridicule” If He Lifts Russian Ban Before Rio He wants the IAAF to rule Russia out of the Games this week and “end the uncertainty.”
• WADA “Dismayed” By Latest Doping Allegations Against Russia In New ARD Report WADA president Craig Reedie: “At a time when trust in sport is wafer-thin these troubling assertions will do little to reinforce confidence in the Russian anti-doping system.”
• Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko Says Russia Is “Doing Everything Possible” And Will Investigate Latest Report Elsewhere, he’s quoted dismissing the ARD report as a political attack.
• IAAF Task Force Investigating Latest Allegations
  *IAAF Task Force Will Address IAAF Council On Friday

The Russian Doping Trilogy

• Third ARD Report Says Russia’s Efforts To Clean Up Doping Have Been “Mere Lip Service” As Culture Of Doping Continues Undercover journalists found a banned coach still working with athletes and a Russian official selling drugs. It also shared documents claiming that a newly elected leader of RUSADA previously gave athletes advanced warnings about drug tests.
• IAAF Statement “Thanking” ARD And Hajo Seppelt And Saying It Will Look Into The Latest Accusations The IAAF/Seb Coe have come a long way from accusing ARD of “declaring war” on the sport.
• AP Article With Some More Specifics
• Russian Whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova Wants To Compete At The Olympics Under The Olympic Flag Stepanova and her husband fled Russia and have applied for political asylum in Canada. The IAAF will consider her request at a meeting this week.
• The Guardian’s Sean Ingle Argues For Keeping Russia Banned From The Rio Games He also thinks the situations in Kenya and Ethiopia should be “more in the firing line.”
• Banned Russian Coach Vladimir Kazarin Denies The Accusations And Accuses USA Of Using Political Influence Against Russia “The USA controls politics and sport. … If we are banned, then all these medals will go to the USA and Great Britain.”

More From The Weekend *All NCAA Results

• Yale’s James Randon Runs 3:58 To Win IC4A Championships
• IAAF Indoor Round-Up: Spain’s Ruth Beitia And Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi Head To World Indoors As HJ Medal Favorites After Winning Their Respective National Championships Tamberi cleared 2.36m while Betia set a new world lead at 1.98m.
• Sandra Perkovic Throws 70.59 Discus National Winter Throwing Meet In Croatia World junior bronze medalist Sara Kolak broke her own national javelin record with 62.75m.
• 43 World And American Records Go Down At USATF Masters Indoor Championships

Distance: David Rudisha Opens His Season

• David Rudisha Wins Season Opener In 1:44.78 20-year-old Aussie Luke Matthews had a massive PR to finish 2nd in 1:45.16. Two OQs in the women’s steeple plus a Ryan Gregson win in the 1,500. *Results *Race Videos
  *IAAF Melbourne Recap After winning NZ champs on Friday, Tom Walsh flew to Australia on Saturday to win the SP here in 20.87m.
• Lucas Rotich Wins Lake Biwa Marathon With 2:09:11 In Warm Conditions In the final men’s Olympic selection race, three Japanese men went sub-2:10, led by Hisanori Kitajima (2nd – 2:09:16). Yuki Kawauchi finished back in 7th (2:11:53).
  *IAAF Recap Kitajima: “I like warmer weather so today’s weather did not bother me. Please note that I am sending this message to the selector.”
• Donnie Cowart And Grace Morgan Win Pan AM XC Championships Max King was 3rd. *Full Results

Big Doping News

• Swedish Paper Says Jos Hermens’ Group May Have Made Up Stuff About Ukrainian Doctor Being Found In Ethiopia – In Reality, Paper Says Hermens Was Employing A Doctor Who Thinks EPO Should Be Legal 
• Fascinating Read: What Is Meldonium/Mildronate – The Drug Aregawi Was Busted For? The Latvian-manufactured heart drug that was only banned starting January 1 has already resulted in two huge positives. A LetsRun.com reader explains what the drug – which isn’t approved in the US – is and does.
• 3 More Ethiopians Bite The Dust And Are Suspended – 1 Appears To Be 2:09 Marathoner Sintayehu Mergia In December, he went from 2:12 to 2:09 in the marathon at age 30.

Worlds News

• IAAF’s World Indoor Stats Book / Media Guide Is Now Out Read it for free.
• Ukrainian Team Named For World Indoors 2012 silver medalist Nataliya Lupu could be a factor in the 800.
• Forget About The Olympics – It’s Only 500 Days Until The 2017 Worlds In London

Ultra Running News

• Worth A Watch: Trailer For New Film On 89-Year-Old Ultra Runner Bob Hayes “I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to do it, but I just keep going because if I stop, that’ll be the end and they’ll haul me off through the pearly gates.”
• UK Ultra Runner Robbie Britton Writes About Running And Winning The 230K Beyond The Ultimate Ice Ultra In Arctic Sweden “If you sweat it freezes to you. A fine balance has to be found by creating enough heat to stay warm but not too warm. Basically it is a Arctic strip tease…”
  *LRC Winter Running Archives
• Satirical Racing Video Goes Viral, Nearly Costs Arizona 50-Miler Its Permit Jesse Weber‘s video of him racing in jean shorts and drinking beer got attention from Maxim, Fox Sports and Yahoo, but ended up offending the Navajo community whose land he ran through.

Other News: Track Well Represented In This Year’s Laureus Award Nominees

Mostly Negative Olympic Headlines *All Rio Coverage

Doping News: Another Major Drug Bust

• 2015 Tokyo Marathon Champ Endeshaw Negesse Fails Drug Test The 2:04 Ethiopian marathoner failed a test for meldonium, the same substance as Abeba Aregawi.
  *MB: An other Ethiopian doping case…
• David Rudisha Talks About The Kenyan Doping Problem And The Possibility Of Breaking His Own 800m World Record “These young athletes who are desperate to make money, to win races, they end up being fools and getting into these drugs.” *AP Article
• Abeba Aregawi Denies Intentionally Doping, Saying Through Her Agent, “I don’t know how this came into my body.” Her agent says that Aregawi looked him in the eye and said she wasn’t doping.
• Court Of Arbitration For Sport (CAS) To Replace IOC In Handling All Doping Cases At Olympic Games CAS will control all anti-doping decisions including handing out sanctions. This is a positive step away from having biased national federations handling all doping cases/bans.

Justin Gatlin / Dennis Mitchell Making Waves

• Dennis Mitchell Steps Down As US Relay Coach Due To New Rules To Prevent Conflicts Of Interest Mitchell coaches Justin Gatlin, who will almost certainly be in the relay pool. Nice to see USATF being proactive about preventing controversy. We’re happy to see Mitchell out of the job, but mostly for other reasons.
  *LRC Archives: Convicted Doper Dennis Mitchell Is Now The Paid Head USA Relays Coach Hired By USATF National Office Without Input Of USATF High Performance Committee
• UK Headline: “Justin Gatlin Clocks 9.45 Seconds On Japanese Game Show By Openly Cheating” This older video of Gatlin breaking the WR with huge fans at his back has resurfaced and is making worldwide headlines.
  *MB: Gatlin runs 9.45!!!