Happy Boxing Day!

A Legend Passes

Miruts Yifter, Inspiration To Haile G & Double Olympic Champ, Dies Yifter won 5,000 and 10,000 gold in 1980 and bronze in 1972. He was jailed upon returning to Ethiopia after 1972 and was a huge inspiration for Haile Gebrselassie.
*A Good Primer For Those Of You Who Don’t Know Much About Him: Athletics Weekly Remembers Miruts Yifter “The Shifter”
*IAAF Remembers Ethiopian Great Miruts Yifter

Holiday Distance News 

• Dave Hunter Takes A Look Back At Molly Huddle’s Incredible 2016 And Wonders If It Wouldn’t Have Happened Had She Not Celebrated Too Early In 2015
• Mercy Cherono Gets Engaged In Big Ceremony In Kenya
• British Olympians Tell You Whether They’ll Be Training On Christmas Day Or Not
• Athletics Weekly‘s Nutritional Tips/Rules To Help You Survive The Holiday Season
• Athletics Weekly Says There Is No Reason To Complicate Your Training – Keep It Simple As The Guys In The 1980s Basically Ran As Fast As People Are Doing Today Run 100+ with two hard workouts and you are pretty much set.
• Runners Tribe Looks At Tactical Races And Olympic 1,500m Final And How Some Fans Love Them And Some Hate Them
• Eliud Kipchoge, Janeth Jepkosgei, Benjamin Limo Visit Kids For Christmas At Shoes4Kids Hospital In Eldoret
• 10 Gifts Every Race Director Would Love From plastic ties to port-a-lets, RW has you covered.

Random News On A Slow Holiday Week

• Scientists: Running Could Make You Smarter “A growing body of research has suggested that aerobically challenging exercise can enhance brain structure and function in older adults.”
• A Guide To The College Bowl Season By Chris Lotsbom Where He Breaks Down The Games Assuming It Was A Distance Race And Not A Football Game
• Abel Kirui Wants To Do The London Double – Break His PR At London Marathon – And Then Rock The London WChamps
• Richard Bowker Announced As Vhair-Elect For UK Athletics – Athletics Weekly
• European Athletics – A Look At A-To-Z Of An Amazing Year For European Athletics This is part I – it only covers A through M.
  *Part 2 – N Through Z

Miler News

• Now That’s A Fan: College Runner Delivers On Promise To Tattoo Matt Centrowitz’s Face On His Body If He Won A Medal In Rio York College’s Cameron Sorter got a Rio celebration pic of Centro on his shoulder blade and recently got a chance to hang out and go for a run with Centro himself.
• Recommended Read: Asbel Kiprop Gives Some Insights On His Training And Talks Olympic Disappointment Kiprop said the result in Rio would have been different if his teammate Elijah Manangoi had been in the race as he is a “team player” and helps Kiprop by setting a fast pace.
• RR #2: Q&A Catching Up With Leo Manzano As He Talks About His Career, His Training And Fatherhood Manzano says his 4-year-old son already loves running and had to hold him back because he ran 3 miles and wanted to keep going.
• Want To Be Coached By Nick Willis? Willis And His Wife Are Running An Online Coaching Program For The Mile The idea is to help non-elites train for something that isn’t jogging the local 5K or trying to finish a marathon. Willis says, “The mile can be something you run as fast as you can … Running doesn’t just have to be jogging along.”
• Video: What’s The Race Day Process Like For An Elite Miler? Follow Aussie miler Jordan Gusman as he warms up and psychs himself up to try to run the second sub-4 mile of his career.

End-Of-The-Year News

• Usain Bolt Ranked The 32nd-Highest Paid Athlete Of 2016 He’s said to earn $32.5 million yearly.
  *Full Forbes List No other track athletes besides Bolt. Soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is ranked #1 at $80 million.
• Alistair Brownlee Thinks Mo Farah’s Sports Personality Of The Year Snub Could Be Because “Some People Don’t See Him As British” Farah received just over a fifth of the votes that tennis player Andy Murray did. But does that say something about Farah’s popularity or about track and field’s?
• Jamaica Gleaner Writer Makes Argument For Elaine Thompson As Performer Of The Year Over Usain Bolt This writer argues that while Bolt’s wins were expected, Thompson’s double gold in the 100/200 (she also won silver in the 4 x 100) were much more hard-fought victories.
• Japan 4 X 100 That Won Surprise Olympic Silver Named Japanese AOY
• Olympic Discus Champ Sandra Perkovic Named Croatian Sportswoman Of The Year
• IAAF Starting Its End-Of-Year-Reviews: *Racewalks

More Distance News

• Opinion Piece By Athletics Illustrated’s Chris Kelsall: “The Death Of International Cross-Country” Kelsall argues that the rise of “plastic Europeans” (Africans essentially being paid to represent countries like Turkey) is going to lead to a “harsh death” for World XC. Includes commentary from Paula Radcliffe, Sally Kipyego and Sonia O’Sullivan.
• Mo Farah Misses Again As Andy Murray Becomes First 3-Time Winner Of The BBC Spoty Award Triathlete Alistair Brownlee was 2nd, an equestrian show jumper 3rd, and Mo Farah only finished 4th.
• Former Boston Police Head Says “Patriots Day” Gets It Right Former Police Commissioner, Ed Davis, who helped lead the investigation, said, “it was a cathartic experience” for him. The movie opens Wednesday in NYC, Boston and LA and January 13th nationwide.

More Doping News

• BAAA Will Try To Recover $175,000 From Rita Jeptoo She will have to pay back the money if she wants to be eligible again at the end of her ban in 2018. However, if she chooses to retire, it will be hard for races to recover that prize money.
• Jamaica Defends Decision To Not Back Seb Coe’s Proposed Changes To The IAAF Constitution The Jamaican federation raises some legitimate concerns with the major overhaul of the IAAF constitution. For example, the removal of age restrictions for officials and having committees appointed rather than elected.
  *Jamaica Gleaner Article The JAA feels it wasn’t right for a very small group to make all the changes without any discussion or approval of individual amendments.
• More Controversy Over Jamaica’s Abstain Vote For New IAAF Reforms Apparently JAAA president and general secretary Garth Gayle acted on their own without discussing the vote with the JAAA congress. Ironic given their argument above.
• Six Moroccan Athletes And One Former Brit Are Among The 19 Doping Cases Recently Announced By The IAAF Among those sanctioned are former World Youth steeple medalist Abdellah Dacha, 3:36 /27:46 man Othmane El Goumri and former GB sprinter (now with Ghana) Tim Abeyie.
• US Pole Vaulter Nick Mossberg Gets 4-Year Doping Ban For HGH Mossberg, the 6th placer at 2015 USAs, was caught buying HGH over the internet.

Assorted US Distance News

• Good Read: IAAF Profile On Clayton Murphy: “The distance travelled by Clayton Murphy between the first and second of David Rudisha’s Olympic 800m gold medals is hard to comprehend.” Go step-by-step through Murphy’s pig-farmer-to-Olympic-hero story. Despite the huge changes, Murphy says he’s still “been able to come back and just be a normal college guy … a bronze medal didn’t change a whole lot for me.”
• Good Read: 77-Year-Old Doyle Carpenter Wins Two-Day Ultramarathon, Running 149 Miles In 48 Hours Lapping a couple (who probably didn’t know he was the leader) on the looped course, he heard them whisper, “I bet he was a great runner when he was young.” Carpenter response as he went on by: “I still am.”
• Gabriele Grunewald, Abbey D’Agostino And Alexi Pappas Among SPIKES’ Personalities Of The Year A lot of non-Americans on their 2016 highlights list as well, including Ed Whitlock and outer space marathoner Tim Peake.
• Boston Bombing Movie “Patriots Day” Premiers On The Hollywood Red Carpet Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray said, “I think they did it in a respectful and credible way.”
• Olympian And TV Commentator Carrie Tollefson To Be Inducted into Villanova Hall Of Fame Tollefson was a 5-time NCAA champion and 12-time All-American during her career.
• USOC Initiate “Operation Gold” To Increase Financial Rewards For Major Medal Winners Money for medal winners at the Winter Olympics is going up 50% and 25% at World Championships. An Olympic gold medal will net you $37,500 from the USOC.

Still In Need Of A Christmas Gift Or Book For The Holidays? Here Are Two Fine Choices

LRC Book Review: “Collision Course” By Jason Henderson – A Terrific Summary Of The Events Before, During And After One Of The Most Memorable Races Of All Time Henderson, a lifelong track nerd and the editor of Athletics Weekly, traces the paths of American favorite Mary Decker and teen phenom Zola Budd of South Africa (who wound up competing for Great Britain) to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where they tangled in the 3,000-meter final, resulting in Decker’s famous fall.

LRC Book Review: Pat Butcher Travels To The Czech Republic For “Quicksilver: The Mercurial Emil Zátopek”; How Does It Compare To The Other Zátopek Biographies? And the verdict is in … which of the three biographies of Emil Zatopek – the man RW called the greatest of all-time – is the best?

NCAA News

• Amherst College Has Former State Supreme Judicial Court Judge Investigating XC Team Over “Racist, Misogynist And Homophobic” Emails Apparently one of the article authors was on the XC team for two years.
  *MB: Amherst Cross Country Team Suspended Following Email Chain
• Southern Illinois Senior And Olympic Trials HJ Runner-Up Kyle Landon Wants To Win His First National Title In 2017 And Make It To London Worlds Landon was “devastated” in 2016 when he finished runner-up at both NCAAs, the OT and missed Rio because he didn’t have the standard.
• Class Of 2016 Inducted Into USTFCCCA Hall Of Fame The six new coaches were Terry Franson, Pat Healy, Mike Holloway, Bob Kitchens, Marty Stern and Bubba Thornton.