December 29, 2016 | LetsRun.com

LetsRun.com’s World And US Rankings

LRC Men’s 1500/Mile: Olympic Champion Matthew Centrowitz Is Our World #1 Asbel Kiprop may have run the world’s fastest time by over a second (3:29.33) and won four Diamond League races, but for the first time since 1971, an American man is the #1 ranked miler in the world as we can’t pick against a near-perfect season from Centro that included victories at World Indoors and the Olympics and a world-leading time in the mile (3:50.63).
*Agree or Disagree? Some Disagree: MB: ‘Year-End Rankings’ Correction – Kiprop #1, Centro #2**

LRC Women’s 1500: Faith Kipyegon Unseats Genzebe Dibaba as World #1; Jenny Simpson Back on Top of U.S. Rankings Kipyegon broke the Kenyan record twice this year, won the Olympic title with ease and became just the second woman in history to break 3:57 three times in one year. Last year, Simpson’s medal chances went up in smoke when her shoe came off in the WC final. This year, with her shoes on, she took bronze in Rio.

LRC Women’s 800: Caster Semenya Is the Clear World #1; Kate Grace Finishes A Shocking Year As U.S. #1 There may be a debate about whether Caster Semenya should be allowed to compete, but there was no debate about who the best women’s 800 runner was in 2016. American Kate Grace returned from injury with a career year, fulfilling her “dream, dream goal” of making the Olympic final in Rio, but was that enough to crack our world top 10?

LRC Men’s 800: David Rudisha Is On Top For 2nd Year In A Row; Olympic Bronze Medalist Clayton Murphy Leads The Americans The greatest 800 runner ever is our pick for #1 again. There are two Americans in the top 10, but where do Murphy and World Indoor champ Boris Berian rank against the world’s best?

IAAF End-Of-Year Reviews: *Jumps *Throws *Multis *Hurdles *Relays *Racewalk s *Long Distance *Road & XC

Athletics Weekly‘s Rankings: Top 3 International Rankings For All Women’s Events You can see their top 10 rankings by purchasing a digital copy of their bumper 112-page end-of-year stats special.

New York News

Jeff Benjamin’s offers a humble solution to ‘Eugene fatigue’ for 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials – Hold it in NYC We 100% agree and think it’s absurd that every major meet is held in Eugene.
Olympic champ Omar McLeod will face Jason Richardson at Millrose Games The meet is Feb 11th this year.

Russia Sort Of Confesses – Or Does It?

This story is getting major traction as it's on the front page of the Wall Street Journal Russia’s New Anti-Doping Chief Admits To NY Times There “… was an institutional conspiracy” To Dope, But Denies It Was State-Sponsored And Wants Everyone To Pay Attention To Fancy Bears

Hold On: Kremlin Responds By Saying It Wants To Check Veracity Of Russian Official’s Doping Comments In NY Times “We are not inclined to consider this information as first hand,” as they want to confirm the quote and check the context of the quote.
Kremlin Says Russian Admission Of Doping In NY Times Was “… distorted and taken out of context.”
NY Times Fires Back: NYT affirms accuracy of Russian doping story – “All quotes in our story are accurate.”

There Was A Lot Of December 26th Action In The UK

A Recap Of The Many Boxing Day Races In England The biggest news from a US perspective was that NCAA indoor 5,000 leader Marc Scott of Tulsa (13:38) ran a 29:33 10k.

NCAA XC
Prediction Contest

LRC Scandal? Rigged!? LetsRun.com’s Jonathan Gault Wins LetsRun.com Running Warehouse XC Prediction Contest Insiders dominated the RunningWarehouse prediction contest as in addition to Gault’s win, a guy coached by Karissa Schweizer‘s grandfather won as well. Another winner wrote one of the greatest emails we’ve ever received.

Holiday Distance News

The Latest On The Anti-Doping Front

Awesome development Ethiopia is going to try to hand out lifetime bans to drug cheats
NYT affirms the accuracy of Russian doping story – “All quotes in our story are accurate.”
Professor: Sports federations will face obstacles in sanctioning individual Russian athletes “I think what will be a problem is individual cases with individuals pleading I was forced to do it or I didn’t know how it was done,” said Dionne Koller, director of the Center for Sport and the Law at the University of Baltimore.
Lance Armstrong says his #1 goal for 2017 is to rejoin the cancer-fighting community as a difference-maker

2016 Is Almost Over – 2017 Will Be Here Before You Know It

US Distance Stars Share Their New Year’s Resolutions From do more yoga (Huddle/Linden) to write a handwritten note every month (Centro), RW has you covered.
British Athletics stars share their New Year’s resolutions
Runner’s World‘s 10 Most Read Stories of 2016 Game of Thrones fans, RW’s article on Margaery Tyrell‘s 3:51 showing at the London Marathon cracks the list.
Gabriele Grunewald is Meg Bellino’s 2016 Human of the Year For Her Cancer Fight
BBTM The Best Mile/1500 Moments of 2016 From Drew Hunter and Genzebe Dibaba‘s exploits indoors to Matthew Centrowitz‘s gold outdoors, it was quite a year.
Might A Legendary HS Record Fall In 2017? After massive indoor heave, Jordan Geist admits Michael Carter’s legendary outdoor record from 1979 is “sitting in the back of my mind”

More Look Backs At 2016

Good Read Nikki Hamblin Says Helping Abbey D In Rio Won’t Define Her “If the same sort of scenario happened in the street you wouldn’t just get up and walk away. It just so happens that it took place for me in front of a few hundred TV cameras.”

Andre De Grasse Selected Canadian Male Athlete Of Year Over Sidney Crosby And Derek Drouin De Grasse got 43 first place votes, Crosby (hockey) 18, Drouin (high jump gold) 2.
The Guardian‘s Andy Bull Takes A Look Back At The Chaos And Brilliance Of The Rio Olympics
BBC Golden Moment Video: David Rudisha Looks Back At Rio Gold
Video: Elaine Thompson Talks To BBC About Her 100-200 Double In Rio

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

Doping News

IOC Finally Acts After McLaren II: Opens New Doping Cases Against 28 Russian Athletes In Sochi Who Had Specimens That Were Tampered With Russian officials have also handed back hosting rights for the end-of-season World Cup finals in cross-country skiing.
*Putin Denies State-Sponsored Doping Happened In Russia
IOC To Retest All Russian Samples From 2010-2014
Fancy Bears Hacking Group Is Trying To Approach Journalists Individually After Initial Dumps Have Not Helped Russian Cause Much
Yuliya Stepanova’s Former Coach Vladimir Mokhnev Given 10-Year Ban From Athletics
*Yuliya Stepanova’s Former Coach Will Challenge His 10-Year Ban “I don’t see why I have been suspended. No-one approached me to catch me red-handed,” said Vladimir Mokhnev.
Drug Testing Deters Doping, But Can Your Average Road Races Afford It?
At Least 200 Cyclists Got Up Early To Ride With The Biggest Doper In History, Lance Armstrong, Last Week In New Zealand

Week That Was

LRC WTW: Europe’s Teen Phenoms Appear To Be The Real Deal And Buzunesh Deba Breaks The Boston Marathon Course Record We look at foreign transplants, junior phenoms and note it’s been 975 days since an American went sub-2:10 in the marathon. We also discussed the ailing Miruts Yifter, the 1980 Olympic 5k/10k champ, who passed away on Thursday.

Galen Rupp’s Future Isn’t On The Track

Ken Goe Exclusive Galen Rupp’s Days As A 5,000m Runner Are Over, 2017 Looks To Be His Last At 10,000m Ken Goe reports, “Salazar said Rupp would continue to compete in the 10,000 through 2017, but would concentrate on marathon training.”
*MB: Discuss

More US News Of Note

Looking Ahead To 2017

Bolt To Focus On Enjoying 100 In Final Season Without Too Much Stress “I think we have done the bulk of the work over the 10 years we have been working, so now it’s my last season. The focus is on the 100m, and I will just be trying to enjoy the season, not too much stress”
After World Indoor Gold, Olympic Bronze Kiwi Shot Putter Tom Walsh Looking Forward to 2017 “I wouldn’t be doing this sport if I didn’t think I could break the world record. So I want to give it a real go and it’s been around for too long.”

Upcoming Action

Olympic champ Omar McLeod will face Jason Richardson at Millrose Games The meet is Feb 11th this year.
Liberty University’s New $30 Million Banked Indoor Track Looks Great, Set To Open January 7
Elite field For January 29th’s Osaka Women’s Marathon Released – Field Includes Americna Serena Burla
Olympic 400h Champ Dalilah Muhammad Will Compete In Europe Indoors For 1st Time In 2017 At Birmingham’s Müller Indoor Grand Prix In Feb. The Birmingham meet is one of 5 meets that are part of the IAAF indoor tour. The series kicks off with the NB Indoor Grand Prix in Boston (Jan 28th) – the only US meet in the tour.
*Eilidh Doyle Will Face Muhammad

Who Says There Aren’t Races On Christmas?

Kurashiki H.S. Runs All-Time #5 Time To Win Its First-Ever National High School Boys Ekiden Title The Japanese high schools even have Kenyan ringers on their teams.
Osaka Kunei Joshi Gakuin H.S. Wins Second National High School Girls Ekiden Title In Three Years

Is One Of The Most Legendary HS Records In Jeopardy?

Jordan Geist Breaks National High School 16-Pound Shot Put Record With Massive 68-4 He broke Ryan Crouser‘s indoor record of 63-11 by more than 4 feet and also beat Michael Carter‘s outdoor record. Could he possibly break Carter’s legendary 81-3 with the HS shot that has stood since ’79?
*End-Of-Year Review IAAF: Throws

Rupp Running Boston!

LRC Analysis LetsRun.com Breaks Down Galen Rupp’s Boston Marathon Debut – Will He (And Should He) Be The Favorite? How Well Suited Is He For The Course? + Conspiracy Theories Galore An American-born man hasn’t won the Boston marathon since 1983. That very well may change in 2017. In this LetsRun.com debate, the LRC staff goes back and forth about Rupp’s Boston debut. They start by debating if Rupp is the favorite but before it’s all over the venture into the conspiracy theory front: Is it possible that the Nike sub-2 attempt was created to water down Boston to ensure Rupp’s victory?
*MB: Galen Rupp to run Boston Marathon. He will need volunteers to hand him new hats throughout the race.
*MB: Calling it now, Rupp wins Boston 2017 2:07:04, prove me wrong.

Men's Team USA for Rio Galen Rupp And Entire US Olympic Marathon Team Minus Amy Cragg Running 2017 Boston Marathon – Plus Jordan Hasay’s Debut Galen Rupp is running his first big city major marathon and it’s not inconceivable he will be the favorite to WIN the 2017 Boston Marathon (international field hasn’t been announced) as Meb runs his final Boston and Shalane Flanagan and Desi Linden go for Boston glory with Jordan Hasay making her debut.