TrackTown Summer Series Portland *Results*Video Replay *Live Thread

LRC Portland Recap: Robby Andrews Drops Out As Ben Blankenship Wins A Thriller Over Merber And Engels, Windle Keeps Rolling The men’s 1,500m didn’t get the Worlds qualifying standard but it was three abreast racing down the homestretch. Drew Windle continued his good form in the 800 and Stephanie Garcia won the 3,000m.
Discuss:Robby Andrews just dropped out with 350 to go

Ken Goe Recap Of Portland:Surprise, Ben Blankenship Wins The 1,500 At The TrackTown Summer Series

Robby Andrews Post-Race Interview:“I’d be lying if (I said) there’s no pressure to get the world championships standard.” Plus news he’s been staying with Clayton Murphy.

Sunday News Of Note

Gold Coast: Takuya Noguchi Runs 2-Minute PR To Win Gold Coast Marathon In 2:08:59 And Beat 43-Year-Old Mungara (2:09:04) And Kawauchi (2:09:18), Abebech Bekele Runs CR (2:25:34) Kawauchi was doing this race as training for next month’s World Champs.

Jarrion Lawson Ready For Long Jump And 4 X 100 At World Championships

USA Hosting News

• Alan Abrahamson Celebrates That The 2020 Trials Are Coming To LA “Follow the logic. Eugene as the base but, you know, get it out of Eugene.”
• Ken Goe Criticizes USATF For Announcing The 2020 Trials Decision The Day Before The First Summer Track Series Meet “
• Register-Guard:“It’s Hard To Picture The Olympic Trials Anywhere But Eugene”
• TV Analyst Dwight Stones Says Track Has Been A “Hard Sell For Track And Field” Talking about an adidas-sponsored meet held in the LA area he said, “It couldn’t draw flies.”
• A Critical Review Of NBC’s Final Day Of Coverage At USAs Not surprisingly, there is much that can be improved.
• The Oregonian’s Ken Goe Writes That He Doesn’t Think His Editors Would Let Him Publish A Story Like The BBC’s FBI/Eugene Allegations Without Indicating A Source The IAAF, USATF/TrackTown officials all say they haven’t heard anything about an investigation.

Distance News

• Recommended Read:Ed Caesar: “The Epic Untold Story Of Nike’s (Almost) Perfect Marathon From the special shoe development which started in 2014 all the way through Eliud Kipchoge‘s near miss, Caesar tells the inside story behind the Breaking2 project. A great read with lots of interesting insights like the fact that Kipchoge couldn’t sleep the night before the attempt he was so nervous and that the shoe designers joked that it would be “great” if their shoes were banned – “Just by opening an orange box you have an advantage? That’s the holy grail.”
• Mo Farah Admits He Still Has “A Lot More Work” To Do To Be Prepared To Defend His World Titles In London Farah said Ostrava was “OK, but not great” and showed he’s a bit rusty.
• European Indoor 1,500 Champ Marcin Lewandowski Gives Shares His Tips For Sport And Life “Unless you are David Rudisha you need to see what is happening during a race. You need to be smart, you need to think during a race and be alive to the tactical variables.”
• Trailer For New Boston Marathon Bombing Movie Starring Jake Gyllenhaal Is Out You might be thinking to yourself, “Didn’t this already come out?” Well, that’s because there were two other Boston movies out earlier this year (the movie “Patriot’s Day” starring Mark Wahlberg and “Boston: The Documentary” narrated by Matt Damon).
• Gabriele Grunewald Launches Her Own Website

A Lot Of People Want To Talk About Usain Bolt And Wayde Van Niekerk

• InsideTheGames’ Mike Rowbottom:“Van Niekerk Upstages Bolt, But Other Rivals Wait On The London Line”
• Wayde Van Niekerk Says He’s Had Some Injury Issues This Year So Is Concerned About All The Rounds In London, Where He’ll Do The 200/400 Double “I think that the double itself is going to be double the work if not triple. Six days of pure competition.”
• BBC:Usain Bolt Sprinting Great Under Pressure As He Tries To Retire In Style The article does a quick rundown of the men who could keep Bolt from going out on top (Justin Gatlin, Yohan Blake, Andre De Grasse).
• The Telegraph:Despite An Endorsement From The Man Himself, Wayde Van Niekerk Will Not Replace Usain Bolt(Requires registering for one free article a month.)

More Mid-Week Action

• Harry Jerome Classic Recap/Results:Andre De Grasse Gets A Hero’s Welcome As He Wins 100 In 10.17Melissa Bishop Canada (2:00.11) and Brannon Kidder (1:47.36) won the 800s as Aussie Rorey Hunter (3:39.28) beat out Izaic Yorks (3:39.41) in the 1,500.
  *De Grasse Mobbed By Fans After Winning Harry Jerome Classic 100m He said last year the crazy reception overwhelmed him, but this year he was ready for it.
• Daniel Stahl Breaks 23-Year-Old Swedish Discus Record With World-Leading 71.29m At Folksam Grand Prix

2020 Trials Go To EugeneSacramento LA

2020 US Olympic Track And Field Trials Awarded To Los Angeles; Will Be Hosted By Mt. SAC If you read some of the articles beforehand, you might have thought the real competition was just between Eugene and Sacramento, but LA won the vote 11-2.
*Ken Goe: USATF Spurns Eugene, Awards 2020 Trials To Mt. SAC Now on the USATF board, Lauren Fleshman said, “Long term, you can’t build track on one city.”
*Los Angeles Times Article
*MB:USATF Awards 2020 Olympic Trials to Mt. SAC

NCAA News

• Texas Supreme Court Refuses To Block Lawsuit By Ex-Longhorns Coach Bev Kearney Kearney sued the University of Texas for discrimination after they fired her for having a romantic relationship with one of her athletes a decade earlier.
• Sub-Four High School Miler Michael Slagowski Going To NAIA School Eastern Oregon University Slagowski went to Penn State, but left early into his second semester citing injury issues (stress fractures) and a dislike for the large class sizes.
  *MB: Slagowski to Eastern Oregon
• MB:Coach Patrick Wales-Dinan out from Harvard at end of month This after he led the team to its first XC title in 30+ years and the first triple crown in the Ivy League in nearly 40 years, but after a member of the coaching staff wrote a highly critical piece on the coaches and team culture at Harvard in The Harvard Crimson.
• Fan Vote For 2017 Bowerman Award Is Ongoing – Get Your Votes In Currently Christian Coleman and Raevyn Rogers are winning with 52.7% (Coleman) and 45.8% (Rogers) of the fan vote.
  *A Look Back At Previous Bowerman Fan Vote Results
• USTFCCCA Takes A Look At How Collegians Did At Various National Championships 25 collegians finished in the top 3 at USAs with 7 of them becoming national champions.

Two More Titles For Coburn And Simpson

LRC Jenny Simpson Makes It Four In A Row In The 1,500 As 31-Year-Old Mother Of Three Sara Vaughn Snags Final Spot To London Simpson and Kate Grace both punched their tickets to London but the big surprise was that Shannon Rowbury did not and Sara Vaughn did.
*MB: SARA MF VAUGHN 
*MB: Jenny Simpson is the Greatest US 1500m runner EVER- male or female
*The Sacramento Bee Article Grace gives a lot of praise the NorCal Distance Project under Drew Wartenburg.

LRC Emma Coburn Remains Queen Of The Steeple At USATF Championships As The Team From Rio 2016 Will Repeat At London 2017 The order of finish was the same in 2017 as 2016 but is the gap between Coburn and everyone else narrowing?

RRWEmily Richards – Star at DIII’s Ohio Northern – Impresses at USA Championships in 800m

LetsRun.com’s Pre-Meet Previews:
*W800/1,500/Steeple *M800/1,500/Steeple 

Thursday At USAs

LRC Hassan Mead Ends Galen Rupp’s Epic Streak To Win His First U.S. Title In A Bizarre Men’s 10K What a race, what a way for Galen Rupp’s incredible streak of 8 straight 10,000m titles come to an end. We break it all down.

LRC Women’s 10K: Molly Huddle Three-Peats As Shalane Flanagan Misses Worlds For The First Time Since 2003 Huddle looked great as America is sending a strong team to Worlds.

LRC 800 / 1,500 Recap: Donavan Brazier Almost Blows It Again, Drew Hunter Makes His First Final, Alysia Montano And Gabe Grunewald Inspire It was an ordinary ending to a extraordinary career as Nick Symmonds could only manage a 1:51 800. But Nick has a new goal – the 2017 Honolulu Marathon in December.

LRC Nick Symmonds – One Of America’s Greatest-Ever 800 Runners – Has Run His Final Track Race, But He’s Already Got A New Goal: Run A Marathon It was an ordinary ending to a extraordinary career as Nick Symmonds could only manage a 1:51 800. But Nick has a new goal – the 2017 Honolulu Marathon in December.
*MB: Thank You Nick Symmonds

LRCGay and Bromell Don’t Advance To Semis, But Veteran Gatlin Does Bromell ran USAs despite thinking he would only be capable of 10.5 as he didn’t want people to think he was a quitter.

LRC Pre Race Justin Gatlin, Tyson Gay, LaShawn Merritt, and Trayvon Bromell May Do Nothing at USAs and Team USA Will Be Fine

LRCPost-Race Interviews From Sacramento

• Message Board Talk: Official 2017 USATF Outdoor Nats Day 1 Live Discussion Thread
• RUPP GOES HOME DEVASTATED!!!!!! 
• Galen Rupp Comes Up Short for USATF Title #9 – Then Blows Off The Media 
• Scott Simmons’ Group Had a Plan to Surge And Talk in Swahili During Race
• That was the greatest 10,000m race I’ve ever seen.
• East African’s Nearly perfect score (1-2-3-4-7) men’s 10k 
• Hope Schmelzle Qualifies for Steeple Final, Scratches to get Married this weekend
• Nick Symmonds and Cas Loxsom go home DEVASTATED 
• Drew Hunter: “Realistically long-term I think I a 5k runner.”
• Cas Loxsom – Heartfelt Note after USAs / Moving back to Penn State to Finish Degree Loxsom put out a post saying he’s been struggling with depression.
• Donavan Brazier… Seriously?  Brazier only gets out of the first round on time.
• Eliud Rutto is an American? 
• What is the best electrolyte rehydration drink?
• Charles Jock listed as unattached at USA 
• Anyone have a free streaming link for the USAs? 
• Dang. Trayvon Bromell and Tyson Gay both go home devastated in men’s 100