Week That Was

WTWHow Does Kamworor Stack Up Versus Bekele And Farah? ESPN Overrates Allyson Felix, Bernard Lagat Isn't The Fastest Masters Half Marathoner

International Distance News

• Recommended Read: Cool Story From World Half Champs: Spanish 39-Year-Old Carles Castillejo Started Back With The Masses, But Passed Most Of The Field To Finish 29th In 62:14 Castillejo was booted from the Spanish squad when they realized they could only enter five, not six. This was unfortunateas Castillejo would have been their top man and brought the team from 6th to 8th.
• RR #2: Switzerland’s 22-Year-Old World Half 8th Placer Julien Wanders Has Spent Most Of The Last Three Years Living And Training In Kenya At just 18-years-old, Wanders decided to skip going to college to go pursue running full-time in Kenya. On what he’s learned there he says Europeans “are not training hard enough and thinking too much about recovery.”
• IAAF: How World Half Champ Netsanet Gudeta Went From Dubai Disappointment To Victory In Valencia After a DNF in Dubai, neither Gudeta or her manager were at all expecting a gold medal or WR run in Spain.
• Three Time Canadian 1500 Olympian Nate Brannen Has Retired From The Track After 20-Years In The Sport Brannen isn’t completely done running though as he plans on training for the marathon.
• IAAF Story Behind The Picture: Getting Images Photographer Reflects On GB’s Kelly Holmes Winning 800m Gold At The 2004 Games Interestingly, Stu Forster explains how the iconic image would likely be used completely differently with the background cropped out if it had been taken today.

British MPs Have Threatened To Reopen Inquiry Into Seb Coe’s “Very Murky” $17 Million Deal During The 2012 Olympics There are conflict of interest concerns as Coe’s company “made a fortune at the Olympics” while Coe was the chairman of the London 2012 organizing committee.

US Winter Olympians And Paralympians Visiting The White House Next Month

Doping News

• Must Read: NY Times Expose On Arizona Man Who Used A Clever Online Business Model To Distribute PEDs (In The Form Of Peptides) Around The World Michael A. Moorcones‘ customers included professional athletes in the NFL, MLB, NBA, and track and field. In one year, he shipped to more than 8,000 people and had $1 million in sales.
  *Discuss
• WADA Still Pursuing Historic Allegations Of State-Sponsored Chinese Doping In The 1980s And ’90s This is in response to the accusations by a former Chinese Olympic team doctor who says athletes as young as 11 were forced to dope.
• Russian Whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov Meets With US Government Officials To Discuss Russian Doping But he wore a mask to “hide his identity”?
• WADA Propose Charter Of Athletes’ Rights To Improve Anti-Doping System Following Russian Scandal WADA Athlete Committee chair Beckie Scott said, “I think the Russian doping scandal exposed a lot more than doping in Russia. It exposed fractures and conflicting loyalties in the whole system.”
• WADA Annual Symposium Recap: “Compliance, Funding And Capturing The Athlete’s Voice”

More Weekend Distance Results – What’s Up With Centro?

• Sweden’s Kalle Berglund (14:15) And GB’s Emillia Gorecka (16:00) Win Carlsbad 5,000 Gorecka beat out US’s Sarah Brown by one second. *Results
• MB: Matt Centrowitz ran 1:53 for 800 in Australia on Thursday He was the last place finisher as the winner was 1:47.53.
• Wilson Kipsang Races Another Marathon; Wins The Tokushima Marathon In Japan With 2:19:35
• Kenya’s Felix Kibitok (60:11) And Ethiopia’s Sutume Asefa Kebede (70:54) Win Stramilano Half In Italy
• Ethiopia’s Meseret Legese (2:28:55) And Kenya’s Kennedy Cheboror (2:13:41) Win At The Chongquing Marathon In China
• Double Kenyan Victory At The Warsaw Half As Ezrah Sang (61:37) And Pauline Njeru (70:02) Get The Wins
• MB: No one finishes Barkley Marathon; Gary Robins goes home devastated again

IAAF News

• That’s A Significant Zero: IAAF Hopeful Missing $150,000 Sent To Nigeria By Mistake Will Be Reimbursed Soon Last year the IAAF sent the Nigeria Athletics Federation $150,000 instead of the $15,000 due to be awarded all national federations.
• Seb Coe To Be A Commentator For Australian Broadcaster Channel 7 During Next Month’s Commonwealth Games

Women’s Distance News

• Caster Semenya Fails In Attempt To Break Zola Budd’s South African 1,500 Record Semenya ran 4:02.50, just .70 off of Budd’s 4:01.80. Former NCAA champ Dominique Scott-Efurd was a distant second in 4:08.6. In the sprints, Luxolo Adams won the men’s 200 (20.01) and Carina Horn the women’s 100 (11.12).
• Laura Muir’s Coach Says She’s A Victim Of Having To Face “Some Of The Best Distance Runners Of All Time” He also said that “in a matter of weeks” she could go out and break the British 10,000 record if that’s what she wanted.
• Reddit AMA With Olympic Triathlon Champ And Now Marathoner Gwen Jorgensen “Marathon training’s biggest hurdle has been staying injury free. There are more days I wake up and limp than days I wake up and feel good.”
• RW: “Why US Women Marathoners Are Having A Moment” Four of the 10 fastest Americans have run their PRs in the last 14 months. Comparatively, American men only have one new name on the top 10 list in the past five+ years.
• Queen Elizabeth II Named Official Starter Of The 2018 London Marathon
• Laura Muir Excited At The Prospect Of Winning More Medals At A Home Championships At Next Year’s Euro Indoor Champs In Glasgow

Russian Doping Updates

• WADA Says Russia Ignored Four Requests To Inspect Moscow’s Anti-Doping Lab WADA president Craig Reedie says Russia still needs to acknowledge its state-sponsored doping and allow the Moscow lab to be inspected.
• Russian Sports Minister Claims Pyeongchang 2018 Doping Cases Are “Senseless” Pavel Kolobkov said he is “outraged” about the two Russians who failed drug tests at the Winter Games and that hr has “no explanation of how it could have happened at all.”
• BBC: Craig Reedie Says Russian Participation At Major Events Still In Doubt

Non-Distance News

• Christian Coleman Thinks He Can Become The Second-Fastest Man Of All Time This Year Coleman says he wants to get Tyson Gay‘s 9.69 American record, but admits Usain Bolt‘s 9.58 is out of reach.
• Christian Coleman Confirms He’ll Return To London For The Anniversary Games On July 21-22
• IAAF Inside Athletics: Ato Boldon Video Interview With Venezuela’s World Triple Jump Champion Yulimar Rojas
• Renaud Lavillenie And Sam Kendricks Lead Stacked Pole Vault Field For Pre Classic In May Also Olympic champ Thiago Braz and Mondo Duplantis.
• Loaded Men’s Javelin Field Announced For Pre Classic With German Duo World Champ Johannes Vetter And Olympic Champ Thomas Rohler

2020 Olympic Trials News

Judge Orders Mt. SAC To Halt Stadium Work, Potentially Putting The 2020 Olympic Trials At Risk The college and the city of Walnut are in a legal battle over whether the stadium reconstruction is complying with regulations protecting water quality. Mt. SAC is also dealing with a civil suit which is arguing the cost of the stadium shouldn’t be covered by public funds.
*Ken Goe’s Take And Comparison To Hayward’s Issues

Older Trials News We Missed
Atlanta Track Club Surprised USATF Selection Committee By Bringing In Meb To Endorse Their Bid For The 2020 Marathon Trials  Meb likes the Olympic tradition of Atlanta, saying he still has a T-shirt a teammate brought him back from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and will be working with the ATC in the future. USATF will decide in April between Atlanta, Austin, Chattanooga and Orlando.