Improved 2018 BOA Chicago Marathon Elite Fields Released

LRC Analysis Props To Chicago: Galen Rupp Will Battle Strong International Field As He Tries To Repeat At Chicago Marathon The international fields for the 2018 Chicago Marathon are out and this year we have no fears about whether Chicago is being watered down to ensure a victory by Galen Rupp. If Rupp is to defend his crown, he’ll have to defeat the winners of the following marathons in 2018: Dubai, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Paris and Boston. The American hopefuls on the women’s side, Jordan Hasay and Amy Cragg, also face increased competition as well.
*MB: 2018 Chicago Marathon elite fields are out and both are much improved from 2017 – Can Galen Rupp repeat?

*Jordan Hasay Doesn’t Just Want To Win Chicago, She Wants To Run Fast “This year, I’ll definitely be trying to shoot for the win, but also trying to run fast. That American record is definitely in my sights.”

2018 Berlin European Champs *Watch LIVE *Live Results/Start Lists *Schedule

Recommended Read Ingebrigtsen Brothers Going For Historic 1-2-3 Sweep In Men’s 1,500 Final Today (translated) Both Henrik and Jakob say Filip is the favorite and Henrik puts the odds of a sweep at 20%.
*German Runner Implies That He Thinks Filip Ingebrigtsen Is Doped (in German) He was blown away by how quickly he recovered from a fall in the 1st round. Some on the message board agreed.

• The Guardian: Laura Muir Descends From St. Moritz Eager For 1,500m Euro Gold Muir wants to become the first British woman to win 1,500m gold while also winning her first outdoor medal.
• Athletics Weekly: Laura Muir Will Feed Off Being The Favorite In The 1,500 “I’ve gone from not making the final to hopefully winning the championship. It’s crazy how far you can come in four years but I’m really proud of myself.”
• Video: Behind The Scenes At A British Athletics Training Camp A 14-minute video with GB distance runners Laura Muir, Charlie Grice, Marc Scott and Charlotte Purdue training at their camp in St. Moritz.
• RRW: Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad Wins Fourth European Steeplechase Title It wasn’t easy for him, though, as he ran 8:31 and was pushed by Spain’s Fernando Carro (8:34) and Italy’s Ethiopian born Yohanes Chiappinelli (8:35).
• Norway’s World Champion Karsten Warholm Blazes 47.64 Win In The 400H While Turkey’s 200m World Champ Clocks 19.76 Victory At Euro Champs Warholm broke his own national record to complete the first half of his 400H/400 Euro double. Olympic PV champ Ekaterini Stefanidi cleared a championship record 4.85m. Belarus’ Elvira Herman was a surprise winner in the women’s 100H (12.67).
  *Video: Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad Showboats In 3,000m Steeplechase Win Unfortunately the video is region locked to Europe.
• 400 Hurdler Thomas Barr Makes History With Ireland’s First Men’s Sprint Medal Ever At Euro Champs Cathal Dennehy writes, “Despite his form coming in being no better than mediocre, [Barr] conjured up a one-lap sprint that was akin to sporting sorcery.” Leon Reid couldn’t match Barr’s bronze, though, as he ended up only 7th in the 200 final.
  *Irish Examiner: “Thomas Barr’s Bronze A Delightful Vindication Of His Talent”
• Thomas Rohler And Andreas Hofmann Deliver One-Two For Germany In Javelin
• Germany’s Former Olympic Discus Champ Robert Harting Was 6th In The Last European Champs Of His Career
• GB’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson Storms To Lead After Heptathlon Day 1 She leads the favorite, Olympic champ Nafi Thiam, by 87 points.

NCAA News: Multiple Ducks Are Jumping Ship

• NCAA XC 4th Placer Katie Rainsberger And NCAA 5,000 3rd Placer Lilli Burdon Leaving Oregon Track Program Tanner Anderson and Mick Stanovsek are also transferring as they confirmed they will follow Andy and Maurica Powell to Seattle. Multiple sources have said Rainsberger and Burdon will do the same.
  *Ken Goe: Katie Rainsberger And Lilli Burdon Lead Exodus From The Oregon Ducks’ Track Program
  *MB: Katie Rainsberger, Lilli Burdon Others Not On Oregon’s 2018 Roster
• World Junior 200 Silver Medalist Lauren Rain Williams Has Also Left The Ducks She is transferring To rival USC.
• Previous News: WITH POWELLS GONE, BRODEY HASTY FLIPS FROM OREGON TO NAU
• Missouri Distance Runner Austin Hindman Turns Pro In Triathlon Hindman (a 4:04 high school miler) leaves Missouri after his freshman year to join Project Podium, a triathlon group in Arizona.
• 2018 USTFCCCA Coaches Hall Of Fame Class Announced
• MB: Coaches, if an athlete screws up, please try to follow this advice from Chris Fox and Justyn Knight on how to handle it
• MB: Inside The Allegations Against Former UW Track Coach (WBUR Radio Show)

Week That Was

LRC Stars Impress At African Champs, Olympic Trials Are Back In Eugene, The Start Time For Tokyo Olympic Marathon Needs to be Changed Elijah Manangoi only beats Cheruiyot these days when it really matters. Amos over Korir and Semenya x2. Plus, we think it’s a mistake for the Olympic Trials to be in Eugene every time.

*Book Review LRC Book Review: “Racing The Hands Of Time” By Larry Hannon – Those New To The Sport Might Enjoy It, But Serious Fans Can Avoid This One Not every race can be your best and not every book can be our favorite. This one starts out fascinating but fizzles.

2018 Berlin European Champs

Dina Asher-Smith (10.85) And Zharnel Hughes (9.95) Win 100m Gold Hughes broke the meet record while Asher-Smith, who trounced Dafne Schippers, broke her own British record. Video of run here. *BBC Article *IAAF Recap

• RRW Morhad Amdouni Wins First French European 10,000m Gold Ever
• MB: Filip Ingebrigtsen Wins His 1500m Heat Despite Falling On Lap 3
• Ingebrigtsen Boys Reach 1,500m Final After Scare, Keeping Dream Of 1-2-3 Podium Sweep Alive
• Lynsey Sharp Leads GB Charge Into 800m Semi-Finals All three Brits advanced past the opening round.
• Poland Cleans Up In The Throws, Taking Gold And Silver In Both The Hammer And Shot Put Wojciech Nowicki beat out world champ Pawel Fajdek in the hammer and Michal Haratyktook the shot put.
• DyeStat: Mondo Duplantis Isn’t The Only Recent Prep In The European Champs Pole Vault California’s Sondre Guttormsen is trying to become the first Norwegian to make the final since 1962.
• DyeStat: New Mexico Signee Adva Cohen Is Ready To Represent Israel In Euro Steeplechase
• Ireland’s Thomas Barr Below Par But Earns Place In 400H Final Barr had a late surge to go from 4th to 2nd in the home straight to qualify automatically for today’s final.
  *Barr: “Put me into a dogfight and I’ll give it my best.”
• Athletics Weekly: Enjoyment Is Key For GB Pole Vaulter Holly Bradshaw In Berlin Bradshaw says she lost “the love” for the sport, but has rediscovered it this year.
• Ukraine’s Maryan Zakalnytskyy And Portugal’s Ines Henriques Defy Conditions To Win 50km Racewalk Titles
• FloTrack: An American’s Guide To The European Championships
• InsideTheGames: British Sprinters And Polish Throwers Corner The Medals On First Finals Eveing At European Athletics Championships
• GB’s Reece Prescod Ahead Of Euro 100m: “I don’t wake up to be the best in Europe – what drives me is to be world champion.” He ended up with the silver behind Hughes.
• The Guardian: Dina Asher-Smith Targets Three European Golds
• British Trio Get Berlin Qualifying Done On First Day

Kenya Cleans Up On Final Days Of African Champs

• WR Holder Beatrice Chepkoech Leads Kenyan Sweep With 8:59.88 To Win African Champs Steeplechase World champion Elijah Manangoi outkicked his training partner Timothy Cheruiyot by .73 in 3:35.20. Kenya’s World U20 champ Edward Zakayo took the men’s 5,000 in 13:48. The Kenyan men also set a meet record to dominate the 4 x 400 in 3:00.92.
• Caster Semenya Completes The 400/800 Double With Strong 1:56.06 Victory Olympic silver medalist Francine Niyonsaba was second in 1:57.97. This was Semenya’s 27th consecutive 800m win (she last lost in 2015).
• Kenya Dominates Women’s African Champs 10,000 With A 1-2 Showing By Stacy Ndiwa (31:31) And Alice Aprot (31:36) Ethiopian Gete Alemayehu was a distant 3rd in 32:10.
• Kenya Edges Out South Africa To Finish Top Of African Champs Medal Tables That’s the headline anyway, but South Africa had way more medals overall (30 to 19), but Kenya had two more golds.
• Report Says Nigeria To Bid For The 2025 World Championships The Nigerian federation president said they should be in strong contention after hosting African Champs which finished yesterday in Asaba.
• IAAF: Top Ten Memorable Moments From African Champs Half of them were distance events.

2020 Olympic News

• Sci-Fi Meets Sports: Computerized Pill Will Be Part Of Canada’s Preparation For Tokyo 2020’s Extreme Heat The pill gets swallowed by an athlete and measures core body temperature during training/competition. Supposedly this will “change the way that we understand how the body responds to heat.”
• Register-Guard: Eugene Businesses Buzzing Over News Of 2020 Olympic Trials Coming To Hayward Field Business owners are excited about the influx of people/money as previous Trials have brought in more than $37 million to the local economy.
• Tents, Cooling Fans And Folding Umbrellas Are Among Proposals Being Considered By Tokyo 2020 To Deal With Heatstroke Concerns 96 people died from heatstroke in Tokyo last month with temperatures going over 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).

More Distance News

• Did You Know That Shelby Houlihan’s Mom Was A Professional Marathoner And Ran For Asics? Houlihan says some of her earliest memories were driving around handing water to her mom on training runs.
• October 21: Ethiopia’s Marta Megra Will Defend Her Title At The Toronto Waterfront Marathon Merga talks about her training situation in Ethiopia where her husband actually works as a pacer for her training group.
• New Mo Farah “Why I Run” Documentary On YouTube The 11 minute video shows him training in Ethiopia ahead of London 2018.
• August 19: Des Linden To Serve As Official Starter For The New Balance Falmouth Road Race Afterwards she will run with the masses to check off one of her “bucket list” races.

Banned Athlete News

• Russian World Indoor Champ Danil Lysenko Suspended Over Whereabouts Violation Lysenko has had his neutral athlete status revoked and will miss Euro Champs.
  *IAAF Statement Says He Failed To “To Provide Whereabouts Information”
• Is This A Joke? Ukraine Bans Mid-D Runner Anton Hrabovskyy For Six Months For Criticizing The Quality Of Their Team Kit He apparently called their Asics outfit “shit” and captioned an instagram story “Nike come back to Ukraine please.”
  *MB: Promising Ukranian mid-d runner complains about quality of team uniform – gets banned for 6 months
• Swiss Sprinter Pascal Mancini Banned From European Championships For “Racist” Posts No mention of what he said, but a Swiss Athletics statement said he made “far-right” and “controversial” Facebook posts.

The 2020 Olympics Start In 2 Years – We Tell You Who Will Be There For Team USA

LRC Cancel The Trials: Here Are The U.S. Women’s Distance Runners Who Will Be Going To The 2020 Olympics Who will join Shelby Houlihan and Jenny Simpson on the 1,500 team? Can Shannon Rowbury return from pregnancy to make a 4th Olympic team at age 35? And who the heck is making this marathon team?

LRC Two Years To Tokyo: We Tell You Which U.S. Men’s Distance Runners Will Be On The 2020 Olympic Team The track and field action at 2020 Tokyo starts in exactly two years – July 31, 2020. We’ve gotten out our crystal ball and we tell you who will be on the US Olympic team.
*MB: The 2020 Olympics start 2 years today – Who will make the US team 800 through 10,000? These are our picks

• Recommended Read Brett Larner Ran The 2020 Tokyo Marathon Course Exactly 2 Years Before The Race – It Was 88 Degrees (31 C) At The Start It was even worse at the finish – 93.6 – and it was humid as hell (88%). What should be done about it? Larner thinks the race needs to be run at night.
• Track and Field News‘ 10 Surest Gold Medal Things For Tokyo 2020 2 Years Out American Mondo Duplantis (hey, he is American) leads the list, which we think is crazy. Sydney McLaughlin, Michael Norman and Noah Lyles also make the list.
• IAAF Publishes Qualification System For Tokyo 2020 Olympics The qualifying window for the marathon and 10k opens January 1, 2019.

Reebok Is Launching A New US-Based Pro Team

LRC Exclusive Reebok Is Launching A New Pro Track Club; Chris Fox Tabbed As Head Coach, Justyn Knight Signed As Star Athlete Though the group will be called the Reebok Boston Track Club, the club’s training base will actually be in Charlottesville, Virginia. This marks a big move for Reebok, which had basically gotten out of running over the last decade.
*MB: Justyn Knight and Chris Fox to Reebok – New Reebok pro track team announced! 

Rojo Speaks Déjà Vu: Reebok Starts A Pro Track Team – Let’s Hope They Stick To It This Time Reebok is starting a pro track team and basing it near Washington, DC? Sound familiar? They did this 25 years ago as well.