Jamaican News

• Daily Mail: Brazil Soccer Legend Ronaldo Seen Hanging Out With Usain Bolt In Madrid Word is top-tier Turkish club Sivasspor is still trying to sign Bolt.
  *Usain Bolt Going To Play Soccer In Mexico? There are reports that the team manager, Diego Maradona, wants to sign Bolt.
• Olympic And World 110H Champ Omar McLeod Has Joined Florida Training Group With Justin Gatlin
• High School In Jamaica Being Renamed After Veronica Campbell-Brown

European News

• Former World 400H Champ Dai Greene Reveals He’s Been Hindered By A Botched Hernia Surgery For The Last 5 Years In 2013 he received implants that frayed and become entangled with nerves. Greene explains how the complications brought him from best in the world in 2011 to barely racing over the last 5 years.
  *BBC Video Interview: “Dai Greene ‘Bitter’ Over Mesh That Almost Ended His Career”
• Italy’s Yemaneberhan Crippa And Switzerland’s Fabienne Schlumpf Take The Wins At Warandercross XC Meet In The Netherlands The race was on the same course in Tilburg that will host the Euro XC Champs on December 9th.
• Ingebrigtsens Lead Norway’s Team For The European XC Championships On December 9th Nothing like some good old sibling rivalry to kick off the holidays.
• France’s Jimmy Gressier And Hugu Hay Hoping To Repeat Their 1-2 Finish At European U23 XC Champs
• European Discus Champ Andrius Gudzius And European Javelin Bronze Medalist Liveta Jasiunaite Are Lithuanian Athletes Of The Year

International Distance Results

• Lonah Chemtai Salpeter Smashes The CR And Her PR With A 2:24:17 Victory At The Florence Marathon Salpeter had struggled with the marathon previously with a PR of only 2:40, but dominated here by more than 6 minutes. Ali Abdu Gelelchu won the men’s race in 2:11:32.
• World 10,000m Bronze Medalist Agnes Tirop And World 10,000m Under-20 Champ Rhonex Kipruto Win Tuskys Wareng XC Race In Kenya They got brand new Mazda Demio cars for their wins.
• Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo And Kenya’s Eva Cherono Get Convincing Wins At The Alcobendas XC Race In Spain It’s been a solid undefeated month for Kiplimo as this made his third win in three weeks.
• Ross Millington And Charlotte Arter Win Liverpool XC Challenge/Euro XC Trials

African Distance Updates

• IAAF Profile: “Now Back To Full Health, Joshua Cheptegei Excited To See What 2019 Brings” Cheptegei’s achievements over the last several years (which include his recent 15k world best and double gold at the Commonwealth Games), are even more impressive considering all the injury issues he’s dealt with.
• World 800m Bronze Medalist Kipyegon Bett Gets 4-Year Doping Ban Bett was actually caught on two offences as he tested positive for EPO, but had already been serving a provisional suspension for evading a doping test.
  *MB: Kenyan EPO doper Kipyegon Bett (800m) hit with 4-year ban from Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU)
• December 9: Half Marathon WR Holder Joyciline Jepkosgei Is Making Her Marathon Debut In Honolulu 9th She said they had the option to make her debut at Valencia last month, but wanted to run a smaller race with no pressure so she didn’t get discouraged if it’s a poor result.
  *Good Read: Joyciline Jepkosgei Talks About Making Her Marathon Debut And How She Would Have Pursued Pro Running If It Wasn’t For Her Then Boyfriend, Now Husband, Nicholas Koech “I lost interest and started some business instead to hustle. … [My husband] asked me why I had stopped running and encouraged me to train and enter local races in 2011.”
• David Rudisha Hoping For A Comeback Year In 2019 After Recovering From Two Years Of Injuries
• The Guardian: Former Aussie Pro Matt Fox Shares Some Insights From His Month Stay In Eliud Kipchoge’s Village Fox was impressed by how flexible Kipchoge’s training group was about training. They had a plan, but it they weren’t “anal about sticking to it” if changes needed to be made.
• Coming Off His NYC Marathon Disappointment, Geoffrey Kamworor Focused On Defending His World XC Title

British News

• Dina Asher-Smith And Zharnel Hughes Named British AOY By British Writers
• The Telegraph: Dina Asher-Smith Is Still Coming To Terms With Her Mainstream Fame She says she can still ride the London “Tube” (subway) fine, but she’s been hounded with tons of interviews and media appearances in the off-season.
• Dina Asher-Smith Says She Won’t Let Media Attention Get In The Way Of Her Training “If anything clashes with training I say: ‘Sorry I can’t go.’ I get invited to do nice things because I run fast. But how do I run fast? By training.”
• Eilish McColgan Isn’t Sure if Scotland Should Compete Independently At European Champs, Separate From GBR “Warm weather training camps, altitude camps abroad. I don’t know if Scottish Athletics would have the resources or the funding in order to be able to support things like that.”
• GB Endurance Runners To Get Nearly $450,000 (£350,000) In Support From London Marathon Organisers
• “Protecting The Competition Environment Through Hyper-Elitism – A Look At The BA High Performance Strategy”

Week That Was

LRC  Another Look At NCAA XC, Joshua Cheptegei Sets World Record On A Course Named “Seven Hills,” 2 Great Finishes In China This week had it all across the globe. The NCAA XC champs lived up to the hype in the snow in Madison, Joshua Cheptegei delivered in the Netherlands, and there were 2 great finishes in China.

Track News

• Shelby Houlihan, Noah Lyles Named USATF Athletes Of The Year – Win Jackie Joyner-Kersee Award And Jesse Owens Awards
• Andre De Grasse Says He’s Healthy: “I’ve recovered from my hamstring injury I’m 100 percent now.” But because of mono and two hamstring pulls, he hasn’t broken 10.00 since Rio.
• Healthy Again, Alonso Edwards Is Still Dreaming Big “I know I have what it takes to run 19.5-19.6. … I also want to become the first South American athlete to break the 10-second barrier and I know it is only a matter of time,” says the 28-year-old, who won 2009 WC silver at age 19. His 19.81 PR dates from 2009 but he did run 19.90 this year.
• NCAA Indoor Track & Field Will Be Starting Soon: TFN Rates Georgia’s Incoming Class As #1 Oregon doesn’t even crack the top 10.
• TFN Ranks Penn State As #1 For Women’s Incoming Classes

African Distance News

• Ethiopia’s Selemon Barega Reflects On Winning The 2018 DL 5,000m Final In Brussels To Move To #4 All-Time With 12:43.02 “Running 12:43 has changed everything for me and my goal is now to one day break the world record.”
• Cynthia Jerop (2:39:16) And Jackson Kemboi (2:20:27) Win Kaas Marathon In Kenya Former half marathon WR holder Peres Jepchirchir made her marathon debut in 3rd (2:46:15) in her comeback from pregnancy.
• Peres Jepchirchir Wants To Reclaim Her World Half Marathon Record Jepchirchir only held the record for a month at 65:06 before Joyciline Jepkosgei broke it.
• Olympic Steeplechase Champ Conseslus Kipruto Wants To Run World XC On the steeplechase, Kipruto says that he wants to try to challenge the WR in 2019 or at least break the 8-minute barrier (his PR is 8:00.12).
• Did The IAAF “Snub” Caster Semenya In Their Female Athlete Of The Year Award? That’s the headline from South Africa anyway.

Doping News

• GB Sprinter Nigel Levine Gets 4-Year Doping Ban Levine was one of the sprinters hoping to make ea comeback after getting in a motorcycle crash.
  *Reuters Article Levine claims that he took a contaminated supplement, but UK Anti-Doping noted that on his doping control form Levine answered “none” for that question.
• WADA President Craig Reedie Says He’s Confident Russia Will Meet The End-Of-The-Year Deadline To Hand Over Data From The Moscow Lab Reedie said, “I find it very hard to believe that the guarantees made to us by the Russian authorities – that they won’t deliver.” Right, because Russia has an excellent track record of cooperating.
• IAAF Says Russian Athletics Federation Will Have To Pay Out $2.76 Million
• UK Government Report Claims That Russian Military Intelligence Service Is Behind The Fancy Bear Hacks
• Seven Russians Get 4-Year Doping Bans Included four track athletes.
• The Guardian: “Let Us Simplify This For Sir Craig Reedie: WADA Is not Doing Its Job”
• WADA Bans Stockholm Lab From Carrying Out A Specific Test For Six Months WADA says it’s to “ensure continued high quality sample analysis.”
• WADA Declares Nigeria Non-Compliant, Revokes Bogotá Lab Accreditation
• WADA Forming Expert Group To Work At Moscow Lab Russia has been told they need to allow access by December 31st or their ban will be reimposed.

More NCAA News

• Denver Post’s Women’s NCAA Recap The last time Colorado won both the individual and team title was 2000. Jones post-race said, “That whole last stretch – I just felt four years flashing by. It took my breath away. I’ll never forget it.”
• Denver Post‘s Men’s NCAA Recap On beating their #8 ranking with a 4th place finish, CU’s #3 man Ryan Forsyth said, “We knew what the ranking was. We didn’t believe it was accurate.”
• Track And Field News: Morgan McDonald And The Bader Tradition Post-race, McDonald said, “It is crazy to think back to my 16-year-old self and see such long-time goals come to fruition.”
• T&F News: Dani Jones And The Colorado Mindset Jones said despite being from Arizona, she was happy with the cold/snowy conditions as she’s been in Colorado for 3 years.
• USTFCCCA: True Team Efforts Led Colorado, NAU, North Central And WashU To D1/D3 National Titles
• MileSplit: NCAA DI Champs By The Numbers Grant Fisher‘s 2nd place finish gave Stanford an unfortunate stat. They now have five runner-up finishes without getting an individual champion.
• This Weekend Made 8 Straight Top 20 Finishes For The Arkansas Women
• RRW: Dani Jones, Morgan McDonald Sprint to NCAA Cross-Country Titles
• List Of All D1 XC All-Americans
• Field Announced For NCAA D2 XC Champs
  *Division II Regional Weekend Recap
• List Of D3 All-Americans