The People Have Spoken

LRC David Rudisha’s 1:40.91 WR Gold Medal Run Is Letsrun.com’s Race Of The Decade December Madness – our 64-race tournament to determine the Race of the Decade – is over and the London 2012 Olympic men’s 800m final has emerged as the dominant winner, destroying Eliud Kipchoge‘s Berlin WR, taking 78.1% of the votes. When one front-runs a world record on the biggest stage imaginable, pulling everyone behind them save one person to a PR, they deserve all the accolades they get.

More 2019 / Decade-In-Review News

• The BBC Is Looking Back At Some Of Their Top Moments Of The Decade Starting With Super Saturday At The 2012 London Olympics On one day, Mo Farah (10,000), Greg Rutherford (LJ) and Jessica Ennis (heptathlon) all won gold in front of the home crowd.
• Transgender D2 NCAA Hurdle Champ CeCé Telfer Is Outsports Female Athlete Of The Year Telfer is the poster child for the problem with transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. Telfer actually got faster after transitioning and went from not scoring at the conference meet to NCAA champion.
  *LRC Archive: What No One Is Telling You: An Athlete Who Ran NCAA Track As A Man For 3 Years Just Won An NCAA Women’s Title
• MileSplit’s Top 21 Most Popular Stories Of 2019
• Japan Running News’s Ten Most-Read Stories Of 2019

The Year Is Almost Over

• Athletics Weekly’s 10 Craziest T&F-Related Moments Of 2019 From Mo Farah vs. Haile G in a verbal spat to Marquise Goodwin winning $1 million in a sprint, they’ve got you’ve covered.
• RW: 10 Gifs That Perfectly Sum Up This Year’s Biggest Moments In Running
• European Athletics’ A To Z Of The Decade (Part 2)

Youngsters In The News

• Record Breaker Max Burgin (1:45:36 At Age 17), Talks About His Year And How He’s Getting Ready For Some Road 5ks It started off perfectly but then he got injured. In the long-term that might be a blessing in disguise but it was hard to deal with. “From my point of view, from June onwards, it was very frustrating.”
• World U18 200 WR Holder Amy Hunt Recalls Her Magical 2019 In one race, she went from never having broken 23 seconds to running 22.42 to break Candace Hill‘s 22.43 WR. Now she’s appearing in Vogue as a result. Let’s hope in 4 years time, she’s not unable to break 23 like Hill.
• Marco Arop, The Two-Time NCAA Runner-Up For Miss St. And WC Finalist, Goes Pro He was NCAA runner-up 2018 outdoors and 2019 indoors but didn’t even make it out of NCAA Regionals outdoors as he was injured but rebounded and got 7th at Worlds.
• Matthew Boling’s US 4 X 100 Teammate, Arian Smith (10.31 100), Is Also Going To Georgia (But To Play Football) Want to see what world class track speed looks like on a football field? Watch this clip.
• RR Meet Max Lewis – Middle School XC Runner And Bone Marrow Transplant Survivor This is an inspiring read. Also if you are a middle school or HS XC coach, this has some great inspirational ideas as Max’s coach seems amazing. It also reminds us all to join the Be The Match Registry right now.

Injured?

Might Low-Intensity Ultrasound In Your Home Coming From A Handheld, Battery-Powered Device Be The Key To Solving Your Achilles Or Knee Problems? You can wear the device for hours. More info at samrecover.com.

Administrative News

• USATF Announces TV Schedule For 2020 Indoor Season
• It Looks Like Spartan Race And Tough Mudder Are Merging In 2020
• Doha 800 Semi-Finalist Alexandra Bell Is Considering Legal Action Against UK Athletics After Being Denied Funding Despite Hitting Selection Criteria She thinks Barry Fudge has a personal vendetta against her as she says he told her she doesn’t have the “medal mentality.” “He doesn’t know me from Adam. I just don’t understand how I can be judged on his opinion.”
• British Journalist Clearly Isn’t Happy About Brexit And What’s Happened To Britain Since 2012 Olympics: Even As the Olympics Lit Up The Nation, We Were Already On The Path To Disaster “We were on our way to becoming bitterly divided, politically banjaxed and an international laughing stock. A basket case of a country, hopelessly broken in two by dint of having asked itself a profound question, and returning an answer that has broken all before it.”
  *MB: Jonathan Gault, this is for for you. Do you consider your native Britain to be an “international laughing stock?”

Tokyo 2020 Marathon Course Finalized

• Tokyo 2020 Unveils Full Olympic Marathon Course In Sapporo The route features a large loop which is about the length of a half marathon, followed by a second smaller loop which will be completed twice.
• Japan Running News: Second Half Of Sapporo Olympic Marathon Course To Be Two Laps Of 10k Loop
  *Course Map *World Athletics Article
• Reuters: Tokyo 2020, IOC Still To Decide Who Pays For Marathon Move

Assorted Admin News

• Interesting Read: Seb Coe Talks About Making Changes To Clean Up The Sport, Fight Corruption ANd Make It More Popular Talking about the controversial Nike marathon shoes he said, “My natural instinct is to be very careful about strangling innovation. Innovation in running shoes is a part of the sport. This is about balance, we recognise that. I can think even in my athletics lifetime, when I was pavement-pounding in flats, and by the 1980s the engineering in shoes lessened the injury.”
• Seb Coe Supports Christian Taylor’s New Athletics Association And Says He “Will Always Encourage Athletes To Have A Voice” “Within 20 minutes of Christian Taylor talking about this I was on the phone to him. I said, ‘Christian, I absolutely encourage you to do this …'”
• English Institute Of Sport Issues Health Instructions To Olympic Athletes, Including Where To Sit On The Plane Apparently there is a place to sit on the plane so the air conditions “leaves them less exposed to bugs from other people.” They wouldn’t give up where that is, though.
• Public Security Intelligence Agency Warns Of Cyber-Attack Threat Before Tokyo 2020 There have been malicious emails sent disguised to look like they are coming from a Tokyo 2020 staff member.
• UK Sport Confident That Team GB Can Improve Rio Olympic Medal Haul At Tokyo 2020 GB broke a historical trend in 2016 by being a host nation in 2012 and not winning less medals at the next Olympics. They took home 67 medals in Rio.
• European Athletics U20 Championships Returns To Tallinn In 2021

Slow Weekend Ahead Of The Holidays

• MB: Chad Hall just ran a 1:03 half!!!!! The younger brother of Ryan Hall ran 1:03:44 at the San Diego Holiday Half Marathon this weekend. Matt Welch won the race in 62:25. *Results
• Japan’s Daichi Kamino Takes Advantage Of Wrong Turn By North Korea’s Ri Kang Bom To Win Asian Marathon Champs In 2:12:18 Bom was just three seconds back in 2nd while North Korea’s Ri Kwang Ok won the women’s race in 2:30:56.
• MB: Jessica Hull Finishes 4th At Aussie Mile Champs (4:37.87) Georgia Griffith won the race in 4:36.29. *Results
• Sendai Ikuei Girls And Boys Sweep National High School Ekiden Titles

Sprint Stuff

• Noah Lyles Selected As T&F News’ Men’s US Athlete Of The Year Lyles took the award for the second year in a row, taking 22 of the 31 votes.
• Dalilah Muhammad Voted T&F News Women’s US Athlete Of The Year Muhammad was chosen unanimously, picking up all 32 of the votes.
• Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Talks To The Telegraph About Coming Back From Childbirth To Have One Of The Best Seasons Of Her Career In 2019 Fraser-Pryce struggled after having an emergency C-section, but didn’t listen to people who said she should just “bow out now.”
• Dina Asher-Smith Knows Being World Champ In 2019 Doesn’t Mean Anything For 2020 “It’s a new year, while you might be world champion this year, next you might be ranked fourth, you might not even make the final.”
• Dina Asher Smith: “This Is What It Takes To Be A Gold Medal Sprinter” “Leading into a major championship, I go into my own world for the four weeks beforehand.”
• Multis: The Guardian Profiles GB’s World Heptathlon Champ Katarina Johnson-Thompson Who Looks Back At Her Turbulent Career Doha 2019 marked Johnson-Thompson overcoming years of injuries and poor championship performances.