Christian Coleman Could Miss Olympics After Three Missed Tests But The Drug Tester Didn’t Even Try To Call Him?

LRC World’s Fastest Man May Face An Olympic Ban For Missing Yet Another Drug Test Christian Coleman may be facing a two-year ban, but we’re not sure he should be banned as some significant questions remain about his case. The authorities ADMIT they made no attempt to call Coleman when they could not locate him.
*MB: Christian Coleman facing suspension for three missed tests

AP: Coleman Is Accusing AIU of making a “purposeful attempt” to make him miss a test. For the test in question, Coleman says he was shopping for Christmas presents near his home and documents show the testers didn’t call him.

GB News

• Brendan Foster Says He Thinks It Will Be “Extremely Difficult” For The London Marathon To Go On In October They are set to decide by Sunday whether London will go ahead with its rescheduled date or completely cancel.
• Scottish Mid-D Runners Laura Muir And Jemma Reekie Talk Training And Life In Lockdown The two training partners are now, at least temporarily, housemates as Reekie moved into Muir’s house during the coronavirus pandemic.
• Great North Run Cancelled With Organizers Preparing For September 2021 Return
• British Racewalker Tom Bosworth Talks About Receiving Homophobic Abuse From A Meet Volunteer He was allegedly told by an athletics volunteer that “f–s are not welcome” in the sport.
• UK Athletes Seeks Performance Director And Olympic Head Coach In “New Era” These will be the first two significant appointments by new CEO Joanna Coates.
• GB Athletes Frustrated At Not Being Able To Train At Alexander Stadium In Birmingham Due To Construction Delays Ahead Of The 2022 Commonwealth Games One hurdler complained that they have to “imagine” they have hurdles to jump over.
• British Olympic Association Athletes Commission Publishes Open Letter Rejecting Racism And Discrimination

Diack Trial Updates

• Lamine Diack Turns On His Son And Calls Him A “Thug” At Corruption Trial Diack threw his son Papa Massata Diack under the bus, saying that he didn’t know about a lot of the corruption his son was involved with. 87-year-old Diack was also apparently hard to understand at times and giving “confused, contradictory and uncertain testimony.”
• Lamine Diack Defends Interference With Russian Doping Cases; Says Was Trying To Secure Sponsorship Deal With A Russian Bank Diack says that rather than announce all the Russian doping sanctions at once, they spread them out so it didn’t hurt their sponsorship opportunities ahead of Moscow 2013 Worlds.
• Diack: “It was mainly for the financial health of the IAAF. The financial health of the IAAF had to be safeguarded and I was prepared to make that compromise.”
• AP: “Corruption Trial Points To Origins Of Russian Doping Saga”

Doping News

• India’s Asian 800m Champ Gomathi Marimuthu Gets 4-Year Ban After Testing Positive For Steroids Impressively, she managed to test positive in four separate samples taken from March through April 2019.
• International Testing Agency Finishes Reanalysis Of Frozen Samples From 2012 London Olympics They have confirmed that they are working on more than a dozen anti-doping violation cases before the statute of limitations expires in August.

The Impossible Games Are Thursday *Results

LRC Jakob Ingebrigtsen Gets European 2,000m Record, Team Norway Crushes Team Kenya,  Karsten Warholm Gets Record @ Impossible Games It wasn’t the track & field we’re used to, but Ingebrigtsen (Euro 2,000m record of 4:50.04), Warholm (300m hurdles world best of 33.78), and Mondo Duplantis (5.86m PV) still entertained the track world on Thursday afternoon.
*MB: Official 2020 Impossible Games Discussion Thread – Team Cheruiyot vs Ingebrigtsen
*MB: Sondre Moen 25,000 meters at Bislet
*MB: Why is World Athletics naming an event after a convicted drug cheat

• Team Cheruiyot Wants A Rematch With Team Ingebrigsten At The Kip Keino Classic In September Timothy Cheruiyot: “The track was windy and that made it difficult to move. Jakob and his teammates had good weather and their track was pretty fast and conducive.”
• Sondre Moen Makes A Statement In Oslo With European 25,000m Record He ran 1:12:46.5, only a little of the world record of 1:12:25.4. He said, “In retrospect, perhaps I should have run a more evenly-paced race and maybe I could have got the world record. But my goal from the start was the area record.”
• European Athletics: Karsten Warholm And Jakob Ingebrigtsen Smash Records At The Impossible Games Warholm: “It was a little funny because Leif Olav (his coach) said ‘maybe you can beat the record in half a second?’ and I said “no, are you sick to the head!” But I trained well and when he said that I had some faith and it began to sink in. It’s so beautiful.”
• World Athletics Impossible Games Recap

General Track News

• Athletes Including Christian Taylor And Emma Coburn Demand Answers After World Athletics Leaked Financial Info Shows They’re Losing Millions Of Dollars Each Year It’s worth noting that the same athletes who ripped World Athletics for cutting less popular events from the Diamond League are now ripping World Athletics for not making changes.
• Seb Coe Set To Become An IOC Member After Being Proposed By The Executive Board Coe has committed to addressing a conflict of interest (his position at CSM Sport Entertainment) which had previously prevented him from joining.
• The Start Date For The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Pushed Back 24 Hours To Give Athletes Competing At Worlds An Extra Day Of Recovery Eugene 2022 Worlds finishes on July 24th and the CWG will start July 28th.
• Mid-D Runner Guy Learmonth Hopes Scottish Athletes Should “Prioritize” Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games

Today Is Impossible, Next Month We Have Inspiration

• Cancelled Zurich DL Will Hold “Inspiration Games” Instead On July 9 The “meet” will see 30 stars compete against eight events at seven stadiums on three different continents. The three stadiums will be broadcast simultaneously for each event.
• Zurich’s “Inspiration Games” Will Include A 150m Race Between Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Allyson Felix And Switzerland’s Mujinga Kambundji Miller-Uibo will race in Florida, Felix in California and Kambundji in Zurich.

Doping News

• 2010 European Champion Russian HJer Alexander Shustov Gets 4-Year Doping Ban His results from July 2013 to July 2017 have been voided.
• Michael Johnson Speaks Out Over Salwa Eid Naser’s Missed Tests Johnson said she should be banned through 2022 and also advocated for increasing the ban for three missed tests to 4 years.
• RUSADA Investigating 27 Possible Rule Violations In May Includes three cases where athletes may have broken conditions of their current bans.

We’ve Brought John Kellogg Out Of Retirement – Our Summer Training Program Is Back

LRC High Schoolers And College Runners- Train Smarter This Summer With The LetsRun.com Summer Training Program If you aren’t sure what you should be doing for summer training and want to be your best this fall, sign up for our summer training program. Get a daily training schedule, interact with our team, and be your best this fall.

Sunday’s Interesting Links

• The Veil On World Athletics’ Finances Is Lifted For 1st Time Ever As Financial Data Are Leaked in 2018, World Athletics had $45 million in the bank. That’s the good news. The bad news is they were spending $20 million more per year than what they were bringing in.
  *MB: World Athletics financial info leaked for 1st time ever. They’ve got $45 million in bank, but are running a $20 mil deficit
• Interesting Thought: What If All The Olympics Had Been Held One Year Earlier Than They Actually Were? Would Jim Ryun, Marty Liquori, Mary Decker, Sonia O’Sullivan, Tyson Gay and Mike Powell be Olympic legends?
• Catching Up With Pat Tyson, Steve Prefontaine’s Roommate And Coaching Legend, During Covid-19
• RIP: 1964 Olympian Ron Larrieu, The 1st American Under 28:00 For 6 Miles And Also A Former US 3-Mile Record Holder, Has Died At 83 Larrieu, who was the older brother of 5-time Olympian Francie Larrieu-Smith, also broke the a 31-year-old US HS 3,200 record by running 9:39.
• Scottish Running Legend Don Macgregor, Who Was A Surprising 7th In The 1972 Olympic Marathon, Has Died
• Former World Athletics Chief Papa Diack Requests Trial Postponement As Lawyers Are Unable To Travel To Trial Due To Covid-19

Previous LRC Exclusives

LRC I Was Bored, So I Watched Joan Benoit Samuelson Win The 1984 Olympic Marathon After a runner that was “considerably heavier than the other marathoners” took an early lead, Benoit won the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon thanks to a daring early breakaway, clocking the #3 time ever (at the time) and demolishing a field of studs (Grete Waitz, Ingrid Kristiansen, Rosa Mota) to cement her status as a legend.
*MB: How hot was it really during the 1984 Olympic women’s marathon? The NY Times report on the race says it got up to “near 90” but the weather data doesn’t show that.

LRC’s Weekly Podcast 2020 Boston Marathon Cancelled, Brown Track And Field Cancelled + Guest Tyler Andrews Goes For Treadmill World Record At Chaski Challenge And HSer Joe Fast Joins The Show Listen to the best track and field running podcast on the planet and learn about the guy who may dominate the NCAA men’s 800 for years to come.