September 23, 2020 | LetsRun.com

A Story The World Needs To Know – We LOVED This Book

LRC “The Russian Affair” By David Walsh: The Story Of The Stepanovs, As You’ve Never Heard It Before In his latest book, David Walsh – the Irish reporter who helped bring down Lance Armstrong – tells the story of the Russian doping scandal through the eyes of whistleblowers Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov, whose relationship was far more complicated than you could imagine. On, February 8, 2013, the couple was supposed to get divorced. Instead, the Stepanovs decided to bring down the Russian doping regime and save their relationship in the process. 5 stars out of 5. Let’s hope this is made into a movie. *Purchase here.
*London Times: “The candour with which they have allowed Walsh to tell their story is rare and gripping.”
*Walsh: “It’s a love story set against the backdrop of a doping thriller.”

Big Finance-Related News From Nike

LRC John Capriotti – “The Most Powerful Man In Track” – Is Stepping Down At Nike; What Does It Mean For The Sport? Is the departure of the cutthroat Capriotti good or bad for the sport? Some say it’s a great thing as he repeatedly worked with those accused and convicted of doping while others are fearful it might be a sign that Nike is no longer fully committed to track and field. Will his successor continue to support track & field at the same level?
*MB: Oregonlive.com: Nike’s track and field overlord John Capriotti eyes consulting role in post-Nike future

Ken Goe: “Could John Capriotti’s Departure Mean Nike Is Scaling Back Its Support For Track? Not So Fast” Goe outlines some of the reasons it’s pretty obvious Nike isn’t going to be pulling back from track in the near future.

2020 World Half Gets A Big Addition And Subtraction

LRC World Half News: Kamworor OUT, Kiplimo IN, Ingebrigtsen Maybe? The 2020 World Half Marathon Championships are going to be incredible but they will not include three-time defending champ Geoffrey Kamworor. Kamworor fractured a tibia in a car accident in June and his agent has told LetsRun.com that the World Half is “not in his plans.” But 7:26/12:48 man Jacob Kiplimo has been added to the field and it also might include Norwegian superstar Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
*MB: Breaking: Geoffrey Kamworor out of 2020 world half
*MB: JAKOB I. to attend World Half in Poland against Kamwo and Cheptegei.

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Previous Capriotti News

John Capriotti – The Guy In Charge Of Negotiating All Nike Track And Field Endorsement Deals – Is Stepping Down Capriotti has been a monumental power player in the sport for 20+ years, largely outside of the public eye. “Caps corner” was where all the agents wanted to be in Eugene.

LetsThrow.com

Ryan Crouser Reaches Milestone With 100th Career 22m Shot Put He’s the only thrower in history to achieve this milestone. 36 of his 104 throws over 22m have come just this year.
Ryan Crouser Dominant Again With 22.59m In Belgrade All five of Crouser’s valid throws were 22.32m or better.
GB Hammer Thrower Chris Bennett Explains How The Pandemic Helped Him Lose Almost 42 Pounds When COVID shut down the sport, Bennett was forced to get a full-time job as a supermarket delivery driver to make money. But doing this helped him improve his poor snacking and sleeping habits.
Alexandra Tavernier And Barbora Spotakova Impress In Kladno Tavernier broke her own French hammer record with 75.23m while Spotakova won the javelin in 64.34m.

More Rome Coverage

LRC Rest Of Rome Recap: Jemma Reekie Earns Revenge, & Elaine Thompson Is BACK Reekie negative-split her way to a big 800 win, while Thompson obliterated the 100m field with a world-leading 10.85.

Mondo Duplantis Breaks Sergey Bubka’s World Outdoor PV Best With 6.15m “There has been a bit of confusion since they changed the rule to one world record (for both indoors and outdoors). Some people didn’t understand that the indoor world record I have is the world record, it covers both spectrums. I wanted to do the outdoor best just to clear the confusion – I have both!”
The Guardian: Jemma Reekie Savors Diamond League 800m Win Over Housemate Laura Muir Reekie won in 1.59.76 over Norway’s Hedda Hynne and Muir in third. *The Telegraph article
Jacob Kiplimo Beats Jakob Ingebrigsten In 3000m As Three Men Went Sub-7:30 Kiplimo and Ingebrigtsen ran 7:26.64 and 7:27.05 for the #8 and #9 fastest times ever.

Lamine Diack Found Guilty

Recommended Read Sean Ingle: How Lamine Diack’s 16-Year Reign In Charge Of IAAF Led To A Jail Term The article talks about a €3.2m payment for total protection and $15m being funneled to the company run by Diack’s company. In other news, USATF legally paid out more than $24 million to those who negotiated its no-bid Nike deal.
*MB: Lamine Diack goes down- going to prison for 2 years

Previous: Former World Athletics (IAAF) President Lamine Diack Found Guilty Of Corruption And Sentenced To Two Years In Prison He was also charged a $590,000 fine. It’s not clear if he will face any actual jail time as he’s been under house arrest for the past two years.

More Recent Results

NCAA XC Results: Notre Dame Men And Women Beat Louisville; Iowa State Men And Women Win Bob Timmons Classic The Kentucky men and women won the Commodore Classic and Arkansas swept the SEC Preview meet.
Craig Nowak (13:48) And Meriah Earle (16:28) Win Carlsbad Virtual 5000
Moldova’s Andrian Mardare Highlights Balkan Championships With Record Breaking Javelin Throw Of 83.60m
Lauren Bruce Breaks New Zealand National Hammer Record With 73.47m
AW Weekly Round-Up: Lewis Byng Breaks British U20 Shot Put Record With 19.73m

Distance News

Kenenisa Bekele Talks About His Prep Against Next Month’s Rescheduled London Marathon Bekele says his training has “been good so far but not super because of the [COVID] lockdown.”
Good Read: Lopez Lomong Talks About His Reluctance Transition To A 10,000m, But Says He Isn’t Done With The 5,000m Lomong says that he wants to do the 5000/10,000 double next year in Tokyo.
Mo Farah To Focus On 10,000m At Tokyo Olympics; Won’t Defend His 5,000m Title “I’m getting on a bit, and I think the key thing is to stick to one event and see what I can do.”
London Marathon To Cut Prize Money By Half For Next Month’s Race However, for first time there will be a separate prize pool for the top British runners.
Aisha Praught-Leer Says She’s Running Over 90 Miles Looking Ahead To Next Year’s Olympics “I am in the ‘meat’ of training for the season because I am preparing my body and mind to start a little bit early because I am not leaving anything to chance.”

Weekend International Action

World Athletics Weekend Round-Up: Kenya’s Nicolas Kimeli Runs 10,000m World Lead With 26:58.97 At The Gouden Spike Meet In The Netherlands At the Norwegian Championships, Jakob Ingebrigtsen had a solid double winning the 1,500/800 in 3:33.93 and 1:48.72 (he won the 1,500m by 13 seconds). Karsten Warholm won the 400H in 48.23, beating the rest of the field by more than five seconds.

Richard Kimunyan Wins Japan National Corporate Champis 10,000m In 27:01.42 It was a close three-way race as Bernard Koech (27:02.39) and Bedan Kroki (27:02.80) were right behind.
Top Three Go Sub-15 As Kenya’s Rebecca Njeri Wins Japan National Corporate Champs 5,000m In 14:55.32 Hitomi Niiya was a close second in 14:55.83, becoming just the second Japanese woman ever to break 15 minutes. Jonathan Ndiku won the men’s race in 13:10.64 over Bernard Koech (13:11.00).
*19-Year-Old Ririka Hironaka Wins Jr. Women’s 3000m In 8:52.80
World Athletics: 2015 World Bronze Medallist Jianan Wang (LJ) And World Silver Medallist Liu Shiying (Javelin) Highlight Chinese Championships Wang won the LJ with a world-leading 8.36m while Shiying won the jav in 67.29m.
*Asian Games Medalist Zhang Deshun Claims Women’s 10,000m Title In 33:26.85 At Chinese Champs
Jonathan Davies And Ian Crowe-Wright Become The First Athletes In 11-Years To Run A Sub-4 Minute Mile In Scotland Davies won the race in 3:59.36 to Crow-Wright’s 3:59.61.
GB’s Charlotte Arter Wins Cardiff Sunset 5k In 15:59

Semenya Legal Battle Is Over, But Debate Continues

#LetHerRun Movement Started To Call On World Athletics To Reverse Testosterone Rules After Caster Semenya Defeated In Court They put out a video ad which is a gross misrepresentation of the situation with Semenya and claim World Athletics is sexist because women need to prove they’re women, but men don’t need to prove they’re men. (Obviously a woman competing against men wouldn’t get an advantage so it’s not an issue.)
MB: David Epstein explains why he no long supports the Semenya testosterone policies. In an interesting read, Epstein compares and contrasts his views with experts Joanna Harper and Ross Tucker.
South African Rights Group Wants To Petition The United Nations And African Union Over Caster Semenya Ruling As usual, people miss the point as one of the leaders compared Semenya’s testosterone to Usain Bolt’s “height and long legs.” We don’t divide sports by height; we do by sex.

Previous Results

A Result We Missed: Johnny Gregorek (3:36.11) And Megan Mansy (4:12.56) Win 1,500m At Bethwel Twilight In Connecticut
Rising Middle Distance Talent Mbaraka James Highlights Tanzanian Championships 19-year-old James won the 1,500m in 3:47.12.
MB: 13-year-old runs 1:16:11 half-marathon world record in South Dakota It was his first half-marathon.
Two Meet Records And A Junior National Record At Japan National University Championships *Day 1 Recap

Assorted Distance News

Pete Julian On Taking His Team To Race In Europe: “There is an actual season out there. It’s happening. I think some people don’t want to believe it. But there are meets happening.”
GB Distance Runner Jo Pavey Talks About Trying To Make A Sixth Olympic Games At The Age Of 47 “I don’t want people to think I am delusional. I know it is a huge ask and there are a lot of talented athletes running. But it is something I want to have a go at.”
Bahrain’s Hassan Chani Will Be Stripped Of His 2018 Asian Games 10,000 Gold Medal After Getting Doping Ban Chani was caught by the athlete biological passport.
Eliud Kipchoge Gets Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta To Fund Library In His Home Village Kipchoge attended the ground-breaking ceremony on Wednesday.
Shalane Flanagan Talks About Her Transition From Athlete To Coach “There was some sadness in closing a chapter of my life that had brought me such joy and meaning, yet relief in knowing that my head, heart and body were headed toward a new goal.”
Former London Winner Prisach Jeptoo Gives Her Thoughts On This Year’s London Marathon And Predicts The Winners It wasn’t much of a prediction, though, as she chose Eliud Kipchoge for the men and “a Kenyan” for the women.

Winter NCAA XC

Ken Goe: “Why not discontinue the 3k and 5k as NCAA indoor events and move XC to the winter permanently?” No XC in the fall? Blasphemy!
MB: Not making this up: NCAA reschedules the NCAA XC championships for the same weekend as the 2021 NCAA indoors The DI Council approved the proposal to have the 2020 XC championships in the spring with Monday, March 15th as the date.

More Results: Van Niekerk Returns

Wayde Van Niekerk Makes International Return With 45.58 Victory In Bellinzona, Switzerland This was his first international race since 2017 London World Champs. Van Niekerk said on Instagram afterwards, “Forgot how to race for a moment, but it’s lovely being back on track.”
*MB: Wayde V NK: 45.61 tonight for opener
World Steeple Silver Medallist Lamecha Girma Wins Close 1500m With 3:35.67 PB In Bellinzona Girma beat out GB’s Piers Copeland (3:35.69) and world 5000m silver medallist Selemon Barega (3:36.07).
*MB: Barega goes home devastated!!
Norway’s Hedda Hynne Runs World-Leading 1:58.10 To Win Bellinzona 800m The time was also a new Norwegian record.
*MB: A 30-year old most of you have never heard of, Hedda Hynne of Norway, just ran a 1:58:10 world’s best
AW Weekly Round-Up: Dina Asher Smith Blasts To Fast 150m With 17.12 On Her Home Track She was just .06 off the UK record. Elsewhere in Poland, Piers Copeland won the 1,500m in 3:37.51.

COVID Related News

Police Still Investigating Usain Bolt’s Surprise Birthday Party Which Reportedly Broke Coronavirus Rules Both the Jamaican prime minister and minister of health say Bolt won’t get any special treatment in the investigation.
Government Proposal Calls For Non-Japanese Athletes To Go Through At Least Five COVID-19 Tests To Compete In Tokyo Olympics
Auckland, New Zealand Runners Angry They’re Being Singled Out And Barred From Rotorua Marathon COVID restrictions in New Zealand allow people to move and gather without constraint, except Aucklanders, who aren’t allowed to gather in groups of more than 10.
Organizers As Public Not To Come Watch The Hakone Ekiden In Person
More Than 10,000 Spectators Attend Baseball And Soccer Matches As Japan Eases Capacity Restrictions A maximum of 5,000 spectators had been permitted since July.
2020 USATF Annual Meeting To Be Held Virtually

NCAA News

Taylor Ewert Wins Collegiate Debut As Arkansas Sweeps SEC Preview Meet The Arkansas women dominated with a perfect 1-5 sweep. Ole Miss’ Mario Garcia Romo won the men’s race, but Arkansas still won the team title by 8 points. *Results
Eight Track Athletes Nominated For NCAA Woman Of The Year
Richmond.com Column: “Cutting Sports To Steal Endowments: They Myth Of Football Funded Athletics”

Non-Distance Stuff

1952 Olympic Javelin Champ Dana Zatopkova Finally Laid To Rest Alongside Her Husband Emil Zatopek Zatopkova died in March at the age of 97, but due to COVID-19, a public tribute wasn’t able to be held until now.
Interesting Read: How Fast Are The Best Long Jumpers? While the best jumpers don’t always have fast 100m PRs, being able to take off at optimum speed is essential.
Wayde Van Niekerk Feels “Comfortable And Confident” About Defending His Olympic 400m Title After Returning To Competition Van Niekerk is definitely one of the athletes that benefited most from the Tokyo postponement. Considering he just ran his first international race in years with only 45.58, he would have been hard pressed to be ready.
*Previously: Wayd Van Niekerk Back In Training After Covid Scare
Karsten Warholm And Mondo Duplantis Talk About Dealing With Expectations Of Record-Breaking Performances Everytime Out

Covid Cancellations (And Postponements)

Not Just USATF: Japan Pulls Team From World Half Marathon Champs Due To COVID
2021 Kansas Relays Cancelled Due To Budget Shortfall Caused By COVID-19 The school says not having the relays will save at least $300,000. They used the word “postponed” but the word they were looking for was “cancelled” as there won’t be any meet in 2021.
Vienna City Marathon Pushed Back From April To September 2021 Due To COVID-19
Fukuoka Marathon Will Go Ahead With Limited Field Size On December 6th Besides the 10 or so invited elites, the field will be limited to the 80 fastest applicants with marathon marks under 2:25 and the 10 fastest with half marathon marks under 1:04.
Nagoya, World’s Largest Women-Only Marathon, To Go Ahead On March 14 With Entires Limited To Residents of Japan
Feb. 28 Iwaki Sunshine Marathon In Japan Canceled
Eliud Kipchoge Hopeful Of Competing In The Rescheduled Tokyo Olympics

A Closer Look At The UMinn Men’s Track Cut

Star-Tribune Column: UMinn AD Made The Wrong Call – The Men’s Track Program Too Good To Cut The Gophers have a proud track and field tradition and even won the 1948 NCAA title at home.
Hundreds March In Support Of Men’s Track We loved the sign that read, “It’s not a budget problem, it’s a priority problem.”
*Mpls.St.Paul Magazine: “Gopher Athletes Protest Against Men’s Sports Cuts”
Instead Of Cutting Sports, Colleges Should Stop Spending Money Like Fools The article includes an amazing quote from a 1929 report on the excesses of college athletics that sounds like it was written today.
Cutting Men’s Track At UMinn Will Only Save $630,362- Just 0.84% Of The Predicted $75,000,000 Shortfall They Face
Outkick.com: NCAA Schools Cry Poverty, Use Pandemic To Cut Sports They Didn’t Want Anyway
MB: Leroy Burrell’s Desperate Letter To Save Men’s Track/XC Programs

Rome Diamond League Full Results TV & Streaming

MB: Official 2020 Rome DL Live Discussion Thread

LRC Mondo Duplantis Clears 6.15m In Rome To Break Outdoor Pole Vault World Record Duplantis now owns the world records indoors and outdoors, as after failing 14 times at the WR height this summer, he got the job done on #15. And he is still only 20 years old.
*MB: Mondo Duplantis Another World Record

LRC Jacob > Jakob: Kiplimo Tops Ingebrigtsen, 7:26 To 7:27, In Fast 3K Showdown In Rome The much-hyped duel between the youngsters didn’t disappoint, while Stewart McSweyn ran 7:28 to take down Craig Mottram‘s Australian record.
*MB: Jakob ran a 7.27,05 3000m tonight in Rome. What do do think about that?
*MB: Official 2020 Rome DL Live Discussion Thread – Jakob vs Jacob —We’re about to find out who’s better over 3000
*MB: Jakob Ingebrigtsen is NOT even the Best 19 Year Old Runner Named Jakob/Jacob

LRC Karsten Warholm & The Greatest 400-Meter Hurdles Season Ever Yet again, Warholm gave the WR a scare but came up a bit short tonight in Rome. Prior to this year, no man had run 47.10 or faster more than once in a season. Warholm has now done it four times in the last 35 days.