December 10, 2020 | LetsRun.com

Seb Coe Shares His Vision

LRC “In a Way, the Horse Bolted the Stable Many, Many Years Ago”: Seb Coe Speaks to LetsRun.com About Shoes, World Records, & 2021 Diamond League Changes Coe acknowledges technology is having an effect on the sport, but believes world records still mean something in 2020: “It is important that when a world record gets broken, that it is broken as a result of outstanding jaw-dropping athletic talents. And I’m still of the belief that in large part that is why we’re seeing those records.”
*MB: Seb Coe talks to LetsRun about the super shoes: “In a way, the horse bolted the stable many, many years ago”

LetsRun Staples

Our Weekly Pod LRC Valencia World Half Marathon Record Podcast Plus Super Shoes, Olympic Babies, and The Track MeetWhat a week in running. Listen today.

LRC WTW: Super Shoes = Super Times, Weini Kelati Goes Pro, And World Athletics Reverses Course After a long Covid-19 break, Rojo‘s weekly recap is back in full force.

International Distance News

2021 World Indoor in China postponed to 2023 We’ll now have it in 2022, 23 and 24.
English National xc meet – which has never been cancelled except for a world war – is postponed even though it wasn’t scheduled until March Memo to Brits. 1) The vaccine is being rolled out 2) Covid-19 is not very dangerous for young, healthy people. *Discuss
Jake Wightman Reminds Everyone You Don’t Have To Be A Teen Star To Be Great “When I go back to U15/U17 level and I was racing Neil Gourley up in Scotland, we were finishing in the middle of the field in races.”
*MB: Jake Wightman says he and Neil Gourley were finishing “middle of the field in races” as teens. now both are WC Finalists
Video Chat With Sam Atkin After His 13:18/27:26 Double On Back-To-Back Days Atkin isn’t the only member of his family in the news.
*MB: Sam Atkin is officially everyone’s hero. After his 13:18/27:26 double, it’s revealed his twin sis is Miss Great Britain (pics)
22 Japanese High School Boys Broke 14:00 This Year; Only 9 American HSers Have EVER Done It
Good News: Mass Participation Japanese Half Marathon With 10,000 Runners Will Run At 70% Capacity In April

More On The Shoes

Seb Coe Speaks On The Shoes; Defends World Athletics Stance On New Technology Coe argues that shoe technology has always improved through the years. “I still marvel at the fact that we had people like Ron Hill running significantly under 2:10 (in the marathon) in shoes that had little more than cardboard support in them.”
RT.com: “Shoe Wars … Arms Race Between Sneaker Brands Takes Center Stage” “With World Athletics seemingly happy to allow a virtual arms race to develop between the world’s top sneaker brands, fans could expect more records to be broken, and more complaints to be made …”

Multi-Eventer News

Signatures Still Needed In Petition Asking The IOC Make Jim Thorpe The Sole Olympic Champion In The Decathlon And Pentathlon At The 1912 Games Thorpe was stripped of his medals because of amateur eligibility rules (he played minor league baseball). The IOC restored his medals in the 1980s, but made him the co-champion rather than sole champion.
Tribute To Florida’s 1976 NCAA Indoor Pentathlon Champion Heidi Hertz Sweet, Who Passed Away Last Week At The Age Of 64

NCAA / HS News

60 Minutes Did Segment On Colleges Cutting Olympic Sports Programs “While some schools are moving mountains to get in football and basketball seasons, non-revenue generating sports are on the chopping block.”
Kansas State’s Tejaswin Shankar And North Dakota State’s Akealy Moton Are NCAA Athletes Of The Week Former NCAA HJ champ Shankar scored 4343 points in the pentathlon to put himself #4 on the collegiate all-time list. Moton won the shot put at the Dakota Dual by more than seven feet with 17.31m.
The Staten Island High School Indoor Track Could Be Moved Outdoors Get ready to shovel off that track in Trevor Dunbar fashion.
Event-By-Event Top 10 Marks From The Collegiate Weekend

2020 Valencia *Full Results

LRC Utter Insanity: Kibiwott Kandie Runs 57:32 As The Top 4 Finishers Break The World Record In The Valencia Half Marathon The Valencia Half Marathon was incredible as not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 men broke the old WR of 58:01.

LRC The Rest Of Valencia: Evans Chebet (2:03:00) And Peres Jepchirchir (2:17:16) Set Valencia Marathon Course Records As Genzebe Dibaba (65:18) Wins Her Half Marathon Debut Pre-race, we said the Valencia fields were the deepest in history and that proved to be the case, particularly in the men’s race, where 30 men broke 2:10.

2021 Will Be A Big Year For Aliphine Tuliamuk

Olympic Marathon Trials Champ Aliphine Tuliamuk Is Pregnant She is due in January and still plans on being ready to race in Tokyo.
*MB: Olympic Trials Marathon Champ Aliphine Tuliamuk is Pregnant

US Distance News

Keira D’Amato Was A DNS In 10,000 Last Weekend Due To Food Poisoning But She’s Running The Marathon Project
Jared Ward added to Marathon Project men’s race
Reid Buchanan Will Have The Fastest Half Marathon PR Of All The Debut Marathoners At Next Weekend’s Marathon Project The 27:58 10,000 man who ran 28:07 last week has a 61:45 half PR.
The Marathon Project Will Be Broadcast Live On USATF.TV On December 20 It will also be on NBCSN on tape delay.
Long-Time Colorado 1,600 State Record Holder In The Mile, Rich Martinez (4:10.98), Has Died At 57 Martine was also 5th at the 1988 Olympic Trials. Cole Sprout finally beat his mark unofficially in a time trial in April. *Share Your Condolences
14:48 Woman Vanessa Fraser Chats After Running 32:09 Normally that would be a disappointment but she had surgery in May to remove damaged tissue in both of her Achilles.
A Look At The Latest Transfers Changes For NCAAs For Next Year

Jump News

RIP: 1970 NCAA And 1976 Olympic LJ Champ Arnie Robinson Dies Of Covid-19
World Athletics AOY Yulimar Rojas Won’t Be Satisfied With Just The Greatest Triple Jump In History “15.50m I know I can do,” she said. “My ambition is to become the first woman to jump 16 metres. It is something unimaginable in people’s minds, but I think I have the ability to do it.”
Athletics Weekly Fondly Remembers The Two Greatest Long Jump Competitions In History Mike Powell wasn’t exactly gracious in victory, “I really hate to say, ‘In your face, Carl,’ but, well, in your face.”
India’s Only-Ever World Championships Medalist, Anju Bobby George, Reveals She Won Her 2003 LJ Bronze With Only 1 Kidney

Sport Politics

Seb Coe And IOC President Thomas Bach Clash Over Podium Protests Apparently Bach “implicitly criticized” Coe for giving an award to Tommie Smith, Peter Norman and John Carlos for their podium protest at the 1968 Games.
1992 Olympic 10,000m Champion Derartu Tulu Officially Nominated As Permanent President Of The Ethiopian Athletics Federation She has been the interim president since November 2018 with Haile Gebrselassie stood down two years into his four-year term.
Russia Critical Of US Politicization Of Sport After Passing Rodchenkov Act One official said, “There is the IOC, there is the CAS, there is WADA, and suddenly there is a law that creates complete chaos in this harmonious system.”

On The Roads

Former NCAA Champ Ben Flanagan Wins In His Half Marathon Debut Flanagan ran 63:19 to win the Mortgage Network Half in South Carolina.
Comody Iida Breaks Okutama Keikoku Ekiden Course Record

Cross-Country Loses Out To Break Dancing For Paris 2024

Cross Country Overlooked For Inclusion For The Paris 2024 Games It would have been fitting as the last time cross country was at the Olympics was at Paris 1924. It was a controversial event with only 15 of the 38 athletes completing the difficult course in heatwave conditions.
World Athletics “Disappointed” At Omission Of XC For Paris 2024 They are still hoping XC will be featured at a future Games.
IOC Cut The Men’s 50k Racewalk From The 2024 Olympic Program But don’t celebrate too soon, non-racewalk fans, World Athletics is going to replace it with a “mixed gender racewalk event.”
Break Dancing Added To The Olympics For Paris 2024 Break dancing beat out cross-country, squash, parkour, cue sports and chess for a spot in the 2024 lineup.
The Telegraph: “IOC Accused Of Making A ‘Mockery’ Of Olympics By Squash Stars Bemused At Breakdancing’s Inclusion” The IOC chose break dancing, citing their desire to appeal to younger people. Squash has been trying unsuccessfully for decades to get into the Olympics.

Begun, The Shoe War Has …

LRC adidas’ “Super Shoe,” The adizero Adios Pro, Is A Huge Winner In Valencia With Half Marathon World Record Since Nike unveiled its Vaporfly 4% in 2016, every other shoe manufacturer has been playing catch-up. But now could the tide be turning? 3 of the 4 winners on Sunday were wearing adidas.

World Athletics Reverses Rule, Will Allow Athletes To Wear Prototype Shoes In Competition As Long As They Meet Technical Specifications This means shoes will no longer need to be available for purchase for athletes to race in them. However, this rule change doesn’t apply to the Olympics or World Athletics championships.
GB Coach Toni Minichiello: “World Athletics had a chance to be all in on shoe technology or all out, like swimming did in banning those suits. They have gone all in.”

**The Track Meet *Results**

LRC The Track Meet Day 2 Recap: Eric Jenkins (27:22) & Rachel Schneider (31:09) Win 10ks As 12 Athletes Hit Olympic Standard There was also an Australian record for Patrick Tiernan (27:22), impressive runs from new pros Weini Kelati (31:10) and Alicia Monson (31:10), and a second PR in 24 hours for Brit Sam Atkin (27:26).

MB: Official The Track Meet 2020 Live Discussion Thread
MB: Jenkins is back baby!!!

LRC The Track Meet Day 1 Recap: Shelby Houlihan And Elise Cranny Pick Up Olympic Standards, Luis Grijalva (13:16) Continues To Roll As Matthew Centrowitz Wins The B Heat The weather was ideal and the times were super-fast – at least for December.
*Register-Guard: Cooper Teare Nearly Kicks His Way To Oregon 5,000m Record Teare’s 13:17.13 is now #2 in the school record books behind Bill McChesney Jr.‘s 1982 record of 13:14.80.

Sports Science

The Science May Finally Be Catching Up To Common Sense: Study Finds Trans Women Still Retain 12% Advantage In Tests Two Years After Transitioning Even After Taking Hormones To Reduce Testosterone The new study is calling into question IOC rules which only require biological male athletes to lower their testosterone for a year before competing in women’s sports. Plus last time we checked, trans women NEVER get their periods.
What Does It Take To Run A 2-Hour Marathon? Recently Published Study Looks Examines The Elite Runners Who Took Part In The Breaking2 Project An interesting note was that researchers found elite runners could take in oxygen twice as fast at marathon pace as a “normal” runner could while sprinting at their max effort.

Why WA Reversed Course On Some DL Changes

Wanda Diamond League Releases Which Meets Will Have Which Events For 2021 Distance-wise, Eugene officially gets men’s and women’s 1,500s, a women’s steeple, and men’s 800 and 3k/5k.
World Athletics Chief Executive Jon Ridgeon Admits They Made “Too Many Changes” At Once To The Diamond League Program “It was important what the athletes had to say, but it was equally important what the broadcasters had to say, because they pay most of the bills. … Some of our key DL broadcasters said to us that actually, do you know, we quite like the two-hour window.”
The Athletes Association Welcomes World Athletics U-Turn On Diamond League Cuts Cutting these events from the DL was the initial catalyst that led Christian Taylor to form the Athletes Association.

Olympic News

Tokyo 2020 Claims Postponement Will Cost $2.8 Billion, Higher Than The $1.9 Billion Initially Reported $1 billion will be paid by the Tokyo government, $1.1 billion by the organizing committee and the last $700 million by the Japanese government.
IOC Confirm Athletes Will Have Limited Time In The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Village To Lower COVID Risk Athletes are expected to arrive five days before their event and leave a maximum of two days after.
Queensland, Australia Revives Bid For 2032 Olympics

More Valencia

RRW Emily Sisson Comes Up 1 Second Short Of American Half Marathon Record In Valencia Oh so close. Sisson missed the American record by a single second in Valencia this morning.

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