Will Several American Records Be Set on Sunday?

Supporters Club Early Access Men’s Marathon Project Preview: With a Fast Course & Perfect Conditions, Will Sunday Be a Historic Day for US Marathoning? There have only been six races in history in which multiple Americans have broken 2:10 (the record is four guys under 2:10), but we could see as many as half a dozen Americans break the barrier in Arizona (Sub required until Friday).
*MB: Marathon Project predictions

LRC SC Will Sara Hall Break Deena Kastor’s 2:19:36 AR In The Marathon On Sunday? Her Coach/Husband Ryan Hall Says Sara’s Training “Has Gone Phenomenal” Let this serve as your official American record alert. While Ryan refused to call it an American record attempt, he said he’d like to see Sara go out in 69:40 so we’ll let you do the math. “This has been the fittest I’ve ever seen her. Every buildup she gets better and better,” said Ryan. (Sub required until Friday)

Other News

• No Spectators Will Be Allowed At NCAA Indoor Championships At The University Of Arkansas Same goes for the NCAA XC Championships scheduled for March 15th in Oklahoma.
• World Athletics Profile: How Three Different Sports Helped KC Lightfoot Become A Top Pole Vaulter The USA Champs 3rd placer credits dirt biking, baseball and cliff/bridge jumping to helping him in the PV.
• European Athletics Launches Six Part Documentary Mini-Series “My Story” Five of the episodes will be on Mondo Duplantis, Karsten Warholm, Nafissatou Thiam, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Sandra Perkovic (sixth episode is TBD).
  *Episode 1 (4 Minute Video): Duplantis: “I want to be the best to ever live”
• Year In Review: 2020 World Athletics Continental Tour

Updates From Asia / Middle East

• Former World Athletics Council Member Ahmad Al Kamali Banned For Six Months And Fined $6000 For Gifting Watches 1984 Olympic 5000m champion Said Aouita claimed they were Rolexes, but Al Kamali claimed, and the AIU seemed to confirm, the watches were only worth $40-50.
• Japan Olympic Marathon Trials Winner Shogo Nakamura Announces He’s Racing The Lake Biwa Mainichi Marathon On February 28
• Two-Time World HJ Champ Mutaz Essa Barshim Backs Doha For Bid For 2030 Asian Games

LetsBobsled.com

• Good Read: “Broken Leg” Sprinter Manteo Mitchell Is Now A Bobsledder Olympic 4×400 silver medalist Mitchell is famous for breaking his fibula during the 2012 Olympic prelims. He hasn’t given up on Tokyo 2020, but is also looking to Beijing 2022 as a bobsledder.
• Former GB Sprinter James Dasaolu Made His Bobsled World Cup Debut Last Weekend Dasaolu is #2 on the British all-time list with a 9.91 PB from 2013.

Doping News

• Seb Coe Says He’s Not Sure Russian Doping Issue Can Be Resolved In The “Near Future” I hope it in the foreseeable future, I am not sure, I will use the word ‘near.'”
• Ukrainian 2:27 Marathoner Viktoriya Khapilina Gets Doping Ban
• To No One’s Surprise: WADA Data Shows Russian Athletes Were Responsible For The Most Anti-Doping Rules Violations In 2018 Russian athletes had 144 violations ahead of 132 for Italians and 114 for France.
• Eight Russian Track Athletes Included In World Athletics’ 2021 Doping Pool Includes world champions Maria Lasitske (HJ) and Anzhelika Sidorova (PV).
• RUSADA Appoints New Supervisory Board To Comply With Updated WADA Code

More Distance News

• Runner’s World Picks Their Most Iconic American Races You Should Add To Your Bucket List With 34 races, this is definitely a pretty solid list.
• Scottish Distance Runner Sarah Inglis Talks Ahead Of Her Marathon Debut At The Marathon Project In Arizona Inglis is a PE teacher living in Canada and jokes that half her kids can’t understand her because of her strong Scottish accent.
• Kinda Lame: Jake Smith Broke Steve Jones’s 34-Year-Old Welsh Half Marathon Record “After Only Being Welsh For Four Days” … And then switched allegiance to England.
• Athletics Weekly Looks Back At Roger Bannister’s First Sub-Four Mile Talking about the moment he broke the barrier, in his auto-biography Bannister said, “I felt like an exploded flashlight with no will to live; I went on existing in the most passive physical state without being quite unconscious.”
• Joshua Cheptegei’s 10,000m WR (26:11.00) And Letesenbet Gidey’s 5,000m WR (14:06.62) Are Ratified By World Athletics
• MileSplit: RIP Colorado Legend Rich Martinez, 57 Martinez still holds the official Colorado high school 1,600m record of 4:10.98 from 1981 (although it has been broken unofficially by Cole Sprout and Cruz Culpepper).

COVID Stuff

• New York Cancels High School Indoor Champs Due To Coronavirus
• Reuters: COVID-10 Leaves Sporting Holes That Will Never Be Filled There will forever remain some blank spaces on the wall for 2020.
• NY Times Writer Argues That College Athletes Getting COVID “Proves That They Are Workers” The debate over paying college athletes is one thing, but this writer gets a little dramatic when he says, “Collegiate athletes are now pawns in a high-stakes game with life and death consequences.”
• NY Times: “College Sports Has Reported at Least 6,629 Virus Cases. There Are Many More.” The NY Times says many universities have kept their case counts from the public.

Vaccine / Tokyo News

• Seb Coe Says Athletes Shouldn’t Get Priority For COVID Vaccine And Need To Take Their Place In Line Coe was also very complimentary of Japan’s response to Olympic postponement, saying he “wakes up grateful that it’s the Japanese who are dealing with this.”
• WADA Tries To Calm Concerns From Athletes Over Coronavirus Vaccine WADA has insisted that “there is no reason to believe” the vaccine would cause drug test failures.
• Seb Coe Says He’s Confident The Tokyo Olympics Will Happen “The games will go ahead. Under different circumstances, under stressful conditions, but the games, I think, will go ahead.”