Cathal Dennehy profiles the greatest shot putter who ever lived as he prepares to win the 1 thing he's never won - world championship gold. Crouser came from a family of elite throwers but it didn't take long for his dad to realize that his son was truly special.

"Everything I have been working for my whole life is to make the U.S. team, to be able to wear red, white, and blue and a Team USA jersey.  ...I would regret it for the rest of my life, not saying “yes” to an opportunity like this. Are you kidding me?"

The runners he coached, loved him. "“I totally believed everything he told me,” Beardsley often said. “If he had told me to go sit in a garbage can, I’d have done it.”
*MB: RIP Bill Squires: Legendary marathon coach has died at 89
*2012 Toni Reavis: CELEBRATING COACH SQUIRES AT 80

"There's so much more competition [in college]," Tuohy said. "The pressure is not all on me. I'm not expected to win every race, which is nice."

Randolph won NCAAs this year while being coached by his dad at North Carolina A&T., but with his father taking over at Tennessee, Randolph (and his sister) is transferring to Tennessee to use the rest of his eligibility.
*MB Archive: Duane Ross to Tennessee

"Among global top 25 economic powers where elite marathoning is a significant thing, Japan is the only country without parity in the sport between women and men. The men outnumber the women 2.5 to 1. Why?"

How about this quote. “I wanted to drag these guys into deep waters. I wanted to make it hurt the whole time, make them question why they were in this event. I came out there with bad intentions.”

“I wasn’t super anxious. I wasn’t overly nervous, I was not like super excited, it’s not like … like a little surreal, like I didn’t actually believe that it was happening."

On the last 4-years of injury issues: “Obviously, it’s been extremely hard. Definitely like at times over the last four years, the saddest, the most depressed I’ve ever been, most frustrated, yeah, some truly, truly terrible days. Yeah. There’s not much more I can say about it. Just like really, really bad days. And, I think I’m just too stubborn to just stop. And especially, I think for me, stopping at that point, it wasn’t the fact that I was as fit as I could possibly be at the time and I still couldn’t do it. It was just my body was kind of betraying me. So there was still always that belief that if I got healthy again I could do it. So, I think just stubbornness I guess.”

From Jonathan Edwards' 18.43 tj (+2.4 - when the WR was 17.97) to William Snoddy's 9.87 100m (+11.2 - when the WR was 9.95), he's got you covered

It's awards season. Who had the best indoor seasons? Which collegiate had the biggest breakthrough? Can Eugene 2022 match the energy of Belgrade? Plus meet the world champ who trains on a triangular dirt track.

Tergat won his 3rd of 5 titles by coming from behind to beat Salah Hissou while Tulu, the first black African woman gold medallist, came from behind to beat Paula Radcliffe. *Race highlights

The piano-playing, University of Georgia bound senior who is the son of Villanovan is currently ranked #7 in the nation for 200 meters and #1 at 400, 500, 600 and 800 meters.

Fisher also explains why he's skipping World Indoors and whether he'll ever move up to the 26.2 distance.

This is an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING read. Michigan's Geoff Burns thinks BU is so fast as it a) has wood boards and b) has a high bank (18% vs 10% on most tracks) that is c) asymmetrical (it reaches it's peak early in the turn, not the middle and then tapers off late). It's so fast that he wouldn't rule out Tim C or Jacob could breaking 3:40 in the mile in it.
*SC This Geoff Burns article on what makes the BU track (and super shoes) so fast is AMAZING. He says Jakob might break 3:40 on it

"To me, that’s the line-up of the eight greatest sprint hurdlers of all time. Many years from now, when they talk about who’d be in that race, and who’d get those middle lanes, I want to be part of that conversation. How do I achieve that? Discipline and consistency." And he gives a shout out to Mike Holloway who told him  "You can be good at two sports, but if you want to be great at one, come to the University of Florida. I can get you there.”

“I’ll be 31 when [the Paris Olympics] comes around, the same age as Damian was in Tokyo. That’s the prime age for the decathlon. I mean, you need your mental to catch up with your physical. It takes a while to mature in dec so 27 to 31 are the best years that you can have."

In an excellent interview with Jeff Hollobaugh, Seidel reveals she views her Olympic medal as a starting point and not acareer defining moment, says you'll be solely disappointed if you expect her to ever break the 10,000 AR, praises Matt Sparks for resurrecting her career, raves about Jon Green and a heck of a lot more.
*MB: Molly Seidel: "[Americans] gonna get our asses handed to us nine times outta ten, if the course is fast."

The 1st grade teacher balances 85-105 mile weeks around her job but is thriving under Lee Trop as she's wacked 41 seconds of her 5000 pb (15:59 to 15:18), 1:33 off her 10k pb (33:42 to 32:09), and run 70:11/2:31:51, and finished 7th in Chicago. She's also eating better. “I don’t know if I have had anorexia, but I definitely had disordered eating in college."

 

Scandinavia's latest distance prodigy hails from Denmark and he's already beaten some of Jakob Ingebrigtsen's age records. At 15, he ran 14:06 at 15. At 16, he ran  7:59/8:42 st/13:44. At 17, last week he destroyed the field to win the Euro U20 title by 25 seconds.
*MB: Axel Vang Christensen Strikes Back - 14:06 5,000m & 9:06 steeple @15 years old

Speaking of Jakob, this is a good piece on him
At 16, Jakob Ingebrigtsen told his dad, "I can quit today. The only way to be at my best is to have a normal life.” 

"In the marathon you have to create the drama. When it's just the same old script it's boring as hell..If you run 3:00 per km you'll run 2:06:35. But there's nothing interesting about that. Sure, I knew that it was a suicidal pace, but I also knew that if I wasn't chasing my dreams nobody would feel it, nobody would be moved. If you're not moving people's hearts then nobody will remember you even if you win."- Japanese marathon legend Takeyuki Nakayama, who was twice 4th at the Olympics, talking about why he went out in 61:55 at the 1987 Fukuoka Marathon when the world record was 2:07:12.