Barringer and Willard in Belgium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New American record...

Wow..... I wish I could have seen that live. Looks like a great race. Congrats to both of them.

I smell a medal in Beijing.

super wrote:

I smell a medal in Beijing.

i dont know about that, the russian girls are very good in this event.

.03 sec. = catfight to the finish!

Unfortunately they won't be metal contenders at the Olympics. Here are the top women's steeple runners so far this year:

9:08.21 Gulnara Samitova-Galkina RUS

9:11.18 Eunice Jepkorir KEN

9:15.84 Tatyana Petrova RUS

9:18.24 Yekaterina Volkova RUS

9:18.35 Donna MacFarlane AUS

9:18.43 Ruth Bisibori Nyangau KEN

Unfortunately the Russian steeple women appear to be doping as most certainly are the Russian 800m runners. And unfortunately the testers at the World Anti-doping Agency are too stupid to test these runners when they were doping during the pre-season while they were undergoing heavy training. The Russian women likely stopped doping when they entered the competitive season, and are clean now -- but still benefiting from the super-human training they were able to accomplish with drugs this past winter. Now it is too late for WADA to catch them. As I've said in other threads, this sport will stay dirty until the drug testers require that the world's top-10 athletes in every T&F event be suprise tested at least twice a month during their heavy training pre-season.

At least Willard and Barringer should make the Olympic finals if that's any consolidation.

What is a metal? Why would they want one?

Will WADA have the new TDF EPO test to blast the Russian women off the medal stand??

or the americans.

gotta agree with whypam. russian women have got to be on an updated version of whatever china was 10 years ago. these results just dont jive. tip of the hat to jb and aw. great, great race.

If you have nothing positive to contribute then stfu.

I smell some red, white and blue sore losers.

lil help here wrote:

What is a metal? Why would they want one?

Gold and Silver are nice meTals. I would be happy to get one of those meTals. Bronze, no thanks.

Look at steeple technique for some of these runners, especially S-G.

Ok I'm not trying prove that this means that the russians are doping but this acticle from the iaaf website caught my attention. More specifically the article mentions the Female who won the 5k at Russian nationals set a pr by over 20 seconds over her previous mark set in '05. There very well could be a logical explanation for her big jump in improvement (better coaching, took time off to have a kid then resumed training, age wise she now is coming into her prime,etc.). All I'm saying is that the amount she improved after not getting a pr for basically 3 years makes me wonder. When I look at this story and then see how other Russians have performed recently, more questions about doping start to creep into my head. You all can read it and make your own judgements.

----------------------------------------------------------

Kazan, Russia - Lilya Shobukhova set a new European record in the 5000m to highlight the third day of the Russian national championships on Saturday (19).

The 30-year-old clocked 14:23.75 to eclipse the 14:24.68 mark set by Turkey's Elvan Abeylegesse at the 2004 Bislett Games in Bergen, Norway. It was a substantial improvement for Shobukhova, the 2006 European silver medallist over the distance, her previous best of 14:47.07 coming at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki where she finished ninth. The Russian is now the fourth fastest ever.

That's less than 8 seconds a year over 5000 meters.

Besides that, one of the objects of training and competing is improvement.

The Russians are all heavily juiced. I think in our hearts, guts, etc we all know this.

Why does every goddamn thread have to descend into a harangue about drugs and Russians and other BS?

It was great to see 2 AMERICAN women kicking butt last night!!!

She has run for titles and not for time - remember Silver medal; that the PR was only 14:43 is not really that important.