WTW: The Mancini Sisters Rock It For La Salle Yet Again & One of The World’s Most Talented Teens Returns To Action

The Week That Was in Running, October 24 – 30, 2022

By Robert Johnson
November 2, 2022

Hope everyone had a great Halloween. I tried to write this on Sunday night as I knew half of Monday would be lost to my four-year old having the time of his life, but I couldn’t quite finish it. So here is our a weekly recap — a little belated.

Each week, we try to make the sport more fun to follow by putting the prior week’s action in perspective for you. Past editions of our Week That Was weekly recap can be found here. Got a tip, question or comment? Please call us at 844-LETSRUN (538-7786), email us, or post in our forum.  

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The Mancini Women Rock It Yet Again For La Salle

The biggest action of last week for our US audience were the NCAA conference cross country championships. We broke them down extensively in our Friday 15 Supporters Club podcast as well as this article: LRC 5 NCAA XC Takeaways – The Stanford men look GREAT, the NC State women win but look vulnerable, and an SEC champ smokes a cigar after the race. But a few minor things caught my eye since then.

As a twin, I’m always looking out for twin stories and I’ve found one. How about some love for the Mancini twins of La Salle, who went 1-2 at the Atlantic 10 meet? In her fifth try at the A-10 meet, Liz Mancini got her first win in 16:38.6 as twin sis El Mancini was second in 16:40.2. But this isn’t really just a twin story — it’s a Mancini sister story as four different Mancinis have run on the women’s team at La Salle and run very well, including younger sister Christine this year. Christine was 4th overall in 16:57.0. (Though despite going 1-2-4, La Salle was only second in the team race behind Loyola).

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The Mancini women have been so good for La Salle that this was the first time at the A-10 XC meet that Liz was even the top Mancini finisher. Here’s how Liz has fared at the meet both within her family and overall in each of her five A-10 XC champs. (Remember, the March 2021 conference champs didn’t count against anyone’s eligibility).

Liz Mancini’s A-10 XC results
2022 – 1st in family, 1st overall. Twin sis El was 2nd. Younger sis Christine was 4th.
2021 – 2nd in family, 4th overall. Twin sis El was 3rd. Younger sis Christine was 11th.
2021 (March) – 3rd in family, 17th overall. Twin sis El was 3rd. Younger sis Christine was 12th.
2019 – 3rd in family, 19th overall. Older sis Grace was 3rd. Twin sis El was 4th. Younger sis Christine was 47th.
2018 – 2nd in family, 14th overall. Older sis Grace was 6th. Twin sis El was 66th. 

The twins aren’t the only ones that get mistaken for each other. Here are their bio pictures from the La Salle athletics website. Can you tell which two are the twins?

For the record, #1 Liz and #3 El are the twins. #2 is big sis Grace and #4 is younger sis Christine.

More: 2019 Philly Inquirer: How many Mancini sisters run cross-country for La Salle? This year, four. 

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How about some love for the men and women of Cal Baptist? In their first year eligible for the NCAA DI champs after moving up from DII, Cal Baptist is rocking it on both the men’s and women’s sides as the men are ranked 25th and the women 14th. Both teams swept the WAC champs last week. The men are led by senior Said Mechaal of Spain (3:46/13:40/28:45). Yes, he is the younger brother of Spanish pro Adel Mechaal (3:30/7:30/13:06/27:50).

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It didn’t take long for coach Ryan Vanhoy to find success at Cal Poly as his men’s and women’s teams both won the Big West titles in his first year in charge. The men moved up one spot from last year while the women moved up two. The men were led by 6th-year senior Jake Ritter, who won an unprecedented third individual Big West XC title. Of course, Vanhoy inherited a stacked men’s team from Mark Conover, who tragically lost his battle with cancer in April, as they returned their entire top five from last year plus Ritter who didn’t run last year.

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Japan’s Seira Fuwa Returns To Action

There also was important collegiate action in Japan where Meijo University won a record sixth straight National University Women’s Ekiden title. They did so in dominant fashion as they took the lead in the first 200m and won five of the six stages, three in course record time. Japan Running News’ Brett Larner has a nice recap of the race on his website.

The competition marked the return to action for one of Japan’s biggest distance prospects, 19-year-old Seira Fuwa of Takushoku University. Last year Fuwa became a sensation at the National Women’s University Ekiden as on the longest 9.2km leg she OBLITERATED the course record, lowering it from 29:14 to 28:00 (30:26 10k pace on hills). In December, she proved that was no fluke as she ran the #2 time in Japanese history for 10,000 — 30:45.21 — at the age of 18.

The performance was so shocking Larner wrote at the time that “it’s safe to say this was the greatest distance performance in Japanese collegiate women’s history.” This year, Fuwa has largely been injured. She didn’t run the Japanese nationals, where she only needed to finish top three to book a ticket to Worlds, due to a right Achilles injury. While Fuwa didn’t race Worlds, she did go to Worlds. Her coach Toshiharu Igarashi took her there so she could see what the atmosphere is like when she does make it.

(Not that anyone asked but I’m not sure that was a good idea. Worlds is like any other race — just faster. The young lady has enough pressure on her already.)

Anyways, Fuwa’s return to action was a good one. In her first road race since January (she won Japan’s Inter-University 10,000 champs in 32:55.31 in early September), she once again ran the 9.2 km leg. This time, she started conservatively — 3:11 for the first km — but ended up winning the stage in 29:39.

More: Meijo Wins Record-Breaking 6th-Straight National University Women’s Ekiden Title, Fuwa Takes Another Step Forward
*May 2022: Takahashi Tells Fuwa “No Need to Overdo It” After Nationals Withdrawal
*October 2021: Meijo Wins Fifth-Straight National Title, 18-Year-Old Fuwa Sets Sendai on Fire at National University Women’s Ekiden

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Nnena Lynch served a drug ban but is supposed to take over the NYRR board in June

Last week, Matthew Futterman published an interesting story in The New York Times. He pointed out how former Villanova star Nnena Lynch on paper looks to be a great future head of the NYRR board — Rhodes scholar, five-time NCAA champion, born and bred New Yorker. Lynch is supposed to become chairwoman of the NYRR board in June 2023 and if that happens she’ll become the first African American and first woman to head the NYRR board.

One small problem.

Lynch served a three-month doping ban back when she was a competitor in 1996 after she tested positive for pseudoephedrine, a stimulant that is also a common ingredient in decongestants. The NYRR has a “zero-tolerance” policy banning people who have served doping suspensions from running in their races. Yes, Lynch won’t need to run NYRR races as head of the board but it’s a bad look if you have one hard-and-fast policy for athletes that doesn’t apply to executives.

This isn’t that hard of a situation to solve.

The NYRR either changes its “zero-tolerance” policy for athletes or Lynch doesn’t become chairwoman. You don’t brag about “zero-tolerance” for the underlings and then give your board chair tolerance. If she innocently took a banned asthma medication — which is what she told the Times in 1997 — I don’t really care, but I do care about hypocrisy. An easy solution would be to amend the policy and say people who served a doping ban of a year or more are ineligible. Does “zero-tolerance” really make sense given that USADA head Travis Tygart believes the US food supply chain is contaminated?

MB: Nnenna Lynch: NY Times: The “New York Road Runners Chose Her as Its Next Chairman. In 1996, She Failed a Doping Test.”

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Tweet of the Week 

Last week, David Deeble, a contributor to the Babylon Bee (a site that Wikipedia says has “been referred to as a Christian, evangelical, or conservative version of The Onion”) put out what I thought to be a sarcastic tweet that was turned out to be pretty brilliant, considering the NYRR’s social media team took it seriously.

If the NYRR actually believes non-binary athletes are deserving of prize money — which appears to be the case they are this year offering it to runners for the first time — then why aren’t non-binary wheelchair racers also getting prize money?

I’d take it a step further. Why do only push-rim wheelchair racers get prize money? Hand-cycle racers used to get prize money. Are they less deserving than push-rim racers?

But stop there? Why don’t other Paralympians such as amputee athletes get prize money in New York? They do in Boston. Dick Traum famously was the first person to run a marathon with a prosthetic leg in NY in 1976. We could keep going with visually impaired athletes, those with mental disabilities, etc. And yes, please add in non-binary divisions to all of them as well.

I don’t actually want the NYRR to add prize money for all these divisions. If the NYRR wants to focus on diversity and inclusion for 364 days of the year as a non-profit, by all means do it. We need more active people of all stripes and all walks of life. But one day of the year, please focus on one thing — producing an elite marathon for runners.

If the NYRR’s goal is to include everyone when it comes to prize money, they are bound to fail as that’s an impossible task. But if they insist on having elite wheelchair and non-binary races, do it on another day when they are the only attraction. There isn’t a single major sporting organization in the world that tries to put on multiple marquee events as the same time.

Think about it. In baseball, the ALCS and NLCS games always are held at difference times. Same with the NFC and AFC Championships in the NFL and the Western and Eastern Conference Finals in the NBA. Yet NYRR thinks people are going to enjoy watching male, female, non-binary, able-bodied and wheelchair races — that’s six sporting events — all live at once? 

That’s hurting my brain thinking about it. I’d rather they have just a single super-elite male field one year, and super-elite female field the next.  There’s a reason why picture-in-picture isn’t a feature that’s hyped on TVs anymore. Viewers hardly ever uses it.

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Prior to publishing this article, we discussed David’s tweet on this week’s edition of the LetsRun.com Track Talk podcast. We had no idea that David is a listener but he is and replied to say he wasn’t being sarcastic. Here’s what he wrote us.

Hi Guys – No sooner had I finally decided to become a supporters club member than I hear my name mentioned on the podcast – wow that’s service!

For the record, while it’s understandable why someone might have considered my inquiry to the NYRR about a binary wheelchair category (to be sarcastic), I was sincere: I wanted to know if the reasons NYRR cite for creating a binary category for runners (to create a welcoming atmosphere for all runners, for example) ends with runners or if it is (will ever will be) extended to wheelchair athletes. 
To be clear, I believe the cultural Left is doing to the NYRR what it does to all institutions it takes over – destroys it – but I think NYRR should clarify why the accommodations they’re making for non-binary runners doesn’t extend to non-binary wheelchair athletes. 
By the way, Robert’s wheelchair deep-fake in the most-recent podcast really had me going there! In fact, it inspired me to crank out a little satire of my own which will be of little enjoyment outside the running community. I think you guys might enjoy it, though. I’ll include it here: Mustard Dispenser Out-Leans Kipchoge At Local Turkey Trot
Thanks again for all the great content over the years.

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Recommended Reads

For recommended reads from other weeks, go here.

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Quotes Of The Day And Last Week’s Home Pages

To see the quotes of the day from last week or last week’s home page or any home page, go to our archive page.

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