WTW: The Greatest Upset Ever, It’s The Year Of The Women’s 1500 + Africa’s World Jr Domination Is Over?

We try to make the sport more fun to follow by putting the prior week’s action in perspective for you. If you missed our extensive coverage of the Rome DL on Friday where Winfred Yavi just missed the steeplechase world record, catch up now as we don’t like to repeat ourselves too much.

We also broke down Rome in great detail in our Supporters Club podcast immediately after the meet. If you want the latest in track & field analysis, join the Supporters Club today.

Past editions of our Week That Was weekly recap can be found here. If you like our written weekly recap, you’ll love our weekly Track Talk Podcast as well.

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Last Week By The Numbers

1 – number of gold medals earned by a non-African-born man in the distance races at the World U20 championships last week as Norway’s Andreas Fjeld Halvorsen won the 3000. It was the first time since the inaugural World Jrs in 1986 that a teen not born in African won a men’s distance title (1500 and up), snapping an 0-73 streak.

Halvorsen certainly benefitted from the fact that he was in the 3000 and not the 5000. The 5000 was won by Kenya’s Andrew Kiptoo Alamisi, who has a 13:05 pb, and the runner-up in the 5000 was Ethiopia’s Abdisa Fayisa, who won the 1500 gold and has pbs of 3:32.37 for 1500 and 13:34.77 for 5000, with that 5000 being run at nearly 6,000 feet of altitude in Nairobi.

*LRC Africa’s 38-Year Domination of Men’s Distance Events At World U20s SNAPPED By Norway’s Andreas Fjeld Halvorsen

1:54.94 – 800m equivalent time for the women’s 600m world’s best of 1:21.63 that 2023 world 800m champ Mary Moraa ran at the ISTAF Berlin meet on Sunday.

1:56.08 – 800m equivalent time for the US 1000m record of 2:31.48 that Addy Wiley ran Saturday in Poland at the Mityng Ambasadorow Bialostockiego Sportu meet. On Wednesday, in another meet in Poland, Wiley had run an 800 pb of 1:56.83.

3:51.3 – new road mile world record set by Britain’s Elliot Giles on Sunday as he beat Olympic bronze medallist Yared Nuguse to capture the New Balance Kö Meile in Düsseldorf, Germany, and smash the old mark of 3:54.50 (the road mile only became a world record event last year).

*MB: Road Mile World Record – Elliot Giles 3:51.3

8 – number of women who have now broken 3:55 in the 1500 this year after world indoor champ Freweyni Hailu joined the club last week in Rome by running 3:54.16 for second. Eight is the most women’s sub-3:55s ever in a year, surpassing the five that did it last year and also in 1993.

Did you know that from 1998 to 2014, zero sub-3:55s were recorded globally?

61:20 – half-marathon pace run by Hillary Bor in winning the 20km Faxon Law New Haven Road Race on Monday, in a US championship record time of 58:09. Bor was hoping to run in the 57s as he has his eyes on Ryan Hall‘s 59:43 American half marathon record, which has stood since 2007, when Bor runs the Valencia Half on October 27. By the way, Valencia will be worth a watch as 57-minute men Yomif Kejelcha and Selemon Barega will be there as well.

70:04 – half-marathon pace run by Keira D’Amato in winning the 20km US title in New Haven on Monday in 66:25.

Keira D’Amato wins the 2024 USATF 20-K Championships at the Faxon Law New Haven Road Race (photo by Jane Monti for Race Results Weekly)

2:28:08 – time recorded by former doper and 2016 Olympic steeplechase champ Ruth Jebet at a marathon that she won over the weekend in Harbin, China. Jebet is now a perfect 3 for 3 in her marathons since her doping ban — but she’s gotten slower in each one, having run 2:23:08 in Turkey last December and 2:26:48 earlier this year in Zhengzhou, China.

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Upset of the Week Century?

One of the biggest trail/ultra races of the year was held last week — UTMB. The race starts and ends in France but also goes through Italy and Switzerland has nearly 10,000 meters of elevation gain and this year was 176 kilometers (109.3 miles) long.

One messageboard poster perfectly described the race as follows: “4 letters. 3 countries crossed. 1 extraordinary adventure.”

And to call the men’s winner a huge surprise would be an understatement.

As David Monti of Race Results Weekly wrote,

“The men’s champion, Frenchman Vincent Bouillard, is a product engineer at HOKA and was only ranked 69th coming into the race.  He won by a 24-minute margin.”

“‘Today, as an engineer at HOKA, I’ve worked on projects related to the HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc,’ Bouillard said. ‘Just starting the race was a dream come true. I had a Plan C to finish in under 30 hours, a Plan B to finish in under 24 hours, and a Plan A to finish in the top 10. Winning in under 20 hours was just unimaginable!”‘”

Well done!!

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Shortly after Bouillard crossed the finish line, I received an email from LRC visitor Evan Bradford who also summed things up perfectly.

Robert, 

While a number of the men’s pre-race favorites — including Jim Walmsley, who was trying to become the first man since 2011 to win Western States and UTMB in the same year — did drop out, Bouillard clocked a quick 19:54.23 t0 win. His win was just 16:40 slower than Walmsley’s “course record” from last year even though this year’s race ran 4.3 km longer than last year.

On a per km basis, Bouillard actually ran faster than anyone ever has when UTMB has been over 150km long.

In fact, Bouillard is the first man to average under 11 minutes per mile for UTMB at its full distance.

In the women’s race, American Katie Schide, who nearly broke the women’s course record at Western States, won her second UTMB title and it doesn’t take some advanced table to determine she SMASHED the course record. Her time of 22:09:31 for 176.4km is way faster than the 22:30:54 that fellow American Courtney Dauwalter ran for 170km in 2021.

Embed from Getty Images

*Official* 2024 UTMB Discussion Thread
*Why don’t sub-Olympic marathoners like Noah Droddy and Parker Stinson become ultramarathoners?
*UTMB Coverage Not Showing Nike Athlete

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We broke down the Rome DL in great detail in our Supporters Club podcast immediately after the meet. If you want the latest in track and field analysis join the Supporters Club today.