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The Week in the Rear View: Racing News June 9 - June 15

Posted June 16th, 2008 at 4:11 PM by Jay Hicks

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Columns, College, Week in Rear View

leonel manzano new balance collegiate invitational

The Week In the Rear View is a weekly column wrapping up the week’s events in running and track & field. I am normally found at PreraceJitters.com, writing about the fast life of track and field.

The week in track and field was a wild and exciting one. The NCAA Track and Field Championships in Des Moines, Iowa provided a sneak peek of the next set of runners who just forged their name into the history books of this sport and hope to achieve the same kind of success at the next level.

Is LSU ready to be crowned the new collegiate sprint capital? Both the women’s and men’s 100-meter champions hail from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Richard Thompson (10.04) and Kelly-Ann Baptiste (11.20) scored major points for the Tigers this past weekend.

Things certainly did not go as planned for Florida State University’s Walter Dix, but he still found a moment to shine. After a disappointing fourth place finish in the 100-meters, Dix looked like he was shot out of a cannon as he won (20.04) the men’s 200 over Richard Thompson. The Seminole now has his eyes laid squarely on the monumental task of the making the Olympic Team.

Leonel Manzano (Pictured) of the University of Texas showed that Bernard Lagat is not the only 1500 meter runner with a vicious kick. Manzano led wire to wire in wearing out the field in his NCAA championship run while showing incredible heart.

What is in a name? Andretti Bain, named after famous driver Mario Andretti, became Oral Roberts University’s first NCAA individual champion in any sport in winning (44.62) the men’s 400.

We have been watching this development very closely in this weekly column. The pressure on Liu Xiang was just ratcheted up a notch this week. The IAAF meet in Ostrava, Czech Republic produced a couple of world records. Dayron Robles of Cuba set a new record (12.87) in the 110 hurdles while running effortlessly over the hurdles. Robles goes into Beijing as the favor to win gold.

Usain Bolt sent a loud message from Ostrava. The 19.83 he put down in the 200 is the just the beginning of things to come.

Dire Tune set the rarely seen one hour run World Record in Ostrava.

This article was written by TheFinalSprint.com guest contributor Jay Hicks of the popular running blog PreraceJitters.com.