She’d never run a 10,000m race before, but Shalane Flanagan can safely say that she’s already mastered the distance on only her first try at Sunday’s Peyton Jordan Cardinal Invitational. Helped by excellent pacemaking provided by Kenya’s Rose Kosgei and a spirited battle with New Zealand’s Kim Smith which went right to homestretch, the 26 year-old Olympian toppled Deena Kastor’s American record with a sparkling 30:34.49 clocking.
“Thanks to the New York Road Runners, they set me up with a rabbit and that gave me a cushion,” Flanagan told a clutch of reporters after the race. “It really worked out very well.”
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Just 18 miles north of this San Jose suburb, one of the most important meets for distance runners held in the United States will take place at Stanford University. Packed with talent, the Peyton Jordan Cardinal Invitational turns the running industry on its head: top stars actually pay entry fees to compete and there are no appearance fees or cash prizes.
So what’s the draw? Perfect weather for achieving all-important Olympic Games qualifying times. When the sun sets at this time of year in Palo Alto, the winds calm down and the temperature drops, becoming comfortably cool. There is already very low humidity.
The key races are the top sections of the men’s and women’s 5000m and 10,000m, led by double world champion Bernard Lagat. Although he won the world titles last summer at both the 1500m and the 5000m, he doesn’t have an Olympic Games “A” standard time in the longer distance: 13:21.50. Working with other coaches, managers and the New York Road Runners, the men’s 5-K will be set-up by pacemaker Christian Hesch for a 13:10 to 13:20 finish time.
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U.S Olympian Dathan Ritzenhein will return to the roads of Central Park to defend his title in the Healthy Kidney 10K on Saturday, May 17, it was announced today by New York Road Runners president and CEO Mary Wittenberg.
Ritzenhein will face stiff competition from an international field that includes ING New York City Marathon 2006 champion Marilson Gomes dos Santos of Brazil and 2007 IAAF World Half-Marathon Championships silver medalist Patrick Makau of Kenya.
Race sponsor Embassy of the United Arab Emirates has once again established a prize-money purse of $23,500—$7,500 for the champion—plus a $20,000 bonus for breaking the Central Park 10K record of 28 minutes, 8 seconds, which Ritzenhein set at last year’s race. Ritzenhein donated his 2007 first-place check of $7,500 to the National Kidney Foundation.
Just how dominant were the Africans at yesterday’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, Scotland? Almost absolutely. Embarrassingly so. Of the 166 finishers, the top 18 were either African or African-born. Of the top 50, 88% were African or African-born. Even when we go all the way down to the top 100, Africans still accounted for 63% of the places! Of the bottom 50, only 30% were African or African-born. Figuratively speaking, Africans hardly even left the rest of the world’s cross-country runners table scraps. That’s dominance. Here’s a chart showing just how dominant Africans were in the race:
The African women were nearly as dominant. In comparison to the men’s race, 15 of the top 18 women were African or African-born. Here are the numbers for that race:
The fact that Kenenisa Bekele could stop for a full 15 seconds to put his shoe back on and still beat the first non-African finisher Jorge Torres of the United States by a minute and 25 seconds (not to mention that he beat “African beater” Craig Mottram by a full two minutes and 2 seconds!) shows just how far the rest of the world has to go to catch up with the Africans.
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Coe Blames Athletes and Coaches, Not Federations, For Cross-Country’s Decline
A report in UK’s Guardian continues the recent discussion about the decline of European decline in cross-country. IAAF President Lamine Diack called Germany’s one-woman delegation (Susanne Hahn) “shameful.” (However, I must say that mad props should go to Hahn!) IAAF VP Sebastian Coe, the unparalleled middle-distance runner who won 4 Olympic medals and set 11 world records (8 outdoors/3 indoors), blamed the individual athletes and coaches, whom he said “don’t see it… You rarely find anyone at a European level now who sees a correlation from cross country to track.”
Read more at: [Guardian, UK]
African Showcase In Edinburgh
Speaking of cross-country, the 11th hour until the big race is upon us. At 9:45am Sunday morning (EST) (9:05 for the women’s race) the Africans will toe the line in Edinburgh, Scotland to take their 22nd world championship in a row at the 36th IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Among the favorites are 2006 winner Ethiopian Kenenisa Bekele, defending champ Zersenay Tadese of Eritrea, Moses Kipsiro of Uganda and a whole host of Kenyan runners, including Gideon Ngatuny. The lone non-African contender is Craig Mottram of Australia. In the women’s race, Tirunesh Dibaba hopes to join Bekele in an Ethiopian sweep.
Read more at: [IAAF][Peninsula On-line, Qatar]
Speaking of Mottram…
That’s all we can do because he’s certainly not doing any speaking for himself. He has initiated his usual pre-race lock-out of the media in order to prepare for the race. Benita Johnson, Mottram’s teammate and training partner, has joined him in the media ban. The Sydney Morning Herald states that the media ban is “self-imposed,” but taskmaster coach Nic Bideau must have a major say in the decision. Bideau told the media that “the interviews might make [Mottram] more famous and get him more sponsorship deals, but it’s not going to help him run better.”
Read more at: [Sydney Morning Herald][More Mottram]
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Here are the world’s top 10 performances in the middle and long-distance track events so far for 2008, based on the % variance of those marks from the current world record. Six out of ten are in the men’s 800m, led by Cuba’s Yeimer López, who also competes in the 400m, perhaps in emulation of the great Alberto Juantorena (seen here outpacing Rick Wohlhuter and Ivo Van Damme of Belgium in the home stretch of the 1976 Olympic Games 800m final in Montreal).
A quick glance at the times reveals that none of them are bound to hold up as top 10 marks until the end of the season. In the men’s 800m, 23 men ran faster last year, led by Mbulaeni Mulaudzi (RSA) who led the world with a time of 1:43.74. In the men’s 5000m, 34 men ran faster in 2007, led by Kenenisa Bekele’s 12:49.53. In the women’s 3000m steeplechase, 18 women ran faster in 2007, led by Russia’s Yekaterina Volkova who ran a time of 9:06.57.
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USA Reigns Supreme in World Championships Medal Count
Team USA, even with many of its top athletes not in attendance, still took away a total of 13 medals, more than any other nation at the 12th IAAF World Indoor Championships held in Valencia, Spain from March 7-9, 2008. These included 5 gold, 5 silver and 3 bronze. Russia was a close second with 12 medals, including 5 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze.
Read more at: [IAAF]
IHT Dismisses Worlds As “For Connoisseurs Only”
An article in the International Herald Tribune dismissed the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships as being “for connoisseurs only.” With The US contingent being “B Team USA” and still winning the meet, the writer probably has a point. Imagine if Wariner, Gay, Felix, Richards, Webb and Tegenkamp had been there.
Read more at: [IHT]
Mottram Focused On Edinburgh
After a disappointing 5th-place finish at the world indoors, Aussie Craig Mottram is now focused on redeeming himself at the World Cross-Country Championships to be held later this month in Edinburgh, Scotland. Mottram’s coach, Nic Bideau, said that “the focus is the cross-country. I mean he hadn’t done the preparation for a race like that, which was a sprint home.”
Read more at: [Melbourne Herald Sun]
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Valencia Boasts 159-Nation Roster
The 12th IAAF World Indoor Championships, to be held in Valencia, Spain from March 7th through March 9th, 2008 will be the biggest ever by a huge margin. The previous largest nation count was 139.
Read more at: [IAAF WIC08]
Mottram Scorches Last 400 of Australian Championships 3000m with 54.0
Craig Mottram sent a loud message to the other World Indoor Championships qualifiers that he is the man to beat by running a 7:48.26 in the Australian Championships 3000m. He scorched the last 400m in 54 seconds to win by nearly 5 ½ seconds.
Read more at: [IAAF]
MastersTrack.com Interview With Speedster Alisa Harvey
Ken Stone over at Masterstrack.com got a chance to interview 42-year-old Alisa Harvey, who has provisionally qualified for the US Olympic Trials, having run a 2:05.75 at the AT&T US Indoor Championships.
Read more at: [Masterstrack.com]
Craig Mottram opened his 2008 outdoor campaign with a victory and a national title in front of his hometown crowd at today’s Melbourne Grand Prix in Olympic Park.
Mottram, from nearby Geelong, clocked 13:11.99 for 5000m, winning the Australian title for the sixth time ahead of Kenya’s Shadrack Kosgei (13:13.51) and Ethiopia’s Abraham Cherkos (13:18.47).
“I’m as fit as I’ve ever been, and I’m looking forward to what’s ahead,” Mottram told Len Johnson of the The Age newspaper.
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IAAF’s Preview Of Melbourne Grand Prix
At the Melbourne Grand Prix, a highly fit Craig Mottram will take on teen Ethiopian sensation Abreham Cherkos Feleke in the 5000m in front of a home crowd. Jeremy Wariner will run his first 400m of the 2008 season. Asafa Powell is still questionable for the 100m.
Read more at: [IAAF]
New Bookshop at Runner’s World
The Runner’s World website has a new feature: the Runner’s World Bookshop. Included among the offering is Runner’s World Guide To Road Racing, which offers “advice from the pros on training for and competing in the four most popular road races–5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon.”
Read more at: [Runner’s World]
No Indoor Championshipss For Bekele
Kenenisa Bekele will miss the IAAF World Indoor Athletic Championships. Instead, he will focus on the World Cross-Country Championships where he hopes to redeem himself after a disastrous 2007 race in Mombasa, Kenya. In that race he succumbed to the heat and the humidity and was forced to drop out.
Read more at: [Guardian Unlimited, UK]
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Meet director Mark Wetmore added some additional depth to the Millrose Games’ Wanamaker Mile, announcing today that Galen Rupp Pictured and Nick Willis would be on the starting line with last year’s 1-2 finishers, Bernard Lagat and Craig Mottram.
Rupp, 21, the NCAA 10,000m record holder, is a natural distance runner, who also holds the U.S. […]
A strong men’s 3000m race is shaping up for the Reebok Boston Indoor Games scheduled for Saturday, January 26 at the Reggie Lewis Track Facility at Roxbury Community College in Boston.
Leading the field will be Australia’s Craig Mottram, the defending champion and the 2005 IAAF World Championships bronze medalist at 5000m. “It will be […]
Australia’s Craig Mottram passed 47 people to win a handicapped mile in Devenport, Tasmania, on Saturday night, according to his coach and manager, Nic Bideau.
Running on grass, only Mottram and Australia’s two-time 1500m champion Lachlan Chisholm did not receive a headstart. Mottram clocked 3:59.1 in his first race since resuming his training in November. […]
At last February’s Millrose Games, the 100th edition of one of the most storied events in all of U.S. athletics, the crowd at Madison Square Garden was on their feet when Bernard Lagat and Craig Mottram were at the front of the Wanamaker Mile with three laps to go.
“This is not going to be easy,” […]
China Withholding Beijing Pollution Data
Physicians for Australian Olympic athletes have requested data about Beijing’s pollution readings from August 2007, measured exactly one year before the 2008 Olympic Games, but to no avail. The readings were taken while a number of pollution-reduction measures were in place in Beijing, including banishing nearly half of the city’s 3 […]
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Episode 87 of TheFinalSprint.com Podcast, the most listened to running podcast in North America, features my interview with Australia’s BENITA JOHNSON; […]
Most performers in elite sport will say that they would compete even if they weren’t paid. On the other hand, while rewards can often seem obscene, eg the $200,000+ per week that many English Premier League footballers earn nowadays, or three times the average YEARLY wage in the UK, few would deny them that opportunity […]
With many of the same actors, the men’s 5000m of the IAAF World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, Germany seemed like a sequel to the 3000m run that was held the previous day. Edwin Cheruiyot Soi (KEN) the winner of the 7.5 lap race (winning time: 7:49.70), was also in the 12.5 lapper, as were Joseph […]
The men’s 3000m Run of the IAAF World Athletics Final (Stuttgart, Germany) was mostly a Kenyan affair, with 7 in the race along with a Brit, an Aussie and a Ugandan. Going into the race, Moses Ndiema Kipsiro (UGA) had the fastest time of the 2007 season, with a time of 7:32.03. The fastest PB […]
World Athletics Final Middle- and Long-Distance Preview
In the latest WAF preview there are speculations about who will run the middle- and long-distance events this late in the season and why they will do it. Runners to watch (men): Mbulaeni Mulaudzi (800m), Daniel Kipchirchir Komen (1500m), Craig Mottram (3000m), Paul Kipsiele Koech (3000m SC), Sileshi Sihine […]
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