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Lead Stories: Saturday, July 19, 2008

TFS News Briefs: 04/22/2008

Posted April 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics, Drugs In Sports, TFS News Briefs

TFS News Briefs John McDonnell To Retire After 36 Years, 42 Titles
Thirty-Six years, 25 Olympians, 42 NCAA National Titles, 181 All-Americans who have earned 643 All-America honors. That’s just some of the legacy the incomparable John McDonnell leaves behind when he retires from his head coach position at the University of Arkansas at the end of the 2008 season.
Read more at: [Google News]

No Positives at the 2008 World Indoor Championships
We all know what kinds of positives I mean, too. Positive tests for steroids, juice, gym candy. Whatever you want to call it, there was none of it at the 2008 IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Valencia, Spain. Has our sport managed to clean itself up? This is certainly a good sign. Now we’re just left with the unenviable task of cleaning up our image. (Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that ESPN is covering the sport of Track & Field!)
Read more at: [ESPN]

Bird's Nest “Bird’s Nest” Architect Discusses Efforts To Fine-Tune Beijing Olympic Stadium
Li Xinggang, the chief architect of the Beijing Olympic Stadium (dubbed the “Bird’s Nest” because of its shape) discusses the fine points of getting his creation ready of the Olympic Games, which begin on 8/08/2008. “We did find some minor problems. For instance, we designed duo doors for the washrooms. Users were meant to enter and exit from different doors, but Chinese users are not accustomed to this and they just turned back and exited from the same door. Now we have to rethink the design: do we revise it and yield to conventional practice or insist on our own design and ask users to learn a new way?”
Read more at: [Beijing08]
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TFS News Briefs: 2/05/08

Posted February 5th, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Track & Field, Olympics, TFS News Briefs

TFS News Briefs
More Bad News For Runners In Kenya
The death toll due to the upheaval in Kenya has now surpassed 1,000 and shows no signs of abating. That’s more bad news for world-class runners who are still in the country.
Read more at: [MetroWest Daily News, MA][NY Times]

Palmiero-Winters Trying To Qualify for US Marathon Trials
Amy Palmiero-Winters, winner of the 2007 Runners World Peoples Choice Heroes of Running award, is trying to qualify for the US Olympic Marathon Trials. Oh, yeah: she’s an amputee.
Read more at: [Press of Atlantic City]

Keflezighi Aims for Flora London & 10,000m Olympic Trial
Meb Keflezighi, still disappointed about his 8th place finish at the US men’s marathon Olympic Trials last year, is gunning for a spot on the 10000m team. He will also run a fall marathon. He is also thinking about the 2012 marathon in London.
Read more at: [Washington Times]
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Challengers added to Berlin Marathon field

Posted August 22nd, 2007 at 6:33 AM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons

Organizers of the 34th real, - Berlin Marathon announced today that four strong Kenyan athletes will line up for the Sept. 30 race to challenge defending champion Haile Gebrselassie.

The group is led by the veteran Sammy Korir whose 2:04:56 second place finish at Berlin in 2003 is still the second-fastest marathon ever run. Korir, 35, ran last year’s edition of the race, splitting 25 km in 1:15:48, but he dropped out in the 26th kilometer with a hamstring injury. Korir has not recorded a marathon finish in 2007.
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Is the World catching
up to the Kenyans?

Posted August 9th, 2007 at 8:50 PM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Track & Field

With headlines such as “Current Crop of Runners Not Up to Task” and “Change Tact[ics] Or Sink”, recent articles published by Kenyan journalists have been harshly critical of Kenyan distance running. Among other concerns are that Ethiopian and Eritrean athletes are closing the gap. But are these reports accurate?

Not according to statistical evidence, which shows that Kenyan running is as dominant as ever – if not more so. I broke down the statistics into all the middle-distance and all the long-distance performances from 1997-2006. I grouped all elite (world-class) performances for middle-distance (800m, 1500m, Mile, 3000m and 300m SC) into one chart and all elite performances for distance (5000m, 10000m) into another chart. I also broke it down even further, analyzing the top 100 performances of all time for both the middle-distance and the distance categories.

The Kenyans have dominated both the middle-distance and the distance categories, both in the elite and the top 100 of all time performances. In fact, in the middle-distance category, Kenyan runners have run more top 100 all time performances tham the rest of the world combined.
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