Olympic track & field schedules in graphic form for tonight and tomorrow morning indexed to Eastern and Pacific times.
If anyone wants to retweet with TV schedules, be my guest.
Track isn’t popular and other lies
(this is during D2 prelims—wait until this place really fills up tomorrow)
It’s just that we emphasize all the wrong things at every level past high school
In 1979 Grete Waitz ran 34 races (totaling 129 miles) ranging from 800m to the marathon and won 31 of them.
I’m worried some of today’s runners might get injured just thinking about that.
So I have this dream of opening a T&F/running sports bar, with the profits used to build a track immediately adjacent. Can’t fail, I’m sure it will work.
(yes, I’m a few pints in already)
About to be a senior, classes hadn’t started yet. He only entered the 800 at the trials as a workout, then tied the WR. Oh, but you know, we shouldn’t over-race.
49 years ago today: Dave Wottle, a Bowling Green senior, arguably runs the greatest race of all time and wins the 800m at the 1972 Olympics.
Gotta be the first guy to win gold after the announcer wonders during the race if he’s “seriously injured.”
50 years ago today, Dave Wottle finished 12th at the NCAA XC championships. In the following 8 months he reduced his 800m PR from 1:47.2 to a then-WR 1:44.3.
Someone I coached 24 years ago is running Boston tomorrow. He’s faster at age 42 than he was at 18. He pounds out 10 mile runs after full days of working construction. I like to think I helped him love running enough to do that.
I didn’t, but I like to think it.
Frank Shorter won a 3-mile/6-mile double at the 1971
@DrakeRelays
. His habit of near constant racing didn’t keep him from winning Olympic marathon gold and silver. And people outside of running actually knew who he was.
29 athletes across all sports are now part of this HOF “inner ring”.
But not Dave Wottle. Isn’t being a 4x NCAA champion (who still holds a championship record), an Olympic champion, and world record holder enough?
49 years ago today, Steve Prefontaine tied the collegiate 2 mile record with the most insane negative split you’ve ever heard of.
On This Date in College T&F history for
@CitiusMag
While much of the Midwest is experiencing a heat wave, temperatures for Saturday’s
@GrandmasMara
in Duluth MN will be in the 50s with a 10mph tailwind and a beeeeeg air conditioner along the left side of the course.
Pat Porter leads Todd Williams and Bob Kennedy at the 1992 USA XC championships. Kennedy won to complete the NCAA/USA double in the space of 5 days. They were his 25th and 26th races of the year.
Years Kenya entered an Olympic steeplechase and didn’t win:
1964: Benjamin Kogo, eliminated in heats
2021 just now
That’s the list.
11/11 golds in between
Through the mid-90s the US XC championships were held the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The last to win the NCAA/USA double within a week was
@zoomkennedy
in ‘91, when he edged Todd Williams by less than a second.
College teammate to me: “how much faster would we have been if we hadn’t drank so much?”
Me: “eh, 4th in the MAC instead of 6th”
Him: “glad we lived our best lives”
In 1962 the first day of the USA vs USSR dual meet drew more fans than either the NFL Championship game or game 7 of the World Series. The second day drew even more.
ESPN NCAA wrestling coverage: split screens, every important match covered
ESPN NCAA T&F coverage: mention a thrilling field event conclusion b/c it interrupted a semifinal.
Why isn’t EVERYONE in this sport DEMANDING that our athletes get the RESPECT they deserve?
Tangentially related: it’s usually assumed the best college coaches are those who win the most. But if I find a coach whose athletes improve consistently and continue to improve after graduating and moving on, that’s a great coach.
Oregon State gets 4th in the DMR. That’s the first points for the Beavers at an indoor or outdoor championships in 36 years. The efforts to revive this program are paying off.
Takeaways from today’s Boston Marathon...
1) If you only train/race in good weather then you are underprepared
2) Even the world’s best marathoners are sometimes the windshield, sometimes the bug
3) For some athletes there is no such thing as overracing
My brother, who is def. *not* a Twitter dude, just sent me a text about how awful
@espn
’s
@nycmarathon
coverage was.
“If you don’t want to show runners and don’t want to talk about running then leave the marathon for a network that does it right.”
@jgault13
The women who have ever run under 3:54.00...
A woman whose coach was arrested in a doping raid
Two Eastern Bloc athletes from the no testing era
A bunch of Chinese women who did it with no int’l observers and never came close again
And Hassan, coached by AlSal
ON THIS DATE IN USC TRACK & FIELD HISTORY...June 17, 1967: McCullouch, Kuller, Simpson & Miller won the NCAA title in the 4x110-yard relay with a time of 38.6. Their time set the USC, collegiate, meet and world records.
Weird stat of the day:
Men who have finished top 15 at NCAA XC and whose 800m PR is under 1:46
1:43.84 Alan Webb
1:44.3 Dave Wottle
1:44.62 Matthew Centrowitz
1:44.98 Steve Holman
1:45.70 Graham Hood
Who am I missing?
Connor McMillan ran 2:12:07 today, will be 24 at the Trials.
Abdi Abdirahman ran 2:11:34, will be 43.
The only man 40+ at Trials to make the team is
@runmeb
, 2016.
The only U25 to do it are Frank Shorter (72) and Kenny Moore (68).
You know, I think we’ve forgotten the true meaning of the beer mile. It’s about people getting together in the dead of night to do something that could get them arrested.
Not a shabby double for
@CoreyBellemore
, who ran 3:45.03 in the 1500m about 30 minutes ago and coming back to set a new world record for the non-alcoholic beer mile in 4:53.08 🍻
Cool stat: “hospital admission data showed that for every sudden cardiac death during a marathon, two car-crash deaths were avoided thanks to street closures during the race.”
New analysis of all medical encounters during six years of UK
@parkrun
events, with a total of 29 million (!) 5K finishes. Very low rate of serious events, and very high (65% vs normal 10% for out-of-hospital events) survival rate for cardiac arrest:
I’m sure someone has already pointed this out, but neither US women’s throwing gold medalists (Chase Ealey, Brooke Andersen) ever won an NCAA title. It’s a long, long haul to the top in the throws.
On this date in 1983,
@BYUTFXC
’s Ed Eyestone took 4th at the US XC Championships, just 5 days after finishing 9th at the NCAAs. He then took 6th at the IAAF Worlds in the middle of a full college ID/OD track season.
Oh, he ran 2:16:21 at the Houston Marathon too.
Stat of the day
28 foot jumps by Carl Lewis over 13 years: 71 (21 were wind-aided)
28 foot jumps by the entire world in the 21 years since he retired: 67
I’ve heard a lot of criticism that US stars won’t be at the USATF Championships. But only 5 of 42 US leaders won’t be there, three of whom just ended a long collegiate season.
If you’re talking stars of 4-5 years ago, sure. But nearly all of TODAY’s stars will be there.
The XC course will have received over 3 inches of rain by this afternoon’s league meet. The kids will have mud up to their eyebrows. What could be more fun than that?
Abby Steiner fits the profile of a sprinter who was going to improve and a lot. She is from a cold-weather state, and split time with soccer through her freshman year of college. In that context, her 11.38/22.71 times in high school were even more remarkable.