Flat Hills Road

I have a window here where I can mention my votes for the Jesse Owens award (and my reasoning) without being tempted to make it look like I voted for the winners (we don’t know them yet), or trying to change your minds about how to vote (because voting is now closed).

As I mentioned, I voted twice, once online like everyone else, and once in the journalists poll. (I’m still tickled to be asked to participate in these things, and a little distressed that our pool of “journalists” is so small they need to include me in order to get enough voters.) I used my online vote as a “sentimental” vote for the ones I liked most, or identified with most; the official vote went to the athletes I thought had best earned the award as it is described with their competitive results in 2009.

So that latter vote went to Tyson Gay and Allyson Felix. Felix was a tough choice over Sanya Richards; both athletes were double World Champions, winning individual events and running a leg on the 4×400m relay. Felix, however, delivered her third consecutive 200m championship, a truly historic accomplishment considering she was facing down two-time Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown. I might have considered Carmelita Jeter with those two had she won the World title as well as her undeniably fast late-season times, but Felix and Richards came through in the big show, and I still think that counts for a lot.

You’d think that would put me off Tyson Gay, particularly with Christian Cantwell and Trey Hardee on the nomination list, but I give Gay a tremendous amount of credit for attitude and American Records. Like Jeter, Gay ran phenomenal marks late in the season, but I really voted for Tyson because he never once used Usain Bolt as an excuse. He ran hurt, and still ran faster than anyone other than Bolt ever has. He faced off with the most dominant sprinter in history and gave the best he had to make the races real races and not walkovers for Bolt. I think that effort deserves to be rewarded.

On the website, I cast my women’s vote for Jenny Barringer. Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher are great athletes, and the runs they’ve had in the past three years have been tremendous, but I have a suspicion that Jenny Barringer is the second coming of Lynn Jennings. (Or, more likely, the first coming of Jenny Barringer; she may be completely without precedent.) Nominally a steeplechaser, she ran PRs from 1,500m to 5,000m (including becoming the first of three–THREE–American women sub-4 at the shorter distance this year), dismantled a series of quality fields in the NCAA track championships, and is probably going to dominate the NCAA cross country meet this fall in a way no American woman has since Flanagan… and Goucher. Get on the Barringer train now, because she’s acting like she’s just getting started.

I don’t actually remember how I used my online vote for men. It may have gone to Christian Cantwell, who took the shot put gold back for the USA in a thrilling competition in Berlin, but it may also have been Trey Hardee, who put together one of the most dominating decathlons I’ve seen from an American in Berlin, and made it look easy despite his relative inexperience. The story at the U.S. championships was that with Olympic champion Bryan Clay out, the U.S. team in Berlin would be weak, but coming out of Berlin it actually looks like the Hardee/Clay duel in 2011 may be more interesting than anything that happens in Daegu–unless, of course, they both arrive in Daegu healthy and can deliver the way they both did in the ‘08 and ‘09 global competitions.

So that’s how I voted. We’ll see in December if I voted with the majorities.

(I’m still interested in hearing thoughts on the Athlete of the Year balloting–assuming Usain Bolt gets one vote, who do the other two go to?)

Update, November 19: Gay won, Felix did not. Here’s the announcement.

Peter Gambaccini's line about a 4 x mile record attempt in Oregon:

The world record of 15:49.08, set by Irishmen Eamonn Coghlan, Marcus O'Sullivan, Frank O'Mara, and Ray Flynn in Dublin in 1985, is not likely to be threatened.

You think? That wasn't exactly a team of scrubs, there. This leads to all kinds of questions. To break that record, four runners have to average 3:57 between them.

• Is there a contemporary American team (by which I mean, ignore sponsor commitments and possibly even injury status: our criteria is that they be active athletes with a blue passport) that could even come close to that? (The Oregon team is chasing the collegiate record of 16:04.5 and will only need to average 4:01.) Lagat-Webb-Manzano-Lomong? Anyone? Would you pull in 800m specialists?
• How about any nation? Morocco vs. Kenya vs. Ethiopia in a 4 x mile? Have Qatar or Bahrain bought enough depth? Even the Russians always seem to be able to run out of their minds for a good relay.
• Certainly an all-star international squad could do it. How would you build a team like that?

Steve Hooker’s meteoric rise up the all-time indoor pole vault list (he was tied for #4 after Millrose, and stands alone at #2 behind seven Sergei Bubka marks after the Boston Indoor Games) begs a question: what’s the difference between outdoors and indoors when we’re talking about the pole vault?

Track athletes obviously see a difference in the physics of 200m banked tracks indoors as compared to 400m flat tracks outdoors. Adam Nelson pointed out that the composition of the indoor shot, which is generally padded to avoid damaging arena floors, changes the grip putters can get on their implement, and that the feeling of the ring under their feet is also different, but the marks between indoors and outdoors are not generally very large. (22.66m indoors, 23.12m outdoors.)

There are two significant differences between the indoor and outdoor pole vaults: wind and runway. Wind is the obvious change: sometimes there’s wind (and other weather) outdoors. There is never wind indoors, at least not of any significant magnitude. This means vaulters don’t have to adjust for conditions, a small but appreciable advantage. Runways are a little more subtle; indoor facilities sometimes (not always) have springy, elevated runways like the one the Boston Indoor Games organizers trucked up from Madison Square Garden for vaulting at the Boston Indoor Games last night. This can also be an advantage if the vaulter is used to the runway. Combined, then, it’s not too surprising that unlike nearly every other event, the pole vault WR is marginally superior indoors to its outdoor counterpart: 6.15m indoors compared to 6.14m outdoors. (Both, of course, held by Bubka.)

Hooker highlighted this Saturday night when he selected 6.06m as an intermediate height before approaching the World Record. It’s an arbitrary height indoors, smack in the middle of the block of Bubka which tops the all-time list. Outdoors, however, it’s a watershed: three men, Maksim Tarasov, Dmitry Markov, and Brad Walker, all at 6.05m marks outdoors. On a combined all-time list, then, Hooker is #2, with a lot of Bubka ahead of him, and that 6.16m height he keeps trying is the highest anyone has ever vaulted, period. There isn’t a distinction in his mind between indoors and outdoors.

Will the statisticians continue making a distinction? Hooker should have the Australian Record now, for example. Will the Australian track statisticians give it to him, or call him the indoor record holder? Considering there are no indoor facilities in Australia, and their domestic outdoor season usually happens during the European and North American indoor season, those lists can’t be terribly deep.

Are there other events where the distinction between World Record and World Indoor Record is meaningless? The men’s high jump records differ by only 2cm. The men’s long jump is off by .14m; the men’s triple jump is off by even more. The shot put is the only comparable throwing event. Women’s PV is about 10cm, both held by Yelena Isinbayeva; women’s high jump is only 1cm lower indoors than out, and the long jump and triple jump show about the same spread between indoors and outdoors as the men’s events do. The women’s shot put records are even closer than the men’s. But only in the men’s pole vault is the indoor mark superior.

I’m guessing that the reason behind this is not the conditions but the depth of competition. More top athletes have faced more and more challenging competition outdoors, over a longer history. I think indoor and outdoor field events are heading for convergence, and Steve Hooker may be at the front of the wave.

Talk about the Boston Indoor Games so far has revolved around three records: the men’s pole vault WR, because of Steve Hooker’s performance at Millrose; the women’s pole vault AR, because of the Dragila/Stuczynski duel at Millrose; and the women’s 5,000m AR, because Shalane Flanagan has an excellent chance of becoming the first American woman under 15:00 indoors. (The race could easily be that fast; the question is more likely to be whether Flanagan is in shape to hang on to the pace that long. It’s early in the season yet.)

The fourth mark, which I’m probably not the first one to mention, is the men’s 1,000m AR. The mark is 2:17.86, and it belongs to David Krummenacker, who set it at this very meet in 2002. The same night, Tim Broe whacked a chunk off Steve Scott’s indoor 3,000m mark, a record now owned by Bernard Lagat, and though Lagat has bested the pre-2002 AR in the 1,000m, Krummenacker’s time stands supreme.

(I interviewed Krummenacker after he set the record. I was one of very few reporters at the Boston Indoor Games that year; there are plenty of us now.)

Despite my build-up, however, the 1,000m record is essentially soft. The reason is that it’s not run as often as it used to be. It’s not an international championship event any more (if it ever was); the world record is nine years old (2:14.96 by Wilson Kipketer) and apart from a few fast times from Abubaker Kaki and the men he outran last year, very few marks since Kipketer are at the top of the list. Certainly a 1,000m AR is more attainable than an 800m AR; just ask Krummenacker, or Ocky Clark who held the AR nearly thirteen years before that. (Johnny Gray’s 1:45.00 800m AR has been old enough to drive for nearly a year now.)

All of which brings us to the man of 2008 at 800m. No, not Andrew Wheating, but Nick Symmonds, who actually won the race that stamped Wheating’s face on everyone’s memories (and was, as far as I could tell, a class act about sharing the spotlight). Symmonds, like Krummenacker, has a background of 800m/1,500m doubles. He’s run well in Boston before, and he’s familiar with the track. In other words, he has about the same credentials Krummenacker had in 2002.

Perhaps the best part of this race, though, is that whether or not the pace is record quality, Symmonds is unlikely to have the win handed to him. Christian Smith and Duane Solomon, who have both represented the USA internationally in the 800m (Solomon in 2007 at the World Championships, Smith at the Olympics last year) are also in the race, as is a veteran by the name of David Krummenacker.

Maybe this isn’t a record attempt by Symmonds, and it’s obviously set up to make a good race no matter what the time. But the environment is there and the mark is not out of reach. If the record goes, don’t say I didn’t warn you just because I didn’t mention this race in my preview.

Update: Looks like Kaki is going for the WR in Stuttgart.

I covered the Millrose Games last night.

Of note: a British journalist of my acquaintance commented on the headline’s use of “scare” with a world record as the subject. (I didn’t write the headline.) I don’t have a problem with the personification (anthropomorphization?) of records, myself; in the past I’ve had them celebrate birthdays and get drivers’ licenses to illustrate age.

Also, for those who didn’t read the USATF release word for word, Adam Nelson announced that next year, when his wife has finished law school, they’re moving back to Athens, Georgia to open a yogurt shop. I guess that’s what you do with an MBA and a law degree. The name of the shop will be “MoYo”, because Nelson’s nickname as a child was “Mo”. But the name works even if you don’t know that, and even if Nelson is pulling our collective legs.