Flat Hills Road

It’s official: Wilson Kipketer and I entered the same race, and I finished ahead.

They have a Media Race at the World Championships, usually an 800m. I gather this happens every time; this is only my fourth Worlds, and I don’t recall it happening in Seville, but I raced in Edmonton and Osaka. I had hoped to improve both my place and time over Osaka (9th and 2:18.8x, if I recall correctly) but I wondered about place when I realized how many sub-2:00 runners were entered here, including World Record holder Wilson Kipketer.

The field was indeed both larger (eight heats) and faster; I ran the fast heat in Osaka, but was in the second-best here. There were four men under 2:00 in the fast heat, with the winner in 1:55.19 (apparently a competitor at the French indoor championships last winter) and second in 1:55.67. Kipketer jogged.

Many of the same runners from my Osaka heat lined up with me this year. I had gone out too fast last time and vowed to follow a smarter strategy this time, so I held back a bit. I shouldn’t have. The leader went through 400m in 1:07.14 and split evenly to finish in 2:14.20. I sat 10th and passed four rivals in the third 200m, but the closing half-lap was very tough; I’d used too much making up ground after the bell. Four runners within a second of each other were like a wall in front of me, and I couldn’t close on them let alone find my way around. I wound up in 2:20.41. I’d say my tactics were OK, but my sense of pace needs work; a month ago, however, I wouldn’t have expected to run one 70-second lap, let alone two, so I’ll take what I can get.

In the composite results, I placed 13th overall, and the first American (again). Kipketer was 15th in 2:21.11.

Every World Championships has a number of TV ads which run before and after each session on the big screen. In Osaka, my favorite was a Mizuno ad in which a recreational runner out for a jog passes athletes meant to represent a series of Japanese marathon stars (Seko, etc.) and one who looks startlingly like Frank Shorter.

Here, my favorite is an adidas ad featuring marathon World Record holder Haile Gebrselassie racing a 200m against Tyson Gay. If you know Haile, and you know Tyson, you can probably guess how it goes from there.

There are some races which just won’t die. The protests surrounding the 1992 Barcelona Olympic men’s 10,000m final lasted for days before Skah finally collected his medal (to jeers). It looks like the women’s 10,000m here in Berlin may be just as complicated.

Here’s the situation: Linet Masai crosses the line first, ending an Ethiopian major-championship streak in this event going back to 1999 and winning Kenya’s first medal since that year. The results are published showing Meseret Defar in third, then abruptly withdrawn again. Later, they are republished to show Defar in fifth.

Meanwhile, those watching the video are chattering about the start. As is traditional, several of the starters were put in an outside start, expected to stay outside lane 4 until crossing a “break line” at the top of the backstretch. Normally, however, this “alley” is marked with small cones or flags; last night there were no markers, nor was the break line marked. The athletes starting on the outside broke for the rail less than 50m in to the race, and took the head of the pack.

If everything had been done by the book, those athletes–including Masai–would have been disqualified. But everything wasn’t done by the book; the alley was unmarked. Officials, apparently, decided to do nothing. The Ethiopian press, this morning, was fuming that the Ethiopian team officials declined to protest the results on the basis of the start; such a protest would have DQed Masai and Momanyi, the fourth-place finisher, and given Ethiopia a sweep of the medals.

I was speculating that if assassinating an Austrian archduke in Serbia could cause Germany to declare war on France, perhaps some missing lane cones could spark an Ethiopia/Kenya war if everything went wrong. We also wondered if the steeplechase barrier crew from Eugene was running the 10,000m start. But what options were left? Disqualify a third of the race, including the apparent winner? Or tell three Ethiopians that they are getting lesser medals (and lesser prize money) because they were beaten by two Kenyans who ran a shorter race?

The athletes should have been called back for a restart the moment the outside alley broke for the rail. When that opportunity was lost, there were no good options remaining.

I had dinner with the IAAF.org team last night, and we checked out our positions in the media tribune this morning. The stadium is, of course, gorgeous, an imposing classical temple from the outside, a soaring modern bowl on the inside. The royal blue track surface colors the whole venue.

We will be encouraging readers of the IAAF.org competition blog to submit comments and questions. I’ll promote some to the front page and answer them on the fly if things aren’t too busy; I may also answer questions without posting the question itself. I’m not sure yet how quickly I’ll be able to check Twitter.

Interesting news over the last week:

• The IAAF Congress passed a false start rule (or, more accurately, a no-false-starts rule.) I understand why the athletes complain–sometimes you just twitch–but there’s nothing that kills the drama of a sprint final like three or four false starts or so.
• I’m reading now that the World Cross is going to become biennial. This might be pragmatic but I don’t like it.
• The Jamaicans tried to withdraw four athletes. Then they withdrew the withdrawl, but only because Diack asked them. Honestly, even the Kenyan federation isn’t that pig-headed: when they yank a top athlete off their team, it’s done months in advance and the replacement is nearly as good. Obviously if Team USA wants to continue global domination, the forward-thinking route is for USATF to become more opaque and arbitrary in order to keep up with the Jamaicans and the Kenyans. (I’m joking, of course.)
• I can understand that an athlete who’s been injured as long as Paula Radcliffe might want a shakedown race before a championship-level marathon. I’m not sure why she chose a half-marathon one week before Berlin, though. A six-hour time change and, well, a half-marathon with only six days of recovery? Kara Goucher’s chances are looking better and better. (Mikitenko pulling out doesn’t hurt, either.)
• I tried to go to the Usain Bolt press conference yesterday, but I got bad directions online and couldn’t find the venue in time. Finding one’s way around in this city is like navigating by waves on the ocean; even Google’s maps show streets going where the satellite photos clearly show buildings (and buildings where there currently are none).
• The Local Organizing Committee is using the most underwhelming tag line in marketing history as the motto of the Championships: “Have a Good Time.” Seriously, that’s it. We asked one of their media staffers about it last night (after the beer but before the ouzo–long story) and he refused to offer his own opinion (good man) but did say it was chosen by a market research firm, which should tell us everything we need to know.

I’ve entered the Media Race, which is on Monday. Rumor has it that Wilson Kipketer is running, and saying he wants to run sub-1:50.

I’ve been too busy recently to comment on the pre-Berlin news; in fact, I generally still am, even though I’m seeing some stuff I wish someone would pick up on. (For example, the IAAF sent a press release today about qualifying for the World Athletics Final in Greece, and I did a quick skim of the current rankings. The U.S. women are really getting it done in the middle distances; they’re all over the top 5 in the 800m and 1,500m, and Jen Rhines is #2 in the 5,000m.)

I hope to have more notes from Berlin, but be aware of these sites:

• I’ll be writing the “competition blog” on berlin.iaaf.org. Pre-meet discussion suggested that readers will be able to submit comments and questions for me to “promote” to the blog page as well, so if this is true it will be much more interactive than previous events.
• I will have articles on the distance events on the Running Times website.
• If there’s anything too short for here and too offbeat for other venues, it may wind up on Twitter. (The IAAF competition blog may also be bridged to Twitter, but I’m not sure how many of these plans are actually happening.)

I’ve written two stories now for CrossFit Journal, a subscription-only internet publication for followers of the strength and conditioning program (movement?) called CrossFit.

The joke of those outside the program is that CrossFit is really a cult, and its practictioners encourage this by referring to people who follow the program as having “drunk the Kool-Aid.” (My editor was recently accused of “buying a Kool-Aid franchise.”) And after a few months keeping half an eye on them, I have to admit there’s a lot of allure there.

The important concept to consider, however, is how CrossFit defines “fitness.” The “What is CrossFit” page says,

Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.

That’s a great idea, in general, but it’s exactly where CrossFit and I part ways. I have a sport–distance running–which I enjoy tremendously, and on average, it rewards the specialist. I might have a laughable vertical leap, but that’s not what I’m training for. I’m training to cover distances for which most people require a car, and do it faster than the other guy. I’m aware of the compromises that requires, and I’ve accepted them because I love what I do. If I was training for combat or survival, you can bet I’d be asking for a cup of the CrossFit Kool-Aid.

Tommie Smith as a statue

After Eugene, I made a last-minute work trip to San Jose. I had a few spare hours between wrapping up at the client site and returning to the airport for the red-eye, so what’s there for a track fan to do in San Jose but pay a quick visit to Speed City?

Speed City was San Jose State University, and in 1968 its track team under Coach Bud Winter was loaded with sprinters. It seems beyond paradox to me that Speed City delivered two men known today principally for standing still, or that those men had to run as fast as they did to earn their moment of immobility, but 1968 was a year of irresistible forces meeting immovable objects. There’s a statue on the campus of San Jose State which is both.

If you’ve done even a little reading about Olympic History you probably already know the image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos which is commemorated in this statue. Smith on the top step and Carlos behind him created one of the most indelible images of the Mexico City Olympics when they raised their fists and bowed their heads on the medal stand as the U.S. national anthem played for the 200m medal ceremony. Smith and Carlos are shoeless (the statue shows two of their shoes on the stand) and Carlos wears a red, green and yellow necklace. Both are wearing pins for the Olympic Project for Human Rights. Forty-one years later, it’s still visibly clear that these men had a grievance.

That moment of stillness on the stand (the statue’s silver step is empty but bears the words, “Peter Norman stood here in solidarity”) was earned with twenty seconds of absolute velocity which lead modern observers to wonder how Smith and Carlos might have compared with the likes of Bolt, Johnson and Gay had they had the benefit of modern athletics technology. And it was followed by years of chaos which would’ve given the pair a grievance if they hadn’t already had one.

Smith and Carlos stood on the podium in their socks.

The statue is moving in an unexpected sense: I felt as though the larger-than-life Smith and Carlos were about to step down from their medal stand and interrogate me, or at least demand that I, too, “take a stand.” (It looks as though other people have stood where Norman stood, for pictures or for soapboxing.) It’s really the only image they could have used, of course, but I sort of wish there was a similarly moving statue, perhaps down by the track, that showed the speed in Speed City as well.

(There are a number of interesting books about Mexico City and the Olympic Project for Human Rights. In particular I’d highlight Smith’s Silent Gesture, which would have benefitted greatly from either a harsher editor or a more assertive ghostwriter or both, and Frank Murphy’s The Last Protest, about Lee Evans; I haven’t read Murphy’s book but on the basis of his previous two I know it has to be excellent.)

(My stories from Day Two and Day Three are online. It’s been busy here.)

The buzz in Eugene since yesterday evening has been about Nicole Bush. The runner-up at the NCAA women’s steeplechase, from Michigan State, Bush finished third in her heat on Friday evening and was visibly limping afterward. This wasn’t odd–several of the women were limping, and several including co-favorite Jenny Barringer told officials and reporters that the water barrier was at 36 inches (the men’s height), not 30 inches (the women’s height.)

Bush, when asked, told David Monti of Race Results Weekly that it “might be” an ankle injury. Turns out she broke her foot, which makes her both more impressive (she finished a steeplechase on a broken foot? And finished third?) and all the more tragic (a healthy Bush might have contended for the third spot on the World Championships team, and now she may not even be running again by Berlin).

It’s hard not to get a little frustrated about this. Earlier this season, there was an incident in the men’s 400m hurdles at Carson where the last women’s hurdle flight was left on the track, so the men found their last flight both lower and earlier than they expected it. Now we can’t get all the women’s steeple barriers the right height.

What’s more, it was obvious after the first round of the race, when the women came off the track, that there was a problem. Jenny Barringer hits those barriers every day; she could probably tell the difference between 35 inches and 36. So what is USATF to do? They could set the barrier correctly for the second heat, giving them a safer race but a clear advantage in qualifying and an utter mess for selecting the final. Or they could leave it as is, risking more injuries but giving both heats the same disadvantage. They apparently chose the latter (to be fair, they didn’t know Bush was injured at the time) but who knows if it was the right decision.

Doug Logan made some statements to the TAFWA breakfast on Friday about accountability, transparency, and ownership of issues. I’m not sure if this is a USATF issue or an Oregon issue, but I’m curious to see if, today, someone takes ownership of the issue and creates some transparency around those steeplechase rounds. It’s an unfortunate situation with lots of losers and no clear villians.

Update: The Register Guard is all over the story, of course. They say it’s a USATF issue, and Logan is in accept-and-apologize mode. And they quote Kara June on the same safety-or-fairness question. Well done, R-G.

Here’s my story about Day 1 of the USATF Championships. I’m hoping that was just warmup.

This year’s TAFWA (Track and Field Writers of America) breakfast was the longest I’ve ever attended, but it included presentations from three top USATF officials, five of the six runners who made the 10,000m team for Berlin last night, and a few words from Alberto Salazar, not to mention the annual awards presentations. I’ll attempt to have a better report on tafwa.org soon, but there were two bits I found particularly interesting.

First, Doug Logan talking about the new Nike deal for USATF described the athlete support section in a way which reminded me strongly of Logan’s old job at MLS. Logan is (justifiably) unhappy with the dominant role of agents and shoe-company sponsors in the sport, and claims to have a long-term plan to change how sponsorship and athlete support work in the sport, at least in this country. This deal provides a clue, as USATF is wading in to bridging the gap between collegiate competition and competent, mature professional athletes.

It’s a great selling point, because post-collegiate support was a major complaint in the Project 30 report, but it’s also likely to disappoint the shoe companies and agents because it begins the process of having all athletes essentially sponsored by the federation. This is the MLS model, where all players are contracted and paid by the league, not the teams. It’s a little like socialism in that it suppresses the open sponsorship market for athletes, and it may undercut how much the top athletes get paid, but it may also spread the available sponsorship money across a broader base of athletes, and if it works in that way it might be worth the trouble.

(As an aside, there is widespread disappointment in Eugene that many of our sport’s stars aren’t running “their” events because they have byes through to Berlin. Bernard Lagat is at least putting on a show in the 800m, but Wariner in the 200m and Tyson Gay running just one round are both wet firecrackers. Those who complain about this largely blame the agents, not the athletes. I think the real problem is that stars like Wariner and Gay aren’t going to be competing inside the live television window.)

Interesting fragment #2 came when Alberto Salazar, usually one who shuns the spotlight, followed two of his athletes to the podium and delivered a brief, apparently unscripted minute of praise for his colleague, Jerry Schumacher, and a number of other coaches around the country (Terrence Mahon was also mentioned by name). As part of this, Salazar mentioned that he thought a coach could only develop and mentor six or seven top-level athletes at once, and that he wanted to continue to attract top-flight coaches like Schumacher to Portland, each coaching a small group of developing athletes under the Oregon Track Club umbrella and support structure, as long as he could persuade Nike to keep funding it. Considering the success he and Schumacher have been having in the last few years, I tend to think this is a good idea. Questions: who’s next?

(Full disclosure: I am a nominee to be Vice President of TAFWA starting next year; the elections are happening later this year, and so far as I know there are no other nominees. Join now if you want to vote against me.)