Adidas Grand Prix edition

Who are the world’s best athletes in each event?

It’s not necessarily the same ranking as on the world lists for each event (although there is quite a bit of crossover). We don’t have win-loss standings, and the Diamond League standings in each event aren’t always descriptive either, especially this early in the season.

It’s something that most fans more or less keep in their head–and if they don’t, then they lack the proper perspective when watching a race. They have no idea whether the result went to form, or there was an upset, and who moved up and down in this theoretical ranking.

So here I am to enlighten you. These rankings are based on a lot of things, including last year’s results. The more high-level competitions an event has seen in 2013, the more the ranking is based on this year.

Today I’m listing women’s events, and just the ones that will be part of Saturday’s Adidas Grand Prix in New York.

100 meters

1. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (JAM)
2. Veronica Campbell-Brown (JAM)
3. Blessing Okagbare (NIG)
4. Kelly-Ann Baptiste (TRI)
5. Barbara Pierre (USA)
disabled list: Carmelita Jeter (USA)

No start lists are available yet for the Adidas Grand Prix in this event. Fraser-Pryce won the Diamond League opener in Shanghai and Cambell-Brown won the major early race of the World Challenge circuit in Kingston. The others have all taken runner-up spots in major races.

200 meters

1. Allyson Felix (USA)
2. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (JAM)
3. Veronica Campbell-Brown (JAM)
4. Sanya Richards-Ross (USA)
5. Kimberlyn Duncan (USA)
disabled list: Carmelita Jeter (USA)

The top two, Felix and Fraser-Pryce, will face off in 150 meter street race on Sunday in Manchester’s Great City Games, and Campbell-Brown will run in New York. As is common in the 200 meters, there hasn’t been much high-level competition between top sprinters.
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In each class of honorees for my Dual Meet Hall of Fame, I try to spread around the choices in event areas, eras, and regions. This year’s choice for distance runner, 70s dude and the Pacific northwest is one of the most intense competitors of all time, Steve Prefontaine.

A year ago I argued that dual meets were a huge part of why Prefontaine became the bigger-than-life Pre, the hero of Duck fans. All he did was win.

So many of his dual meet exploits require the word epic. There were crazy doubles, like a 3:56/13:06 mile/3-mile double. There were fast times, like his 13:29.6 American Record. But one race stands out above them all, possibly the greatest race ever held in a dual meet. It was against Oregon State on May 6, 1972. From the following day’s Eugene Register-Guard:

In a race that those who saw will never forget — and in five years 100,000 people will say they were there — Steve Prefontaine reached back for more intestines than one man’s stomach should hold in repelling the inspired 1,500 meter challenge of Oregon State’s Hailu Saturday at Hayward Field.

Bill Bowerman called it one of the greatest races he has ever seen. It will forever overshadow Oregon’s obliteration of OSU in the dual meet…

The results say that Prefontaine won in 3:39.8 … and that Hailu was three strides back in 3:40.4.

As Pre said later, “I wanted the race to be a question of who had the most guts, not who had the most speed.”
…
The 800 meter lead went to Pre in 1:57 and he had it at three laps when Haile made his move.

The crowd [of more than 9,000] sensed the time had come for Pre to be tested. For a moment or two, as they battled stride for stride down the back stretch, there was a lingering doubt whether Pre could repel the challenge of the quicker African.

Pre used his superior experience, moving gradually over on the track as the two moved in front of the east grandstand. He forced Hailu to move wider than he wanted and the Ethiopian could never forge ahead.

Slowly, Pre pulled away around the turn and, although he wobbled the last 30 yards from sheer exhaustion, he hung on to win.

In his biography of the man, Pre!, Tom Jordan called it “the quintessential Prefontaine race”, and Eugene Register-Guard sportswriter Ron Bellamy listed it among the best races he ever saw.

Here is Pre’s complete record in collegiate dual meets.

3/21/70	at Fresno St w/ Stanford	1st 2-mile 8:40.0
3/28/70	at UTEP	1st 3-mile 13:48.8
4/4/70	at Washington	1st 1-mile 4:03.2 1st 2-mile 8:51.6
4/11/70	at Cal	1st 3-mile 13:30.6
4/18/70	vs UCLA	1st (tie) 1-mile 4:05.3 1st 2-mile 8:46.4
4/25/70	vs Washington St	1st 3-mile 13:12.8
5/2/70	vs Oregon State	1st 1-mile 4:00.4
3/20/71	home quadrangular	1st 2-mile 8:33.2
3/27/71	at San Diego State	1st 1-mile 4:00.2
4/3/71	vs Stanford	1st 3-mile 13:01.6 dual meet record
4/10/71	vs Washington	1st 1-mile 4:02.6 1st 8:36.2
4/17/71	vs Cal	1st 3-mile 13:34.0
4/24/71	at UCLA	1st 1-mile 3:59.4
5/8/71	at Oregon State	1st 2-mile 8:42.4
3/18/72	at Fresno State	1st 2-mile 8:55.4
4/8/72	at Washington	1st 1-mile 4:07.3
4/15/72	at Nebraska	1st 2-mile 8:35.2
4/29/72	vs Washington St	1st 5000m 13:29.6 American Record
5/6/72	vs Oregon State	1st 1500m 3:39.8 dual meet record
4/7/73	vs Washington	1st 1-mile 4:03.2 1st 2-mile 8:51.6
4/14/73	home quadrangular	1st 1-mile 3:56.8 dual meet record 1st 3-mile 13:06.4
5/5/73	at Oregon State	1st 3-mile 13:27.2

The second-to-last athlete honored in the spring 2013 class of the Dual Meet Hall of Fame is Cal long/triple jumper Sheila Hudson.

Hudson was a four-time NCAA Champion, three times in the triple jump and once in the long jump. In dual meet competition she was a team player, regularly doing double duty in the jumps plus running on the 4×100 relay and sometimes the open 100.

My data on Hudson in dual meet competition is rather sparse, as she competed at a time when they were falling out of favor, but also because the late 80s and early 90s were a tough time for getting this kind of information. What I have shows her undefeated, putting up marks that remain near the top of the all-time dual meet lists.

What I have on her career:

4/25/87	at Oregon w/ BYU	1st LJ 20′ 6/5w 1st TJ 43′ 10″w 3rd 4×100
5/2/87	vs Stanford	1st LJ 20′ 8.5″w 1st TJ 43′ 1/4″
4/23/88	vs Oregon & Fresno State	3rd 100m 12.08 1st LJ 21′ 8.75″ 1st TJ 43′ 9.25″ 3rd 4×100
4/30/88	vs Stanford	results unknown
	redshirted 1988
4/21/90	vs Oregon	1st LJ 21-6.25 1st TJ 45-1 dual meet record
4/28/90	vs Stanford	1st LJ 21-7 1st TJ 42-11

The next athlete honored in the spring 2013 class of my Dual Meet Hall of Fame is James Randal “Randy” Matson.

Matson was the greatest collegiate thrower of all time. He lost just once in his entire college career at Texas A&M, setting collegiate and world records along the way.

In dual meet competition, he was unworldly. He broke the dual meet record in his very first collegiate shot put competition and broke it four more times in his three years of eligibility (and broke the discus record twice). Of course, going into that first collegiate meet, he was already the Olympic silver medalist.

He finished off his dual meet career with a world record 71′ 5½” throw (21.78 meters). Forty-six years later, it still stands as the dual meet record. Matson owns four of the top ten marks in dual meet history, and ranks #3 in the discus.

In later years, he continued to work with his alma mater in fund-raising and promotional roles, but has now retired.

His complete dual meet career:

2/27/65	vs Baylor	1st SP 66′ 8½” dual meet record 1st DT 185′ 3½”
3/6/65	at Rice w/ Texas	1st SP 65′ 7″ 1st DT 170′ 7½”
3/20/65	at LSU w/ Rice	1st SP 63′ 9″ 1st DT 189′ 1″
4/9/65	vs Baylor, Texas & SMU	1st SP 67′ 11¼” dual meet record 1st DT 190′ 7″
4/14/65	at Baylor w/ Texas Tech	1st SP 67′ ¼” 1st DT 201′ 1½” dual meet record
4/30/65	at Texas w/ Rice	1st SP 69′ ¾” dual meet record 1st DT 195′ 10½”
3/19/66	at Rice w/ LSU	1st SP 62′ ¾” 1st DT 161′ 8″
4/12/66	vs Baylor	1st SP 65′ 10¼” 1st DT 191′ 6½”
2/24/67	vs Baylor	1st SP 68′ 8¾” 1st DT
3/3/67	at Texas w/ Rice	1st SP 66′ 5½” 1st DT 184′ 6″
3/18/67	vs Rice & LSU	1st DT 200′ 7¾”
4/8/67	vs Baylor & TCU	1st SP 70′ 5½” dual meet record 1st DT 213′ 9″ dual meet record
4/12/67	at Baylor	1st SP 68′ 7″ 1st DT 189′ 5″
4/15/67	at New Mexico w/ Kansas	1st SP 69′ 2¼ 1st DT 190′ 8½”
4/22/67	vs Baylor & Texas Tech	1st SP 71′ 5½” World Record 1st DT 200′ 11″

As a nod to the USC-UCLA rivalry, every spring will see one athlete from each of the two universities honored in the Dual Meet Hall of Fame. The last athlete was a Trojan and this one will be a Bruin.

She’s only the greatest athlete of all time, and possibly the most versatile, so Jackie Joyner (Kersee*) is a natural for the Dual Meet Hall of Fame.

My listing of Joyner’s career dual meet record looks rather sparse in terms of meets because I’m probably missing a bit. It’s also a bit sparse because in most of those seasons she was still playing basketball for the Bruins well into the early part of the West Coast track season. Joyner redshirted the 1984 season to prepare for the Olympics, too.

But when she competed…whew. She set two dual meet records that may never be broken. One was with a long jump of 22’ 11¼” (6.99 meters). Another was for the heptathlon.

Heptathlon? Yes, heptathlon. In an April 1982 triangular against USC and Utah State, Joyner did all seven heptathlon events (plus a leg on the 4×100). Scored on the current tables, it’s 5527 points in just under 3 hours.

4/10/82	vs Oregon	1st HJ 5-7 1st LJ 19-6
4/17/82	at USC w/ Utah St	2nd 200m 24.72 5th 800m 2:20.44 1st 100H 14.68w 3rd HJ 5-4 1st LJ 20-5½ 6th SP 36-6½ 6th JT 124-6 1st 4×100 45.61
4/9/83	at Oregon	2nd 100m 12.24 1st 200m 24.78 1st 100H 14.02 1st LJ 19′ 6″ 1st 4×100 45.60
4/13/85	vs Cal Poly	1st HJ 6-0 1st LJ 19-11¾ 1st TJ 41-6½w 2nd SP 44-3 1st 4×100 45.88 1st 4×400 (53.6 split)
5/4/85	at USC	2nd 100H 13.19 2nd HJ 5-11½ 1st LJ 22-11¼ dual meet record 2nd JT 157-5 1st 4×100 44.13 DMR 1st 4×400 (52.5 split)

*Joyner did not marry Bobby Kersee until 1986, after her collegiate career was over.

The next athlete honoree for the spring 2013 class of my Dual Meet Hall of Fame is USC pole vaulter Bob Seagren.

During Seagren’s freshman year of 1966, he broke the world record. Of course, back then there was no freshman eligibility. He went on to win two NCAA outdoor titles in ’67 and ’69, with a runner-up finish sandwiched in between. Ironically, he won Olympic gold in that same season that he didn’t win the NCAA.

Seagren is possibly most famous for getting screwed by Olympic officials in 1972, leading him to exit from “amateur” competition and join the International Track Association. He also won the 1973 Superstars competition and acted, including a brief role in the classic 70s sitcom Soap.

He won sixteen of his eighteen collegiate dual meets, a remarkable achievement given the inconsistency of the event and that he often faced world-class competition, including teammate Paul Wilson. He twice set the dual meet record, once each in 1967 and ’68. Seagren lost that record to UCLA’s Dick Railsback in ’69 but beat him at the all-important USC-UCLA dual meet. In fact, only once in Seagren’s career did the Trojans lose a meet. Unlike many pole vaulters, Seagren was no one-trick pony; he branched out into the 440 yard hurdles and scored every time he ran.

So far as I know, this is Seagren’s complete collegiate dual meet career.

3/18/1967	vs Arizona & Arizona St	1st PV 16-6¾
4/9/1967	vs Cal	1st PV 16-6
4/15/1967	vs Washington	1st PV 16-6½
4/22/1967	vs Stanford	1st PV 15-6½
4/29/1967	at Oregon State	1st PV 15-6
5/6/1967	vs UCLA	1st PV 17-½ dual meet record
3/30/1968	vs Occidental	nh PV
4/6/1968	at Cal	1st PV 16-6
4/13/1968	at Oregon	1st PV 17-1½ dual meet record
4/20/1968	vs Stanford	1st PV 16-6 2nd 440yh 54.4
4/27/1968	vs Washington St	1st (tie) PV 15-7
5/4/1968	vs UCLA	1st PV 16-6 2nd 440yH 53.6
3/8/1969	vs Arizona & Arizona St	1st PV 16-0 3rd 440yH
3/29/1969	vs Occidental	2nd PV 16-0
4/5/1969	vs Cal	1st PV 16-7 2nd 440yH
4/19/1969	at Stanford	1st PV 16-0 1st 440yH 53.0
4/26/1969	at Washington St	1st PV 16-11½ 2nd 4x110y Relay
5/3/1969	vs UCLA	1st PV 17-0

Yesterday I posted some projections for the Pac-12 and SEC Championships. The SEC team projections were my own work, and I put up the Pac-12 projections published by the Eugene Register-Guard.

With another day of competition done, here are my updates…

SEC Championships

MEN
It’s beginning to look like Arkansas’ meet to lose. Projections:
Arkansas 161
Texas A&M 129
Florida 123

WOMEN
Yesterday it appeared that this would be an inseparable three- or four-way battle, but LSU has moved ahead of the pack. A Tiger victory, however, is by no means secure. Projections:
LSU 140.5
Florida 110
Texas A&M 107
Arkansas 106.5

Pac-12

I did not update the men’s scores because Oregon is cruising towards a seventh straight conference title. The women’s meet looked closer, and the favored Ducks had a mishap when defending NCAA 100 meter champion English Gardner false-started out of the 100m semis. It’s a bit closer now, but Oregon’s women still have the advantage. Projections:
Oregon 151.5
Arizona 122
Arizona State 94

Big Ten

I finally ran some projections for the Big Ten men’s championship, and it’s going to be a real barn-burner. At the indoor Big Ten meet, just five points separated the top five teams, and it could happen that way again. Projections:
Illinois 104
Nebraska 100.5
Ohio State 97
Wisconsin 91.5
Iowa 86
Minnesota 85
Indiana 77
Penn State 69
Purdue 49
Michigan 39
Michigan State 21

The two major conference championships going on this weekend are the SEC and Pac-12. So who is going to win?

One way is to look at the USTFCCCA rankings. In a situation like this, though, those are not exactly helpful–those rankings are a numerical measure of a team’s scoring potential at the NCAA Championships, which isn’t exactly the same thing as a conference championship.

Better yet is to come up with a “dope sheet”, a prediction of the outcome of each event, and then add up scores. You can then update your scoresheet as actual results come in, and adjust your predicted final score.

It’s a cumbersome project at times, which is why a) I haven’t done it for the Big Ten Championships (and maybe I’ll get to that later today) and b) I’m glad the Eugene Register-Guard already did it for the Pac-12.

Here are the predicted final scores, which I will periodically update throughout the weekend.

SEC Championships

On the men’s side, Arkansas’ 26-point gap is more likely to narrow than expand. On the women’s side…holy cow.
Meet homepage (schedule, live stream links)
Live results

MEN	WOMEN
153 Arkansas	124 Florida
127 Florida	123 LSU
125 Texas A&M	121 Arkansas
78 Georgia	104 Texas A&M
56 LSU	82 Georgia
51 Kentucky	47 Kentucky
50 Auburn	43 Missouri
41 Alabama	42 Auburn
38 Missouri	40 South Carolina
38 Mississippi	24 Tennessee
33 Tennessee	23 Miss State
31 Miss State	22 Alabama
9 South Carolina	13 Mississippi
9 Vanderbilt

Pac-12 Championships

It looks like an Duck sweep, but Arizona is going to make the Oregon women work for it.
Meet homepage
Live results

MEN	WOMEN
148 Oregon	159 Oregon
107 USC	121 Arizona
104 UCLA	89 Arizona State
89 Arizona State	84 Stanford
88 Washington	83 USC
69 California	80 UCLA
68 Arizona	55 Washington
54 Colorado	53 Colorado
47 Washington St.	38 Washington St.
45 Stanford	35 California
	14 Utah
	8 Oregon State

Eugene Register-Guard dope sheets:
Men | Women

One of the great forgotten names in collegiate track and field is Henry Carr, who ran for Arizona State for three seasons before giving up “amateur” track and field for the NFL.

It’s rare for a sprinter to set world records in collegiate competition, and it’s rarer still that he set them in dual meets. Yet Carr did just that, twice. He won 29 out of 32 sprint races in collegiate dual meet competition.

Of those three losses, one was in his first collegiate meet of his career. The second was to Adolph Plummer, who set a world record the following season. And the last was when he appeared to be “just striding” and gave up no points in the loss (to a teammate).

The most remarkable run in his dual meet career was probably in March of 1964, in a home meet against New Mexico. Anchoring the mile relay, he go the baton about 30 yards behind the leader and caught him. He split 46.8 (when the world record was 44.9) in his third event of the day.

Carr’s complete career…

3/18/62	vs Oregon St & Ariz	1st 100y 9.6 2nd 220yS 20.9
4/5/62	vs Colorado	1st 100y 9.5 1st 220yS 20.5
4/18/62	vs New Mexico	1st 100y 9.5 2nd 220yS 20.4e (a) 2nd LJ 22′ 8¾” 1st Mile Relay
5/5/62	vs Arizona	1st 100y 9.4 1st 220yS 20.1 3rd LJ
3/9/63	vs Arizona & Oxy	1st 100y 9.6 1st 220y 20.6 2nd LJ 23′ 3¾” 1st Mile Relay
3/16/63	at New Mexico	1st 100y 9.5 1st 220y 20.6 1st 440y Relay 1st Mile Relay
3/19/63	vs Utah	1st 100y 9.6 1st 220y 20.4 WR 1st LJ 24′ 1¾” 1st 440y Relay 1st Mile Relay
3/23/63	vs Arizona & USC	1st 100y 9.5 1st 220y 20.3 WR 1st LJ 23′ 9″ 1st 440y Relay 1st Mile Relay 46.0
4/16/63	at Cal w/ SJ State	1st 100y 9.8 1st 220y 21.5 1st 440y Relay 1st Mile Relay
5/4/63	at Arizona	1st 100y 9.4 1st 220y 20.5 1st Mile Relay
3/7/64	vs Arizona & Oxy	1st 100y 9.4w 1st 210y 19.8
3/14/64	vs New Mexico	1st 100y 9.4 1st 220y 20.8 1st Mile Relay 46.8 split (b)
3/21/64	at Arizona w/ USC	1st 100y 9.5 1st 220y 20.7 1st Mile Relay
3/24/64	vs Oklahoma	1st 100y 9.5 1st 220y 20.7 1st Mile Relay
4/2/64	vs Colorado	2nd 100y (c) 1st 220y 21.3 1st 440y Relay
5/2/64	vs Arizona	1st 100y 9.7 1st 220y 21.0 1st 440y Relay 2nd Mile Relay

(a) lost to Adolph Plummer, who set 440y WR in ’63
(b) made up 30y deficit to win
(c) “appeared to be just striding” in 100y, lost to teammate

Last year I inaugurated the Dual Meet Hall of Fame to recognize outstanding achievement in this little-recognized but important facet of college track and field. My spring 2012 choice for coach honoree was Washington State’s John Chaplin, and my winter 2013 choice was Nebraska’s Gary Pepin.

This time, it’s Jim Bush, the coach of tremendous teams at UCLA, USC and Occidental.

As a coach, all Jim Bush did was win.

Injuries held Bush back as collegiate competitor at Cal, and he was determined to be a better coach than athlete. After stints as head coach at Fullerton High School (eight seasons, eight league titles) and Fullerton Junior College, Bush moved to Occidental College. In three seasons (1962-64), his Tigers never lost to UCLA in a dual meet. So UCLA hired him.

When Bush came to UCLA, they had never beaten rival USC in any of their 31 dual meets. In his first year (1965), the Bruins fell again, but the streak was broken in 1966. For the remainder of Bush’s 18 years, they won all but four of the dual meets against USC.

Under Bush, the Bruins beat a heck of a lot more teams than just USC. All in all, Bush’s dual meet record at UCLA was 152-21-0, and under his watch the Bruins won seven dual meet national championships (and only once did they finish outside of the top three.)

Bush developed great athletes and lots of them, but the team came first. He once famously kicked Dwight Stones off his team after Stones told Bush he wanted to do only three meets for the Bruins (vs USC, Pac-8 and NCAA) and Bush refused to let the world record holder back on the team.

Bush left UCLA after the 1984 season due to health issues. Over the next few years he worked with professional athletes of various stripes: football (LA Raiders, Marcus Allen in particular), baseball (LA Dodgers), basketball (LA Lakers). He earned Super Bowl and World Series rings for his efforts.

Bush went back to active track coaching as a volunteer assistant at crosstown rival USC, and the Trojans hired him as head coach in the summer of 1990. USC’s competitive fortunes had declined precipitously, citing NCAA scholarship limitations as the reason. Bush didn’t accept this: “We’re going to bring USC back. I don’t care how many scholarships you have, it doesn’t make a difference to me,” he told the LA Times. “If we have 14 scholarships, that means everyone else has 14 scholarships. We’re going to win.”

Win they did. Going 0-5 and 1-5 in Bush’s first two years, the Trojans progressed to 5-2 and 9-1 in his last two years, topping out at #6 in the TFN dual meet rankings. Bush’s career at USC did not end well; he said he was forced out (after being diagnosed with prostate cancer), and he filed a lawsuit against USC (eventually settled out of court.)

Bush still coaches, volunteering his time in Southern California.