Shalane Flanagan vs history
Boston Marathon
Monday, 9:32am ET
No American, man or woman, has won the Boston Marathon since 1985. Much has changed since then, and at times the probability of ever having a US winner appeared to round to zero. But this year there is hope, as Olympic 10k medalist Flanagan is in the shape of her life.

There is no better matchup of a race and an individual in terms of public interest and sentiment. It’s the oldest annual marathon in the world and held in a city that prides itself on history. The city truly cares about and appreciates this race as sports fans, in that winning really matters (as does getting plastered, apparently). Even better, the hero is a Boston-area native with an Irish surname. If Flanagan won, you could almost imagine famed Boston sports fan Bill Simmons writing Now I Can Die in Peace, part II.

The odds for Flanagan are long, as they are for any single athlete in a marathon. There’s a lot of competition and the marathon is a fickle master. But maybe, just maybe…
Live webcast link
Flotrack coverage | Runnerspace page | Running Times coverage

Texas A&M vs Arkansas (men)
John McDonnell Invitational, Fayetteville AR
Saturday, main session at 5:00pm local time (6:00pm ET)
The two rivals meet up again this weekend at the John McDonnell Invitational, a seven-team scored meet. Entries have not yet been posted, but I doubt either team will hold back. They’re currently #1 and #2 in the USTFCCCA rankings, so this should be a dandy of a battle.
Arkansas track home page | Live results

Kansas vs Texas A&M (women)
John McDonnell Invitational, Fayetteville AR
Saturday, main session at 5:00pm local time (6:00pm ET)
The McDonnell Invitational also brings together the #1 and #3 teams in the women’s rankings, another good one to watch.
Arkansas track home page | Live results

Kenenisa Bekele vs Ibrahim Jeilan (10k)
SPAR Great Ireland Run, Dublin
Sunday, 1:30pm local time (7:30am ET)
If Bekele isn’t the greatest distance runner of all time, then he’s on the short list for that honor. He hasn’t quite been himself in the last few years, though, so current form is questionable. Maybe he’ll be back at the top, or maybe his time has passed. On Sunday he runs against Jeilan, the surprise 2011 World Champion at 10,000 meters. This may be a preview of the Ethiopian 10k trials for the Worlds team, to be held in two months in conjunction with the Prefontaine Classic.
Race website | RTÉ preview

Geoffrey Kipsang vs Kenyan selectors
Rotterdam Marathon
Sunday, 10:30am local time (4:30am ET)
Third at last fall’s Berlin Marathon in his first-ever 26.2-miler, Kipsang won February’s RAK Half Marathon in 58:54. He’s probably the headline name in Sunday’s race, with 2011 champion Wilson Chebet among his main competition. Whoever wins is probably hoping to also impress selectors for Kenya’s World Championship squad—this second-tier race doesn’t have any of the big dogs who would rather skip the Worlds for a fall payday.
Race website | Xinhua preview

Earlier today I sat down with Bowling Green’s Brooke Pleger, who has burst onto the national scene in the hammer throw. Currently ranked second in the NCAA, she’s had a meteoric rise.

Her yearly progression:

Here’s the interview. It’s a bit lengthy, but I thought it worth the time.

Thanks to Jason Knavel and the Athletics Communication staff at Bowling Green for making a big media push for track in general and Brooke in particular. I was her second interview today and there have been many more in the last week, which must be some kind of a record for women’s college hammer throwers.

There was a lot of action over the weekend. Let’s get to it!

Men

Team of the Week: Oregon Ducks
The Ducks won their own Pepsi Team Invitational over Texas A&M, Washington and Washington State. Depending on your system, the Aggies were either #1 (USTFCCCA computer) or #2 (TFN dual meet ranking), but either way this was an upset.

Sprint/hurdle athlete of the week Dedrick Dukes, Florida
Dukes won the 200 meters at the Florida Relays in a wind-aided time of 20.38. Wind or no, that still very fast.

Distance athlete of the week: Henry Lelei, Texas A&M
Lelei won the steeplechase in the Aggies’ quadrangular at Oregon with Washington and Washington State in a PR and NCAA-leading time of 8:32.91. According to my research, it’s the fastest steeplechase in a dual/tri/quad meet in 28 years.

Jumps athlete of the week: Mike Hartfield, Ohio State
Hartfield led the Buckeyes to victory at the Jim Click Shootout by sweeping the long and triple jumps. He broke his PR in the triple jump with 15.84 meters (51′ 11¾”). His long jump of 8.10 meters (26′ 7″) marks his third straight week over 8 meters—a distance only one other collegian has achieved this year.

Throws athlete of the week: Julian Wruck, UCLA
Wruck won the discus in the Bruins’ tri-meet domination of LSU and TCU with a throw of 66.05 meters (216′ 8″), the world’s leading distance of the year. It’s also a new record for dual/tri/quad meets, breaking the 29-year-old record held by BYU’s Stefan Fernholm, when he threw 65.66 at San Diego State.

Team Player: Jordan Locklear, Cal
Single-day distance doubles are rare these days, but Locklear won both the 800 and 1500 in the Bears’ tri-meet victory over Michigan and Virginia. Efforts like this is what California needs in two weeks in order to have a shot at breaking Stanford’s six-year win streak in the 121st Big Meet.
Continue reading →

There’s a lot going on this weekend, as college track takes it up a notch, spring road racing is really getting started, and the IAAF’s World Challenge series begins.

1. Texas A&M at Oregon (women)
Saturday at 12:00pm local (3:00pm ET)
Live webcast from 2:30pm ET
This is actually a quadrangular, as Washington and Washington State are also in the mix, but it’s hard to see any team but the Ducks or Aggies winning this. Since they’re #1 and #3 in the Track and Field News dual meet rankings, the national dual meet championship is on the line.
Meet homepage | Live results

2. LSU at UCLA (women)
Saturday, field events at 9:00am local (noon ET), running events at 12:30pm local
The #1- and #3- ranked women’s dual meet teams may be facing off in Eugene, but the #2 and #12 teams are simultaneously facing off in Westwood, with #16 TCU providing depth. LSU must win this if they’re going to have any chance at the national dual meet title, and they have to look good while doing it.
Meet homepage | Live results
Continue reading →

Yesterday I posted the women’s college team report and noted that while college track is for the athletes, it’s about the colleges, and that’s why I take so much interest in team-oriented competition.

There’s another reason to take interest in team competition: simplicity. A track team is one entity but our sport is made up of more than twenty events. It’s just so much easier to keep track of teams.

Here are the three major rankings systems, all released within the last two days:

Continue reading →

I like college track, as a separate and distinct entity from either professional or high school track, because of the things that make it different from those other two levels. Yes, this is a tautology, but bear with me.

I like all three levels of track for different reasons and for what they are about. Professional track is about individuals, plain and simple. (On some level it is also about national identity, but not all that often.) High school track is all about kids and the optimism and energy of youth. College track is all about the teams, as are all college sports, a point well made a couple years back by the great Joe Posnanski:

No, college athletics is not ABOUT the players. College athletics is FOR the players, but that’s a different thing, and that’s a distinction we don’t often make. College football only works on this grand scale, I believe, because it’s about the colleges. The alumni connect to it. The people in the town connect to it. The people in the state connect to it. People are proud of their connection to the University of South Carolina and Clemson, they are inspired by Alabama and Auburn, Penn State and Notre Dame and Stanford, they identify themselves through Missouri and Wisconsin and Florida and Texas A&M. The players matter because they chose those schools, they play for those schools, they win for those schools and they lose for those schools too. Everyone, of course, wants them to be the best players available, and some are willing to cheat the current system to get those players. But soon the players move on, and the love affair continues, just as strong, just as vital. The CONNECTION is what drives college football.

Continue reading →

The Texas Relays and Stanford Invitational dominated the landscape this weekend, and there was a lot of top-level action. Let’s get to it!

Men

Athlete of the week, track events: Ameer Webb, Texas A&M
Webb won the Most Outstanding Performer award at the Texas Relays, and that’s no small accomplishment. He won the 100 meters in a world-leading 10.14, and ran on the Aggies’ winning 4×200 and 4×100 relays, both of which now lead the NCAA lists.

Honorable mention goes to Webb’s teammate, Deon Lendore, who anchored the Aggies’ runner-up 4×400 relay with a split of 44.46 seconds.

Athlete of the week, field events: Sam Kendricks, Ole Miss
This was a very tough choice, as there were many outstanding efforts in the field events over the weekend, but Kendricks’ win in the pole vault at the Texas Relays is my choice for the best of the bunch. His winning height of 5.81 meters (19′ ¾”) is the best by a collegian in fifteen years.

Kendricks, just a 20-year-old sophomore, is now only the second American to go over 5.80 in the last three years; the other is Brad Walker, the 2007 World champion. In the last ten years, only two athletes under age 21 have gone over 5.80; one was an age-group flameout but the other, Germany’s Raphael Holzdeppe, won bronze at last year’s Olympics.

Honorable mention goes to UCLA’s Julian Wruck, who won the discus at the Texas Relays with a distance of 66.01 meters (216′ 7″) puts him #6 on the all-time collegiate list.
Continue reading →

The outdoor season is just getting started, and there’s plenty of action already among collegiate and professional athletes. Here are my picks for the top matchups.

1. Derek Drouin vs Erik Kynard
High jump
Texas Relays, Austin TX
Saturday, 11:00am local (noon ET)
The men’s high jump is the event of the year in college track, and this is the first regular season head-to-head matchup between these two stars since February 2011. It’s been 29 years since two Olympic medalists in the same event have both come back for another collegiate season, and it’ something special whenever these two go against each other. Bronze medalist Drouin now leads their career series at 6 to 5, and leads in the personal record department as well (2.35 meters to 2.34).

If you’re one of the lucky few whose cable provider carries the Longhorn Network, you can watch the meet live: today (Thursday) 2:30-4:30 p.m., 6-7 p.m. and 8-11 p.m. (ET); tomorrow from 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m and 7:30-10:30 p.m. (ET), and Saturday from 2:30-6:30 p.m. (ET).
Texas Relays website

2. Asafa Powell vs scratch
132nd Stawell Gift, Stawell AUS
Monday, 2:45pm local time (11:45pm ET, Sunday night)
The Stawell Gift is a 120 meter handicap sprint race held in the small Australian town every year over Easter weekend. Competitors are given handicaps of various distances based on their perceived ability. Massive gambling and other types of fun ensue. The weekend includes dozens of handicap races of all distances and for all age groups, but the men’s 120 meter sprint is the headliner.

The amateur code which was enforced on track and field up until the early 80s meant that Stawell rarely drew top talent. The only two winners off “scratch” (running the full distance), Jean-Louis Ravelomanantsoa (1975) and Joshua Ross (2005), were Olympic sprinters. But no one of Powell’s status has ever run the Stawell. Michael Frater ran last year and didn’t even get to the final, so Powell better be ready to run very well if he wants to win and claim the $40,000 prize. The early betting favorite is a man named Khan Marr, who will get a 5.25 meter handicap.

Stawell Gift website | Preview from The Age
Continue reading →

When I was a high school kid, Tennessee was one of the top track programs in the nation. Or at least it seemed that way, with all their two-sport football/track guys like Willie Gault and Sam Graddy. They dominated the SEC for a long time, winning 21 out of 23 men’s conference titles from 1964 to 1986. The Vols were still a top team even after the Arkansas juggernaut moved to the SEC from the Southwest Conference in the 90s, as the Vols won the NCAA title in 2001 and finishing second the next year.

But the last few years haven’t been good. In fact, they’ve been downright terrible according to Marvin West, who has the post-mortem for you. He doesn’t have anything good to say about head coach JJ Clark, who took over a newly combined men’s and women’s program in 2010 (save this bit: “there are no complaints about inequality. Both teams are bad.”)

Don’t be deceived by the alt-weekly website for which West writes; he is in retirement but is still a heavy hitter. He was the former sports editor of the Knoxville News-Sentinel, then promoted to managing editor, then became the national sports editor for Scripps Howard News Service, then promoted to managing editor for the whole Scripps Howard service. That he dedicates an entire column to Volunteer track says both that West knows his stuff and that track is more important in Knoxville than most college towns.
Continue reading →

Men

Athlete of the Week: Julian Wruck, UCLA
Wruck won the discus at the Texas State Elite Meet with a distance of 65.04 meters (213′ 5″), the furthest throw by a collegian since 2009. It puts him #2 in the world for the young 2013 season and makes him the #6 Australian of all time. He also broke the UCLA school record, held by the legendary John Godina.

Honorable mention goes to Arkansas’ Andrew Irwin, who won the pole vault at the same meet with a height of 5.60 meters (18′ 4½”).
Continue reading →