Month: January 2013

HURDLES CHAMP ARIES MERRITT OUT AT SATURDAY’S INDOOR MEET IN BOSTON

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Oly champ Aries Merritt
Oly champ Aries Merritt

Merritt, 2012 Olympic hurdles champion and world record holder, has withdrawn from this Saturday’s New Balance Indoor Grand Prix at Boston’s Reggie Lewis Center. The news was released by meet organizers late this afternoon.

“At the beginning of yesterday’s workout, I experienced a cramp as I went over a hurdle during one of my drills,” said Merritt in a prepared statement.  “I hate to disappoint Boston area track and field fans, but my physio think it is best if I withdraw to ensure I stay healthy for the rest of this World Championship year.  I hope everyone understands.” 

Merritt was one of the first athletes to commit to the 18th NBIGP, and is a big loss.  He’d run the meet twice before, taking seventh in the 60m hurdles in 2010, then second last year.  That still leaves Olympic champions Tirunesh Dibaba (10,000m) and Jenn Suhr (pole vault) as meet headliners, along with Olympic silver medalists Galen Rupp (10,000m) and Dejen Gebremeskel (5000m) who will meet in the 3000m on Saturday.   Dibaba opens her season on the way to a highly anticipated debut marathon in London in April.  She’s broken the 5000m indoor record twice in Boston (2005 & 2007).

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YES, BUT IS IT A REAL TOUR?

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13BBTMtourLogo     Having just passed its first year anniversary the Bring Back the Mile campaign just announced its Bring Back the Mile Tour 2013 which will include 13 stops and an end-of-the-year gala celebrating a Mile legend and the year in the Mile.

Knowing how loosely strung most running “tours” have been in the past,  I emailed BBTM founder Ryan Lamppa the following query:  “Is this simply linking all these mile races up on paper, but not actually creating a specific tour with a prize purse attached at the end?  Now that would be news. Not that this isn’t.”

Here’s Ryan’s response:

“The BBTM Tour 2013 is about the Big Tent, and our main Tour objective in year one is about promotion – promotion of the Mile, Tour events and the athletes, and our broader vision is to have a national Mile grand prix series in 2014 (only top prize money races). In short, we are scaling this. Call the BBTM Tour 2013 lap 2 of the Bring Back the Mile campaign.”

Makes sense, Ryan. Like the mile race itself, it’s important to have a strategy to execute. You’ve had a good first lap, I’d say. Now it’s on to the second.

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NBIGP2013
The first tour site is this Saturday night’s New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston’s Reggie Lewis Center.  I’m fortunate to be the house announcer for the meet.

In the featured men’s mile, 2011 World Championship bronze medalist Matthew Centrowitz, Jr. heads the field. There will also be both boy’s and girl’s junior miles, events which always light up the raucous New England fans.  The meet sold-out early, but you can watch it live on ESPN3 Feb. 2nd, and again on tape-delay on ESPN2 Sunday, Feb. 3, from 2-4 p.m. Eastern standard time.

Of course, the race that has everyone on the edge of their seats is the match up between Olympic 10,000m silver medalist Galen Rupp and his Olympic 5000 counterpart Dejen Gebremeskel of Ethiopia. These two battled three years ago at the Reggie over 5000m with both losing out to Bernard Lagat’s American record 13:11.50.  Gebremeskel took 2nd, Rupp a close fourth in what was his inaugural pro season.

But now they each hold Olympic hardware, and Rupp is coming off the fifth fastest indoor mile in history last week at the B.U. Invitational (3:50.92).  Gebremeskel will have to run something similar to his memorable one-shoe 3000 at the 2011 NBIGP meet where he bested now double Olympic champion Mo Farah in a final lap thriller.

This meet is not one to miss.

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Run 2013 Virgin London Marathon in Support of Team Entoto

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londonmarathonOrganizers of the sold out 2013 Virgin London Marathon have generously donated TWO entries to the Entoto Foundation.  Run one of the world’s most prestigious marathons and help a great cause!  The entries will go to the 2 highest “bidders” (people who commit to raise the largest amount of funds for Entoto.)  Funds can be raised by making a personal donation, receiving donations from friends and family in support of your run, or a combination of both.

Entoto will support you with a personal fundraising page that will be posted on our website and on Facebook.  Bidders must commit to raising funds of $2000 or more per entry.  Remember, this marathon is currently sold out!

And what a field London will have this year:  course record holders from all five World Marathon Majors, plus the 2012 Olympic Marathon champion Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda, and the world record holder Patrick Makau of Kenya.  In the women’s race you will see the highly anticipated marathon debut of the Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba, the triple Olympic gold medalist on the track and nine-time world champion who will take on four sub-2:20 performers from last year!

Be a part of history while helping ensure that someone without the same fortune of birth can better create a history of their own.

CLICK HERE to make a bid. It’s a win-win situation.

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Haile-Geb Marathon
And don’t forget that the Entoto Foundation has been named the official charity partner of the inaugural Haile Gebrselassie Marathon, coming this October 20th to Hawassa, Ethiopia. Experience a marathon hosted by history’s greatest runner.

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(Disclaimer:  I am a board member of the Entoto Foundation)

REMEMBERING THE CHALLENGER

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28 January 1986
28 January 1986

The Challenger space shuttle exploded on this day 27 years ago. For those too young to remember, people immediately began comparing it to the Kennedy assassination.  Everyone remembers where they were when they first heard the news. The feelings were of an ecumenical loss.

The day after however the stories quickly turned to coping.  This was pre-9/11, pre-periodic shooting sprees like in Tucson, Aurora and Newtown.  There had been a long span between national tragedies when the Challenger suddenly exploded just 73-seconds after takeoff against a cobalt blue Florida sky.  As such why it had happened (an O-ring seal in its right solid rocket booster failed at liftoff) wasn’t really the issue. Only that it did happen.

Millions viewed the Challenger launch live because of the presence of crew member Christa McAuliffe, who was the first member of the Teacher in Space Project and the (planned) first female teacher in space. Media coverage of the accident was extensive: one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident. Accordingly, the media quickly centered on ‘how are the children taking this?’

As sad experience has since shown, this is almost always the way we’ve addressed such monumental loss, even more so today. Yet the sense then, as it remains today, is the more we ask, ‘how do you feel’ to the children, the more we question how it is we feel ourselves. (more…)

A GRANDFATHER’S PRIDE

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Sabrina Benavides & Grandad Alberto Bazan
Sabrina Benavides & Grandad Alberto Bazan (behind in the straw hat)

With rich dreams being brought to life yesterday in New York, Boston, and Glasgow by Mary Cain, Galen Rupp and Duane Solomon, each heralding a fruitful beginning to the 2016 Rio Olympic cycle, it was at a small all-comers meet in Chula Vista, California that I was again reminded of track’s enduring draw.  On a dreary Saturday morning at the San Diego Track Club’s Mid-Winter Track Classic I witnessed track’s profound but timeless connection to effort, exhaustion, joy and frustration, the likes of which transcend the fanciful vogues of the moment while linking generations in a manner that the tastes of the day never can.

Toya taking the 1000m
Toya Taking the 1000m

As wife Toya completed a finely paced victory in the 1000-meter run at Montgomery High School’s Al Prazak Stadium, my eye was drawn to a young competitor focused on her upcoming race as she was being advised by portly man many years her senior.

A seventh-grader at El Centro Junior High, 13 year-old Sabrina Benavides was running in just the second 3000 meter track race of her life. She had debuted at this very meet one year ago, notching a 12:07 time.  Since then she had run a 20:27 5K at the Cougar Invitational, the cross country meet staged by Cal State San Marcos head coach Steve Scott, the former American record holder in the mile. Holding court with Sabrina before the start of her race yesterday was Alberto Bazan, 61, of Imperial, California, her grandfather. (more…)

DUBAI CHARGES INTO NEW YEAR, BUT WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP?

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Ethiopia's Lelisa Desisa win Dubai
Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa wins Dubai

Yesterday’s 14th Standard Charter Dubai Marathon came out, on paper, as one of the most thrilling and historic in marathon history. In a final 800 meter flurry five men, led by debutante Lelisa Desisa, 23, of Ethiopia, crossed the line sub-2:05:00, one better than the record set in Dubai 2012. Four of the top five finishers were also debs at the distance, cementing the understanding that the sport has fundamentally changed from an experienced-based test of endurance to a youth-based examination of speed over distance.

Yet, as scintillating as it may look in today’s news accounts, to actually watch the 2013 Dubai Marathon unfold was like watching a benighted hunting party running headlong through the mists of a post-apocalyptic cityscape with “eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders”, as Cormac McCarthy so luridly wrote in The Road. Except for the celebrating crowd of flag-waving Ethiopians at the finish, the rest of early morning Dubai was as empty as a ghost-town, not a soul out along the dead-flat palm-lined course.

And though a pack stretching 17-deep or more ran together past half-way, there wasn’t one graphic on the computer screen listing who was who, not one split, not one close up shot of any individual in the pack. Meaning, if you didn’t have an already highly developed interest in the game, there would be no discernible reason whatsoever to invest your time. But somehow as long as the thousands come and pay their entry fees, and fast times are created, all is well.

This morning I had a long conversation with British sports agent Ricky Simms of Pace Sports Management. Among others, Simms represents Olympic kings Usain Bolt and Mo Farah. (more…)