Which American Athletes Were Helped And Hurt the Most by the Olympic Postponement?
May 5, 2021
When the Tokyo Summer Olympics were officially pushed back a year in March 2020, we knew it would affect the composition of the US Olympic track & field team. Just as the US did not send the same team to the 2015 World Championships as it did to the 2016 Olympics, the roster it will send to Tokyo in July will differ from the one it would have sent last summer. Younger athletes have had an extra year to develop; older athletes have had an extra year to decline, with the impact being biggest at the extremes. One year of extra maturation is a much bigger deal in a positive way for a teenager than a 25-year-old and one year of extra age is a much bigger deal in a negative way for a 35-year-old than a 25-year-old.
WTW: A Look At The Ethiopian Olympic Marathon Team, America’s Teen Sprint Prodigies Continue To Impress, Courtney Wayment and Karoline Grøvdal Run Fast
Below we try to make sense of some of the major events of the last week.
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Assuming the Ethiopian federation sticks to what it has said it will do and take the top 3 from its trials to the Olympics, the list of names that didn’t make the 2020 Ethiopian Olympic men’s marathon team is staggering.
Kenenisa Bekele – the world’s greatest distance runner and second-fastest marathon in history isn’t on the team, nor is the third- or fourth-fastest men in history in
LSU maintained its hold on the top spot for the sixth consecutive week.
Abigail O’Donoghue improved her season effort in the high jump to 1.89m (6-2¼) for the third-best clearance of the year. In the long jump,
Aliyah Whisby soared to No. 8 with her 6.65m (21-10).
Arkansas remained at No. 2 and kept some distance from the rest of the top-5. The Razorbacks got some help on the track with two top-3 nationally ranked performances.
Krissy Gear clocked 4:09.00 in the 1500 for the second-fastest time of the season. Also moving up on the Descending Order List is
Tiana Wilson, climbing to No. 3 in the 400 with her 51.21.
Nigeria
Also Receiving Votes: Mercy Chelangat (Alabama); Anna Cockrell (Southern California); Anna Hall (Georgia); Marie-Therese Obst (Georgia); Camryn Rogers (California); Courtney Wayment (BYU)
NEXT: May 5
Clark, who hails from High Point, North Carolina, is the third woman from Alabama to make The Bowerman Watch List and the first since 2017. She won the Florida Relays 200 meters in a PR 22.50 which leads the nation outdoors after an indoor best of 22.45 that ties her for No. 7 on the all-time collegiate list. She was second at the NCAA Indoor in the 200 and fourth in 60. In the 100 she has clocked 11.07.
Davis, who hails from Agoura Hills, California, added the outdoor collegiate record in the long jump to match the indoor version. Her leap of 7.14m (23-5¼) to win the Texas Relays broke one the oldest records on the books, dating back more than 35 years to the legendary Jackie Joyner. Davis is now the first woman to hold the indoor and outdoor CRs at the same since another l
Hayward Field’s Grand Reopening Is Friday, And a Ton of NCAA Stars Will Be Racing
April 1, 2021
When the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field reopens on Friday with the Hayward Premiere meet, 1,028 days will have passed since it last hosted a track meet.
Back then, on June 9, 2018, the marathon world record was 2:02:57, the Nike Oregon Project still existed,
Donald Trump had zero impeachments, and we were still 18 months away from learning the word “coronavirus.” It has been a minute.
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Phil Knight‘s bulldozers razed old Hayward to the ground? It was pretty good:
With an estimated cost of $270 million, “new” Hayward is easily the most expensive track & field-specific facility ever built in the United States and immediately becomes the center of the American track & field universe: over the next 16 months, the stadium will host two NCAA championships, the US Olympic Trials, and the 2022 World Championships. Based on everything we’