2021 Outdoors

[philipo]

Elaine or Sydney. Elaine is the rightful world record holder in the 100m and 200m. Sydney's performance was up right up there with Warholm's IMO. She competed sparingly over 400mH but to become the first woman to go sub 52 at the US trials then take another half a second off that in the Olympic final was absolutely amazing. Not sure why she is not being talked about more on this forum.

Rojas's technique makes me wince, but cannot take away from what she has achieved and let's hope she can sort out her second phase and become the first woman over 16m in 2022. Faith Kipyegon also had a sublime season. Would love to see her given the respect she deserves. As Laura Muir said of Faith after the 1500m OLY final:"She's the greatest of all time. She doesn't get enough credit. She's won everything there is. I've got a lot of respect for her and I'm very, very happy to see her winning gold and I'm honoured to be behind her in that race."

When assessing an athlete for the AOY surely one should take on board that such an athlete has dominated in two events. For me the records of a notorious doper Flo Jo and the nonsense of her 10.49 that never was, makes ETH a WR holder and a co fave for the 2021 title of AOY.
.ETH competed many times against one of the greatest sprinters of all time, whereas Rojas had no comparable competition during the year.

[LuckySpikes]

the question of Hassan being possibly tainted is a dangerous game merely because she was part of the nutter Salazar group, but she has not been found remotely guilty of doping and,in any event, the fact of being one of the athletes of the Oregon Projec tleading to a doping suspicion is too harsh . Is our multi gold medals champion Mo Farah equally guilty... too much smell of LetsRun for me.

It has nothing to do with her being coached by Salazar but rather to do with the ridiculous way she was closing races starting from 2019.

I made a fairly long post about it 2 years ago but AW managed to delete 3 months of my posts so unfortunately it's lost to the ether.

To summarise, Hassan had sustained finishes that were far faster than any female athlete had run before (and notably in races that weren't that slow up to that point). In particular 2 races raised my suspicions ...

1) The Diamond League 5000m Final - ridiculous last 1000m
2) The WCh 10,000 in Doha - unbelievable last 1500

I can provide more detail (numbers basically) if you request it.

[philipo]

It has nothing to do with her being coached by Salazar but rather to do with the ridiculous way she was closing races starting from 2019.

I made a fairly long post about it 2 years ago but AW managed to delete 3 months of my posts so unfortunately it's lost to the ether.

To summarise, Hassan had sustained finishes that were far faster than any female athlete had run before (and notably in races that weren't that slow up to that point). In particular 2 races raised my suspicions ...

1) The Diamond League 5000m Final - ridiculous last 1000m
2) The WCh 10,000 in Doha - unbelievable last 1500

I can provide more detail (numbers basically) if you request it.

sorry we will have to disagree lucky. Glad to see my second choice won the womens award, ETH. well deserved, and Warholm for the mens award. Congrats to both.
Mu deserved her award as rising star .

The whole history of athleteics is full of athletes who did amazing things such as Owens WRs in Ann Arbor in a couple of hours; Zatopek's amazing |Marathon in his first attempt, when winning the Gold Medal in 1952. These and countless amazing performances would have taken the Letsrun nutters by storm who would have been babbling about doping, for sure.Its very easy to point the finger at any World Record holder.!!!

[Grassmarket]

World Athletes of the Year named - Karsten Warholm & Elaine Thompson-Herah.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/59496103

[Grassmarket]

Corrupt former IAAF head Lamine Diack dies.

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/convicted-ex-head-world-athletics-lamine-diack-dies-88-2021-12-03/

[Grassmarket]

BBC covering the next few World Champs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/59523137

[LuckySpikes]

Ha, the shortest obituary ever on the WA site? Currently just one sentence. They "note the death" not their usual "saddened to hear ..."

https://www.worldathletics.org/news/news/former-iaaf-president-lamine-diack-dies

[Occasional Hope]

That is a bit curt

I saw elsewhere that drugs cheat C J Hunter (Marion Jones's ex-husband) died recently, aged just 52. One suspects the drug use contributed...

[LuckySpikes]

The final entry lists have been published for next weekend's European Cross Country Championships in Dublin - https://european-athletics.com/news/...-championships

Keep an eye open early next week for my Fantasy Euro Cross contest - very easy and quick to enter!

[drobbie]

BBC covering the next few World Champs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/59523137

still no deal between them and british athletics , pathetic

[LuckySpikes]

Some notable European results from today's Valencia Marathon:

In 11th place Amanal Petros (GER) bettered his own NR with 2:06.26. In 12th Hamid Ben Daoud seems to have broken, by 1 second, Ayad Lamdassem's Spanish NR set last year at this race, 2:06:34.

Fionnuala McCormack ran 2:23:57 for 5th, breaking her PB by 2 mins 50s. Apparently she's also running Euro Cross next weekend! And in 10th place Giovanna Epis (ITA) also took almost 3 minutes off her best, running 2:25:19 to go #4 on the Italian A-T list.

[drobbie]

The final entry lists have been published for next weekend's European Cross Country Championships in Dublin - https://european-athletics.com/news/...-championships

Keep an eye open early next week for my Fantasy Euro Cross contest - very easy and quick to enter!

as usual i have absolutely no idea with this - apart from expecting 4 or 5 of the british teams will finish 1st to 3rd and barring a sniper ingebritsen will probably win the mens senior race - always a good watch almost exactly in the middle of the lull between the end of the outdoor season and the start of the indoor season

[LuckySpikes]

Japan has some fabulous female youngsters at the moment - Ririka Hironaka, Kaede Hagitani & Nozomi Tanaka have all run sub-15 for 5000 this year (aged 20, 20 & 21 respectively) and Tanaka 3:59 at 1500. Any of them would dominate in the NCAA.

But 18 year-old Seira Fuwa may turn out to be the best of them all. I first noticed her (and mentioned her here) in July when she ran 15:20.68. For an 18yo that was seriously impressive but what she did at Sunday's Morino Miyako Ekiden (AKA the Japanese Women's University Ekiden) was on another level. Heck, based on this, she might even be better than Hironaka etc already!

She ran the 5th leg, the longest leg at 9.2km. The Course Record for this leg from the previous 38 editions was 29:14. By no means a soft record - every team puts their best runner on this longest leg since it's where they can make the most difference. Anyway, Seira Fuwa ran a phenomenal 28:00 ... If she'd continued at that pace for another 800m she would have run 30:26 for 10km!!
The U20 WR on the track for 10,000 is 30:26.50. Finishing just ahead of her, Yuka Suzuki ran 28:59 (she ran a 31:37 PB on the track this year) and Narumi Kobayashi ran 29:28 (31:22 PB this year - the collegiate record). There's a few small ups and downs on this leg but the net elevation looks close to zero.

She's not 19 until next March and so will still be eligible for U20 records next year!

Someone put together a video of the TV coverage of her run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZWLjAkkhIM (it starts about 15s before she starts; she's in the orange top). She got quite a lot of air-time because they knew she's a talent and it was clear from the first kilometre that she was doing something amazing.

18yo Seira Fuwa's amazing Ekiden leg a few weeks ago was no fluke.

In Kyoto yesterday she ran 30:45.21 on her 10,000m debut, a Japanese U20 NR and #2 Japanese all-time. As mentioned above the U20 WR is Linet Masai's 30:26.50 and Fuwa will still be eligible for U20s next year!

[LuckySpikes]

Some of you may have been a fan of the Trackinsun results blog that Carles Baronet ran.

Well, there's great news! After a few months hiatus, it's back at a new web address - Search Google for track and field results carles baronet (the forum won't allow me to post the address in the post or in the comments)

[LuckySpikes]

I've really been enjoying the new World Cross Country Tour. Having the Gold meetings live streamed on the WA YouTube channel hasn't yet materialised as promised (maybe they're working on that for next season) but it's still been possible to watch all the meetings so far (without geo-blocking), except for the Silver meeting in Tilburg. That Tour continues this Sunday at Venta de Banos in Spain.

And the new World Race Walking Tour is taking shape nicely, set to start this weekend in Dublin.

There's 15 meetings on the Race Walking Tour so far:

Gold
Podebrady (CZE)
Warsaw (POL)
Taicang (CHN)
Dudince (SVK)
Rio Maior (POR)
La Coruna (ESP)
Suzhou (CHN)

Silver
Montreuil (FRA)

Bronze
Dublin (IRL)
Santee (USA)
Antalya (TUR)
Adelaide (AUS)
Olomouc (CZE)
Banska Bystrica (SVK)
Borsky Mikulas (SVK)

The calendar is at https://www.worldathletics.org/compe...endar-results?

You'll see that the first 4 legs of the Tour are 3 national championships and the Oceania Championships but they're all Open meetings that allow international guests as well. That happens quite a bit in race walking due to the relatively limited international opportunities. For example, last year the Turkish Championships attracted some very good Ukrainians, Belarussians & Kazakhs. The Oceania RW Championships has had a number of South/Central Americans, Europeans and Canadians competing because they winter at the sports nutrition centre in Australia. Of course, COVID may mean that this is less the case for these coming meetings.

I'm expecting at least 3 more events to be added to the Tour in due course. The old World Race Walking Challenge circuit had a Mexican meeting or two and due to the strength of race walking in Central & South America that region really needs a stop on the Tour. The Alytus meeting in Lithuania is also a quality meeting and I'd expect that to maybe get a Silver label. A couple of weeks ago the All Japan Walk meeting in Nomi was also on the Tour but has since disappeared off the list.
As one of the homes of race walking Italy should really have a stop on the Tour - a few years ago they used to have a meeting on the World Challenge circuit but that meeting was discontinued.
I'm also hoping that the Lugano (SUI) meeting is brought back into the fold after a few years off the World Challenge circuit.

I don't anticipate that all the meetings will have wonderful live streaming but 2022 is set to be a bumper year for live Race Walking on our TV/computer screens, what with us also having the World Team RW Champs, the World Champs, Commonwealth Games, European Champs, World University Games, World U20s, South American Games and a few other very good meetings such as the Spanish & Japanese Champs, the South American RW Championships and the Ivano-Frankivsk meeting.

[Ursus]

https://athleticsweekly.com/athletics-news/diamond-league-final-three-format-changed-1039952167/

Better….but still daft.

Wasn’t broken in the first place.