Credit where credit is due: USATF catches a lot of flack on here for its laissez faire event promotion and uninspired website (multimedia-free since 1993!) but they’ve really got a great thing going on with their Pick ‘N Win game. So much so that the IAAF is now launching one as well. Read more…
Is a world championship without the world’s best, truly a championship? This is the question posed by the NY Times in their coverage of Valencia 2K8.com — in an editorial, I might add. (Now that’s some serious ink.) And, if you ask me, it’s a pretty fair question. Championships are held to weed out the riff-raff and allow the very best in a sport to elevate themselves. They are the centrifuge of life, and the champions are the yield of this, this…. reverse emulsion! (The athletes even provide their own centripetal acceleration!)
So, if you hold the World Championships and Jeremy Wariner isn’t running the 400, and Kenny Bekele isn’t running the 3k, what do you have?
Say what you want about the tradition of America’s best runners not making World Championships a priority (excepting Outdoors, of course). This time around, a healthy number of the top US athletes are turning out for Valencia and plan on heading to Edinburgh. For once, this March might not be a month of split-squad games with overpriced tickets to see a line-up of a few stars and a bunch of kids headed back to Durham within a few weeks. And the traffic — oh, the traffic! — as you sit behind a train of maroon-haired ladies in wrap-around sunglasses driving to their Wednesday bingo. You can play Mah-Jong from the comfort of your own home, granny! Try it sometime! Like today!
But I digress: for us fans of running, this month is less Hot Stove and more just Stove. March marks a season of opportunity - to turn heads and make some noise with an eye toward the Olympics… Read more…