World Championships: Final Day

The last day of this madness…the meet is taking its toll…..just look at the wreckage in our rented apartment. Bodies everywhere…

Took myself on out on the town for a magnificent coffee shop breakfast. The best part was the solitude: very few people there at 7 AM on a Sunday.

 A little bike ride to loosen the legs.....across the Willamette and into Springfield. When I realize I'm a bit ahead of schedule, I take a detour up Skyline to Pre's Rock. 

'Up' is a key word here....that climb is a GRIND. 

Time to roll....organizers throw some extra swag our way. 

A little early for the day's events, so I take a 30 minute snooze under the bleachers. 

Yesterday's standings. I think we might be able to pull out a squeaker. 

Shalane does a nice job with the cookbooks...and the marathon. 

American great Craig Masback. 

Track ace Mica sends me this shot of Craig back in the day....

I show the picture to Craig, thinking there's no way he remembers that race. Oh nay, nay...

1) Cambridge/Oxford vs the Ivy League, probably around 1976

2) Iffley Road Track, Oxford

3) Craig's first sub-4 minute mile

4) The second sub-4 minute mile on that track, the first being Roger Bannister in 1954

5) Roger Bannister was in attendance to watch Craig's race

I LOVE TRACK!

House of Run podcast host Kevin. If you enjoy the sport, listen in. He and fellow host Jason do an incredible job. And if you can stump them on arcane trivia from the Prefontaine movie 'Without Limits,' you are exempt from a muddy training run up Skinner's Butte with Roscoe and Kenny. 

I tell Kevin my solution for the US men's persistent baton problems in the 4x100m relay. Forget coaching by Carl Lewis, Mike Marsh, et al.....have the men's get instruction from....THE US WOMEN. Dead serious here....the women seem to pass the stick just fine. 

That relay was incredible. Recent collegian Abby Steiner had the second leg and was running directly at me with a look of pure hate on her face.....she puts a quarter second into two time 100m Olympic Champion Elaine Thompson....then hometown UO phenom Jenna takes the stick and gives Jamaica's Shelly Ann a run for her money as well. The US anchor leg is just enough to take the victory. Tremendous job....like I said, they should be training the men. 

This British guy is one of the on-field announcers. He looks familiar to me...

I show him this picture and ask if he's the same guy...2012 Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford. 

He chuckles and says, "No, that's my friend Greg." This guy is Iwan Thomas, silver medalist on the 1996 Olympic 4x400 relay. One of my favorite races, because an upstart American team of unproven runners took down the vaunted Brits. 

Best hurdle team in the world! These folks had their hands on a second world record, this time the women's 100m high hurdles. 

Men's decathlon hurdles: the guys look like a Murderer's Row lineup, everyone has their game face on. Reminds me of this shot from the 2012 Olympic Trials, when some guy was pumping himself up for the 400m. 

For the hurdles semi-final, I'm stationed between Phil Knight's suite and the Nike suite. Here's Uncle Phil. 

The first hurdle semi starts, and I see world record holder Keni Harrison falling back by the halfway point. A Nigerian woman takes the race in 12.12. No reaction from anyone, as people nearby are busy talking about family and their dinner plans. I blurt out, "That's a world record, people!" 

The decathlon competitors run the 1500m on exhausted leg. A guy from Puerto Rico is in medal contention, so he busts it....soon after the finishing, the scoreboard updates and shows him third overall, and he commences to big happy sobbing. 

Then the scoreboard updates once more and he's relegated to fourth. That's just COLD. 

"Unfair" (Definition): putting Michael Norman on leg 2 of the 4x400m relay. 

The pole vault happens right in front of me. Another world record, and exactly 1 minute before the TV feed ends! And how did I miss that front flip? 

As the meet ends, the American team stages themselves next to my post, so I have to find an escape route under the stands. Good thing I'm fairly thin. 

So THIS is where they're hiding legendary UO coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. Under the bleachers? 

I see light....

The colors in the stadium are stunning....and Legend takes a final lap on his scooter. 

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe...he has some Olympic jewelry of his own. 

Outward bound...

On my melancholy walk back to my room, I see this Ethiopian celebration.

6 years of waiting for this meet. What an experience. Hopefully to be topped by...

Los Angeles 2028. 

Day 9: Great food (finally), and Relays that work (sometimes)

Day 8: A Cuban embargo lifted, an airborne Mac, and Syd the Kid

Day 7: An American Record, and Old Friends

Day 6: Cuff, Link, and Butkus

Day 5: Errant Photographers, and a kid who finally listened to Dad

Day 4: Don’t you hate it when your clothes don’t fit (and errant photographers)

Day 3: Marathons, Dance Cams, and not enough caffeine

Day 2: Celebrity Day at the Track

Day 1: Preview

World Championships Day 9: Great food (finally) and Relays that work (sometimes)

The penultimate day. As tired as I was last night, I still woke up at 0500. Oh well. 

My vantage point for the women’s 100 m hurdles, a nice view from up here…

Lots of wreckage in the heats, including two of the four Americans. Yikes….Nia Ali was easily leading, when she buried flight #9 and ate Mondo. Quite shaken up….Then Alysha Johnson tattoos the first hurdle and stops. A few other athletes hit the deck hard as well. 

Track is a contact sport. 

Here’s Olympic Champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn after winning her heat (and being held up by NBC’s Lewis Johnson). 

She looks happier being interviewed by this Asian crew. 

And oh by the way…

A bit o’ clarification: Jasmine’s mom was two years behind me at Somerville (NJ) High School. I introduced myself, then Jasmine Face Time’d her mother on the spot, and I was able to say hi after almost 40 years!

No more lunch in the dining hall. Just can’t do it anymore; fortunately, food trucks outside the track are doing some good things…

African Cajun tacos….who knew? 

We use ‘prisms’ to mark the break line for the 800m and 4x400 relays. More like a green rectangle that we place at specific spots on the track…Dave and Jeannie are the subject matter experts. 

The dorm has two parking spaces out front that require no permit on weekends. More importantly, no one knows about them. I do…

My man Ishmael is the hurdle crew chief; those folks do a precise job EVERY TIME. After last night’s excitement, they went to celebrate at a local restaurant. Ish noticed Sydney’s sister there, so he told her that the entire crew was there to celebrate. Sis texted sis, and in short order the world record holder shows up to thank the whole crew. 

How cool is that? (Answer: pretty)

A better shot of Legend’s hijinks from last night: 

First event of the evening session is a do-over; one of the pileups from this morning’s hurdle heats caused some interference, so a runner is given a chance to qualify in a solo heat. Just an individual time trial….problem is, she chunks the final hurdle and goes down. 

The US women show up big-time and lay waste to the vaunted Jamaicans in the 4x100 relay. Abby Steiner puts 0.24 into reigning Olympic Champion Elaine on the backstretch leg. 

I still need to read that sentence again. 

Meanwhile, on her home track, UO grad Jenna Prandini puts it to multiple gold medalist Shelly Ann on the final turn. Jamaica makes a charge in the homestretch but comes up short. That was one spectacular race!!

The US men show up and exceed expectations. Translation: they didn’t drop the stick this time, but two horrible baton passes doom them to second place. On paper, they had no peer, but exchanges are a thing. They’re lucky they weren’t DQ’d, as the last pass was clearly out of the zone. Oh well….baby steps. 

I feel really bad for the British and Italian teams. Not because of their results….but because they must have made their travel plans late. While most teams are in the fancy, air conditioned, well stocked new dorms near the track, those two teams are housed in stifling hot Carson Hall with the officials….and the nasty food. 

One more day. Women’s 800, Men’s Pole Vault, Men’s 5000, both 4x4 relays. 

Gonna be a burner. 

And the worst thing that happened all day? This morning, I thought I grabbed my multivitamin gummies, but instead I bit into a fish oil capsule. 

That’ll wake you up, all right. 

Day 8: A Cuban embargo lifted, an airborne Mac, and Syd the Kid

Day 7: An American Record, and Old Friends

Day 6: Cuff, Link, and Butkus

Day 5: Errant Photographers, and a kid who finally listened to Dad

Day 4: Don’t you hate it when your clothes don’t fit (and errant photographers)

Day 3: Marathons, Dance Cams, and not enough caffeine

Day 2: Celebrity Day at the Track

Day 1: Preview

World Championships Day 8: A Cuban embargo lifted, an airborne Mac, and Syd the Kid

My last day of work work. No more 0430 wake up calls, no more early evenings for your intrepid blog author. 

Breakfast turned out okay. Tasty quiche. 

I did notice that, once again, chicken is on the noon menu, but thank goodness not of the lemon herb variety. 

Saw a great article about the gold and silver medalists in the 1976 Olympic 400m. I’ve worked many meets with Fred: heck, the man was my childhood hero, and I’m just thrilled to know him. One of my all time favorite moments on the track with him occurred at the 2012 Olympic Trials.

Great shot of that amazing Montreal 4x400m relay team, with Fred on the left. Look at the smiles! You’d be happy too, if you ran 2:56 almost 50 years ago….#Wheels…..and I always was in awe of bespectacled Bennie Brown’s shoulders. 

From the “completely unrelated to track but still awesome” category, here is a boss move if I ever saw one! Business travelers, take heed. 

Full work day, as usual, but enough time to ride my bike for 45 minutes or so along the River Trail. Then it’s off to play track once again!

While walking thru the stadium before the events begin, i see 1500m finalist Josh Thompson. I tell him that during Nationals, I was standing on the track in front of his family, and my ears are still ringing. He ran that race from the back, only moving up at the bell, and snuck into 3rd place at the wire. Very cool to see a guy with a child of his own work his way onto the Worlds team. I believe he got a personal best here as well. 

I asked if he knew what happened to Woody Kincaid, who fell in the 5000 semi and couldn’t quite make up the ground to qualify. Josh said that Woody was clipped from behind; his protest was disallowed because the judges said the fall was early and he had plenty of time to catch up. If that’s an accurate accounting, it’s a horribly unfair outcome. He was tripped by someone else, found himself injured and 30m behind the pack, and is denied the final because there were a lot of laps remaining?!?

Not cool. 

College classmates Chris and Duncan are in the house once more! They were here at the 2016 Trials, when Chris somehow recognized me from 30 years prior, and confirmed by digging thru the meet program to find the umpire listings. Duncan ran down from the bleachers and got this great shot of us. 

The men’s 400 was interesting: 4 runners abreast coming off the final turn, and Mike Norman squeezes out the victory. Shaunae Miller-Uibo has no such problems in the women’s final, as she put the race away handily. 

Then, the women’s 400m hurdles. At Nationals, Sydney set a world record with no competition, and we all wondered what she’d do with the best runners in the world pushing her at this meet. 

What she did is go lights out, putting away the race on the backstretch, and continuing her destructive assault on this poor defenseless event. Who breaks their own world record by 3/4 of a second? 

If she runs that time against the open 400m finalists (she hurdles while they don’t), she’s 7th in the final. That’s pure insanity. Then again, she’s from Central Jersey, so that explains much!

(I grew up in Central Jersey myself, so my own insanity is similarly explained away)

I was feeling great, full of energy after the meet, and one drink changed all that. It’s been a long 10 days for me! I was so tired that I left my phone in the car and missed a perfectly good photo op with Anna Cockrell and Raevyn Rogers. 

#RookieMistake

Day 7: An American Record, and Old Friends

Day 6: Cuff, Link, and Butkus

Day 5: Errant Photographers, and a kid who finally listened to Dad

Day 4: Don’t you hate it when your clothes don’t fit (and errant photographers)

Day 3: Marathons, Dance Cams, and not enough caffeine

Day 2: Celebrity Day at the Track

Day 1: Preview

World Championships Day 7: An American Record, and old friends

Every day begins with a 0530 conference call, as I’m working a full schedule during the meet. So no late nights for Nicky Boy. At least on weeknights, but Friday nite will be different, because i definitely need a night out. 

Here’s my early morning view, walking from the (air conditioned) apartment to the dorm. This would be more difficult if there wasn’t a 16 oz latté in my hand. 

Key words: ‘Air conditioned.’ Like most of the country, we’re pushing heat wave status, and the dorms are without cooling. Good investment on my part to find a place that lets me sleep comfortably. 

Problems with my work laptop at 0500, and the Help Desk isn’t open yet. So i use the on-call line for immediate support…..and I get voicemail. Grrrrrrrrrrr………..

Tonite is the men’s 200m final….sorry, I forgot the words ‘much anticipated,’ as this will be a shootout at the OK Corral (only because ‘15th and Agate’ doesn’t sound as sharp). Young lad Erriyon Knighton, all of 18 years old soaking wet, owns the 4th fastest time in history. He’s a quiet, non-demonstrative sort, just showing up with his lunch pail and punching the time clock. His main rival is Noah Lyles, a veteran at 25 years old, and quite a showboat. Lots of posturing, playing to the crowd, attention seeking. Lyles gets the crowd riled up, all right. 

At the qualifying meet for Worlds, Lyles snuck past Knighton at the wire and immediately started the ‘me, me, me’ garbage. And of course NBC (TV, not me) fed into that during the post-race interviews, so Knighton cut his discussion short and bailed, with steam coming out of his ears. 

I know ‘karma’ and ‘schadenfreude’ have two different meanings, but man oh man, i hope Erriyon destroys the field (and Lyles) tonite. 

Couple days ago, I talked about the Dance Cam. These two Detroit guys came back for Act 2!!

A few pix before the meet started…

Some nice kicks: 

This does not appear to be Dirk….

I seem to be fairly dehydrated today, not sure why. So, the remedy…

A few guys in the crowd ask me what my protein shake is….I say it’s a diet drink, low calorie. 

Stadium announcer Geoff Wightman is maybe the best known celebrity of the meet, having watched his son win a world championship while Dad had to maintain his professional/impartial composure. I’ll give him a pass on any outbursts he might have uttered. 

Electric day on the track: 

Men’s 5000m semi-final….Woody Kincaid takes an early tumble in front of me, and I believe someone else caused the fall. Very quickly, he’s 40m down on the leaders, and sporting a whole lot of road rash. The deal is that the first five in each semi to finish are automatically advanced to the final, and then the next five fastest overall are advanced as well. I’m hopeful that Woody will file an appeal, since the fall seemed to be not his fault….regardless, Woody gets mad and goes full burner to get one of the time qualifiers; the boy has a brisk final lap. He just misses the last qualifying slot, so hopefully the referee will slot him into the final. Rough day for him. 

Same in the women’s 800 heats. A runner from Australia is seemingly clipped from behind and goes down hard, a face first dive into the mondo track surface. She gets up VERY slow and wobbles across the finish line….if SHE isn’t advanced, there is no justice in the world. 

Women’s 200m final; Shericka Jackson runs possibly the fastest time ever in leading a Jamaican 1-2 finish, with a beaming Dina Asher-Smith grabbing the bronze. 

Now, the aforementioned mens’s 200…..I notice Erriyon is quietly focused, same for world #1 (and Cheesehead) Kenny Bednarek. Who is not quiet? Noah Lyles. He takes a run out or two and whips the crowd into a frenzy. I’m SMH. 

Then what happens? He destroys the turn, destroys the straight, and ties Michael Johnson’s American Record of 19.32 while not being challenged. After he stops, he stares at the timer with a look that says, ‘Seriously? You’re gonna call that a tie?’

And then the timer clicks backward a notch. 19.31!!!!! The track roars its approval, and Noah shreds his jersey in response. Meanwhile, I cannot confirm whether Michael Johnson filed an appeal. 

It ain’t bragging if you can back it up. 

Kenny and Erriyon finish off a 1-2-3 American sweep, with Erriyon becoming the youngest ever WC sprint medalist. Not bad, given that he graduated high school last month. 

And that’s an American clean sweep of both sprints, another first. Fast twitch fiber seems to be the rage again in the US. 

On my walk to the apartment after the meet, Track Town Pizza was the place to be….I never got the memo…

The Cadence Club is some ridiculously expensive marketing ploy….for a mere $2,000, get a finish line ticket and fancy food on the turf field. I notice the area is sparsely populated, go figure. 

You may know that I am a track history fanatic, have been since age 10. I grew up with names like Bones Dillard, Horace Ashenfelter, and Lee Evans imprinted in my brain. I’m always looking for links to the past. 

At every Hayward Field meet, I see chief clerk Wade Bell. He ran the 800 for Bill Bowerman in the late 60’s, and was also a sub-4 minute miler back in the era of sloppy cinder tracks. He later became Bowerman’s personal CPA…..Wade was an odds-on favorite for a podium finish at the Mexico City Olympics, but Montezuma’s Revenge took him down in the heats. 

Yesterday, as I’m walking out of the stadium, I see this scene, and I nearly cry. 

That’s Wade embracing 1968 200m bronze medalist John Carlos. Given their body language, that might have been the first time they’ve seen each other since the Mexico Games. 

Long story short: John and 200m winner Tommie Smith (also in attendance here) did the Black Power Salute on the podium and were thrown out of the Olympic Village. Somebody told them in advance, “Don’t do it, you won’t be able to get a job.” Teammate and WR holder Lee Evans said in response, “We can’t get a job now, so what’s the difference?”

The man who won silver in Mexico City, an Australian named Peter Norman, was 100% supportive of John and Tommy on the victory stand. That earned Peter his own banishment Down Under for years….at his funeral, John and Tommy were pallbearers, friends until the end. 

I’m glad I have this blog to remember days like today. 

Day 6: Cuff, Link, and Butkus

Day 5: Errant Photographers, and a kid who finally listened to Dad

Day 4: Don’t you hate it when your clothes don’t fit (and errant photographers)

Day 3: Marathons, Dance Cams, and not enough caffeine

Day 2: Celebrity Day at the Track

Day 1: Preview