Joy MacDonald, a former distance runner who set W55 and W65 world records in the vault, has died of a heart attack, her daughter reports. When wasn’t specified, but Jennifer MacDonald writes that her mom passed away while working at her desk. “[She] had been feeling fine prior,” Jennifer says. “She was able to maintain her exercising, fitness and active lifestyle right up until the end, which is how she would have wanted it. Unfortunately her 20+ years of smoking in her youth caused irreparable damage which eventually caught up to her. I am fortunate to have had her as long as I did.” In fact, according to a 1985 profile, Joy once smoked four packs a day. “I went to the track and couldn’t finish a mile,” Joy told a local paper. “It took me a month and a half to run a mile. I was not about to stop there.”
The W55 vault WR progression suggests that Joy was a women’s PV pioneer.
We know fast-twitch muscles make sprinters and slow-twitchers are distance types. It’s also obvious that you want to pick parents who live a long time. But can genetic testing give you a leg up as well? British sprinter Craig Pickering says yes. Writing in Athletics Weekly, Craig argues: “It is worth reiterating here that the idea behind genetic testing is not to change your end goal. If you’re a sprinter, but you didn’t have the RR ACTN3 allele, your genes wouldn’t tell us that you couldn’t be a sprinter. Instead, we would look at training recommendations that should allow you to get the most out of your training, by playing to your genetic advantage. Similarly, injury predisposition testing information can be used to provide specific exercise interventions within a prehabilitative training programme, even without current symptoms.”
Who knew? According to the Irish Times, an M90 standout thinks M95 will be a tough age group. Hugh Gallagher is quoted as saying: “Competition is very keen in the Over 95 section at the moment, so there’s plenty to look forward to.” In any case, Hugh is shooting for 2015 worlds. “The winner of more than 150 All-Ireland track and field athletic gold medals, Hugh (90) is now training for the World Masters Athletics Championships in Lyon, France, next August. Before that, there’s the All-Ireland Masters indoors in Athlone (March) and outdoor championships in Tullamore (July), where he hopes to take part in the 60-metre sprint, the shot putt and long jump.” He’ll savor any meet, since he’s lucky to be here.
Sue McDonald is the W50 American record holder in the high jump, going 1.57 (5-1Âľ) in June 2013. Add another credit to Sue’s list: founder of a social media site for athletes to chat about Lyon worlds. She has launched this closed Facebook group. To join, send Sue a friend request. She writes: “We will be sharing information in regards to the meet, travel plans, hotel arrangements, transportation, budgets, how to prepare for an International trip, what to be ready for. My hope is that we all become friends and benefit from the shared information and cheer each other on.” Great idea! This augments my Forums, but with better functionality.
It’s still 22 months away, but the Western Australian Tourism Commission has posted information on 2016 WMA outdoor worlds in Perth. The domain name was registered July 19, 2011 — less than a week after Perth was chosen at the 2011 General Assembly meeting at Sacramento worlds. The event (WMA’s first outdoor worlds in an even-numbered year) will be held Oct. 26 through Nov. 6. (At 2001 Brisbane worlds, the meet dates were July 4-14. Go figure. Lyon worlds will be in August 2015.) Venues are listed here, including the West Australian Athletics Stadium, resurfaced by Mondo, and promised to be “in top condition for the Championships with the work carried out in January 2014.”
Charles Austin, the American record-holder in the high jump, recently turned 47. He gave an interview in which he retold the story of his M45 record jump (still unratified) last summer. But the biggest revelation could serve as a New Year’s resolution. “I may not be able to do 7-10,” he tells Athletes Quarterly. “But if I train, I can still do 7-0 with no problem. I worked too hard over the years to let [my fitness] go to waste.” He told me much the same thing in July. In early December, Charles said his coach, Sue Humphrey (also the 2004 USA Olympic women’s coach), had provided Sandy Pashkin what she needed for records verification. Maybe new records chair Jeff Brower will take a closer look. Here’s wishing your goals come to pass and resolutions stay kept. Happy 2015.
Doug “Shaggy” Smith of Ontario posted this video showing images of Canadians at world masters championships since the 1970s. It’s meant to encourage Canadian sign-ups for Lyon worlds in August 2015. “Be part of history!” Doug writes, adding with a snarky smile: “AMERICAN FRIENDS **Caution** – you may find this short video so stirring that you may want to defect north!!” Well, maybe not. But the idea of encouraging countrymen to join the national team is worth replicating south of the northern border — but with a different national anthem as background music.
Canadians hosted the first world masters meet (Toronto 1975), of course.
Among the masters reports given at the USATF annual meeting recently in Anaheim was one by outgoing active-athletes rep Mary Trotto. It’s an eye-opener. (See it here.) She compiled positive and negative feedback on the WMA world indoor meet in Budapest. The harshest criticism (by an unnamed athlete) dealt with heats in the wake of scratches. Apparently, the folks in charge did a poor job of reseeding fields — or didn’t even bother to. That’s unacceptable at a world championship. It may have been 10 months ago, but the failures deserve follow-up. What hiccups did you observe at worlds?
The late Jock Jocoy was pictured at 1984 Eugene nationals in NMN. He was M55 that year.
The folks at Australian Masters Athletics are the picture of creativity. They are planning a “Nostalgia Photo Display” at 2015 outdoor masters nationals in Sydney. “So far we have received Nationals photos from 1974, 77, 79, 80, 84, 86 to 92, 94 & 99, so we are still after some from the missing years,” says a posting. “Please have a look through your photo albums over Christmas and send them through to our photo collator Ron Wills as jpeg files to ron.wills39@gmail.com. Please identify the event, date the photo was taken, and as many persons as they can.” Wouldn’t it be cool to collect similar shots [from private collections] for USATF masters nationals? These digital images also could be posted on mastershistory.org — the USATF-subsidized site. But why stop at Australia and America. Every affiliate should focus on such a project. WMA, get behind this!
Malcolm Gillis of Alabama, a pioneering masters marathoner who completed the 5K-10K-marathon triple at 1995 Buffalo worlds, died Dec. 2 at age 81, his local paper reports. His son, Bob, told a story from 1997 Durban worlds: “[Malcolm] was walking around the city, and two youthful men knocked him down. One sat on him while the other picked his wallet out of his back pocket. Then they both scampered away in opposite directions. Shocked and dirty but unhurt, he chased after one of them, for many blocks through twists and turns. ‘The man was confident of escape at first, but as the blocks wore on he became more and more winded,’ Bob said. ‘Finally he could go no further, and Malcolm sat on him and asked that someone call for the police. A constable arrived shortly and took the man into custody.’ The trial was set for a few days later, and his father changed his travel plans to take part.”
Malcolm showed off medals in 2004; he died after a decade of dementia.
Ken has followed track as an athlete, writer and web-master since the late 1960s, and saw most sessions of track and field at the 1984 Los Angeles and 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He also attended the 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Trials, the last three as a blogger and Patch correspondent. [More...]
