Our 2013 USATF Masters Athlete of the Year Myrle Mensey continues to hammer the W65 records. Throwing Sept. 28 at Gary Cooper’s homegrown center in Troy, Missouri, she beat the listed WR in the 12-pound weight throw with a heave of 16.81 meters (55-1 3/4). Previous WR was 16.77 (55-0) by Holland’s Annie van Anholt in 2012. Myrle also extended her own American records in the hammer and 20-pound superweight to 39.61 (129-11 1/2) and 11.41 (37-5 1/4), respectively. Still looming is the W65 hammer WR of 44.38 (145-7 1/4) by Germany’s Jutta Schäfer way back in 1997. Myrle writes: “And I’m not finished. I think I got some better ones in me.” Results of the USATF-sanctioned throws meet where Myrle went bonkers are posted here. I converted the Word doc into a PDF here. Mega-mazel-tov to Myrle!
Missouri’s MM is ‘Mmm Mmm Good’ in the hammer and weight throws.
M65 Dennis Scott competed at WMA Asian regional meet in 2K steeple and other events.
A month ago, I wrote about an Americanset to compete in the Asian Masters Athletics WMA regional meet in Japan. M65 steeplechaser Dennis Scott lives in the Philippines. [But I linked to the wrong Dennis Scott in mastersrankings.com. Sorry.] Also contrary to my posts, Dennis competed after all — albeit hobbled by injury. Dennis posted a detailed comment, saying: “The reason you didn’t see the steeple results is that you were looking at the page listing only the Japanese runners. What was supposed to be the 18th AMA was changed by Japan into a joint venue to include the Japanese masters national championships. They created a huge delay in event start times because they brought in 1,944 athletes (every city team and track club), and not just in masters age 35+, but starting from 25+. Whereas you might normally expect 3 athletes from one country in an event, the Japanese flooded almost everything with their people. In one of my events, the M65 1500m, there were 31 Japanese.” But his biggest revelation was about the atrocious officiating at the Japan meet, where one of his teammates (a long jumper and two-time Olympian) was injured after not being given a chance for warmup. See below.
Dennis Scott wears a Kenya singlet sometimes, and has made friends with that country’s runners. They call him "the white Kenyan."
Masters middle-distance legend Anselm LeBourne has a youth-oriented business in the running for a $150,000 small-business grant from an arm of JP Morgan Chase.(See the deal.) “Our company, Running Development Academy, has applied for a Mission Street Grant,” he writes. “We needs 250 votes by Oct. 17, 2014, to be one of the finalists.” Voting is free and easy. Just click on the blue Vote now button on this page. “Help us gain enough votes to apply for a grant,” he says of Running Development Academy, “an athletic company specializing in the facilitation of athletic scholarships to Colleges in the USA for those children in the urban communities. This program is a year-round program and also Provide SAT classes to better prepare athletes.” When the voting period ends, a grants panel decides on the top businesses. Recipients will be announced in January 2015. Best of luck, Anselm!
The late Olga Kotelko would likely be No. 1 in any 2014 rankings.
John Seto thinks his seasonal lists website can be a platform for “World Rankings Awards” for 2015. He writes: “Athletes will get points for their ranking (legal wind performances only) in each ranked event and the athlete with the most combined points in each WMA region after the 2015 rankings are finished in early 2016 will receive an award. The athlete who earns the most points worldwide may get a different award.” He concedes this is an idea-in-progress. But first he has to assure mastersrankings.com (or its parallel sites) is financially sustainable. More recognition is good. But some single-event athletes may consider this unfair. (What if a 50-year-old high-jumps 7 feet or runs a sub-4 mile?) Also TBD: What prizes, and who pays for them? On the positive side, this could encourage more event experimentation — and compete with the highly subjective (and political) IAAF World’s Best Athlete Awards. We’ll keep an eye on this, and see what WMA thinks of it.
Tamil Naduis a state in southern India. One of its masters sprinters is named Dr. George Abraham Ambattu. But he could use a cure for the wobblies. Watch him cross the line in a 100-meter dash in March, winning what a YouTube video depicts as the “National Masters Athletics Championships-2014 in Coimbatore. Tamilnadu. Men U40 100M Final.” Officials appear to be watching the start well. Hope they watched the finish as well. Anyone got results?
The Huntsman World Senior Games track meet wrapped up Wednesday in St. George, Utah, and results have been graciously shared by Judie Pesznecker. One stuck out as Beamonesque, but I doubt its accuracy. W75 Ingeborg Siegers of Germany is credited with a 2-kilo shot mark Monday of 16.63 meters (54-6 1/2), or 18 feet better than the listed WR of 11.10 (36-5) by Evaun Williams and nearly twice as far as the runner-up. [Thursday update: Judie says she looked at a later report of the shot put and it shows Ingeborg Siegers with a 6.63m shot and in 6th place. “I’ve made that change on our website,” she writes.]. Also, we see a first-place tie in the M80 shot of 10.02 meters (32-10 1/2) by Melvin Heath and Leonard Rosen. So neither had a second throw to break the tie? I don’t have my PDF-combining software with me at the moment, so here are the files separately for all three days: Monday field events and Monday track events, Tuesday field events and Tuesday track events and Wednesday field events and Wednesday track events. Sorry for the hassle. Any notable marks I’m missing?
Women like road races more than track meets because LDR events aren’t as competitive. That’s my summary of a story summarizing an article in Evolutionary Psychology. I suspect some of y’all may beg to differ. Is it really true that female distance runners don’t really care how they finish? In any case, here’s what a Michigan shrink said: “Road races have grown tremendously in popularity in the past few decades but most runners have a recreational orientation, not a competitive one. This is shown in how they answer questionnaires and in their generally slow performances. They run for their mental and physical well-being and to socialize. Track meets are completely different — there aren’t medals for every finisher, they haven’t become popular, and the runners that do show up almost always run fast.”
Former USATF Masters Athlete of the Year and M90 multi-event superstar Ralph Maxwell died Sept. 28 at his home in Richville, Minnesota, surrounded by family,according to news reports. He was 94 and never ceased to make me smile. He competed as recently as March in Florida. A retired judge who set many records, WMA still lists him for M90 outdoor WRs in the 80- and 200-meter hurdles and the decathlon and pentathlon. He also was vault recordman for a few years. Indoors, he holds the 60-meter hurdles record and the pent best. He’s been featured here many times, and sometimes for antics off the track (his anti-Romney poem, for example). I haven’t read a cause of death, but nearly two years ago, he talked about having cancer. Type not specified. In December 2012, he wrote me: “I’ve got good news and bad. First, the bad. It’s cancer. The good news is this: When you eventually die, it will be some other cause, not this one.” Ralph said he was in Costa Rica for Christmas, “vigorously training as usual — running, jumping, throwing. If I felt any better, I would have to be put on a leash.”
Ralph was the greatest M90 hurdler in history, especially at 2011 worlds.
John Seto’s work-in-progress website remodel continues. But an interesting development is the name of the site. He registered athleticsrankings.net to house the databases created for mastersrankings.com. He also says he’s moved to a new server (godaddy.com). “This should perform faster and have less, if any, interruptions than the previous host,” he writes. So now you can access the U.S. and world lists via either name. The good stuff (season lists, events and age groups, men and women) are found in dropdown menus on the lefthand side. Site is less cluttered. On Oct. 2, John posted this note on homepage:”The site improvements are progressing well and you should be able to submit your results again by the end of my day on October 5th. Thank you to those who have provided feedback and suggestions. Some have already been incorporated. Obviously, the site appearance has been changed. There are some subtle things that are being done dynamically but it will not impact using the site.”
Late last month, M55 jumper Willie Banks was honored at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Assembly awards dinner in Chicago, which drew a crowd of 300. He received the group’s Olympic Torch award for his positive impact on the Olympic Movement. “When they told me about the award, I was shaking to the core because you don’t expect these kinds of things — especially somebody like me because I wasn’t a huge star,” Banks said. “To be recognized for the amount of time I spent away from my family and the long times in hotels and airports, it’s a great feeling.” The site report added: “His athletic accomplishments include setting the world record in 1985 and holding it for a decade. He is also well-known for popularizing the triple jump by encouraging the crowd to clap as he prepared for his run-up, a tradition that Friday’s crowd acknowledged by beginning that rhythmic clap during the presentation of Banks’ award. The 58-year-old was quick to humor his audience by hopping up from his seat and taking three jumps in front of the stage.”
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...]
