German track czars pick and choose which WMA rules to obey
According to reports on the official German Athletics site (DLV) and the unofficial (but sexier) blog kept by German world champ Annette Koop, the Germans are defying some changes approved by World Masters Athletics in the rules of competition. At the August 5 General Assembly, for example, Lahti delegates voted to scrap the 16-meter distance from the start to the first hurdle in the M60 100-meter hurdles and go back to the previous distance, 12 meters, which accommodated a traditional 8-step approach. The German DLV also said nein to changes in some women’s weights. Annette tore DLV a new one. She’s upset that her countrymen will lose shots at records.
Delegates at the General Assembly voted mostly by electronic device, not hands.
W90 superstar Olga Kotelko continues her world record romp
Olga Kotelko just kills me. She claims at least 15 world records in the run-up to Lahti, sets eight WRs there, and then what? She goes and sets some more a couple weekends ago at the British Columbia Senior Games in Richmond. Her most notable WR at Minoru Park was in the 400-meter dash. She broke the 3-minute barrier at age 90 to shatter the listed age-group record of 3:06.85 by Mexico’s Rosario Iglesias in 2001. Olga’s time was 2:50.28, according to these results. In July, Olga was among eight greats inducted into the Canadian Masters Hall of Fame. Here’s a report from Doug Smith in Ontario: “Inductees . . . were announced at the Championships Awards Banquet on Saturday, July 18, in Kamloops. Diane Palmason is the Chair of the Hall of Fame Committee. Members of the Committee presented the HOF plaques.”
Olga got her award from HoF chair Diane Palmason.
David O’Meara’s next mile odyssey: world tour in 30 minutes
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David O’Meara, who prefers asphalt to Mondo for his miles, recently finished a second summer of road races and achieved his goal: 27 mile runs (a little over a marathon) in a total time under 2 hours, 11 minutes. All but one were sub-5. In fact, his cumulative clocking was about 2:07. His 2009 odyssey trumped 2008’s, when he ran 20 sub-5 miles at age 45. So what does he do next? At this point, I’m tempted to say: “He’ll go to the ends of the earth to avoid running a mile on the track.” But that would only be half-true. I asked him about his plans for summer 2010, and he revealed: “We are launching our new 2010 event this week. It is ‘Around The World
In Less Than 30 Minutes.’ That is 6 one-mile races, on 6 continents (no
interest in Antarctica), in 6 weeks.” Wow! But a bigger revelation came in his next sentence: “I am running the mile next March at the National Masters Indoor
Championships in Boston, MA. I have only run indoors twice, but since
they offer the mile — I will attend. I ran a 4:37 in 2007, I would love
to break that mark in 2010.” Now that’s a challenge to all the M45s out there. Add David’s scalp to your trophy collection (even though his scalp is pretty thin, hairwise.)
September 23, 2009
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Pyramid 5K aims to benefit track at masters-friendly school
Everyone who’s competed at Long Beach State since 1995 knows the Pyramid — a dramatic blue-glass arena rising majestically north of the track. But the track itself has gone to seed, and folks running at Sunday’s Self-Transcendence meet noted its sorry shape. But thanks to the power of the Pyramid, a resurfaced track could be possible. M45 high jumper Tom VanZandt writes: “I am helping to put on the Pyramid Run at Long Beach State. See www.pyramidrun.com. This November 8 race will benefit the Long Beach State track and cross country teams. I think we all agree that the Beach has been a very strong
supporter of masters track and field over the years.” Indeed. It’s been the site of many Southern California Striders Meets of Champions and hundreds of all-comers meets open to masters. (And it was the scene of my first masters meet: Jan. 28, 1995.)
Introducing another major player: mastersathletics.info
Geoff Bramley of Brisbane, Australia, didn’t take baby steps when he conceived his marvelous masters Web site. He chose a domain name with grown-up ambitions: mastersathletics.info. Although the site launched last November, I wasn’t aware of it until he contacted me this month. And I immediately replied, calling his site “WONDERFUL!” And I sent some questions as well. “What started as a small local site is growing to encompass the whole of the Masters Athletics community with visitors from all over the world,” Geoff wrote me. “Hopefully I can continue to build on this interest and introduce new features to assist in the growth and interest in Masters
Athletics.”
Geoff used the content management system Joomla to build his masterful site.
Albert Erickson sets M80 world record — but only on paper
When (and if) Albert Erickson opened page 12 of September’s National Masters News, he must have been shocked. The lead item in Track Highlights said: “World Record Pole Vault at Seattle Classic” and reported how “Albert Erickson, M80, bettered the world and American pole vault marks for his age group with a 2.86 at the Seattle Classic on July 18th in Seattle, Washington. That betters the 2.75 set by Bud Held last year in Santa Barbara.” Only one problem. Albert jumped 2.08 (6-9 3/4) at the Seattle meet, not a WR 2.86 (9-4 1/2). Someone had sent NMN results with a typo, according to Becca Gillespy Peter, who wrote me: “I am the PNTF webmaster and noticed it when I was sent the results from the meet, as I saw Al on a weekly basis last summer and he told me what he jumped in the meet.”
September 22, 2009
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Nadine O’Connor’s encore: American record in debut 300H
Nadine O’Connor, the vault legend and world-record holder in the W65 100, has run hurdles before, “but never more than five,” she told me last night. Well, she’s no longer a long-hurdles virgin. Competing at Long Beach State University alongside Rita Hanscom, Linda Cohn and “a couple of guys,” Nadine yesterday ran the 300-meter hurdles in 56.71 — crushing the listed W65 American record of 62.49 by Barbara Jordan. Yes, it was her first-ever try at 300s. “I wasn’t sure I could even do it,” Nadine told me in a phone chat after the USATF-sanctioned Self-Transcendence Masters Meet (formerly Sri Chinmoy). Unsure of her endurance, she said she was dumbfounded at her success and how “absolutely fun” it was. The seven-hurdle race over 27-inch barriers ends at age 69. At 70, Nadine gets a crack at the 200-meter hurdles. But the listed WR for W65 300H is 55.69 by Holland’s Riedtje Dijknan in 2005. Nadine doesn’t even turn 68 until March, so she’ll have more tries.
September 21, 2009
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Sydney World Masters Games posts shorter entrants list
A few days ago, the list of track and field entrants at the Sydney World Masters Games mysteriously vanished from the site. Then suddenly a new list of entrants, dated Sept. 16, was posted. Here it is — all 200 pages (in PDF format). Not sure what’s behind the update — except the original list, dated Sept. 8, was 205 pages. OMG! Sydney has lost five pages of people! Alert the authorities for a mass abduction! Or whatever. Anyone notice a difference between the two lists?
Eurovets president once had secret life as redneck ranter
Dieter Massin
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When he’s not working behind the scenes to elect his friends to WMA offices, Dieter Massin of Germany holds sway over the Eurovets. He’s the president of the EVAA. But I recently learned that he’s something else: a formerly anonymous columnist who now writes a blog! What’s not to like? Dieter (whose last name is pronounced Mah-SEEN) asked me for a picture for his blog, and he graciously gave me a photo credit in the mugshot I sent (taken at the WMA General Assembly in August). Here is Dieter’s blog — or “blokk,” as he calls it. One entry describes how Dieter used the pen name Juppa. And: “As a man of the people who enjoys his long-deserved retirement, Juppa . . . has to everything and everyone a clear opinion that he — sometimes even unasked — in a humorous way (reveals) in his version of the Ruhrpott dialect.”
September 20, 2009
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WMA distances self from IAAF’s stupid edict on starting age
Back in mid-August, around the time of the IAAF World Championships in Berlin, the IAAF Congress adopted a strange rule for masters nonstadia events (mainly road running) — that the starting age for masters is 40. This was news to World Masters Athletics, which changed the opening men’s age group from 40 to 35 about six years ago and has always allowed women to begin masters competition at age 35. So lots of masters runners got hot and bothered, worrying about WMA’s age groups. Now WMA has issued an official response: The IAAF can go screw itself. Actually, WMA President Stan Perkins is a lot more diplomatic. Here’s the letter dated Sept. 10, 2009, that Stan wrote to WMA affiliates.
