Irene Obera, the W80 Hall of Famer seeking IAAF Masters Athlete of the Year recognition, set another world record Friday in Perth — clocking 18.70 in the 80-meter hurdles and beating her own 18.96 from the hep last week, which in turn sliced her 19.32 from Lyon worlds. But how do you top this: A tie for first in W70 sprint hurdles — both in WR time!? Austria’s Marianne Maier and China’s Fuen Teng, running into a 0.9 mps wind, both claimed gold at 15.93 seconds. The listed WR was 16.04 by Marianne at 2013 Porto Alegre worlds. (She’s 73 now.) But Marianne ran 15.72 into another wind in her hep. So that might qualify instead. Just goes to show what head-to-head racing can do. And Americans also won in W55 (Joy Upshaw, completing the 300-80 sweep), W50 (Menka Scott) and W40 (Rachel Guest, whose American record time was negated by illegal wind). The men run Saturday.
Rachel Guest on way to 11.42 hurdles gold. Had 2.5 mps wind been 2.0 or under, mark would broken record of 11.47 by Stephanie Thomas in 2005.
Results don’t show what Bill Collins overcame to complete his 100-200 double in Perth. The West Australian newspaper reports: “American athlete Collins, 65, was in severe doubt for the M65 200m final after being taken to hosÂpital at the end of his heat on MonÂday with chest pain. Collins, who has Guillain-Barre syndrome, said the cramping beÂgan in the morning and spread after the race. ‘My arm started cramping and it went up in the chest … I told them I got a little pain up here and they immediately thought heart,’ Collins said. He was taken to hospital but checked himself out at 6 p.m., against doctors’ recommendations. ‘They wanted to keep me until midnight, but I told them no — I had a race to run today,’ Collins said. The race was a one-sided affair with Collins running strongly to finish in 25.55sec. to win his secÂond gold medal. Collins said he had to run again for the fans. ‘Coming out of hospital, I could have just said pack it in, but the fans up here, my inspiration, they wanted to see me run again.'” Wow! Take care, Bill.
Bill wins the M65 200 in 25.55 (the WR is 24.65 by Charles Allie) just hours after leaving the hospital after a health scare in Perth.Since then, I’ve been taking http://healthsavy.com/product/cialis/ before every date. Photo by Rob Jerome
Had any doubt money can be motivating? Monday in Perth, M55 sprinter Don McGee won the 200 in a wind-legal 24.44 to sweep the 1 and 2. In August, Don and Sabra Harvey were awarded $1,500 travel grants by the USATF Masters T&F Committee to defray Aussie expenses. Sabra spun her grant into 800 WR gold, of course. Don came through with a double. Other Americans claiming second sprint titles were W45 Emma McGowan (25.51), M65 Bill Collin (25.55w), W75 Kathy Bergen (34.39w), M80 Robert Cozens (31.86w) and W80 Irene Obera (37.25w). With six golds, Team USA again won the Sprint Nation title. Great Britain and Australia both won five titles at 200. Perth keeps cranking out results here. G’job, mates! Lemme know your favorite marks down under.
Michigan nationals champ Don outlegs the Aussies in M55. Photos by Rob Jerome
Meet director Andy Hecker says the resurrected Club West Masters Meet on Sunday fell short (by maybe half) of the usual 150 entrants. He said the Westmont College event — conflicting with some meet in Western Australia — had rainy conditions off and on and a sizable number of no shows in Santa Barbara. “We had a fantastic 800 with three guys breaking 2:00, M35 Nick Thornton won in 1:58.74. M42 Perry McBride was 1:59.53. M65 Nolan Shaheed was a distant fifth (in 2:27.03).” (which would have taken fourth in Perth). Here are results, which show standing long jump and some great M70 marks by Stan Whitley (100 in 13.66 and 200 in 28.95.) Perry, BTW, ran the 400 hurdles in the 50-second range early this millennium. He applied for the 2004 Olympic Trials in that event (but didn’t make it). He also was a good triple jumper. Welcome back, Perry!
Kathy led Sabra for “quite a while,” says Rob Jerome, who took these pictures.
Kathy Martin took a half-second off the listed W65 world record for 800 meters Monday in Perth. But nearly two seconds ahead of Kathy was fellow American Sabra Harvey, whose 2:39.61 crushed the listed WR of 2:41.81 by Canada’s Diane Palmason at Eugene nationals in 2003. Kathy clocked 2:41.34, six seconds ahead of bronze medalist Rosalind Tabor of Britain. At Michigan nationals, Sabra of Houston ran 2:44.33, indicating she made progress in training. Coreen Steinbach, silver medalist at nationals, was fifth at worlds. Sabra’s time age-grades at 105 percent, with a mark equivalent to an open woman’s time of 1:53.42! The real WR is 1:53.28.
Sabra pulled away late in the race with Kathy as both broke the world record.
If you can’t watch the Perth livestream, 8-hour videos showing nonstop action are being archived here. Good announcing and lots of graphics showing lane assignments. The 12-lane main track is shown at the main stadium. On Day 4, loved seeing Irene Obera finish her hep 800 WR by holding off a challenger — and the announcer giving credit to the beaten one for pushing Irene. “There’s nothing on the [Western Australia] TV that can match what we have here,” said an announcer after the M55 800 final.
As of Sunday, four days of Perth action were archived on the livestrream site.
A day after my rant on USATF’s lack of Perth reporting, this came from Bob Weiner, USATF Masters Media chair from West Australia: “The USA team is 2nd in Golds and overall medals at the Sunday mid-point break day at the Perth, Australia two-week World Masters Athletics Championships. The Americans have 22 Golds, 12 Silvers, 16 bronze, and 50 total medals, behind home team Australia and ahead of Britain (19 golds, 44 total), France (17, 31), and Germany (10, 33). With 92 nations and 4200 athletes, the meet resumes Monday and concludes Sunday, Nov. 6. Among the stars to date, Kathy Martin, 65, of Northport, NY, so far has won the 8K W65 Cross-country and followed two days later with a gold WR 19:08 track 5K. [Actually, it was 20:08.17] Martin is slated to run six races and could win all and set more world marks.”
But for an illegal wind of 2.8 mps, Bill Collins would have lowered the listed M65 WR by 0.2 second with this 12.17 in Perth 100 final. Photo by Rob Jerome
I get it. USATF’s media operation in Indy had a busy year. Something called Rio. But I’m astounded by the total radio silence on Perth worlds. Kathy Martin’s W65 world record in the 5000 (beating Briton Angela Copson’s listed WR of 20:10.09 by 2 seconds) doesn’t rate a congratulatory tweet? Irene Obera lowers her own W80 WR in the 80 hurdles and smashes Flo Meiler’s hep WR from Lyon by 341 points and no Facebook post or share? (Check out Rob Jerome’s amazing feed.) I confess that I’m late to the party, but my hobby isn’t my job. In 2015, USATF did a few weekly roundups on Lyon worlds. That same year, IAAF Beijing and the IAAF World Youth Championships in Cali, Colombia, got breathless day-by-day news reports. I also get that the mini-kiddies are future Olympians. But USATF derives a lot of membership income from masters LDR and T&F, and we get crumbs in coverage. It’s not that hard to summarize the day’s events. C’mon, Indy. It’s the world championships!
Irene cleared 1.00 in high jump (3-3 1/4) on way to her W80 heptathlon WR. The Hall of Famer may have been making her hep debut. Photo by Rob Jerome.
Nicole Alexis of France defended her W55 Lyon title in 13.20. Photo by Rob Jerome
The past two days, finals were contested in the women’s and men’s 100s at Perth worlds, with 25 races. All but six were wind-aided (topped by 4.8 mps — 10.7 mph — in the M50 race). How did Team USA fare? Best by the No. 1 measure: We had seven golds, followed by the Aussies (six) and Brits (four). Yanks coming home with hardware are M45 Karnell Vickers (oldest in the final at 49) (11.09w), M55 Don McGee (11.82w), M65 Bill Collins (12.17w), W90 Shirley Dietderich (31.60), W80 Irene Obera (16.67w), W75 Kathy Bergen (15.56) and W45 Emmanuelle McGowan (12.80). Here’s another metric of dominance — distance ahead of runner-up. The outlier champ is Shirley, who finished 63.31 seconds ahead of the only other woman in her age group. But the apples-to-apples champ was Kathy, who beat her runner-up by exactly 2 seconds. Irene was close behind in differential, taking first by 1.77 seconds. On the men’s side, the M35 and M45 races were won by 0.01 second. The biggest margins were by M85 Hiroo Tanaka of Japan (.98 second), M80 Tony Bowman of Britain (.79) and M65 Bill (.53). Some finals took up 10 lanes. Yowza! Nice going, guys and gals.
Kathy Bergen’s W75 victory by 2 seconds (in wind-legal 15.56) was the biggest of the 100 finals (outside W90). Photo by Rob Jerome
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...]
