September 2003 Issue

NCAA Cross Country Previews

Men: Can Anyone Beat Stanford/Cragg?

Top 10 Teams

1. Stanford

The defending champs lose no one from the top 7 who amassed a miserly 47 points last year . The Cardinal are also coming off a very solid track campaign. One question mark is Sage, who...

(for more team and individual picks, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

Women: BYU Chasing Third Straight Win

Top 10 Teams

1. BYU

Team champs in ’01 and ’02 led by steeplers Michaela Mannová and Kassi Andersen (5th and 7th last year), Patrick Shane’s always-deep Cougars add frosh Ruth Graham and Amber Harper (12th and 13th at Foot Locker HS Champs in ’02) and have…

(for more team and individual picks, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

Youth Must Be Served

While the track world's big guns took a brief rest to prepare for the second half of the season, young stars like Poland's young 7-8 3/4 high jumper Aleksander Walerianczyk got a chance to shine

Usain Bolt, Aleksander Walerianczyk, Shalonda Solomon, Carolina Klüft, Dmitriy Valyukevich, teemu Wirkkala. Remember those names. You'll be hearing more of them soon, as they proved at the Pan-Am Junior Championships, European Under-23 Championships and European Junior Championships.

The Pan-Am Juniors received their biggest jolt from precocious Usain Bolt when the Jamaican sensation matched the World Junior Record in the 200 with his blazing 20.13 in Barbados...

(for more, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

The Next HS Phenom?

by Kirby Lee

With the graduation of top-rated high school sprinter Allyson Felix it didn't take long for Shalonda Solomon (Poly, Long Beach) to make an impact.

While Felix next competed at the Senior level at the USATF Championships, Solomon won both Junior dash titles. Then the rising senior won the 100 and 200, and anchored the U.S. 4x1 to victory in the Pan-American Junior Champs, becoming the meet's only triple gold medalist.

In the 200 the 17-year-old Californian timed a meet record 22.93 to move to No. 6 on the all-time high school list and cracked the 23-second barrier for the first time. In the 100, Solomon ran =PR 11.35, just 0.01 off the meet record set by four-time NCAA champion Angela Williams..."

(for more read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

A Name Made For Headlines

by Sieg Lindstrom

"Lightning" Bolt, they call him. He is Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprint prodigy who doesn't even turn 17 until August 21, two days before the World Championships begin in Paris.

The 6-foot-5 star has grown 2 inches since he stormed 20.61 in the 200 at last year's World Junior Championships in his nation's capital of Kingston to become, at 15, the youngest-ever winner in that meet. His improvement on the track has been just as rapid.

This April Bolt got down to 20.43, and then 20.25. On the same day as his 20.25 he ran 45.35.

In June he won the Senior Jamaican 200 title with a 20.28.

In July he won the World Youth title in 20.40 and then a week later added the Pan-Am Junior crown in 20.13-the fastest time ever for a 16-year-old, faster than any 17-year-old has ever run and equal to the World Junior Record set by 18-year-old American Roy Martin in '85.

"If you don't think this guy can run under 20 seconds, you're nuts," says T&FN High School Editor Mike Kennedy, who has seen Bolt in action at both the World Juniors and Worth Youths.

"Don't be surprised if he does it sooner rather than later,"...

(for more, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

T&FN Interview: Stacy Dragila

by Sieg Lindstrom

There are great athletes who seemingly find their technique, master it and then consistently reproduce it over a decade or more to reap records and medals. Edwin Moses comes to mind; Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson.

Other champions reach crossroads where they decide they must shrug off caution and take a calculated but necessary gamble in order to grab the brass ring-the gold medal, the World Record-and reach their potential. That is where Stacy Dragila-the women's pole vault's first world indoor champion, first outdoor champion, first Olympic champion-found herself this spring.

With a switch to a new coach, a new training base and a new plan to significantly revise her technique, Dragila is now going for the gusto and willingly taking some lumps-in the form of a dip in heights cleared-temporarily she hopes....

T&FN: What is it you're trying to change in your technique?

Dragila: Dave and I have always known that we wanted to get my step out more. Traditionally I take off under, and I think maybe I learned that because Dave vaulted that way in the '70s. Early on and even last year, Dave would still jump with me a little bit, and I'm a very visual person. So I would watch him and to me that didn't seem bad, but I created a pretty bad habit that's obviously going to hinder me gripping higher on the pole and creating the space I think I need to jump those higher heights.

Dave and I have addressed a couple of these things in the fall for years but then we've gotten away from them during the season.

T&FN: How about a little Vault Takeoff 101 for the tech-challenged observer. When you say you want to get your step "out more," do you mean you want to take off earlier?

Dragila: No, it's my step at takeoff. A long jumper wants to take up every inch of the board they possibly can. Well, a pole vaulter at the elite level-all the women that I watched at indoor Worlds-were taking off at 12-feet [from the back of the box] and a little bit outside of 12-feet.

I tend to...

(for more, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

Gatlin Hot, Montgomery Not

by Bob Ramsak

While the highlight of the 37th DN Galan was to be Tim Montgomery's return from "maternity leave," it was Justin Gatlin who stole the thunder in front of yet another sellout crowd of 15,549 at Stockholm's intimately charming Olympic Stadium.

Indeed, Gatlin was so dominant in his third race since the USATF Championships that the only competition he faced in the latter half of the race was the stiff 2.4mps headwind.

"I felt like I was back to my old self," the former Vol said...

To describe Tim Montgomery as disappointed after his 10.39 in Stockholm would be a gross understatement. "It was terrible," the World Record holder hastily admitted.

"Disastrous" was a common descriptor at the Olympic Stadium for Montgomery's effort. Never in the hunt, he finished well behind winner Justin Gatlin.

"After the first run," where he ran 10.37 to barely move on to the final, "I had no clue what went wrong," Montgomery said...

(for more, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

by Ed Gordon

Berlin, Germany, August 10—Breaking a month-long pause after the Rome meet, the Golden League series started up again with the staging of the 62nd ISTAF meet. This affair was presented on an intensely warm and breezy day in Berlin’s cozy Jahn Sportpark, as the Olympic Stadium continues to be renovated for soccer’s ’06 World Cup.

Coming into the meeting, only a pair million-dollar-jackpot contenders was still alive—Chandra Sturrup in the 100 and Maria Mutola in the 800. But within 20 minutes after the start of the main program, the number was down to one.

Sturrup was almost even with resurgent American Chryste Gaines coming out of the blocks in the 100, while Kelli White reacted sluggishly and spent most of the first 50m surveying the damage her bad start had left. With half the race still ahead, the U.S. champion put on a strong finish and clipped off the two early leaders right before the tape, winning in a wind-aided 10.84, edging Gaines (10.86) and Sturrup (10.88).

“I’m upset that my start was so bad, because that’s what I’ve been working on in the past weeks,” said White. “The reason I was able to win today was because of my strength.”

Sturrup’s elimination in the fourth of six GL meets came more than an hour before Mutola went to the line as the sole competitor aiming for the grand prize. Perhaps the Olympic champion did too much thinking about a big September bank deposit because what evolved on the track turned into her biggest 800 challenge of the season…

(for more read the September issue of Track & Field News)

Why No Aldama?

by Steven Downes

If the scriptwriters of a trashy soap had come up with a plotline as unlikely as this, they would have been laughed out of Hollywood. Yet the tragic love story surrounding Yamilé Aldama-the world's leading triple jumper-is the heart-rending stuff of real life.

The latest, futile episode in Aldama's 3-year soap opera will play out during the World Championships. The planet's top athletes are vying for medals and prize money... with the notable exception of Aldama.

Top of the world list this year, a silver medalist at the Worlds in '99, and with the ability to jump close to 50-feet almost at will, Aldama could have expected to win her first world title by more than a foot.

Yet as a result of the British Home Office's bureaucracy, sporting red tape, and the treachery of her drug-smuggling husband, while the rest of the world's elite are competing for world titles, Aldama and her infant son, Amil, are faced with eviction from their home and life on the street, their future uncertain...."

(for the full story, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

Zürich Golden League: Gatlin PRs at 9.97

by Garry Hill

The great ones never lose it. At age 75, the famed Weltklasse remains-at worst-first among equals on the short list of great track & field internationals.

It's all still there: a panoply of stars both present and past (see sidebar), marks of the highest order, tickets sold out long in advance to a crowd both knowledgeable and enthusiastic. When the end-zone crazies early on began filling the air with their lusty Germanic voices, accompanying their sing-song cheering with rhythmic banging on the advertising signs on the wall, a wide-eyed Weltklasse rookie spectator was heard to say, "This is like being at a college football game."

American sprinters certainly treated the penultimate stop on the Golden League Circuit as if it were a home game, winning all four 100m races. Strange part is, these guys weren't the first team. Or is the U.S. going to be running the "wrong" people in the Paris 100s?

First of the four centuries was the women's B race, in which Angela Williams (USATF 6th) typically got out quickly, then held on for an 11.23-11.27 win over Nigerian Mercy Nku.

An hour later it was the secondary men's 100, with Mickey Grimes (didn't make USATF final) and Darvis Patton (didn't run USATF 100) lunging across the line together with PR clockings, Grimes winning 9.99-10.00. Just the latest to benefit from John Smith's coaching magic, Grimes quickly got a new lifetime best after losing one in the unfortunate Pan-Am mess.

Another hour down the road and the prime-time men's 100 went off. As at Stanford, USATF champ Bernard Williams was out best, but his success ended there. By mid-race it was a two-man competition between John Capel (didn't run the 100 at USATF) and Kim Collins of St. Kitts, running side-by-side in lanes 5 and 4. As they drove for the line, Capel began to edge ahead but in the closing materials, unlooked-for on the inside in lane 2 came the swooping figure of an orange-clad Justin Gatlin. ...

(for more, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

From The Editor

GOT AN E-MAIL THE OTHER DAY. Guy wanted to know why my columns dwelt so much-his words-on the negative. Wondered if I ever had anything positive to say. For those of you who agree with him and think me some kind of congenital sourpuss who gets his jollies through a bleak outlook on life, I hasten to assure you that that's not the case. So why do the bulk of my musings in this space end up as rants about one thing or another?

For you, dear reader, only for you! Allow me to explain!...

(for the full opinion, read the September Issue of Track & Field News)

World Champs!!!!!!

Simply put, in T&FN you'll find more words, more pictures, more numbers than anywhere else on the planet when it comes to the planetary track champs. And not just more: also better, as we put our huge collection of writers and photographers through their paces.

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