End of One Season, Beginning of Another

With the World Cup and Talence multis last weekend, the elite international track & field season is over. The year's top athletes?

On the men's side, those who went undefeated on the World Athletics Tour were Asafa Powell, Jeremy Wariner, Saif Saaeed Shaheen and Virgilius Alekna (with Irving Saladino coming close at 12 out of 13). Women who turned the trick were Sanya Richards and Tatyana Lebedeva (while Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar lost to no one but each other). Winners of the Race Walking Challenge were Francisco Javier Fernandez and Claudia Stef; winners of the Combined Events Challenge were Dmitri Karpov and Carolina Kluft.

Now the collegiate cross-country circuit is beginning (but nothing will really matter for nearly a month) and the major marathons are coming up soon. Cool Running has a nice rundown on who's where; this Sunday is the Berlin Marathon, with "only" Haile G. and Sammy Korir on tap.