Year-End Summary

It seems obligatory...First, some links.

Track & Field News' men's and women's Athletes of the Year, men's and women's Performances of the Year, and #1-ranked men and women

The IAAF's end-of-the-year reviews for sprints, middle distance, long distance, road running, hurdles, jumps, throws, and combined events

Race Results Weekly's Marathoners of the Year; Runner's Web's Ten Best Moments of 2006 for US Distance Running

Now, the year in review for the Superfan.

The blog was launched on June 11 with a review of the NCAA Championships TV coverage. Since then, I've also begun blogging for Trackshark and Garry Hill gave me a positive review. As of right now, the blog has had 4,337 hits.

As a fan, I got a few nice opportunities. Early in the year I was given a chance to announce at our local high school conference championships. It is hands-down the best job to have a t a track meet. Then the USATF championships came to Indianapolis, the NCAA XC regionals came to my little town, and finally I saw two NCAA XC Championships in one weekend (part 1 - part 2).

I was asked to take the boys' cross-country coaching job at my school. While our season wasn't the most successful, we had fun and a lot of improvement.

As an athlete, this year was a disaster. I bombed a marathon in April, then developed achilles tendonitis which I wasn't able to get under control for six months. I don't keep track of miles anymore, only training time; my annual total was 252 hours, or just under 5 hours per week. Short of injury, I prefer to keep it in the 8 to 10 hours per week range.

Olympic Distance Event Medal Count

Which nations have won the most Olympic medals in the distance events? Would you guess Kenya, or Finland? Either way you'd be wrong. I counted 'em up; to see who it is, follow the link.

Anti-Doping Tirade

Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman punches around Mark McGwire in an online column which details his Hall of Fame vote.

Some will claim steroids were not disallowed at the time, and that, of course, is 100 percent false. There was no testing for them during McGwire's career, and no spelled-out punishment. But they were neither permitted in baseball nor legal in our society.

Some will say that everyone did them, and I'll agree that many did do them. But I will say first that not everyone did do them, and most who did got away with it. While McGwire has never failed a test or confessed, in my mind he is caught.

Heyman does not specifically address it, but baseball and track have very similar doping problems. The common issue is a reverence for each sports' stats, numbers and records, which doping has totally and completely fouled up.

College Track Drawbacks

Over at my Trackshark blog, I posted my thoughts about college track's drawbacks and what to do about them.

The Other Shulman: Book Review

This isn't the first time I've pimped this novel, as I noted its winning the Thurber Award for comedy writing. I got it yesterday morning, and read the whole thing before midnight.

I won't bother with much of a synopsis; Amazon has plenty. "Middle-aged schlimazel waddles through NYC marathon and self-discovery" does fine. If you're looking for the exploits of superstars, skip it. This is a great story of an ordinary person's struggles. My only complaint is the ending, which feels like it was thrown together in the final hour before a publishing deadline.

What I should add is that while this is billed as comedy, funniness is not the point of the book. It's much like Little Miss Sunshine or Dry: A Memoir in that the comedy complements the storyline, which otherwise would be too horribly, suicidally depressing to get through. Like these other stories, the suffering is both necessary and passing. Plus, it's the New York City marathon...

Merry Christmas

Anti-Doping News

Old News: Grandma's Marathon female champ Halina Karnatsevich DQ'd for stanozolol.

New Twist (via Associated Press):

Scott Keenan, executive director of Grandma's Marathon, said it was the fourth time USA Track and Field had selected the race for drug testing. It was the first time an athlete tested positive.
...
Keenan said race organizers will continue to encourage USA Track and Field to include Grandma's Marathon on its schedule for drug testing in the future.

Do directors of "mid-major" races see it as prestigious to get selected for dope tests? And if so, does it actually improve the profile of a race to have a positive test? Seems that way. So an event promotor would actually relish a doping DQ. I guess in the world of second- or third-tier marathons, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

I Won!

I'm Time Magazine's Person of the Year!

Oh...and you are too. That kind of ruins the exclusivity I was expecting.

I suppose it's a decent choice in a year without an obvious one, although a bit of a cop-out. That doesn't keep some people from bitching about it -- George F. Will says bloggers reek of narcissism (which he says on national TV without a note of irony), but others might argue we pose a threat to his kind of entrenched media power. Whatever. Google says the average blogger has one reader. I know who mine is, and he looks at me in the mirror every morning.

While Time tries to call the internets a revolutionary medium, the web as a democratic tool is merely a technological re-hash of the 19th-century penny press. Funny that Time makes this choice in the very same year that Net Neutrality became a big issue.

Christmas, TV, and track

I just watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV. It's really amazing; even though the show is 41 years old, the only out-of-date items in the whole thing are the jazz-trio soundtrack and the debate about whether or not Christmas is too commercialized (by now everyone has given up all hope--and it's really weird to see Charlie Brown's overtly religious message of austerity and humility sponsored by the ultimate soul-less entity, Wal-Mart).

The more I think about it, the more I believe the 1960s and 70s had to be the best time for children in this country, and Christmas-time is no exception, as the "golden age" of Christmas specials started with the Peanuts gang (1965) and extended just into my age bracket with Little House on the Prarie's "Christmas at Plum Creek" (1974). After that, things went decidedly downhill; the Dayton Daily News ranks the worst of all time, with nine of the ten released between 1978 and the present. (If "ALF's Special Christmas" doesn't make the cut, you know they're really bad!)

So you've got kids. And you've gone to see truly terrible Christmas movies with them, and if you see one more maudlin holiday show on TV you're going to lose it, go all Henry Rollins on the neighborhood and crucify your neighbor on his front door with nails from his well-stocked garage. And you're a track fan, too. What are you going to do?

A decent show produced within the last few years is Robbie the Reindeer in Hooves of Fire. It won't be on TV this year, but you can buy in on DVD or VHS. Created by Aardman Animations, the geniuses behind Wallace and Gromit, it stands up well to the repeated viewing you'll be forced into. Cut to the good parts: Robbie, son of Rudolph, competes in various running/jumping/throwing events at the "Reindeer Games". Christmas stuff? Who cares, this is track!

Gatlin article in WaPo

Yesterday the Washington Post ran an article on the Justin Gatlin affair. There's little new in it; they rehash the same wild and wierd conspiracy theory that massage therapist Chris Whetstine sabotaged Gatlin.

At the T&FN message board, EPelle once again gives us the best analysis, noting that the story "has gotten much more interesting and more detailed as time has gone along", lending credence to the idea that it's all made up. At Let's Run, Old Runner Guy astutely noted the following passage in the article:

The case has attracted the attention of federal investigators, according to several sources, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) has allowed an unusual extension to give Gatlin's lawyers time to assemble their client's defense.

This IS new, and it leads us to wonder: what are the feds looking for? One possibility no one has mentioned is Trevor Graham. He's already under indictment for lying to federal agents in the BALCO investigation, and they may be looking for some more evidence against him.

BALCO, perjury, and Marion Jones

There's been some recent news in the BALCO trials; Thursday, cyclist Tammy Thomas (right) was indicted on perjury charges. Yep, that's a woman. You think she might have used steroids?

Also, recently Marion Jones said she's undecided about her future (read: she's thinking about retiring). T&FN message board maven EPelle notes the timing, and wonders if anything is going on:

Her [EPO-positive] "A"-sample was released just after Gatlin's camp went public of his testosterone positive. ...The cyclist gets indicted during BALCO/Phase III (it is in this phase according to authorities) for lying to the Grand Jury in BALCO/Phase I in stating she had never used PED's and/or that she did not get illegal drugs from Patrick Arnold. Marion Jones nearly simultanously states she is unsure what direction she will head in 2007.

Another post by EPelle, quoting the San Jose Mercury-News:

Another possible target for perjury is Marion Jones, an Olympic gold-medal sprinter who also testified in 2003. If she denied using performance-enhancing drugs, Jones might have a problem because her ex-husband, C.J. Hunter, said under oath that he gave the sprinter banned drugs and saw Jones inject herself.

At least two other grand jury witnesses who worked with her former coach, Trevor Graham, have testified in the case. Also, Balco mastermind Victor Conte Jr. has said in interviews with the Mercury News and others that he supplied Jones with performance-enhancing drugs. Jones repeatedly has denied all allegations.

Bonds attorney made an interesting comment on Wednesday:
``If this is phase three, why not indict Barry?'' Bonds' attorney Michael Rains said Thursday. ``The simple answer -- they need the testimony of Greg Anderson.''

The same has seemingly applied to Marion Jones: No witness testimony from Victor Conte. His plea bargain allowed for silence on his part when it came to any help he could have provided the authorities in their fact-finding against athletes, distributors, coaches, officials, agents, etc.

Patrick Arnold received the same condition in his plea agreement, which allowed him to not have to name names. However, he had the following to say:
"Track and field, especially the sprinters, they were more sophisticated in whom to seek out," he offers as a hint.

This is nothing but speculation, but quite interesting to be sure. But why on earth were Conte and Arnold, the masterminds behind BALCO, given this kind of free ride? Strange indeed.

Clarion University Drops Track

...and, of course, blames Title IX. (Clarion is a D-II school in the Penn State system.)

The issue is usually complex when teams are cut, but in general it comes down to the fact that football gobbles up gobs of money and other sports die to feed it. Title IX is only involved in that women's sports, already generally ignored and underfunded, don't get the axe.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports columnist Sherry Anderson muddies the issues when she takes the AD's word at face value. At the very least, she reveals her near ignorance of both small-college sports and Title IX.

She lists the recent expansion of women's sports at Clarion, yet parrot's the AD's talking point that the school could fail to show "a history and continuing practice of expanding women's opportunities". Obviously, it can, and so any proportionality issues are a moot point. (Clarion's new release incorrectly states proportionality is a requirement; the law is well enough known that this can only be a deliberately false statement.)

Anderson also suggests that football be taken out of the Title IX equation. First of all, four separate attempts to do just that have been rejected by Congress. Secondly, she states that "Clarion operates below [the] NCAA [limit] of 90 players", but doesn't give us any perspective on the issue. Some digging shows that Clarion's football team actually did have 90 players last year, while the other five men's sports now remaining had 62 athletes between them.

But the icing on the cake is this: "Add a caveat, such as requiring that a school show that its football program is in the black and some of that revenue is used for women's programs." There are somewhere in the range of 60 or so schools in all of college football that actually make money, and none of them are cutting any sports. (Hint: if a profitable team isn't in the Pac-10, Big XII, Big Ten, ACC or SEC, it better be named Notre Dame.) If Clarion's football team were able to make a profit, they wouldn't have cut a thing.

Here's the point to Title IX, which people don't understand. Agencies which recieve federal monies are required to treat men and women equally for the simple reason that they are taxed at the same rate.

Carl Lewis sighting

He, along with sister Carol, was in the audience last night on the live season finale of NBC's reality weight-loss game show The Biggest Loser. Both were wearing "I ♥ Wylie" t-shirts in support of finalist Mark Wylie.

After a bit of digging online, I found out why he was there. Wylie is the Vice President of Best Buddies International, a charitable organization that provides "opportunities for one-on-one friendships and integrated employment" for people with intellectual disabilities; Carl Lewis is a member of its board of directors and a big supporter (a recent fund-raising auction item was a day with Lewis at the 2008 Summer Olympics).

TV Listings Update

Monday, December 11
ESPN Classic, 4:30 PM
Jim Thorpe All American

Thursday, December 21
ESPN Classic, 2:30 AM
1977 Superstars

ESPN Classic, 8:00 AM
Who's #1?: Best Female Athletes

Saturday, December 30
CBS, 1 PM
NCAA Fall Championships

Friday, January 5
ESPN Classic, 2:30 AM
1973 Superstars

Golden League

A few days back, the IAAF announced the setup for this year's Golden League jackpot. It's back to splitting the $1 million only between athletes who go undefeated, with a new safety net--if no one is undefeated, it's split between those who win at 5 out of 6 meets.

Over at the T&FN boards, the topic of discussion turned towards the slate of GL jackpot events, and how they seem to be the same events year after year (100m, 1500/mile, etc.). Garry Hill explains the reasoning, mainly marketability and meet promotion. Another points out that an event with two good athletes virtually guarantees that neither will win the jackpot. My reply:

I think we've highlighted one of the problems with the whole Golden League setup in the first place. A back & forth season-long battle between two great athletes is probably the best thing that a sports tour could hope for (classic example: Arnold Palmer and Jack Niklaus). But the Golden League doesn't reward such a thing. In fact, the GP circuit's season-long standings haven't rewarded that since its inception, since the cash always goes to the athletes with more or less unopposed dominance.

Do any of our creative minds have alternative ideas?

Got any? Post 'em in the comments.

Anti-Doping News

Two stories in the news today...

First, the testers have apparently beaten the cheaters out of the gate on gene doping (which is nothing but gene therapy used for a nefarious end). Gene doping was seen as the next step beyond drug use, and far more powerful. According to this article, it's more or less been stuffed as a cheating option before anyone seriously tried it (so far as we know).

Second, Ben Johnson told Australia's Herald Sun newspaper that Carl Lewis was involved in a conspiracy to sabotage him and cause his positive test at the 1988 Olympics. This is on its face a laughable claim, as Johnson testified under oath that his drug use began in 1981 and so no conspiracy was necessary. Besides, this story was first told at least 15 years ago, and so far the search for this "mystery man" who spiked Johnson's drink has been as serious as OJ's search for Nicole Simpson's "real" killer. But at least this story taught us that Tony Kornheiser and Charles Wilbon (ESPN's Pardon The Interruption) have absolutely no knowledge about elite track & field.

Wish List

This afternoon my mother-in-law asked me to write up a Christmas wish list. In that spirit, I'm posting a list of things the track fan in your family might want.

Books

1. Bowerman and the Men of Oregon
The best track book in quite a while

2. The Other Shulman: A Novel
Winner of the Thurber Award for comedy writing

3. The Last Protest: Lee Evans in Mexico City
Amazon.com's average review: 5 stars




Videos

1. Fire on the Track: The Steve Prefontaine Story
Newly released on DVD, this was just voted the #1 running movie of all time.

2. The Olympiad's Greatest Moments
8-volume history of the Summer Olympics

3. On The Edge
Also newly released on DVD, it's probably the best fictional track movie out there

Apparel

1. Onitsuka Tiger Ultimate 81s
The old-school shoes.

2. Track Jacket
In style once again, you can get one with any college or national team colors/logo.

3. Dave Wottle's ITA jersey
There's only one, and it is currently owned by a coin and sports collectibles dealer named Tom Noe. It'll be up for auction soon, as Noe owes Ohio about $17 million.

Games
1. Konami Track & Field arcade game
Awesome!

2. Track & Field Math Board Game
A lot of fans are coaches (like me), and a lot of coaches are teachers (like me). This is an instructional track & field math game!

3. Bruce Jenner Decathlon Game
As far as the board game itself goes, it's completely lame, but this is a great collectible for a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer.

Terry Fox

I just got my new Runner’s World yesterday, and didn’t have time to sit down and look through it until today. Generally, it’s 100 or so pages of glossy fluff; I only subscribe because it’s cheap and usually gives my running a pick-me-up. But sometimes they have a really good article, the kind that could get into one of the annual Best Sports Writing anthologies.

This issue has one of them, and I urge you to get the magazine and read it. It’s a look back at Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope. Unlike most Americans I know who he was (or is, as many refer to him), but I had no idea he was such a hero in Canada. I must say, I’m a bit embarrassed at my ignorance since I have many Canadian ancestors, live close to the border, and watch a decent amount of CBC. I'm disturbed to realize Rick Mercer would have as easy a time with me as any other American.

The story of Fox is a great one, but what struck me as amazing is the very same thing I was ashamed of not knowing: he is among Canada's greatest heroes, more revered than Alexander Graham Bell, Pierre Trudeau or even Wayne Gretzky. This was an everyman who, at first glance, struggled against tremendous difficulty and ultimately failed. Yet his struggle gave the entire nation the gift of health and life. When CBC ranked The Greatest Canadians two years ago, the only one ahead of Fox was a Socialist (Tommy Douglas).

I'd like to organize a Terry Fox Run in the Toledo area, but we've got a Race for the Cure on the same exact day. I think I'll go up to Windsor next fall and run in respect for the man, and more importantly the whole of Canada.

Anti-Doping News

Developing story: the IAAF gives the Mexican federation a warning.

Despite a considerable requests and subsequent reminders, the Mexican Athletic Federation had repeatedly failed to provide the IAAF with the name and doping control form for an adverse analytical finding related to a doping control test on one of its athletes.

This is strike one. Strike two is a fine, strike three is suspension of the federation (and therefore all its athletes).

I have no details on this story yet; your guess is as good as mine. Somebody flunked a dope test and there's a tug of war going on. The T&FN message board may eventually give us more info.

Anti-Doping News

Developing story: the IAAF gives the Mexican federation a warning.

Despite a considerable requests and subsequent reminders, the Mexican Athletic Federation had repeatedly failed to provide the IAAF with the name and doping control form for an adverse analytical finding related to a doping control test on one of its athletes.

This is strike one. Strike two is a fine, strike three is suspension of the federation (and therefore all its athletes).

I have no details on this story yet; your guess is as good as mine. Somebody flunked a dope test and there's a tug of war going on. The T&FN message board may eventually give us more info.

Anti-Doping News

Developing story: the IAAF gives the Mexican federation a warning.

Despite a considerable requests and subsequent reminders, the Mexican Athletic Federation had repeatedly failed to provide the IAAF with the name and doping control form for an adverse analytical finding related to a doping control test on one of its athletes.

This is strike one. Strike two is a fine, strike three is suspension of the federation (and therefore all its athletes).

I have no details on this story yet; your guess is as good as mine. Somebody flunked a dope test and there's a tug of war going on. The T&FN message board may eventually give us more info.