The oldest track & field blog on the internet

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Day 9 Summary

Results
IAAF review
USATF recap
USA Today notebook

Once again I'm watching live on WCSN. First up is the women's high jump which should take a while. Dave Johnson is keeping the chart for us at the T&FN message board.
UPDATE: Vlasic wins as expected, but silver (DiMartino) and bronze (Chicherova) were big surprises.
UPDATE 2: Vlasic attempting a WR. If she makes it, I get an additional 100 points in the fantasy league.
UPDATE 3: Nope. Didn't really expect it, but I was hoping.
Results - report - discuss

The only event last night (this morning over there) was the women's marathon.
(results - report - story - Let's Run thread - T&FN discussion)
Catherine Ndereba won her umpteenth major race; the experts hadn't figured her as a major threat. It was quite close at the end. Japan's Reiko Tosa moved into the bronze position late in the race to earn the home team's first (and likely only) medal of the championships. She was closing on in on second or event first but came up short.

The men's javelin is about to start. DJ is again keeping the stats for us. The heavy favorites are Tero Pitkämäki and Andreas Thorkildsen. The former is the pre-meet favorite and has lost only once all year, but barely scraped into the final. Qualifying rounds almost always reveal much about what will happen in the final, so last night I dropped Pitkämäki off my fantasy league team in favor of Thorkildsen. But the Norwegian has had some injury problems too, so I could be in a heap of trouble either way.
UPDATE: Shit. I shouldn't have made the trade. Pitkämäki took the lead with a big 89.15 throw. UPDATE 2: Maybe I'm OK. Thorkildsen now in second and not by much.
UPDATE 3: These throws stood up; Breaux Greer took bronze.
Results - report - discuss

Now the men's 5000 is up.
Let's Run thread
A very slow first ten laps, then a furious run to the finish. Lagat wins the double, Tegenkamp outsprinted several runners and missed bronze by maybe an inch. My pre-race favorite, Eliud Kipchoge, took silver; Ugandan Moses Ndiema Kipsiro took bronze.
Results - report - discuss

Next up, men's 800 meters. Always a thriller. If I were allowed to make two changes last night, I would have put Gary Reed on my fantasy roster.
UPDATE: And I was right. Reed within hundredths of the win! Kenyan Yego wins gold, Borzakovskiy got caught up in traffic (as I predicted weeks ago) and got bronze.
Results - report - discuss

Now the women's 1500 meters. Prohibitive favorite: Miriam Jamal.
UPDATE: Jamal does indeed win in her best time of the year, holding off Soboleva. Lyschynska gets bronze. I got the trifecta on this one.
Results - report - discuss

The penultimate event: the women's 4x400. Since I could only take the USA in one relay and I used it on the men's 4x400, I picked Russia for this one.
UPDATE: Shit. Russians fourth. USA wins, Jamaica second, Brits third. It appears that the USA will win all four relay golds and Jamaica will win all four silvers.
Results - report - discuss

And now the last event of the whole thing, the men's 4x400. The only real question here is whether or not the USA will set a record of some sort.
UPDATE: USA domination but no record. Jamaica didn't get any medal at all; the Bahamians took silver (they had a great meet!) and Poland took bronze.
Results - report - discuss

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