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Monday, February 18, 2008

Weekend Recap

Joe Battaglia at NBC Olympics picks his top ten performances of the weekend. There was a lot going on.

In the US, there was the Tyson Invitational, where Adam Nelson set the real indoor World Record in the pro section while Texas set the indoor World Record in the distance medley.

Over in the UK, there was a big meet in Birmingham, where Kenenisa Bekele set the indoor 2-mile "world record".

Yelena Isinbayeva upped her own indoor World Record to 16' 2 3/4" (4.95m) at the vault-only Pole Vault Stars meet in Donetsk, Ukraine.

Two other important meets flew under the radar a bit. The USATF Cross Country championships showed that Shalane Flanagan is again in fine form, while Ryan Hall's late fade was a bit of a surprise. The Russians crushed the competition at the European Indoor Cup.

And there were a few other smaller competitions: the Eurocross in Diekirch (LUX), the Asian Indoor Championships in Doha (QAT), the French Indoor Championships, the Tokyo Marathon, and an early World Athletics Tour meet down under in Sydney.

2 comments:

Johnny said...

Has Adam Nelson ever tested positiive for PEDs? My thinking is no, but there was a whole period where it seemed like every American weight thrower was on something.

I watched the Tyson Meet yesterday and enjoyed the shot put competition very much. As a distance runner, I never understood the weight throwers, or the pole vaulters (the flakiest of all), but the one thing I knew about them was that they were great teammates. Great.

The Track & Field Superfan said...

I'm not aware of even the slightest hint of scandal about Nelson. Note also that he's known as much less into pure maximum strength than most other putters.

I'm a highly suspicious person about these things, but note that shot-putters tend to get hit by drug tests a lot more often than anyone else. Their drugs of choice--anabolics and testosterone--are the easiest to test for.

Compared to outdoor putting, this mark isn't even Nelson's PR. Both Cantwell and Hoffa have also thrown further outdoors.