Superfan Daily: Your Track Vault Pick of the Week

As the Millrose Games are coming up soon, this week I give you a 1996 New York Times story on the year the great Bubka came to Madison Square Garden.

As a light snow fell, a man of relatively average height and weight wearing black knit cap, gray down jacket, corduroys and hiking boots emerged from the subway station at 50th Street and Broadway at 10 A.M. yesterday and then proceeded south on Broadway. Hardly any of the passers-by or anyone driving in an automobile seemed to take any particular notice. And why should they? After all, he was like everyone else trapersing the thoroughfare, other than that he was carrying a 17-foot pole on his shoulder.

What's On
The Ostravska latka, the first meet in the Czech High Jump Grand Prix, takes place tomorrow in Ostrava.

Track on TV
Bud Greenspan's Athens 2004: Stories of Olympic Glory, 12:45 PM today on Showtime Family Zone

News Links
Runner's World's Racing News has all the headlines: former college teammates Alan Webb versus Nick Willis at the Boston stop on the VISA circuit, the Lucas Verzbicas controversy, and more.

Various competition lineup announcements: The Meeting Pas de Calais in Lievin FRA on February 6 will have a bunch of stars; the Tokyo Marathon on February 27 will have Haile Gebrselassie against a formidable opponent, Gideon Ngatuny; Olympic 100 champ Shelly-Ann Fraser will open her season in Jamaica on January 29.

Phil Hersh's belated salute to Bud Greenspan.

The second installment of The Guardian's weekly Gonzo-style series on running in Kenya.

Classy: Nick Willis' upgrade to Olympic silver (after Rashid Ramzi's doping DQ) will be done at a track meet in Christchurch NZ next month. The things are usually done without the appropriate levels of pomp and circumstance.

Oklahoma adds a couple of midyear transfers.

Brianna Glenn bogs on pain management, and Tom Kloos of the Bay Area Track Club blogs on the face of victory.

Arkansas' head men's track coach Chris Bucknam's weekly press conference, and the press conference from women's head coach Lance Harter.

Not directly track-related, but nonetheless huge: Sports Illustrated has a lot of dirt on Lance Armstrong, and reportedly their article is much toned-down from the original. Super-anti-doping doc Don Caitlin doesn't come out looking so good. And the great guys at the Science of Sport blog tell us a bit more about the drug HemAssist, which Armstrong supposedly used. The Armstrong affair appears to be a much bigger crime than just sports fraud, and many people may be in very big trouble.