In Defense Of Tunnel Vision ⏱️
Lap 246: Sponsored by Olipop
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Compiled by David Melly & Paul Snyder
World Athletics Awards Continue To Baffle 🤬
Whether it’s the Grammy nominations, early Oscar buzz, or yes, even the World Athletics Athlete of the Year Awards, an important part of awards season has officially begun: complaining about disrespectful omissions and careless snubs.
As we noted last week, the finalists for female Athlete of the Year were not what we—or really anyone with half a brain—expected. Triple World champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and 5000m world record holder Beatrice Chebet were shut out of the finals entirely, despite Chebet and Faith Kipyegon leading the social media vote. Instead, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Femke Bol were named finalists, who we would argue are the fourth- and fifth-most qualified nominees (out of five).
Bol is particularly confusing. Don’t get us wrong—we’re Femke fan(ke)s here at The Lap Count. But nothing about the season she had really screams “Athlete of the Year.” She defended her World title in the 400m hurdles and picked up silver and bronze relay medals, but three of the other nominees had more World golds and the fourth—Kipyegon—took a gold and silver in two individual events. Two of her fellow nominees set world records in their events and the other two ran all-time top-five marks; Bol’s 51.54 season’s best was her slowest of the last three years. So why did she make the cut?
Three-quarters of the vote tally comes from two places: the World Athletics Council and the ill-defined “World Athletics Family.” The former, which accounts for 50% of the vote, consists of 26 members, eight of whom are European. It’s unfair to say that homerism plays a role here, but it’s worth noting that there is only one American and three Africans on the council. The membership of the World Athletics Family is not published anywhere, but this secretive group gets the same weight in decision-making as the social media vote.
The one thing Bol did that none of her fellow nominees did was make the trip to Zurich and win her fifth consecutive Diamond League final. Jefferson-Wooden, notably, was one of the big stars of Grand Slam Track in the spring and only competed in three of the Diamond League’s nine official 100m races. Last year, we asked the question “what does the Athlete of the Year say about this sport?” and this year, Bol’s inclusion as a finalist sends a clear message to athletes and fans alike: WA wants you to take the Diamond League final more seriously than any other non-championship meet.
Another recurring theme from the Athlete of the Year finalists pointed out by our friend Paul Hof-Mahoney is that throwers fared poorly across the board. Three nominees in the men’s and women’s Field Athlete of the Year categories were throwers; none proceeded to the final round. The most frustrating of those omissions was Valarie Allman, who won her first World title in the discus, completed her second straight undefeated season, and accounted for eight of the ten longest throws in the world this year.
Maybe it’s because Allman snubbed the Diamond League? Guess again. The 30-year-old won five of the six Diamond League discus competitions, including the final. In all likelihood, her exclusion was the result of a desire for regional equity, as fellow American Tara Davis-Woodhall was named a finalist alongside Australian Nicola Olyslagers. Olyslagers had a great season, winning World indoor and outdoor titles and going 6-3 against rival Yaroslava Mahuchikh. But Allman and Davis-Woodhall both won every competition they entered, and both picked up World titles, too. And in Allman’s case, she can’t be penalized for skipping World Indoors because the discus isn’t contested. So why should Val be punished simply because another member of Team USA had an equally impressive season?
The Canadian hammer throwers, of course, got no love either. Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg have both been two of the most dominant athletes in their event the last two seasons, but we already know that World Athletics doesn’t care about the hammer throw as they excised it entirely from the Diamond League circuit. It would be nice to show them a little compensatory love in the awards season instead, but alas, here we are.
It’s harder to argue there were big snubs in men’s Track Athlete of the Year simply because the competition was much closer. No one really had a truly dominant season, and as a result there’s a fair argument to be made for any of the five nominees, with Noah Lyles and Emmanuel Wanyonyi being named finalists. If and when Lyles is named the winner, there will surely be a strong and highly-entertaining reaction from Jamaican Twitter.
The last notable choice among the finalists is the inclusion of Maria Perez, the double race walk champion from Spain, as a finalist for the women’s clumsily-named “Out of Stadium” award. World Athletics opted to name two marathoners on the men’s side (Sabastian Sawe and Alphonce Simbu), but presumably in an effort to get us all to take race walking more seriously, nominated Perez over the likes of Tigst Assefa and Sifan Hassan. Hassan was 2024’s Athlete of the Year, so hopefully she won’t be too devastated to miss this year’s trip to Monaco, but it does seem like she deserves the recognition for being a team player and lending her name, clout, and legs to three World Majors, including the newest addition in Sydney.
With the finalists named, the decision is up to the fans* (*those that have a registered World Athletics+ account and voted within the six-day window). Of course, WA never publishes final vote totals or public results, so a cynic may suggest that the eventual winners could easily be just as strategic and political as the finalists themselves. An even bigger cynic would argue that the entire awards system is just a way to stay in the news during a dead period in the track and field calendar.
But given the governing body’s indomitable ability to direct resources and shape the narrative of the sport, it’s worth watching closely to know where exactly they’re trying to take us.
One way or another, we’ll find out on November 30th.
The View From The Tunnel 🔭
Track and field medals were handed out months ago and the World Marathon Major circuit finally wrapped up in New York, but is championship season really over?
Not if your race distance of choice is really, really, really long. Fall is a great time to be an ultra-running fan or competitor, beginning with Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc in late August and continuing with three World Championships (24 hours, 100k, and 50k) in October, November, and December. Last weekend, all eyes in the ultra world weren’t on Chamonix, France or Bangkok, Thailand, however: they were fixated on the bustling metropolis of Vienna, Illinois.
That’s because Vienna (pronounced “VIE-anna”; population: 1,300) was home to the 12th annual Tunnel Hill 50 and 100 mile race, as well as the USATF 50-mile championship. 800 runners took to the flat, crushed-gravel bike path for an out-and-back… and out-and-back, and out-and-back, and out-and-back… race whose finishers ranged from 2:12 marathoner Brogan Austin to 90-year-old Gene Bruckert, who won his age group as the sole participant with a 24:03:34 effort.
The race results weren’t all novelties and “where are they now” spotting by any means. Two world records and an American record went down at Tunnel Hill, a course that’s basically become the BU indoor track for ultramarathons. The first big story of the day was Anne Flower, a full-time emergency room doctor from Colorado who shattered the women’s 50 mile record by over 11 minutes. Like Austin, Flower was a 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier, but she was never a professional—quite the opposite, as she clocked her 2:42:24 PB while in residency. Earlier this year, Flower decided to run her first-ever 100-mile at the famed Leadville 100, and it seems that she’s found her specialty, as she shattered the course record on the high-altitude trail race in her first go.
Flower ran about as close to perfectly-even splits as possible throughout the race, averaging 6:23 per mile and coming through the marathon split in 2:46. Based on how cheerful she looked at the finish line, you’d think she was out for a 5k jog in the park. Austin, who was running his first ultramarathon of any distance, had an unfortunately typical debut, hitting the marathon in 2:26 (5:36 pace) and then hitting the wall, hanging on for a 5:02:54 finish (6:03 pace) the hard way. Behind him, the experienced legs of Dr. Geoff Burns, who in his day job is a national expert on supershoes, kept things between 6:00 and 6:10 pace the whole time to move from 5th into 2nd over the back half of the race. That tale of two races is a perfect distillation of where the sport of ultrarunning is right now: you can have the shiny road PBs and track-honed talent, but experience still goes a long way over long distances.
The woman whose record Flower broke, Courtney Olsen, finished second in the USATF championship, but her day didn’t end at 50 miles. The race did feature an official 100km finish, which outside the mile-focused United States is the more common ultra race distance than 50 miles, and Olsen had a big barrier in mind. She wanted the 30-year-old American record of 7:00:48 held by 1990s ultra legend Anne Trason, but it was really close at the end. Olsen, a 2:36 marathoner in her own right, sprinted into the finish at the end of 62 miles of racing to clock a 6:59:55, breaking not just the record but the seven-hour barrier—something only one other woman in history has ever achieved.
Five hours later, those poor souls taking on the 100-mile distance were wrapping up their last few miles with headlamps in the dark. Even with aching legs and sinking temperatures, 45-year-old Caitriona Jennings didn’t come all the way from Ireland to go home empty-handed. With impressively even halves of 6:12:06 and 6:24:58, Jennings knocked five minutes off Camille Herron’s prior world (and course) record set back in 2017. Jennings also finished fourth overall in the race that ultimately had 173 total finishers.
The men’s race, believe it or not, came down to the 100-mile equivalent of a kicker’s battle, with 21 seconds separating Phil Young and Reese Slobodianuk at 97 miles. Young had led the first half of the race but slipped to third place before clawing his way back in the last 15 or so miles. Young finished in 12:03:27 (7:14 pace) with all the top male finishers slowing down fairly significantly over the second half, but found the extra gear to clip off a few 6-minute miles at the finish to overtake Slobodianuk for the win.
Much like Chicago or New York, Tunnel Hill’s pleasant weather and strong fields provided a perfect showcase of the best of American distance running talent. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end. In many ways, Tunnel Hill is the anti-NYC: as unpretentious and free of fanfare as it gets, hundreds of miles from the nearest major city with the “crowd” limited to friends, family, and crew. There are no brand activations; there are no Bachelor contestants. Competitors are more likely to be fueling with gummy worms and hot dogs than Maurten gels. At one point, a wandering dog from a nearby farm came very close to throwing the race into disarray by blocking the road into an aid station and refusing to move for cars.
And yet, the performances themselves were elite, by any measure. If you’re a mid-pack OTQer looking at the results and thinking to yourself, “How elite can they be? I could do that,” there’s one solution: Be like Brogan Austin and go out and do it. It won’t seem quite so easy at mile 40. If you’re simply a running fan who finds yourself in southern Illinois next November, Tunnel Hill is a can’t-miss event. Just remember to bring a beer and a chair, because it takes a while.
A Freeze Appreciation Post 🥶
Look. We love track and field. For our dollar, there’s nothing we’d rather take in sporting-wise than a down-to-the-wire 1500m, a blink-and-you-miss-it 100m, or a neck-craning high jump showdown. But we have to admit that one area our sport falls short in—that the major professional leagues of the United States have really dialed in—is “the in-stadium experience.”
If you’ve ever attended an NBA, WNBA, NFL, MLS, etc. game, you know what we’re talking about. From the moment you saunter into the stadium until the post-game exit traffic, you WILL be entertained. There is no dead air. No quiet moments. Just sport at its highest level, punctuated by things like baby races, plate-balancing unicyclists, local recording artists inserting creative melisma into the American national anthem, and T-shirt cannons galore.
To call the experience “stimulating” is like calling Antarctica “chilly.”
But of all the gimmicks and sideshows trotted out by professional sport franchises across our fair land, the one that we like best is the Atlanta Braves’ “Beat the Freeze” promotion. At each home game, a fan gets the chance to race the Freeze, a particularly speedy mascot, first portrayed by Nigel Talton, who happens to boast a lifetime best in the 100m of 10.47.
Of course, pitting a local schlub, several beers deep, against an NAIA podium finisher wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting outcome. So the Freeze spots the challenger several seconds—to the point that he is occasionally beaten! The result is pure magic. It’s inarguably a more momentarily entertaining spectacle than the baseball being played around it. And though not the point of the exercise, it really does drive home just how much fast a legitimate sprinter is.
The Braves are actually hiring a new Freeze right now. (We highly encourage any Georgia-based speedsters looking for a strange part-time job to apply.) And while smiling serenely in appreciation for all the various Freezes have done to entertain us, we got thinking: are there other contexts in which we could casually deploy decent track and field athletes to make laypeople look silly?
Imagine you attend LSU—your football program has just had another stinker of an outing on the road, and the opposing team’s student section is rushing the field to tear down the goal posts in celebration… again. You are dejected and it’s been months since you’ve had the chance to utter “geaux Tigers.” That is, until your track team’s pole vaulter sprints onto the field, pole in hand, and effortlessly clears the 10-foot-high crossbars. Confused and, frankly, impressed, the wind is fully taken out of your foes’ sails, and they quietly shuffle out of the stadium and back toward the quad. The next Mondo Duplantis flexes at the 50-yard line, stomping on the home team’s logo while brandishing a pole menacingly.
Despite our distaste for competitive treadmill running on the elite level, there’s room for some stationary action in a different setting. Set up a pair of Woodways smack dab in the middle of an arena and let a fan try and hold the PB pace of a 10,000m All-American for all of halftime. If they’re still on the ‘mill by the time the teams retake the field, they get $10,000. Good luck making it half a mile on a stomach full of hot dogs and Bud Light.
The Freeze is cool enough, but let’s introduce some Penn Relays magic into the mix. Two teams of four – two 100m sprinters and two randomly-selected fans apiece – crisscross the football field or soccer pitch, shuttle relay style, with the added entertainment value of placing the pros and shmos on opposite legs. There’s more reason to integrate that into a sportsball game than the mixed 4x100m into Worlds if you ask us.
There are so many ways to display the incredible strength possessed by shot put specialists. You could have a retired thrower attempt to squat any three randomly selected fans in attendance at an NFL game. You could do something similar with bench pressing fans. Hell, if you’re really creative you could probably envision four particularly rigid fans being deadlifted at halftime. The simplest may be having Ryan Crouser pick up and throw a 15-pound dumbbell 60-plus feet next to Joe Ticket-Holder attempting to do the same. If all else fails, there’s only one way to convey STRENGTH to the average American sports fan. And that’s arm wrestling (or arm wrasslin’, if you prefer). We envision a sort of all-comers situation in which a former competitive shot putter sits at a folding table in the middle of the field/court during a time out break, and ten or so fans are trotted out to challenge them. Of course, each fan is easily dispatched. Before the crowd can lose interest, the fans are allowed to team up. Can the thrower overtake two simultaneous noodle arms? Three? Four?
Are these ideas dumb and in some cases dangerous? Yes. But that’s showbiz baby. That’s sports-as-entertainment!
More News From The Track And Field World 📰
– The B.A.A. Half attracted some top-tier international talent to the roads of Boston, with Fantaye Belayneh—coming off of a ninth-place showing at the World Championship 5000m—taking the win in 1:08:51 in the women’s race, and Isaia Lasoi—the #3 ranked road runner in the world—securing the men’s victory in 1:00:59.
– At the highly alliterative Cardiff Cross Challenge, Kenyan stars Matthew Kipchumba Kipsang (28:19 for 9.6k) and Cynthia Chepkirui (20:11 for 6.4k) prevailed over highly British fields.
– Major development in the ongoing battle for fastest marathon in the U.S. held in a city whose name ends in “-apolis:” at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, nine women qualified for the 2028 Olympic Trials, led by Amanda Mosborg (2:32:01) and five men managed to secure their spots on the Trials starting line, with Joseph Whelan breaking the tape in 2:12:29. (Comparatively, in Minneapolis on a warm day in October, just one man and two women hit the sub-2:16/sub-2:37 marks, respectively.)
– Adding further insult to Minneapolis’s injury, at the Indianapolis Monumental Half, Skylar Stidam won the men’s race and qualified in 1:02:47, while women’s winner Carrie Ellwood (1:08:34) was joined by five additional women under the 1:12 OTQ half marathon mark.
– After nearly two decades at the helm of the Arkansas Razorbacks track and field program, Chris Bucknam has announced his retirement at the conclusion of the 2025 season. Under Bucknam’s watch, the Arkansas squad won two NCAA indoor titles, and landed atop the podium 18 times. Woo pig sooie, sir. Woo pig sooie.
– Happy trails as well to Canadian middle-distance legend Charles Philibert-Thiboutot, who went big then blew up in his marathon debut at New York City and then promptly—and relatably—announced his retirement.
– Across the sea and back again: British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith has returned to Texas after leaving coach Edrick Floreal last year, briefly returning to the UK for training, and ultimately settling back with Baylor coach Michael Ford, who guides Trayvon Bromell’s training among others.
– Congratulations to actress Shailene Woodley on finally having her name bolded in The Lap Count. Woodley is set to star in a Victoria Negri-directed psychological thriller centered around the Badwater 135 ultra marathon. Negri herself is an ultrarunner, Death Valley is a pretty eerie place in its own right, and the Badwater 135 is a bizarre simulacrum of losing one’s mind, so we’ll be checking Ultra out when it’s released.
– And as we descend into “ultra-curious track and field newsletter” status, we feel it’s our responsibility to share that former Bowerman Track Club stud Andrew Bumbalough took home the ‘W’ at the Run the Rock 50k outside of Bend, Oregon, in 3:57:41.
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Chebet and Jefferson were serious snubs but I don't think Femke is that confusing. She was undefeated in the 400mh and only lost two individual races (a 200m and 400m). She also won 6 Diamond Leagues, including the final, and a gold in Tokyo. The voters clearly valued Diamond League over Grand Slam (it is a World Athletics panel after all) but Bol raced and won often. If anything, Sydney is more confusing considering how little she competed. I don't mind World Athletics rewarding athletes for having a complete season -- it is a yearly award. All this to say, I think Chebet and Jefferson had the most impressive seasons but don't agree that it's a great mystery that Bol was included in the list.