Icahn't Believe It's USAs ⏱️
Lap 282: Sponsored by 100Percent & Bandit
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Compiled by David Melly, Kyle Merber, & Paul Snyder
What Josh Kerr Got Right About “Project 222” 🏟️
It’s not often in the sport of track and field that you can hear the roar of a crowd through your television screen. But with one lap to go in Josh Kerr’s audacious record-setting mile run at the London Athletic Meet, the Olympic Stadium was as loud as any World Cup match.
Spurred on by 60,000 or so screaming fans, Kerr was able to pull away from runner-up Yared Nuguse and go where no man had ever gone before, stopping the clock at 3:42.66. In doing so, he became the first man under 3:43 in history and knocked Hicham El Guerrouj off the top spot for the first time in 27 years.
Behind Kerr, Nuguse held on for second in 3:45.69 and Jake Heyward continued his improbable comeback season, setting a Welsh record of 3:46.73. Heyward missed three straight seasons to injury, and now he’s back to his best stuff in half a season of racing. Robert Farken rounded out the most cheer-worthy performances by breaking his own German record for the second time this month, running 3:46.82 for fourth.
Around Kerr was another thrilling Diamond League meet, headlined by a red-hot Julien Alfred, who defeated Olympic champ Gabby Thomas over 200m once again, running a new meet record of 21.66 to Thomas’s 21.81. In the men’s 100m, NCAA champ Kayinsola Ajayi caused quite a stir with his finish line staredown of World champ Oblique Seville (or was it Jordan Anthony?), which didn’t slow him down too much because he still won the race in 9.84 into a headwind. Ajayi’s Auburn teammate Ja’Kobe Tharp re-proved his NCAA performance was no fluke, as he picked up his second of two 110mH wins on the pro circuit last week. Running 12.89 in London and 12.85 in Budapest in an incredible display of high-level consistency. And British fans will surely be throwing their tea and crumpets at the screen right now because we got four paragraphs in without mentioning Keely Hodgkinson’s 1:56.21 win in the 800m.
The theme of the field events was shocking losses, as Mondo Duplantis withdrew early from the pole vault program with hamstring tightness and ended up fourth, while discus queen Valarie Sion threw well, but not well enough to counteract Cierra Jackson’s surprise Diamond League record in the discus. Last year’s NCAA champ launched an absurd 71.72m sixth-round throw in the discus to defeat the reigning champ and log the longest throw in the world outside the wind tunnels of Oklahoma in nearly four decades.
But you’d never know any of this happened from the headlines, because the media firestorm that followed was all Josh Kerr, all the time.
Deservedly so!
Kerr can be a polarizing figure for his public bravado and seemingly impregnable ego, but if you’re going to take the incredibly vulnerable risk of calling your shot four months in advance, you deserve the literal and metaphorical victory laps that follow.
Kerr’s 3:42.66 seemed to accomplish two rare feats: it broke through to the broader sporting public’s consciousness, making its way into ESPN push alerts to Twitter clip farms, and it captured the full attention of the hard-core track and field fandom in a way that few events outside an Olympic final can. The physical achievement itself is all the more impressive because of the way it was successfully framed and presented to the world as a moment, a where-were-you-when phenomenon that will live on as one of the defining achievements of both the track and field year and Kerr’s entire career.
So how’d he do it? It’s one thing to put in the training and harness the technology necessary to get into world-record form, but it’s another to win the marketing and promotional game as well.
One key factor has already been mentioned: Kerr’s been telling us about the “Project 222” endeavor for months. Full entry lists for Diamond League meets are rarely available more than a few days in advance, and athletes are (unfortunately) under no professional obligation to tell fans what races they’re running until they get to the start line. Yet we’ve known since March that Kerr was running this race, on this day, and what his stated goal was. That allows for months of speculation by fans and analysts alike, dissecting workouts and cross-referencing splits to gauge Kerr’s chances of both victory and record-setting success.
Typically, track and field endeavors flicker in and out of our brains in a matter of seconds, with last weekend’s meet quickly subsumed by the next surprise PB or big upset. But sports more generally thrive on narratives that fans can sit with, and a mile world record attempt is just as worthy of sustained public attention as a 41-year-old’s free agency journey.
Since March (and actually, fairly consistently for the last several years), Kerr has rigorously documented his buildup. Again, the lack of professional obligation to tell the world anything about your health and training means that there’s an enormously wide range in how forthcoming professional track and field athletes are, with some posting daily runs on Strava and others dropping off the face of the planet for years. Kerr, like many of his rivals, has harnessed the power of YouTube effectively to keep fans interested and drop new tidbits of information to help shape the story. If there’s one criticism to his media strategy in the leadup to the race, it would’ve been nice to officially know about Kerr’s 2:42 1200m time trial at altitude sooner than the day before the race, because that would’ve really helped the pre-race frenzy.
Kerr’s selection of the London Diamond League as the venue of choice was also an audacious, but critical, ingredient in the recipe for success. He was not only inviting all challengers (at least those that could acquire a bib for a DL meet), but he removed any sort of asterisks that have become all-too-common place in these much-hyped record attempts. By opting to compete at a real race rather than a brand-sponsored exhibition, he was not only making sure the record itself was official-official, but that the entire endeavor felt performance-forward.
Surely the higher-ups at Brooks would’ve preferred a few more logos, and there’s plenty of “project” precedent—whether it’s Nike’s various Kipyegon/Kipchoge exhibitions, Jim Walmsley’s 100K Hoka time trial, or the Adidas “Road to Records” events. Even within the bounds of official competitions, there’s a wide range of perceived legitimacy. But with all due respect to the BUs and UWs of the world, it’s so much more satisfying to watch a record fall on an international broadcast of a 73-year-old professional meet than a half-empty college track.
London itself proved once again why it’s one of the track and field athletics capitals of the world. There’s great value in bringing track to new and exciting places where it doesn’t have a pre-existing footprint, but just as important is honoring the tradition and history of one of the world’s oldest sports. If your goal is to maximize in-stadium energy, choosing the place that delivered two of the best track and field events of recent memory—the 2012 Olympics and 2017 World Championship—as a homecoming for the most decorated UK distance runner since Mo Farah (Editor’s note: or second-most, depending on how you stack up Kerr’s resume against Hodgkinson’s) is a brilliant move.
Then there’s the goal itself. Taking down an El Guerrouj WR was no cakewalk, but despite being 27 years old, the 3:43.13 mile was arguably one of the more gettable marks on offer. Per the World Athletics scoring tables, 3:43.13 is “easier” than the 800m, 1500m, 3000m, and 5000m marks; it and Emmanuel Wanyonyi’s newly-set 1000m record are the only male distance records worth less than 1300 points.
3:43.13 is 3:28.01 1500m pace plus 109 meters; seven active runners including Kerr have run faster for 1500m. When Jakob Ingebrigtsen came within a second of the mark in 2023, his PB at the time was 3:27.14. Running 3:42 is something few men will ever be capable of, but it also doesn’t necessarily require being in 3:26-low 1500m shape.
The net result was an event built for success. An ambitious, but achievable goal teased months in advance, with repeated drips and drabs of new information to build interest dropped along the way. A perfectly-packaged showcase with the UK’s best miler headlining the UK’s biggest meet, while still preserving the high level of competition and elite standards essential to the race’s credibility. A generational athlete with a love-him-or-hate-him persona, evoking strong emotions from his fervent supporters and biggest detractors alike. And of course, the run itself; Kerr was able to blossom, not wilt, under the bright lights as he has at championships going back to NCAAs in 2017.
Few track and field moments will be able to match this one’s alchemy, but more should try. Josh Kerr deserves a lot of credit for putting his reputation on the line to create must-see TV, and even more for delivering. Whether his record stands for two more weeks or 27 more years, it’ll eventually be broken, but the thrill of that roaring crowd will last forever.
The Silver Linings Of A “Skippable” U.S. Champs 🗽
The U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships are set to kick off tomorrow at Icahn Stadium. New York City, baby! Not Eugene! National titles on the line in the nation’s largest city! This is something everyone in the American track and field ecosystem has been clamoring for years!
And yet, the pre-meet hype feels a bit muted.
This is a weird year for professional track and field. Thus, we have a weird USAs. Instead of an Olympics or World Championship to build a season around, all some roads lead to the brand new World Ultimate Championships. Possible world ranking point accumulation aside, qualification for said Diamond League Final x Worlds hybrid ignores national championships.
Accordingly, athletes with byes into the WUC fields or who are confident their rankings will get them in can pass on a weekend in New York, relatively consequence free. That’s why fans who schlep over to Randall’s Island will not be treated to feats of strength/speed/endurance/springiness from the likes of Cole Hocker, Yared Nuguse, Brandon Miller (a late scratch), Masai Russell, Gabby Thomas, Rai Benjamin (another late scratch), Katie Moon, or Ja’Kobe Tharp.
Before you let your fan ire reach a critical mass and head to the comments section of these athletes’ profiles, consider: you make more money finishing first ($10,000 vs $8,800) at any Diamond League than at USAs, and you also make more money finishing fifth, sixth, or seventh. Plus, USAs offers nothing in the form of appearance fees, and for sprinters in particular, Icahn Stadium is not likely to produce times quite as fast as Hayward.
But rather than dwell on who is not on the start lists, here at the Lap Count, we choose to focus on the positives. And there are plenty. First off, stars like Sha’Carri Richardson, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, Noah Lyles, Kenny Bednarek, Valarie Sion, Cooper Lutkenhaus, Quincy Hall, among plenty of others, are all slated to compete as of Tuesday evening. Any time you can watch big names like these do their things—especially inside a condensed, four-day schedule in a (comparatively) easy to reach stadium—that’s special.
But beyond that, the notable absences at USAs, in some ways, make for more interesting competitions. Neat things—athletically, to be clear—can happen in a power vacuum! Events are less predictable, rising talent has a chance to make a statement on a still-very-much major stage.
The men’s 1500m is perhaps the single event most obviously defined by who’s sitting it out—in addition to no Hocker or Nuguse, Jonah Koech has been M.I.A. all year, Ethan Strand has scratched, and Hobbs Kessler is opting for the 800m. But that simply leaves room for a scene veteran—competing during a historic period for U.S. men’s middle distance—like Vince Ciattei or Sam Prakel to take home a precious U.S. title or for a youngster like Nathan Green or Simeon Birnbaum to re-announce their presence on the pro stage. Plus, without known entities like Nuguse to keep things honest, or Hocker’s anxiety-inducing kick in the mix, even predicting how this one will pan out is a challenge. And that rocks!
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s absence here has nothing to do with the World Ultimate Championships, at least not directly. She just gave birth to her daughter, and is understandably sitting things out. But in her absence, both the 400m and 400m hurdles suddenly feel wide open. As much as we love witnessing SML outclass world class athletes, we’re pretty stoked about the prospect of a late career Dalilah Muhammad U.S. title in her hometown, or an Aaliyah Butler win that establishes her as the unquestionable quarter-mile queen of the U.S.
In a race like the men’s 5000m, we’ve got our headliner in Grant Fisher, but no clear pecking order beyond that. Without Graham Blanks, Nico Young, or Parker Wolfe in the field, Fisher’s strategy feels more open ended. Does the double Olympic medalist simply run away from the field from the gun, flexing on a crew of young, scrappy, non-sub-13-PR guys? Does he trust he can cruise at a comfortable clip then close better than anybody else? It seems unlikely that anybody else will lead for much of the race—why would they? The men’s longer distance events at U.S. championships in recent years have deviated from the sit-and-kick affairs of yore, and become true races of attrition where three or four big dogs battle it out and let the pace and warm conditions take their tolls. Here, Fisher has the world’s largest target on his back and will likely be handed the keys to the race from the jump—how does he play it?
But it’s not just tactical intrigue or room for new champs that slightly watered down fields encourage. Superstars feel a bit more leeway to dabble in a secondary event, as Nikki Hiltz is doing in the 800m, and Davis-Woodhall is apparently attempting in the long jump and 100m hurdles. In both cases, a double victory at first thought feels impossible, but hey… stranger things have happened.
Hiltz is undoubtedly the class of American 1500m running at the moment, but given their strength relative to the nation’s 800m cohort and absolutely killer close and racing instincts, you never know. Plus, despite Addy Wiley and Roisin Willis having had very strong years up to now, there isn’t a clear insurmountable favorite in the field. Because Hiltz’s world ranking projects to comfortably slot them onto the World Ultimate starting line of the longer race, they can give this demanding double a shot.
As a high schooler, Davis-Woodhall posted the then-second fastest ever prep time in the event, and as a college senior she ran 12.75. Returning to the event for the first time since 2021, in her one outing over hurdles this season she ran a massive PB of 12.47. She’ll likely need to shave off another 0.2 seconds to be competitive—and potentially to even make the final—but given her talent and the rust she could conceivably bust through the rounds, who’s to say what her ceiling is this weekend?
No matter what, it’ll be fascinating to watch her alternate between lining up in the blocks and measuring her steps before getting the stands clapping. And even if everything goes horribly, horribly wrong, Davis-Woodhall still knows she’s still assured a turn on the runway in Budapest as the reigning World and Olympic champ. That degree of insurance makes risk-taking like what she’s set to do viable. (It’s a damn shame Ryan Crouser has shut down his season, because this is likely the best shot we’d ever get at witnessing the high school record holder dust off the discus.)
So go ahead and open up the usual browser tabs, ensure you’ve got access to the requisite streaming services, get the group chat fired up, and tune in to what may not be the most star-studded USAs in history, but what still promises to be a memorable one. We’ve got superstars stepping out of their comfort zones, soon-to-be household names hungry for their first U.S. title, and best of all, lots of favorite-less competitions in store.
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“I do feel like I most definitely can get to that elite level status that these other ladies are. I think back to when I won my first World Championship and I had my first undefeated season in 2013. I ran 12.26, I ran 12.3. I was running those times well over 10 years ago, so it’s not like I’m not capable of doing those things.”
Brianna Rollins-McNeal will be one of the runners participating in Bandit’s Unsponsored Project at the 2026 USATF Outdoor Championships. Learn more about her here.
Some Of Y’all Need An Altitude Attitude Adjustment 😤
Dating is not easy. In the early stages of getting to know someone, it’s important to be on the lookout for potential red flags—something they do or say that gives a glimpse into who that person really is. Well ladies, if a guy ever tries to pass off his converted 1500m time as a full mile… RUN!
If you want to break four minutes in the mile, you have to break four minutes in the mile. And the only bigger faux pas than estimating one’s ability to keep going for an additional 109 meters might be using an online calculator to make an altitude conversion. While running a 4:04 mile at altitude might indicate the ability to break four minutes at sea level… it’s not a sub-four minute mile.
But the NCAA is not in the business of statistics, it’s in the business of selecting the top 16 athletes every indoor season to compete at the NCAA Championships. Since 1981, citing supportive scientific studies, the NCAA has implemented a standardized conversion formula to adjust marks to account for competitions held at different altitudes. And since 2013, the length and bank of the track has also been factored into the selection equation. (Anyone who has ever tried sprinting on the turns of a flat 200m track understands why.)
Relying on altitude conversions has been the path to qualification for several NCAA mile champions, including Josh Kerr, Anthony Rotich, and Geordie Beamish. Historical results demonstrate that athletes who get into the quota because of adjusted times generally prove that they belong. And even if they don’t, it makes sense that the NCAA would want to take a chance on the possibility that a Montana State guy who didn’t make it out of Bozeman may have more upside than a runner who finished 11th in heat 2 of three different 3000m races held in Boston.
That’s all about to change.
The NCAA Division I Men’s & Women’s Track and Field and Cross Country Oversight Committee has voted in favor of removing the altitude and track-size calculations as procedural for the selection of NCAA qualifying marks. That means running 14:00 for 5000m at the Sky Dome in Flagstaff would have been worth 13:22 last year, but next season it will be worth 14:00.
As you might imagine, the comment section about this news had a mixed bag of opinions.
Oregon athlete Connor Burns had strong thoughts: “If you have the ability to qualify to NCAAs you will get to race at sea level I promise no coach is letting that opportunity pass.” Which is certainly true for many, if not most, top athletes. But let’s look at who else is and is not qualifying for NCAAs.
At the 2026 NCAA Indoor meet, 527 of the 625 competing athletes represent a school in one of the Power Four conferences, or about 84% of attendees. And that’s not including the 14 athletes backed by Princeton’s $34 billion endowment, or the 18 additional athletes from historical powerhouses Villanova and Northern Arizona. There are only 68 teams in the P4 conferences, but there are 365 Division I schools.
For small-school, at-altitude or altitude-adjacent athletes, getting to NCAAs is more dependent on their coach having the money to get them to sea level than their talent. The divide between the haves and have-nots in the collegiate system is a gap that continues to widen. And that’s not getting into the four-figure sums programs now have to drop to run everyone in a 5000m at BU. By eliminating altitude and track conversions, the NCAA is effectively adding another layer between the fully-funded and barely-scraping-by—that’s the problem here.
College coaches gaming the system to bring their athletes to altitude to unfairly qualify for the NCAA Championships is a made-up problem. This past year, across the 800m, mile, 3000m, 5000m, and DMR on both the men’s and women’s side, there were only 12 spots filled by conversion. Meanwhile, 14 of the 16 top times in the men’s 3000m were run at Boston University.
Getting rid of altitude and flat track conversions won’t significantly change who qualifies for an NCAA meet, but it may give more ammo to athletic directors looking for a good reason to cut roster spots and save on budget. That small DI school in the mountains may not fly their best athletes to Boston if they don’t have a chance of qualifying, but now they’ll appear much less competitive nationally and in recruiting.
The NCAA made a huge step towards professionalizing the collegiate system when it became acceptable to pay student athletes. Unfortunately, however, the House v. NCAA ruling did not go far enough. Whether it’s the MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, EPL, or virtually every professional sport in the world, the healthiest leagues maintain a level of revenue-sharing so that the prosperity of big market teams is spread to smaller markets.
It’s already being done in college sports, but the $1.03 billion doled out among the SEC schools doesn’t spread beyond those 16 institutions. There’s a complicated component of the legislation moving through Congress that would work to spread the wealth, literally, but long story short: that’s not going anywhere any time soon.
NCAA track will never achieve true parity. There will always be big schools with big budgets who can send more athletes to more places in pursuit of qualifying marks. But it’s also an individual sport, and the opportunities that follow collegiate track and field can be life-changing, both career-wise and financially. So it’s a shame that this particular rule change flattens and narrows the path to long-term success, because it will almost certainly lead to an All-American talent sitting at home, trying to borrow an ESPN login to watch a race they could’ve won.
More News From The Track And Field World 📰
– At Kingsport, Tennessee’s Crazy 8s 8k—which doubled as the U.S. 8k championship—Andrew Colley (22:38) and Emily Venters (25:05) took the titles. That makes two U.S. titles on the year for both athletes.
– At the Night of Athletics (incredible name) in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium, Winfred Yavi went 8:52.87 to win the steeple and José Carlos Pinto set the Portuguese 5000m record in 12:59.75.
– Recent Indiana high school grad Noah Bontrager, who won the U.S. U20 3000m title in June, secured the World U20 auto standard of 8:04 last weekend in Philadelphia, on an indoor track, paced in part by his dad. After World U20s he’s headed to Notre Dame in the fall.
– In what has to be considered terrifying news for her hammer throw rivals around the world, three-time Olympic champ and world record holder Anita Włodarczyk, at the spry young age of 40, threw 75.01m in Madrid to log her best performance in nearly four years last weekend.
– Neils Laros has called it a season, citing a bum Achilles.
– In other sad tendon news, 1:06 half marathoner Taylor Roe tore her FHL tendon and had to have it surgically repaired.
– Already in New York, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Noah Lyles stopped by the TODAY show to explain what exactly the World Ultimate Championships are.
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Such good writing; perfect mix of wit and wisdom. Week after week. Always insightful, thought provoking and enjoyable.