Bekele, Bolt, and Berlin

Sometimes there's too MUCH to write about.

With the World Championships going on in Berlin, I feel like I barely have enough time to absorb one astonishing result before another event is tugging at my attention on the track or in the field. Already after three days, this meet is turning out to be hugely entertaining with some results that seem inevitable and other that seem unthinkable.

Bolt Makes Tyson Gay's AR Look Ordinary

Watching Usain Bolt get off to a smooth start and then casually run 9.89 in the semi-finals of the men's 100m, I started thinking that the final was going to live up to the hype. It did, as Bolt lowered his own world record by 0.11 and made Tyson Gay's huge AR of 9.71 -- the fastest non-Bolt time in history -- look like merely a "good effort."

Consider, if you will, that three years ago, the world record stood at 9.77 (actually, 9.762, as we should probably start using thousandths of a second when listing sprint records...). In three short years, Bolt has completely changed our idea of the possible. In that time, Bolt has lowered the record by 0.19, more than it had been lowered in the previous 38 years.

Based on an analysis of each phase of Bolt's race, it has been calculated that he ran the 20 meters from 60m to 80m in 1.61 seconds. If my math is correct, that means he was running 27.8 mph.

I can't wait to see this man can do in the 200 (Final Aug 20).

Bekele Equals Geb's Four Championships

I didn't sit down to watch the men's 10,000m final until late last night, and then only after an hour of watching other events that were riveting in their own way. I was delighted to see Americans Lagat, Lomong, and Manzano make it to the finals of the men's 1500 (I believe that having three Americans there helps all their chances, as a countryman is marginally less likely to elbow you out of the way at that crucial moment). I tend to agree with Noah Jampol, who believes that there's no way Asbel Kiprop doesn't win this race. In his semi-final he went from last to first by running a 52-second final lap, largely in the second and third lanes.

But back to the 10,000. In the early stages, there was the familiar line of East African runners from Kenya, Ethiopia, Qatar (via Kenya), and Eritrea, but with the addition of two Americans, Galen Rupp and Dathan Ritzenheim. How did we ever forget about Ritz? He has been runner-up in a number of important domestic races, but this guy finished 9th in the Olympic Marathon last year (top American, ahead of Ryan Hall). As the race developed, Ritz moved past Rupp and all the way up to 6th -- the highest finish for an American male in an Olympic or World Championships 10K since Frank Shorter finished 5th in 1976.

Meanwhile, Eritrean Zerzeny Tadese was doing everything in his power to try to shake the implacable shadow of the world's greatest 10K runner, Ethiopian Keninisa Bekele. As Tadese reeled off lap after lap at 61-63 seconds, lesser runners fell off the pace and the lead pack dwindled to five, then four, then three, and finally with 1600m to go it was only two.

Like Bolt in the sprints, Bekele awes by making the unthinkable look like child's play. With 400m to go, Bekele calmly moved up alongside the Eritrean and then proceeded to demonstrate that the previous 9600m, run at a pace that had ruined the finest distance runners in the world, was just so much warmup. Bekele ran the next 200m in 28+ seconds, opening a three-second gap. In the final 200m, run in 29+, he made sure everyone in the stadium knew that he was enjoying himself. His time of 26:46.31 was a World Championships record.

In fact, after a first 5000m of 13:40, Bekele's second 500m of 13:05 was only 13 seconds off the world championships record for the 5000 meters. And he looked like he could have run, much, much faster.

WCs > OGs

Is it just me or are the World Championships a far better track meet than the Olympics? If you'll pardon the urban analogy, the WC's are like San Francisco, intimate and classy, and the Olympics are like LA, sprawling and gaudy.

During the Olympics, athletics takes a back seat to swimming, basketball, and other sports where Americans tend to dominate. I hate having distance races interrupted all night by promos for other sports.

And speaking of coverage, are they completely mental at the Boston Globe? The morning after Chelsea Johnson won a surprise silver in the women's PV, three American men advanced to the finals of the 1500, Ritz placed 5th in the 10K, Carmelita Jeter took bronze in the women's 100m, and Jenny Barringer ran an American record in the women's steeple to take 5th, the Globe Sports Section had three quarters of a page on Brian Daubach's minor league coaching career.

C'mon guys. Get a clue.