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Questions to ponder for track season
Posted: Friday April 26, 2002 3:10 PM
Penn Relays under way. Drake Relays under way. Can only mean one thing: Track season. No Olympic Games this summer. No World Championships. Still, there are a number of questions I'd like to see answered.
Q: Have we seen the best of Marion Jones?
Possible answer: Hard to say. Last summer was clearly a bummer for the best woman in the history of U.S. track and field. She got beat in the 100 meters at worlds not because Zhanna Pintusevich-Block ran the race of her life (although she did), but because Jones couldn't run 10.85, a time she hit regularly in training from 1998-2000. Last weekend at the Mt. SAC Relays, Jones opened with a 50.46 for 400 meters, which is quick, but two years ago she kicked off her Olympic season with a 49.59 in the Walnut Hills. She's a smart, gifted woman with wide interests. Does she still want to run faster than any woman ever has, as she once said?
Q: Is it time for Tim Montgomery or J.J. Johnson to finally take down Maurice Greene?
Possible answer: Rule No. 1 is Never bet against Mo. He's fast, doesn't break form and has proven himself to be one of the two best big-race sprinters in history (alongside King Carl Lewis ). However, there were indications last summer that Mo's body was breaking down from five years of high-level running. Montgomery has already run 9.94 this year and Johnson, a new face (thank heavens) has gone 9.95 in the Mt. SAC wind tunnel. This could be the year for one of them (or Tennessee's Justin Gatlin ) to get Greene. Don't wait for '03 and '04, because Greene is only 27. There's more gold in those bones.
Q: Can Deena Drossin challenge the best in the world?
Possible answer: Maybe. She got second at cross-country worlds, which is big-time. She ran 2:26:58 in her debut marathon in New York -- very impressive. Then again, England's Paula Radcliffe ran 2:18:56 in her marathon debut in London; that's eight minutes faster. Granted, London is a much faster course than New York, but eight minutes, dude, is a serious gap. Drossin has the chance to surpass Lynn Jennings as the best American women's distance runner since Joan Benoit Samuelson , although she's not there yet. Internationally, there's work to be done.
Q: What's to become of last year's high school superstars, Alan Webb and Dathan Ritzenhein?
Possible answer: They'll be good. Great? Don't know yet. Both had terrific cross-country seasons. Webb sat out the winter with Achilles problems and is just now getting back to serious training. Ritzenhein is cranking out miles in the gnarly Colorado program. Give it time.
Q: How messy is this whole USATF/IAAF drug-testing thing going to get?
Possible answer: It came front and center at the Olympic Games. Can't get much messier than that. Now both parties have gone to binding arbitration with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The perception of USATF, internationally, is that American track athletes are almost all drug cheats and that the country's governing body harbors them. Anything that dents that exaggeration is useful, no matter how much it might temporarily embarrass the federation.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to
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