Gill Athletics becomes official supplier to USATF

Gill Athletics has been veddy, veddy good to us — a prime sponsor of this Web site. But I’m a little confused about today’s joint announcement with USATF that Gill has become the official supplier of USA Track & Field. Free loaner poles for W70 vaulters at nationals? No other companies’ javelins at nationals? What does “official supplier” mean?


With some supplier/sponsor deals, using a rival company’s equipment (or wearing a nonsponsor’s shoes, for example) gets athletes into a heap of trouble.
Gill, BTW, has a strong connection to masters track in the form of M50 decathlete Jeff Watry (pictured below, right), a Gill engineer and webmaster who a few years ago came out from Illinois to test his company’s javelins with a special javelin cannon at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista (southeast of San Diego).
I shot photos for Gill. (Got to eat in the supercool athletes’ cafeteria as well.)
Gill’s involvement in masters track (and this site) is to be applauded. But I’m still gonna try to pin down exactly what the “official supplier” gig means for masters.

Related posts:

  1. Charlie Ruter dies at 91; official at USATF masters championships
  2. Jeff ‘Decamouse’ Watry leaves Gill, returns to Wisconsin roots
  3. USATF officials get an official Code of Ethics: No smoking!
  4. Factory Pole Vault meet at Gill welcomes masters
  5. USATF officials inject jolliness into official Web site

November 17, 2005

One Response

  1. Becca Gillespy - November 18, 2005

    Decamouse!!! :D
    UCS was the supplier before, and you didn’t see any restrictions on what people could use at nationals or anything like that. I suspect this means even less at the masters level than it does at the elite level.
    I think at USATF Nationals you will see the official meet equipment being Gill… such as the pits, hurdles, etc. Athletes have always been allowed to use their own equipment, that won’t change.

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