Bill Collins: Two world records in the 200 on same day!
âNot such a long day at the office,â begins Pete Mulholland of Running Fitness magazine on Day 2 of the world masters meet in Linz, âonly 12 hours of watching, interviewing, scavenging for results plus the occasional pit-stop for refreshments. I managed to catch up with some of yesterdayâs 3000m competitors and discovered that there had been some fun and games with the lap recorders.â (Oh no here we go again with lap-counting follies â a la Hawaii masters nationals last summer).
Pete continues:
But then, one of the highlights of many a mastersâ international meeting is the confusion regarding counting laps. Letâs face it, with a lap of only 200m the problem is exacerbated.
Britainâs Pat Gallagher, who less than two weeks ago set new indoor world W65 marks over 800m and 1500m, was a clear winner of her category in the combined W60/65 race but the initial result sheet stated she was second.
Dialogue between team manager Maurice Doogan and the initially insistent refereeing team was lengthy but thankfully successful as Gallagher was then credited with a winning 11:42.68, just six seconds away from yet another world record.
Mary Anstey, another Brit, had problems in the W70 3000m when she was told to stop although she knew that a final lap had to follow. The result showed her as a winner when it should have shown second â but watch this space.
Perusal of the 3000m results also led to the discovery of another world record from the opening day as Germanyâs W65 Rona Frederiks clocked 11:20.09 to take a shade over 10 seconds from her previous mark of 12:30.03.
Well, back to today and it was the 200m semis and finals that caught the eye and how.
Word on the streets is that Steve Peters is âKing of the Sprints,â but in the world of masters you would be hard pushed to find anyone to match the current exciting talents of M40 Enrico Sarencini ITA and M55 Bill Collins USA.
The tall and long-striding Sarencini cruised to 23.49 in his opening heat of the M40 200m: and stepped up a gear to take his semi in 22.53 before seeing off his opponents with ease as he clocked 22.09 in the final, just shy of his own world record of 21.94.
Good as Sarencini was, Bill Collins was something else! Can you name an athlete who has set two world 200m records in the same day? Well you can now as Collins did just that with a semi-final time of 23.70 and 23.36 in the final to brush generic viagra online aside his compatriot Stephen Robbinsâ time of 24.09 set way back in 1998.
Collins now has the distinction of owning the 200m world record for three age categories: M45, M50 and now M55.
Such is Collinsâ current form, his 60m world record of 7.47s set in Houston last month could prove to have a short lived existence. They say that this mondo type surface here in Linz is pretty quick.
The absent Peters may have had his work cut out in the M50 200m as Kerry Smith proved a clear winner over Viv Oliver to cross the line in 23.22 which compares with Petersâ best indoor time of 23.22.
Stephens may have lost his M55 200m record to Collins but earlier he had taken the M60 contest in 25.49 â which compares well with Guido Muellerâs world record of 25.22, but for all that it was a close run affair as he just headed Peter Crombie AUS and Wilfredo Picorelli PUR who ran 25.59 and 26.06, respectively.
Violetta Lapierre FRA, a W40 double sprint champion in San Sebastian, was a class apart as she swept to a 200m world record of 25.29 to delete the mark of 25.46 set by Anke Moritz GER who just minutes earlier had placed second to Joy Upshaw-Margerum USA in the W45 category.
Guido Mueller GER was as majestic as ever in taking the M65 200m in 26.19.
That well known Italian double act Bruno Sobrero and Ugo Sansonetti had the crowd on their feet as per usual and as in previous encounters there was little to choose between them as Bruno held on to take the M85 title, 36.65 to Ugoâs 36.73.
Your correspondent was unable to discover as the whether there had been a repeat of the 2002 European Championships when Ugo missed the medal ceremony as he had to meet his girlfriend!
The classic M75 200m match between Wolfgang Reuter GER and Earl Fee CAN didnât quite materialise as Reuter romped home in 29.45 with Fee third in 30.59, the pair being split by Manfred Konopka GER and his time of 30.39.
âI like this track,â admitted Reuter, âas I set a world record here last winter when it first opened.â
W50 Ibolya Paech GER proved a cool customer as she decided that her opening Javelin throw â outdoors of course â of 35.50 (116-6) would be good enough for victory: and so at proved as she enjoyed a winning margin of almost five metres.
One Response
I am a few days late commenting about the 3k follies in Linz. It was the same old same old, try out the system on the old ladies – who cares if we screw up. So they did screw up. They shoved 19 of us onto the track ages 65 and up. This is a guarantee of a mess, four lap counters, no introductions, no lap count sheets with times, no hip numbers, and the age group number so small as to need a magnifying glass to read them. They lined us up 3 deep – no effort made to split the field and have half start further up the track.
Off we went, and sure as the sun rises, the mess began with the younger faster 65 year olds lapping the older runners. When I had 2 laps to go an official held up one finger indicating 1 lap, I held up 2 fingers indicating 2 laps. The US team managers are shouting at me from the stands that I have 2 laps to go. They can count, the lap counters cannot. Meanwhile the first place 70 year old runner lapped the rest of us, and she was stopped one lap shy. Her husband called to her to run another one and she was back on the track like a jack rabbit. she ran another lap. Mary Ansley, the British runner in 2nd in W 70 was stopped one lap shy. Her husband told her to run another one, she attempted to do so but was pulled off the track before crossing the finish line. Meanwhile I am running around and finishing 3rd.
The initial results showed the British lady in first, the german lady in 2nd, a Canadian lady in 3rd, and I am in 4th. The US files an appeal complete with my splits showing that I ran 15 laps. Upon review of the finish line tapes, I can be seen holding up 2 fingers indicating that the lap counter is wrong. The Canadian runner is disqualified for failing to run 15 laps, the British runner is still in first, the German in second, I am now in 3rd.
The Germans file an appeal, I speak with them and the appeals personm, the German woman is given gold, the British woman gets silver, I get bronze.
This is not yet over as the offical results still show the British woman in first and that she set a world record!
I have sent an email to Sandy Pashkin recounting this sorry state of affairs and saying that no matter how nice the British woman may be, she did not set a world record unless world records for the 3k indoors is given for running 14 laps. The world record probably belongs to the German runner. Meanwhile I look like a silly slug for finishing a minute and 1/2 behind the first two runners. Well folks, I ran 15 laps, their times are for 14 laps.
Did the officials learn from this – no – they made the same mistakes in the older women’s 3k race walk.
This same sorry mess happened in Boise last year with wrong lap counting, the clock malfunctioning, no splits being given after the clock was stopped for the first runner – age 40 when there were runners from age 40 to over 80 on the track. And the race director’s attitude basically was – who cares.
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