Dave Albo shot of Orville (left) and Dixon.
The most dramatic race at ABQ gets proper retelling on Runner’s World.
Kit Fox ran down M99
Orville Rogers and M92
Dixon Hemphill about their stirring 60-meter dash showdown, which Orville won by an eyelash. “Dixon Hemphill wishes he would have simply leaned at the finish. Maybe he didn’t do it because of lack of experience — he was, after all, the youngest of the two competitors in the race. Or maybe he didn’t do it because of his replacement hip,” Kit writes, quoting Dixon: “I think had I leaned a little bit, I would have won.” In fact, the video suggests he was leaning backward at the finish. Orville just barely nipped him in the last few yards. “Rogers has defeated Hemphill in the 60-meter-dash at the USATF Indoor Championships four years in a row,” the story says. They expect to meet again at Baton Rouge this summer. “I know I can improve for the future,” Dixon said. “There is training that I am not doing that I should.”
6 Responses
We had a lot of hot sprints in Albuquerque, and I would have to vote for Oscar Peyton of Maryland vs. Damien Leake of California in the 60 dash as the best of all.
These two hotshots hit the finish line absolutely together, and I had no idea who had won. Quickly the clock showed that both had run 7.73, but through the miracle of modern technology the FAT crew was able to place Oscar as the winner, 0.7725 to 0.7729.
In other words, Oscar won by 1/250 of a second.
Oh, I left out the fact that both are 64.
My vote for best 60m in NM goes to Kenton Brown edging out Ty Brown in M70 by .01 seconds, 8.26 to 8.27. Kenton told me later “That’s the first time I’ve beaten Ty.” The Browns are currently 1 and 2 in the world this indoor season.
I’m with Pete on this, though there’s a very good case to be made for the M70 race as well. However, in that one Ty was handicapped by the fact that he was suffering from a very bad cold and (I think) fever, making his performance pretty remarkable. Oscar had had the same cold (they picked it up at a practice a few days before flying to ABQ) but recovered more quickly.
In the M60 race Damien had a super good start while Oscar’s was horrid. At the 5m mark he was about 1.5m behind, maybe more (I was standing on the far side of the track at about 15m and had a really good view of the start). From that point on Oscar’s long legs brought him slowly back until he nipped Damien at the line by a whisker.
Another top athlete suffering from illness, especially during the pentathlon on Friday, was Rachael Guest. She spent a few hours on Thursday night at an urgent care center and competed with a fever of over 100 degrees. Yet she still made a run at her AR!
Now Dixon is featured in The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-sports-bog/wp/2017/02/28/92-year-old-runner-cant-wait-for-a-rematch-after-video-of-race-goes-viral/?utm_term=.da1834aa6847
We’d certainly be happy to stage a rematch at the Penn relays, it could even be televised!
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