A belated cheer for Dave Bickel: Mt. SAC masters hammer champ
The least appreciated track and fieldsters? I nominate hammer throwers. So thankfully, Joy Upshaw sent me some shots of the masters throwers at the Mt. SAC Relays, who competed Saturday morning while I was driving up from San Diego. To recap: M40 David Bickel won the masters hammer event at Mt. SAC with a best throw of 46.82 meters (153-7), and a series of 45.28, 46.63, 46.82, FOUL, 46.49 and 46.40. And speaking of hammer studs: I was resting in the shade near the “Where the world’s greatest athletes compete” sign at Mt. SAC when two guys approached me, asking if I could take their photo in front of the sign. Sure, no problem. I guessed they were shot putters. The said, “No, we just took one-two in the hammer.” I guessed: “So did you throw 220?” Think again. Libor Charfreitag of Slovakia (not Slovenia, as originally told) went 76.18 (249-11) and Jerome Bortoluzzi of France threw 73.02 (239-7). I’ll be watching for these gents in London, fersure.
John Edmonston (left), Richard Watson, Steve Hill, Dave Bickel and John Ryer.
On the other hand, hurdlers get lots of props. Here’s a video of the Mt. SAC masters 110s, where David Ashford pulls up out of the blocks (not Mike Godbout, as erroneously listed in the Mt. SAC results.) Derek Pye, about age 43, wins in 14.46 — which boggles my brain since that’s intrinsically superior to my hand-timed high school best of 14.4.
I had a chance to chat with 800 American record holder Johnny Gray at Mt. SAÇ — who once famously predicted that he’d claim every masters record from 200 to 1500. When I reminded him of this, he kind of grimaced and recalled how he tore his ACL while showing one of his athletes how to high jump. That ended his masters aspirations.
Still, he says he can run fine now. But he’s a tad overweight.
Good to see him at Mt. SAC, once a field of dreams for him.
And my apologies for suggesting Willie Gault would race for the M50 sprint world records Sunday. He apparently meant NEXT Sunday — at the Tiny Lister Classic at Cal State Los Angeles. Check back in a week for results.
4 Responses
There is a difference between Slovenia and Slovakia. Libor and I are from Slovakia. So was Lad Pataki. Slovakia, a small country with a pretty good track and field history…
Yes, Milan, when I was growing up in Russia, we always had great respect for the Slovak track and field athletes and the tradition continues there.
For you folks from the other side of the Iron Curtain, Slovakia was part of the former Czechoslovakia and Slovenia was the northern part of the former Yugoslavia.
Oops, sorry on geographical flub. My bad. I’ll fix.
No problem 🙂
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