Masters Track News and Muse

The first outdoor meet of the year is usually about working out winter kinks and setting benchmarks -- standards for later improvement. But some amazing results yesterday at the fourth annual Saddleback Masters meet at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo (south Orange County), California, showed athletes in midseason form. The No. 1 highlight: The vaulting couple of Bud Held and Nadine O'Connor (they live together in Del Mar, California) both broke listed world outdoor records in their age groups.

The motto of Trackmeets.com is "We show every lap of every race." This webcasting company out of Syracuse University lives up to its goal most of the time. But at the USATF nationals last weekend in Boston, the crew dropped the ball. Big time. When Tony Young and masters discovery Brian Pope hammered each other the last few laps of the masters 3000 at the Boston USATF nationals , the crowd at the Reggie Lewis Center could be heard in the background screaming. It was a thrilling race that resulted in an American M40 indoor record for Young. But those last three or four laps apparently weren't shown on the webcast.

Just received a note from Kamal Jabbour, the brains and chief engineer behind the trackmeets.com webcast of the Boston USATF nationals (and many other events). He corrects my misinformation about the Stacy Dragila interview obscuring coverage of the final laps of the masters 3000, which produced an American indoor record. He writes: "We DID show the race. The video stayed on the track. We sent the audio to Stacy."

Nice work by the organizers of the Boston national masters meet! The entry list recently posted includes not only names, events and club affiliations but also the Holy Grail of masters statisticians -- dates of birth! Keyboarding the DOBs is a pain, but it saves incredible amounts of legwork for reporters and record keepers afterward. The Boston entry list lacks only one element that would make it a model of perfection -- hometowns.

WMA reports: "The last day for entries to the XV WMA World Masters Championships in Carolina in July has been extended. The last day is now April 30 without any extra penalty fee. The LOC will still accept late entries up to May 31 with a penalty fee of USD 50:- after April 30 and up to May 31. The LOC has sent out a letter to all WMA Affiliates re this change. In this letter it is also strongly underlined that all athletes who must have a visa to enter USA must apply immediately. On the Carolina website all information re the visa procedure is given."

Bob Weiner of Washington has his mind on another war today -- the fight for coverage of masters track. His immediate target -- the Boston indoor masters nationals at the end of the month. Here's his first press release, which led to a short article in the Boston Globe:

Today's mail brings the application booklet for the Pan-Pacific Masters Games in Sacramento. The bad news: The track meet portion of the event is August 1-3 at American River College in Sacramento. (Almost overlaps the USATF national masters meet Aug. 7-10 at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Also: This isn't the same venue as the 2000 and 2004 Olympic Trials.) The good news: Track entrants can compete for well under $100.

Sweden's Ivar Söderlind, the recordmeister for European masters, has compiled a list of world and European indoor records set at the March 6-9 European Indoor Masters Championships at San Sebastian, Spain (the host of the 2005 world WMA meet). Here's what he calls a preliminary list of world age-group records set at San Sebastian -- worth noting as the USA championships get under way this coming week in Boston: