Orono battles the elements, dodges thunderstorm bullet
It wasn’t Charlotte hot, but it was hot. Halfway through the USATF masters outdoor nationals, athletes are looking forward to cooler weather Saturday and Sunday after an evening T-storm brought heavy rain and lightning to this area of Maine. With radar showing electrical storms about six miles away, meet officials canceled the final field events (M70 and M75 discus) and rescheduled them for early Saturday morning. That was a minor bother compared to what happened around 4:30 Thursday afternoon — when 300 athletes staying at one University of Maine dorm were told to pack and move to another dorm when power was lost at their first dorm. And the dorms aren’t air-conditioned. It reached the low 90s Friday, but a stiff breeze (into the faces of 400 finishers and all sprints) provided some relief.
This is the third time Orono has hosted masters nationals (after 1998 and 2002), and the level of competition is probably the highest — and this despite some notable no-shows, including W45 Joy Upshaw-Margerum, resting up for Riccione worlds in September.
But the biggest stars are here — including Bill Collins, Phil Raschker, Nadine O’Connor, Nolan Shaheed, Kathy Martin and Marie-Louise Michelsohn.
Neni Lewis won the W45 shot, but said she had to go back to New York to close escrow on a co-op apartment she’s buying. She’ll miss a couple days of competition, I think.
Carol Finsrud is taking up the slack in the throws, however. Today, she set American records on her first and final throws in the W50 discus. The ultimate mark was 42.96 — 140-11. She also nearly nailed an official driving an electric cart. (He was driving the cart near the sector boundary when she threw her 1 kg disc just outside the line on the right.) She’ll get a shot at the WR of 45.48 when she competes next month in Italy.
I’m not competing at Orono (becuz of a bum, buckling left knee), but my wife and I are shooting hundreds of photos and taking lots of video. This should augment the live Webcast being done. That Webcast gets high marks for image quality but Bronx cheers for event selection. They focus exclusively on track events and ignore the fieldsters (even during down times on the oval).
I’ll talk to them Saturday about this.
Lots more to report. Stay tuned.
10 Responses
Congratulations on the AR Carol. I expect you will improve that mark a few more times before all is said and done. The Hammer record is ripe for you too. Good luck in Italy.
Thanks Ken for the photos and video you are taking. I especially appreciate any help you can provide in getting the webcast cameraman to point the camera to any active field event when a running event isn’t actually being contested. Of course, I’m biased to see the pole vault and on Thursday it was often in center screen during running dead time, but was so small no one was identifiable and you couldn’t see if they cleared the bar or not!
Just me again. As I was writing the above comment, for more than 10 minutes the camera was “stuck” on the finish line waiting for the final finishers of the 10K. During that time they could have been showing some of the M50-59 vaulters that were jumping and then cut back for each 10K finisher.
Wait a minute. The camera just now changed to show the pole vault. Yeah!!!
Gary Hunter just set first an American record and then a world record while the camera was focused on runners adjusting their blocks in preparation for 100m races. Frustrating to say the least.
As noted in the previous post, the camera did go to the PV pit momentarily; just long enough to see Gary do one warm up jump before it moved away again.
MR KEN STONE YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB WITH ALL THAT YOU ARE DOING FOR MASTERS TRACK AND FEILD ,MUCH RESPECT TO YOU AND MAY THE PAST BE THE PAST . KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK GOD BLESS DAVID ASHFORD USA TRACK AND FEILD 110HH.
how about moving the timing device to the other end of the track for the sprinting events…official told me they did not have an extension cord long enough to reach….they could have taken my 200M entry fee (DQ for a step on the line) and bought 2-3 long enough and use the change for some glasses…just a joke..
Unfortunately a late summer training injury kept me from competing this year but I have to agree with Simpson. We pay a lot of money in USATF membership and entry fees for this meet. It can’t cost that much to buy or rent two extra cameras to insure that the sprints aren’t run into ridiculous headwinds. You’ve got to be able to turn it around for the biggest meet of the year.
Hey Rod, we all looked for you in the 100, figured you must have gotten hurt…Ketrell did not show up either…get healthy man, there is always next season, new faces, old ones too…next year it’s in Spokane, Washington…perhaps they’ll purchase some stinking extension cords and get rid of Murray Stanford…
The webcast was NOT a USATF project. It was done by an outside company and was put together at the last minute. We were told at the Athletes Meeting on Friday night that in future years they hope to have more cameras and provide better coverage of the field events.
It really breaks this discus thrower’s heart that the sprinters didn’t get to run with a gale force tailwind and record faster than ever times that would have been wind-aided. The wind on the straightaway was the same for everyone. The discus throwers didn’t have that equal playing field with the tailwind (NOT good for discus throwing) that cut distances for some throws but not for others (when it got calm for a few minutes at a time). For us that’s part of the game and is accepted.
Everybody has the same wind but 2 events in particular, my event, the hurdles, and the pole vault can actually become dangerous if you can’t adjust for the wind. Especially if you’re talking about athletes who aren’t all world class.
Leave a Reply