Jeff Watry, the engineer/athlete for Gill Athletics, shares these results from the USATF Masters National Decathlon/ Heptathlon Championships held June 21-22 at a university in southwest Missouri. Among the nearly 50 entrants were quite a few Britons and Canadians, who joined the meet as part of a challenge. I posted an article previewing the event a while back. Among other notable results, Britain’s Pat Oakes beat America’s Mary Trotto in the W60 decathlon (yes, all 10 events). Mary might have won had she not had a DNF in the 100-meter hurdles. Grant Overstake took hundreds of great photos. Grant’s wife, Claire, won the W50 heptathlon and was the subject of this nice writeup.

On this date in 1968, the San Diego Track & Field Association together with the city Recreation Department and the Los Angeles Seniors Track Club joined under the leadership of David Pain to stage a track meet at historic Balboa Stadium. It was Day 1 of the first U.S. National Masters Track & Field Championships, under AAU auspices. Pain said the meet would show that older runners could stay in “superb physical condition.” The meet — for men only that first year — would inspire past champions to return to the sport, he said, and “younger men will be encouraged to continue in competition beyond the age at which athletes customarily compete.” Well, it worked.

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Matthew Cavanaugh of the European Pressphoto Agency took a nice action shot of USATF Masters Media Chairman Bob Weiner near the end of the half-mile Bastille Day Race in the nation’s capital. See below; that’s Bob in the Potomac Runners jersey. Bob writes: “Here I am tied for the lead racing five yards from the finish of the Bastille Day Race down Pennsylvania Avenue, Capitol building looming large behind us, when BOTH the other leader and I at the exact same moment . . . dropped our champagne bottle and glass required to stay on our trays . . . and were therefore DQ’d. The guy in third behind us won. Fifty international media cameras cover the event. About 100 people competed.”

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Reuters reports from Lubljana: “Jamaican-born sprinter Merlene Ottey will race twice in four days in a last-ditch effort to become the first athlete to take part in eight Olympic Games. Ottey, 48, will run at meetings in the Slovenian city of Maribor on Saturday and Tuesday in an attempt to achieve the Olympic 100 metres qualifying time by the deadline on Wednesday. Ottey has taken part in every Olympics since the 1980 Games in Moscow and her tally of eight medals is more than any other woman in track and field. She competed for Slovenia at the 2004 Games after six Olympics with Jamaica.”

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Doug Logan, the new CEO of USA Track & Field, apparently promoted himself as the soccer savior of MLS. Well, maybe. But did he fully disclose his failures as well? One was in the mid-1990s, when he was the owner of a Continental Basketball Association franchise in San Diego. His club, called the San Diego Wildcards, went belly up shortly after a losing season, and he owed nearly $500,000 when he filed for bankruptcy. Meet your new CEO, USATF! Here are excerpts from Logan’s brief run in San Diego.

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Doug Logan: will new CEO’s gray hair make him masters-mindful?

I’m keeping an open mind on this BIG news from Indy: A former exec with Arena Football League and Major League Soccer is the new CEO of USA Track & Field. His name is Doug Logan, and the announcement of his selection by the USATF Board of Diectors is below. Doug, about 64, replaces Craig Masback, who left for Nike seven months ago. The question is: Will Doug be friendly to masters or throw them under the train? Doug says: “The opportunity to play a meaningful role in a second (sport) was irresistible. The strength of the sport is based on the ubiquity of athletics and the fact that everyone has ‘played’ at one time or another. Everyone has raced their brother or sister. To a large degree, it is a marketer’s dream.”

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Last weekend saw the finale of the two-part German masters nationals. Yes, the Germans have so many masters tracksters they hold two separate meets — for under-50 and for 50-plus. The first meet was June 27-29 (see results) and the second, which attracted nearly 1,000 entrants, was July 11-13 (see results). Great coverage was at a Web site that included some nice shots. Report and photos are here. Which reminds me: Deadline for regular entry in USATF masters nationals is a week from tonight. (Late entry, with a $50 penalty, is July 30.) See U in Spokane!

Olympian Dalton Grant of Great Britain has become the oldest man to clear 7 feet in the high jump, accomplishing that miraculous feat at age 42 years, 4 months over the weekend. He thus equals a never-ratified 2.15-meter (7-0 1/2) jump by Glen Conley of New York in August 1997. (I wrote extensively about this.) A newspaper report quoted Dalton as saying: “I can definitely get back up to 2.20 metres, I know I can.” And 2.20 is 7-2 1/2.

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America doesn’t have a monopoly on milers. Today we learn that M45 star Jesus Borrego of Spain has bettered John Hinton’s M45 world record for 1500 meters, clocking 3:52.43 on July 12, according to a note that Jesus sent to Nolan Shaheed of California. This Spanish blog also confirms the mark. The listed M45 WR is 3:56.39, which John ran at Durham, North Carolina, in 2007. Jesus isn’t new to record-breaking. In February 2007, we reported his WR for the indoor 3000.

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By this time next week we’ll know. We’ll know whether Merlene Ottey, 48, will compete in the world’s most important track meet. Yesterday, over at my MAD blog, I wrote about Merlene’s dream to run in her eighth Olympics. That boggles the brain. But we’re used to Merlene doing the impossible, so we take it for granted she has a shot at Beijing. Alas, I think her Olympic career is now past tense, 28 years after first appearing in the Games. She has until July 23 to get the Olympic “A” standard of 11.32 for the 100-meter dash, or beat the fastest Slovenian mark this season. Not easy, given her season best of 11.67. But give her time.

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