Masters mole Keith Mathis reports another M50 indoor high jump record by Bruce McBarnette. “At the Mid-Atlantic USATF 2008 Open and Masters Indoor Championship meet (Saturday) at Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pa., Bruce . . . jumped 1.93 (6-4) to break his own American Record of 1.92. Attached is a picture at the end of the meet with several of the HJ participants, officials and Bruce with the bar at 1.93.” Keith won the M55 high jump with a subpar 4-10, but was thrilled with the meet because he could watch his son Josh (handsome blonde in photo below), who won the under-18 event with a PR leap of 5-4. Josh also won the triple jump at a PR 37-2, “a very excitnig track and field day. We all celebrated with a nice meal in Collegeville and toasted Bruce’s fantastic accomplishment.”

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Romary Rifka of Mexico, who turned 37 on December 23, 2007, set a Mexican indoor record of 1.90 (6-2 3/4) in high jump qualifying today at IAAF indoors. She’s three months older than Serbian Dragutin Topic, who is merely the oldest male flopper at the meet in Spain. My apologies to Romary for not recognizing you. Geezers are coming out of the woodwork at worlds! The listed indoor WR for W35 is 2.00 (6-6 3/4) by Ukraine’s Inga Babakova in 2001. RR jumped 1.95 outdoors last season and has a PR of 1.97 from 2004. But her indoor best had been 1.86 (6-1 1/4) from 2004. She’s on fire!

Better late than never. According to the NYRR club’s results site, Poland’s Zofia Wieciorkowska clocked a 1500 in 4:40.4 to beat the listed W45 world record of 4:41.67 by Spain’s Aurora Perez in 2006 — as telegraphed a week ago. In Heat 3, Marie-Louise Michelson is indeed credited with a W65 world indoor record of 5:52.1 (lowering her own mark by 5 seconds). Both were set at the Armory track in New York in the “Thursday Night at the Races” series. Nice runs, ladies!

Dragutin Topic, who turns 37 in five days, cleared 2.27 (7-5 1/4) today on his third try to make the finals at IAAF indoor worlds in Valencia, Spain. He’s the oldest high jumper in meet history. A month ago, he became the oldest man to clear 2.30 (7-6 1/2), so he has some inches left in his legs. He was perfect until his last height, making 2.15, 2.20 and 2.24 on first attempt. Masters gotta conserve energy, ya know.

In the high jump, 2 meters separates the supermen from the men. That’s 6 feet, 6 3/4 inches to us mortals. Last Sunday, Italy’s Marco Segatel cleared 2.00 less than a month before turning 46. That’s a European indoor record, which is reported here. Thus we now have three men over 45 over 2.00 — M45 Dennis Lewis (2.04), M50 Thomas Zacharias (2.00) and Marco. On the WMA Age-Graded Tables, a performance of 2.00 corresponds to an Open (ages 20-30) equivalent of 2.325 (7-7 1/2). Nosebleed territory. Congrats to Marco. Watch him fly at indoor worlds!

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Chiropractor and trainer Tim McCrossen, 41, won the masters exhibition 60-meter dash at the Boston open nationals last month. But perhaps the toughest challenge was just getting to the meet.Tim wrote me: “It was rough for us to https://www.aasfoundation.org/cenforce-2000-mg/ get to Boston as we had to drive 100 miles in freezing rain from Cincy to Columbus to fly out, then delays and then flew to Portsmouth NH and drove an hour down, but being a bobsledder helped in that I can drive in that stuff.” (Tim qualified for the four-man event at 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway but missed the medal round by .01 second.) Tim replied to my email interview more than a week ago, so I apologize for this tardy posting.

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Former WR distance legend Henry Rono, who turned 56 last month, is a constant presence on a letsrun.com message board. And a recent post by Henry is very sad. Someone asked if he would be competing at April’s Carlsbad 5K, and he said he couldn’t afford to get there from his New Mexico home without event help. He wrote: “ME! pay my way to Carlsbad? Are you kidding me? I have not pay my rent for the last two months. I am knocking every door in every company to hire me in the last three month.”

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Last July, I reported on a reality TV show concept revolving around masters track — up till age 52. Hadn’t heard much since. But now the show is a go for production. And the folks behind it have posted a poll asking if the age limit should be lifted. According to this press release, which cites Marion Jones and other steroid scandals, “T.R.A.C.K. (Top Resurrected Athletes Challenge-Ken) Live! is the ultimate, physical challenge allowing former high school track & field athletes ages 32 to 52 to compete for the glory once again. The discipline to get in shape and the drive to compete effectively under pressure will keep the audience wondering who will be up to the challenge.”

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Nolan Shaheed, the 2007 USATF Masters Male Athlete of the Year, writes: “I’m a late entry for the world indoor meet in France and have paid my registration fees and have booked my flight. But the French travel agency (dropped the ball) on the room reservation. So if any of your blog readers have booked a three- or four-star hotel but find they can no longer go, I would like the name and number of the hotel so I can book it directly.” If anyone can help this 58-year-old gent, please contact me, or post a comment below. Thankee!

This is one beastly file. But a PDF reaching 322 pages, the IAAF statistics handbook issued for the upcoming IAAF world indoor championships in Valencia, Spain, is a treasure trove of masters stats. Mainly, it’s good for finding out the oldest entrants in indoor worlds history. “These pages list the youngest and oldest gold medallists (G), medallists (M), finalists (F) and competitors (C) in each World Indoor Games or Championship event,” says the title on page 21. The oldest medalist (and winner) was Russia’s Yekaterina Podkopayeva, who took the 1500 in 1997 at age 44 years, 271 days. She’s also the oldest athlete in meet history.

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