My masters friend Rosa Marchi of Italy shares news of a great new reference: this “Register of Honor” of all world masters champions by event and age group since the inaugural 1975 meet in Toronto. Here’s the list of 100-meter men’s champions, for example. Filippo Luigi Fasolato and Werter Corbelli are credited for this work, which improves on a similar compilation on a British Web site (the women’s lists are here). The new Italian lists add dates of birth and wind readings.

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And I mean porn in the clean sense. I’ve been sneaking frequent peeks at the wcsn.com webcast of the IAAF world meet in Osaka — both live coverage (which I’m ogling while typing this) and archived video. If you get past the small screen and occasional glitches, you have one of the best track-video experiences in history. Costing about $5 a month, World Championships Sports Network gives you what regular TV can’t: uninterrupted track and field. No (expletive) commercials!

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Jamaica’s Danny McFarlane, who turned 35 in June, ran the 400-meter hurdles in 48.32 on Aug. 26. This shattered the listed M35 world record of 48.93 by American Nat Page in 1992. But will Danny’s mark be ratified? Don’t count on it. The mark occurred in the semifinals at the IAAF World Championships in Osaka (he took fifth in the final in 48.59), and WMA has a blind spot when it comes to open track. How do I know? Well, a couple months ago, Danny ran sub 48.9 at an IAAF permit meet in Carson, California. He didn’t get WR credit for that time either. WMA will continue to stand for We Mandate Absurdities until this injustice is righted. Danny says he’s retiring from elite track. Wish the WMA records chair would unseat herself as well.

John Gracey, an M75 vaulter in New Grenada, Pennsylvania, plays with pain. How much? According to Joel Rineer’s Sunday piece in the Chambersburg Public Opinion: “Gracey . . . has had to endure a chronic back injury, two bypass surgeries on his heart, having his gall bladder removed, a stroke and, most recently, a shoulder injury.” But Gracey is a glutton for punishment, and says: “I’m proud of the fact that I’ve done more sports and did it better than anybody in the country, I believe. What I mean is all that I’ve done — shooting rifle, compound and crossbows, cross-country ski racing, biathlons and triathlons, all the individual races and the track meets, I don’t know too many people that have done all that good enough to win at a high level.”

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Annette and Robert Koop share an interesting tidbit on their German masters blog. They report that six Italian athletes (Later correction: Comments point out the nationality wasn’t specified. My apologies –ken) were admitted to next month’s Riccione world meet after the entry deadline. The horror! Actually, the funny part is how this contrasted with Germany’s failed attempts to push some late entries into the WMA meet. My German-American friend Stefan Waltermann summarized the Koops’ post for me thusly: “Yes, six additional athletes were admitted after the deadline. Germany had some pretty good athletes coming in late and the German Track & Field officials wanted to do it by the books. They sent numerous e-mails to the organizing committee asking for a change for late entries by extension of the deadline.”

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More than 10 years ago, I had a field day mocking a fad supplement called Super Blue Green Algae. The scientific name for this stuff is Aphanizomenon flos-aquae. Then a decade passed with no peep from the folks in Oregon hyping this “super food.” But at Orono nationals, W60 multi-eventer Kathy Jager of Arizona buttonholed me (and many others) about a supplement she was taking (and helping sell) called StemEnhance.

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The folks in Clermont-Ferrand, France, have begun building their Web site for the third WMA World Masters Indoor Championships in March 2008 (a week before USATF indoor nationals). Entry fees are listed in Euros, and other info is given. Lots of cupboards are still bare, though. But it’s nice that they’ve posted a calendar of which events will be contested on which days. Helps with travel planning.

Merlene Ottey is 47 — and the oldest sprinter at Osaka this week. Alas, she didn’t make it out of the heats at IAAF worlds. But she still made her presence known. USA Today included this note about her performance: “At 47, Merlene Ottey is still running — and nearly at the top level. The winner of a record 14 world championships medals, though none since 1997, Ottey was knocked out Saturday in the 100 meters heats. She ran 11.64, losing in a heat won by American Carmelita Jeter in 11.07. ‘I wanted to have a better race, but I did not have enough time to prepare,’ said Ottey, who now runs for Slovenia instead of her native Jamaica.”

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One of the best things about nationals is meeting new people. At the Orono Athletes Banquet, I chatted with a lady named Margaret Kaufman of Madison, Wisconsin. She’s a national-class W60 sprinter. But even more interesting: She’s a world-class Greek scholar. Margaret wrote me: “I wanted to give you my website address: www.margaretgeorge.com. If you look under ‘adventures in research’ on the menu bar, that will take you to a list of items, where ‘ancient and modern racing’ is. There are photos of the Greek ancient race reenactment, and then a section on masters racing. It even has a photo of Nadine (O’Connor).”

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Many of you know my Oregon friend Dave Clingan, a world-class M50 runner, co-webmaster of this site and USATF mover-and-shaker (first as an active athletes rep, and later as chair of the rankings and awards committees). He also coaches preps near his Portland home and guides kids on his youth team (two of whom won gold medals at the national Junior Olympics in Southern California). Now check this out: Dave sought a world record recently in a beer mile. What’s a beer mile? Well, nobody can tell this story better than Dave himself. The following dispatch is a hoot. Cheers!

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