Ralph Fruguglietti, 52, a restaurateur in the Central California town of Shafter is really looking forward to Riccione worlds. 1) He was born in Italy. 2) He throws the discus and hopes to threaten a record. Unfortunately, Ralph is unclear on what the single-age record is. A nice story in today’s Bakersfield Californian refers to Al Oerter’s unofficial single-age M52 best of 62.74 (205-10), set in 1989 at the Eugene worlds. But WMA lists the M50 age-group world record as 68.40 (224-5) by Germany’s Klaus Weiffenbach in 1997. And Klaus was 52 when he did that. A bit better than four-gold Al at 52. Ralph says: “If I break (Al’s) record, I’m going to write him a letter.” Very sorry, Ralph. Maybe we can find Klaus’ address for you.

Read the rest of this post »

Tony Echeandia won the M40 hurdles at 2006 Charlotte nationals.

How cool would it be to finish third in your open national championships — at age 43? Ask Getulio “Tony” Echeandia. A week ago Sunday, Tony won bronze in the Masculino 400 Metros Vallas (men’s 400-meter hurdles) at the Puerto Rican national track championships at Ponce, Puerto Rico. His time was 54.17. That time is more than 2 seconds faster than the 56.43 he ran in taking silver in the M40 long hurdles at the 2005 San Sebastian worlds! (He would have beaten gold-medalist Kip Janvrin with this time.) Of course, I had to learn more about his Ponce performance.

Read the rest of this post »

John Simpson during Charlotte nationals.

Aaron Thigpen, don’t look back. Folks are gaining on you. At the April Mt. SAC Relays east of Los Angeles, Aaron lowered his own M40 American record for 100 meters to 10.60 seconds. But on June 9, Tim McCrossen clocked 10.74 at a Dayton meet, and three days later John Simpson dropped a 10.77 in Dallas. John writes: “Even though it was FAT, there was no wind gauge at the meet.” But he says the wind was nearly a cross breeze. Tim is another blast from the past, having won the NCAA Division III indoor 400 and outdoor 100 meters in 1987 for St. Lawrence University in New York State. Tim’s school records: 10.2 (hand-time), 21.23 and 46.68. Would be nice to see all three meet at Orono nationals. Stay tuned.

Read the rest of this post »

Jimmie Markham’s general-purpose track blog has a nice interview with a masters blogger (and high school coach and M45 runner) named Jon Waldron, who sez: “I had a really good year a few years ago and ran 4:33 for the mile as a 45-year-old. But I still feel like I can train smarter and race better. I’d like to be competitive at the national level in the 50-54 age group when I turn 50 next year.” Hasn’t shown up in the rankings lately, but we wish him the best.

Anyone over 35 — the masters entry age — is a “geezer” when it comes to competition in the USATF national championships at Indy — only a week away. The Status of Entries page is full of wrinkled grayhairs, AKA M35, M40, M45 and even some W40 athletes. (And this doesn’t count the masters exhibition races.) All are competing a spot on the Team USA squad headed for IAAF worlds in Osaka, Japan.

Read the rest of this post »

How serious is Roald Bradstock, the new M45 American recordholder in the javelin? He made a special request to USATF to be restored to its out-of-season drug-testing program. Of course, he’s eligible, since he’s qualified for the ambien price USATF Open nationals and probably the 2008 Olympic Trials. But that’s not the most interesting thing about Roald. He’s also a world-class artist — dubbed the “Olympic Picasso” in this Athletic Weekly profile. (PDF) A little while before Germany’s Peter Blank bested Roald’s world age-group record, Roald took part in an email interview.

Read the rest of this post »

The biggest non-Japan world masters championships in history is assured. WMA President Cesare Beccalli writes of this September’s meet in his native Italy: “We have a total of about 8,900 competitors from about 90 countries — 3,000 of them are Italians, about 4,000 from other European countries, a little less than 2,000 from all other countries; particularly to be noted: about 600 from South America, 150 from Africa, wonderful!” But it’s not so wonderful for Sacramento’s bid for the 2011 World Masters Athletic Championships, which goes up for a vote in September.

Read the rest of this post »

Almost 900 Germans (all of them listed here) are entered in the Riccione world masters championships in September. But by the end of the meet, one German-born American may have collected more hardware than the entire Deutschland women’s team (of 280 athletes). Phil Raschker is back. “I haven’t felt this good in probably 11 years,” Phil told the Shelby County Reporter newspaper after her Alabama exertions over the weekend, which included three world records.

Read the rest of this post »

Results are now posted from the USATF Southern California Association Masters Championships of June 9. Many are eye-catching. In addition to meet records previously pointed out by Jeff Davison, we see four more: In the M50 discus, Ralph Fruguglietti threw 55.92 (183-5), beating a mark by the late Parry O’Brien. Stan Whitley’s 400 was 58.81, not 58.91 as previously reported. In M70, Jesse Carrington ran the 400 in another beat-your-age time of 67.46, and M75 Don Cheek clocked 1:16.17 for 400. Also quite notable, the M45 debut of San Diego’s Jai Black, who ran the 100 in 12.97 and the 200 in 25.67 — by far the best in the nation in that age group. Phil Raschker’s W45 records of 12.50 and 25.56 are in jeopardy.

Jim Sorensen is at peace. He didn’t get an invite to run the Bowerman Mile at the Pre Classic on Sunday, but he was touched by the grass-roots campaign to make it happen. (His quest to be the first M40 to run a sub-4 outdoor mile was even detailed across the country in the Washington Times.) As it turns out, the Pre Classic mile was run in crappy weather. Sub-4 would have been an outrageous challenge. Jim wrote me: “It turns out that the ‘no’ answer (from meet director Tom Jordan) was probably best.” In a quickie interview, Jim talked about the week that wasn’t.

Read the rest of this post »