Update on Kingdom 13.79 mystery
I’ve received two communications on the case of the missing 13.79 Roger Kingdom hurdles mark from the various season lists. Roger himself wrote me: “I have no clue! Maybe we need to ask them (USATF) or the Slippery Rock University coaches about that.” And USATF statmeister Glen McMicken wrote me: “I am still looking into several marks in different events before the final lists are released.” However, one clue on why the mark was spiked came in a Track & Field News forum.
Responding to this news…
>The electronic track newsletter has not reported any marks for him. Are these
>in legitimate meets with legit timing and wind etc. or just the stuff of fancy?
>Not to put down one of my favorite hurdlers ever but sometimes stories like
>this take on a life of there own.
… a poster named Nik Bonaddio wrote:
“He ran them at Slippery Rock University, a D2 program about an hour north of Pittsburgh, his home base. The track is a nice surface, elevation maybe 900 feet. The meet itself was an all-comers meet, probably fundraising for the team. I thought I might run myself, but decided not..no competition there to be honest with you. He was literally running against high school kids and people from the neighborhood.”
Another post asked:
>Do summer all-comer meets at Slippery Rock have real automatic timing and a
>wind gauge? This not meant to pick on the Rock it is just that those amenities
>are often not found at AC meets anwyhere.
And Nik responded:
“I wasn’t at the meet, but I know they set it up for Roger to qualify with everything in check, at least for his heat and his event. Unrelated, when I ran at the Rock for a quad meet last year, the FAT times were slow across the board. I hope they got that bug worked out. Also, the Rock has possibly the worst indoor track facility in the nation.”
So perhaps faulty FAT had something to do with it.
