LAST LAP — November

HERE’S THIS MONTH’S collection of short takes on generally off-track activities that have gone/will go a long way towards shaping the way the sport is headed.

After a court ruling, is the future presaged for post-collegiate track on T&FN’s November 1971 cover coming to the NCAA? We’’ll be exploring this question as it applies to track & field in a coming issue. Our hunch is the future, whatever it is, will be here soon.

Next Year’s Diamond League Meets

The DL schedule has been released for ’25. Again, it features 15 meets, and again, the circuit begins in China before hitting Doha and Rabat (or Marrakech?) and heading to Europe, with Eugene slotted between Paris and Monaco.

What’s different is that for only the second time, the 2-day Final (Zürich, August 27–28) will take place before the global championship meet, in this case, the World Championships in Tokyo (September 13-21).

The only previous time the Worlds came before the DLF was in ’19, when fear of extreme weather led to the Doha Worlds concluding in early October. Similar concerns were behind the late scheduling in Tokyo next year, though having the best athletes conclude their season at Worlds is an oft-stated goal of WA head Seb Coe.

As always, all of the standard track & field events will be contested, with the exception of the hammer, the combined events, and the road events/walks, all of which are taken care of elsewhere,

The ’25 meets:
April—Xiamen (26);
May—Shanghai (03), Doha (16), Rabat (25);
June—Rome (06), Oslo (12), Stockholm 15, Paris (20);
July—Eugene (05), Monaco (11), London (19);
August—Chorzów (16), Lausanne (20), Brussels (22), Zürich (27–28).

The ’26 Final will move back to Brussels on September 05–06.


A Familiar Site For ’28 NCAA

The NCAA has confirmed that Eugene’s Hayward Field will be hosting the ’28 NCAA Championships, in addition to all the ones leading up to that, as previously announced.

The indoor championships will be going to Arkansas in ’26 and ’27, and to The TRACK at New Balance in Boston in ’28.

For cross country, the ’26 finals will be held in Terre Haute, Indiana, and the ’27 edition will return to Stillwater, Oklahoma. Already announced was the ’25 meet at Missouri’s Gans Creek course.

Big 10 athletes will get experience on the Nationals track this spring with the announcement that the conference will hold its championships at Hayward on May 16–18


A “Revenge Tour” Coming Up

Shelby Houlihan ‘s 4-year doping suspension will be finished on January 15. The 13-time U.S. champion (indoor, outdoor & XC) will be cleared to train with other professional runners in November. Currently, she is training under the guidance of her older sister, Shayla Houlihan. Says Shayla, herself a 9:51 steepler back in the day, “She will be on a revenge tour come January. She wants to break every record she possibly can.”

That’s exactly the theme Shelby expressed in a recent podcast, saying, “I want to go after as many records as I can. That’s the thought I have in my head. I don’t care it it’s like the 800, the marathon, road, indoor, outdoor, like off distance. I want to just see what I’m capable of and try to see what I can do.”

The ’16 Olympian and then-member of the Nike Bowerman TC earned her much-discussed suspension with a positive test for Nandrolone in January ’21. Her defense claimed she had inadvertently ingested the anabolic steroid from eating a pork burrito. She appealed all the way to CAS, which upheld the suspension.


Blue Armory Now Red

The Armory track in New York City — officially part of the Nike Track & Field Center — already has a reputation as one of the faster indoor loops available. The latest upgrade might just make it a tad more speedy.

On the surface, the biggest change is that the new Mondo surface is blue instead of the old red. More importantly, unlike its past resurfacings, this one by Miller Sports involved removing five older layers before applying the new surface, in an effort to increase “spring and responsiveness for athletes.”

The always-busy facility will see almost-daily action on the new oval, with the first major pro event coming on February 08 with the Millrose Games.


Let’s Hold An Indoor Meet Outdoors!

Remember WA’s “short track” concept? It‘s still a thing, if you look at the organization’s World Records page, which no longer keeps track of indoors vs. outdoors, but instead lists records with “short track” versions interspersed.

Yet the WA Indoor Championships are still called “indoor,” perhaps a nod to the potential difficulty of selling a “short track” championship.

All that may be put to the test, as the New Zealand federation is making bold plans to bid for the meet’s ’28 edition with the understanding that the Kiwi version of the World Indoors would be held outdoors on a 200m “short track.”

Athletics New Zealand CEO Cam Mitchell is excited about the possibility in the next Olympic year. “It could be that aspirational event that we build all of our programming and development work towards and then head into Los Angeles from there,” he said.

WA has asked that all federations biding for the ’28 and ’30 editions indicate interest by December, with final bids set for July ’25 and announcement of the winners in September ’25.


A Chance To Change Your Mind

The rapidly changing NCAA landscape will look a bit different this fall, as the organization’s Div. I Council has approved the elimination of the National Letter Of Intent (NLI — not to be confused with NIL) program. For 60 years the letter of intent was the mainstay agreement between athletes and schools.

Last year, the program was substantially weakened when the Collegiate Commissioner’s Association allowed athletes to withdraw their signed NLI for any reason and without penalty.

The NLI will be replaced in most cases by institutional aid agreements, which many think will set the stage for professional contracts between schools and athletes.

The tradition of signing days won’t go away, however, as agreements for track and cross country athletes will still be signed this fall on the first Wednesday of November.


Jail Sentence For Johnson

The day of reckoning came for ex-Huntington U coach Nick Johnson, who was found guilty of sexual battery for a series of incidents involving a former athlete. Johnson was sentenced to a year behind bars, with the judge saying, “It was hard for me to find any mitigating factors because he has not acknowledged he did anything wrong.”

The school noted, “There are no pending matters before the court involving any current student athlete and/or current coach from Huntington University. The University is also not involved in any ongoing litigation concerning the former coach or the former student athletes.”

The Christian institution located in Northwest Indiana was not able to dodge all consequences. The NAIA suspended its cross country teams from post-season championships for the ’24 season and placed the school under probation through the 2026–27 school year. In addition, Athletic Director Lori Culler was placed on probation for the rest of this school year because of violations of the NAIA code of ethics.

Culler fired Nick Johnson after he pled guilty to identity deception in a ’20 Oregon case where prosecutors dropped charges of child seduction and kidnapping as part of a plea agreement. She then hired his wife, former U.S.-Ranked 1500 runner Lauren Johnson, as head coach. She was fired two years later, but is still the coach of pro runner Addy Wiley.

Johnson still faces possible litigation. Two years ago, a federal lawsuit made sexual battery and rape claims and also accused the Johnsons of running a doping program at Huntington. A judge dismissed the case but indicated the lawsuit could be refiled on the state level. That hasn’t happened yet.


Another Felix Business Venture

Allyson Felix is not one to take her medals and leave the sport behind. “I needed to build what I wished existed,” she says of her latest creation, Always Alpha, a management firm focused on female athletes.

Felix joined with brother Wes as well as sports executive Cosette Chaput to found Always Alpha. Says Chaput, “We created Always Alpha to revolutionize women’s sports by moving beyond outdated, one-size-fits-all models designed with male athletes in mind. These traditional frameworks, tied to contracts and templated endorsements, fail to recognize the unique strengths and potential of female athletes, coaches and broadcasters.”

The firm is under the Dolphin Entertainment umbrella. “With Always Alpha, we’re taking everything we learned and creating the modern management firm I used to dream of existing to help the next generation of talent do the same and build the future they in turn dream of too,” explains Felix.


NCAA To Pay Small Fortune

The NCAA’s landmark $2.7 billion settlement with student-athletes has moved one step closer to reality, now that a federal judge in California has given preliminary approval to the agreement, saying that the plan looks to be “fair, reasonable and adequate.”

The settlement resolves three antitrust lawsuits from athletes who said that the NCAA barring payment to them violated federal law. The NCAA denies any wrongdoing but agreed to pay past damages and allow schools to directly pay athletes. Steve Berman, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said it puts athletes, “one huge step closer to a revolutionary change.”

NCAA president Charles Baker said the deal “will help bring stability and sustainability to college athletics while delivering increased benefits to student-athletes for years to come.” A hearing is set for April for the final approval decision. ◻︎

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