THE LATEST in the aches, pains & eligibility departments:
Quartermiler Chloe Abbott has bypassed her final season with Kentucky to sign a pro contract with On.
Michelle-Lee Ahye had her 2-year ban for whereabouts failures upheld by CAS. Not that it makes a big difference anymore, as the Trinidadian sprinter’s ban expires in late April and she will be eligible to run in Tokyo.
Chris Derrick says that he’s still not past a problem with his left leg that has hampered him since last year. “It has been the most frustrating injury of my career —a dead-legged loss of coordination that seems to build throughout hard, continuous efforts.”
Stanford frosh Zofia Dudek, 3rd at the Pac-12 XC meet, ran 156th at nationals. Said coach J.J. Clark, “Zofia has something going on with her foot and it got much worse on the course. She had every right to stop, but that’s nowhere in her mindset, so she didn’t.”
Northern Arizona’s Blaise Ferro recovered from a chronic back injury just in time to be a key runner on the Lumberjack’s winning squad at XC nationals.
Abeba Gebremeskel of Ethiopia, who ran her marathon best of 2:22:29 in ’19, has been provisionally suspended by the AIU in a biological passport case.
Heptathlete Allison Halverson (PR 6144 ’18) has been approved to represent Armenia internationally.
Ednah Kurgat became a U.S. citizen on February 19. The ’17 NCAA cross country champion for New Mexico, she has a 10,000 best of 32:14.27.
Renaud Lavillenie had to take a pass on the European Indoor after he felt a sharp pain in his right calf. “I do not want to aggravate the injury to risk compromising the Olympics,” he said. “It’s a tough decision for me but it’s wiser.”
Nationally ranked miler Riley Masters has retired at age 30. Last summer he had surgery for Haglund’s Deformity. “When COVID shut everything down it opened the window to get surgery, but I knew it was going to be difficult to come back from that,” he told the Bangor Daily News. “I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get the training in that was necessary to make the team.”
Jonny Mellor, one of 2 British marathoners to have an Olympic standard, pulled out of the trials race because of a case of gout.
Spanish hurdler Orlando Ortega has resumed training after losing much of indoors to a toe injury. “I’m not even 90% yet, but I feel good,” he says.
BYU’s Whittni Orton has been injured much of the season; her first race was the NCAA XC, which she led through 5K before finishing 17th.
Andrii Protsenko, the 4th-placer in the Rio high jump, had to miss the Euro Indoor because of a back injury.
A hamstring injury kept Ivana Španović from going for her fourth gold in the Euro Indoor long jump.
Dani Stevens, Australia’s ’09 world champ in the discus, struggled last year with recovering from surgery for a bulging disc in her neck. “I didn’t want my career to be finished like that,” she says as this year has opened on a promising note.
Another Aussie, walker Jared Tallent, winner of the ’12 Olympic 50K, has retired at age 36 after a hamstring injury kept him out of the Australian champs, his last chance for a Tokyo qualifier.
Zane Weir of South Africa hit the Olympic shot standard but will sit this one out as he is in the process of taking on Italian citizenship.
In The COVID Ward
Swiss marathoner Tadesse Abraham has tested positive.
Bad luck for Belgian hurdler Eline Berings, who was forced to withdraw from the Euro Indoor semis after a positive test. But it turned out to be a false positive, but that news came too late to reinstate her.
British vaulter Holly Bradshaw reported that she had COVID, saying, “I have minimal symptoms and still feel positive, optimistic and energized.”
Shot putter Konrad Bukowiecki needs toe surgery, but that was delayed after he tested positive for C19. The Polish star says, “Well, you have to grit your teeth, survive what life brought and look to the future with hope.”
A tweet from triple jumper Omar Craddock: “This the first time I’ve been under the weather in many years, and I’m told to rest! If my body isn’t moving my mind is. This corona is attacking my mental more than anything.”
The former holder of the collegiate vault record, Jacob Davis, spent weeks in the hospital this winter fighting off C19.
Portuguese triple jumper Patricia Mamona had a case of C19 some 6 weeks before the Euro Indoor, but nonetheless captured gold.
Reigning Euro 60 champ Ewa Swoboda had to pull out of the Euro Indoor because of a positive test.
Gianmarco Tamberi picked up COVID-19 at the European Indoor, but the Italian high jumper recovered quickly.
New Doping Suspensions
4 years — Jacob Kengador (Kenya, marathon), Gilbert Kewmoi (Kenya, 1500);
3 years — Nelly Jepkosgei (Bahrain, 800), Bralon Taplin (Grenada, 400);
2 years — Dilshod Nazarov (Tajikistan, hammer). □