Racing Into Your Inbox ⏱️

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Compiled by David Melly, Paul Snyder, Jasmine Fehr, and Audrey Allen.

We Need More Brittany Browns 🤑

For those tuning into the Athlos NYC track meet last Thursday, one of the most surprising outcomes for the casual viewer may have come at the end of the night, when Brittany Brown took down Olympic champion, meet headliner, and meet co-founder Gabby Thomas over 200 meters. Sure, Brown is a two-time global medalist in the event, but she was doubling back from the 100m, at the end of a long season, and Thomas was the world leader taking center stage at her event. But that’s why they run the race, and like she’s done throughout her whole career, Brown defied the odds.

Brittany Brown’s statement victory capped off an incredible (and lucrative, to the tune of $150K in prize money alone) season and solidified her spot as one of the most unorthodox figures in the sport right now. The 29-year-old is hardly your prototypical American sprint star. She competed collegiately at the University of Iowa, where she used the hell out of all four years of eligibility from 2014-2018, but her highest NCAA finish was only 5th and she graduated with comparatively modest PBs of 11.28 and 22.55. 2019 was her true breakout season as a pro, when she made her first team in the 200m with a second-place finish at USAs that springboarded her to the silver medal in a surprise performance at Worlds.

Brown trains mostly with long sprinters like Alexis Holmes and Anna Cockrell in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but she’s nearly as strong over 100m as she is over 200m, finishing 7th in the shorter event at Worlds in 2023. In addition to being a big fan of CITIUS MAG, she’s been vocal and forthcoming in the media on hot-button subjects ranging from unfair lane draws to her battle with endometriosis. But what really stands out about Brown is that, unlike many of her rivals in American sprints, she’s a racer.

How do you rack up six-figure totals in prize money in a sport not exactly known for its rich purses? You line up for big races as often as you can. Brown’s 2024 season – which opened on March 30th and concluded at Athlos on September 26th – featured 12 competitions. She competed in seven countries across distances ranging from 100m to 400m, picking up three Diamond League wins and an Olympic bronze medal along the way. And defying contemporary wisdom, Brown’s commitment to racing early and often didn’t seem to hinder her ability to perform in championship settings: her best races of the season were her lifetime best 21.90 at Trials to make her first Olympic team, her medal-winning performance in Paris, and two big paycheck wins at the DL final in Brussels and then Athlos.

Brittany Brown is proof that you can do both: race the regular-season pro circuit and perform your best when it counts most. In an event group where youth is prized, she’s run her best times in the 100m and 200m over a decade into her career. And with all due respect to the star-making machines of Bobby Kersee, Dennis Mitchell, and Edrick Floreal, she’s succeeding in the short sprints outside the traditional training lanes.

As we think about how athletes themselves can contribute to the growth of the sport more broadly, one of the key elements is the willingness to say yes when an opportunity presents itself. Brown is clearly a “say yes” kind of competitor whose fearlessness extends off the track to her race scheduling, and she’s done all that we as fans and supporters could possibly ask of her. One key part of bringing new fans to track and field is creating the circumstances for stars to shine – the other part is rewarding the athletes that take us up on the offer with the kudos they so richly deserve.

What’s In A Rivalry? ⚔️

The latest update from the Ingebrigtsens’ ongoing quest to become the Kardashians of Norway is that, in the fourth episode of the Amazon docuseries “Born To Run,” 2x Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen shared that he doesn’t consider British miler Josh Kerr a rival:

“...He’s a very good runner who had a really good race when many others had a bad race. Those are the facts. The problem with the rivalry is that it’s not created by the media. It’s only created by that moron because he began trash-talking me.”

With all due respect… huh?!?

Even when recognizing that something may have been lost in the Norwegian-to-English translation here, there’s no way to find Jakob’s assertion even remotely true. Let’s say a good sports rivalry includes three components: 1) frequent competition between two parties; 2) close results in said competitions, and 3) intense emotional investment in the outcomes. 

To put it more bluntly, Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen are rivals.

The duo have raced head-to-head in the mile/1500m 12 times over the course of their careers (18 if you include heats), including the last five global 1500m finals. (They’re also the only two men in the world who’ve been in every one of those finals.) In championships, Ingebrigtsen holds a 3-2 advantage, but Kerr has gotten the better outcome the last two rounds. Of those races, the farthest apart they’ve finished was in 2022, when Ingebrigtsen placed 2nd to Kerr’s 5th – that’s also their biggest time gap at 1.13 seconds. On average, they’ve finished one place and 0.68 seconds apart.

Fun fact: the duo’s first-ever head-to-head meeting was at the World U20 championships back in 2016, where a then-15-year-old Ingebrigtsen finished 9th, one spot and 0.14 seconds ahead of Kerr in tenth. They’ve seemingly been tied together by fate from the very start.

And as for emotional investment, you could argue, perhaps, that Kerr and Ingebrigtsen were ships passing in the night for the first part of their pro careers. Hell, as recently as 2022 Timothy Cheruiyot seemed like the bigger threat to the upstart Norwegian’s dominance over 1500m. But then came Budapest, where a hard-kicking Scot relegated Ingebrigtsen to silver for the second straight championship, and post-race interviews sparked fireworks – Ingebrigtsen blamed illness (but then came back to win the 5000m four days later) and Kerr attributed Ingebrigtsen’s semifinal showboating to “insecurity.” The latter, in particular, seemed to touch a nerve with Ingebrigtsen (perhaps proving Kerr’s point), setting off a year-long firestorm of sniping at one another in the press over the offseason leading up to their rematch at this year’s Prefontaine Classic.

In Eugene, the duo shifted awkwardly in their seats while the media peppered them with questions about one another in the pre-race press conference, and the next day a red-hot Kerr, coming off an indoor world record, got the best of Ingebrigtsen in his first race since a minor Achilles injury. Their next matchup was in Paris (Ingebrigtsen’s past comments about Kerr’s aversion to racing the regular-season circuit is a fair criticism here), where Cole Hocker stole everyone’s thunder but Kerr’s silver-medal finish had to make Ingebrigtsen’s fourth-place result sting a little more. It wasn’t until Zurich that Jakob snapped the three-race losing streak to Kerr. Yared Nuguse came out on top, but runner-up Ingebrigtsen still managed to beat Kerr, who only finished fifth.

Both Ingebrigtsen and Kerr would likely say, when pressed, that they care more about being the best in the world than beating one another. But it’s hard to deny over the past two seasons, that regardless of the beef’s true origins, both athletes are defined as much by their accomplishments as by their relationship to one another. 

Jakob can deny it all he wants, but at this point in his career, Josh Kerr is his primary rival. And the fact that they are rivals makes following their careers so much more compelling. Having one persistent foil makes for higher emotional stakes than facing a faceless musical-chairs rotation of opponents and allows for multi-race, multi-year storytelling that legendary sports lore is all about.

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What We Learned From The First Big Weekend In NCAA XC 🥜

Buckle up, as the cross-country roller coaster has already left the gate. When you’re a distance runner in the NCAA, there’s no true off-season once the academic year starts. Summer is the primary opportunity for shakeups, and now we’re starting to find out which favorites are picking up where they left off, which transfers are adjusting best to their new home, and who’s ready to level-up thanks to some quality summer training.

What it also means is that some athletes are still building from a post-track break, others are quietly recovering from late-spring injuries, and some teams – blessed with enough firepower – are saving their star players for the postseason. After our first real look at the NCAA landscape, it’s too early to call the shots just yet, but that’s what’s so fun about collegiate XC’s opening weekend. It’s irresponsible to count anybody out, but you can start adding contenders to your increasingly long “short list.”

Racing a partial roster can mean many things.

We’re still 52 days away from The Big Dance, so it’s unsurprising that we didn’t see the full championship lineup of every team on our radar. That means that if your favorite team underperforms without a full lineup, you can write off the result entirely. But if your favorite team overperforms with some legs still in reserve… get everyone else on board the hype train. 

A ninth-place finish for the Oregon women at the Nuttycombe Invitational may seem like a discouraging result for the Ducks at first glance (it dropped their ranking eight spots to No. 12), but we aren’t concerned. They were missing the upperclassmen trio of Silan Ayyildiz, Maddy Elmore and Klaudia Kazimierska. Meanwhile, Mia Barnett had a solid showing as their highest finisher in 18th place. 

At the same time, their B1G counterparts out of Seattle validated their jump to the Duck’s old No. 4 ranking. Even with Amina Maatoug’s uncharacteristic showing in 27th place, the Washington Huskies flexed their depth with all scorers in the top 34 and a mere 29.3-second gap separating their first and fifth. The team was led by a promising eighth place outing from Maeve Stiles, a transfer from Penn whose only result at NCAAs so far is a 60th-place XC finish in 2022.

A little bit further south at Missouri’s Gans Creek Classic, the Midwest was anything but “mid” (hold your boos). The Florida women slotted four in the top 13 without individual title contender Hilda Olemomoi or super-senior Allison Wilson. The British duo of Beth Morley (sixth) and Tia Wilson (11th) impressed in their NCAA debuts, and Reagan Gilmore finished 13th in her hard launch at the collegiate level. The Gators made a statement despite falling four spots to No. 11 ranking. 

The stage gets set for another huge team clash.

The OSU men backed up their No. 1 ranking with a 1-3-4-5-6 finish at the Cowboy Jamboree, and it’s safe to say the Cowboys didn’t win solely on the strength of their home field advantage. Brian Musau crushed the 8K course record in 22:55.6, besting the 2023 NCAA cross country runner-up and reigning outdoor 10,000m champion Habtom Samuel by eight seconds. If OSU’s 19-point team score wasn’t impressive enough, keep in mind that Adisu Guadia finished 10th while competing unattached, and Fouad Messaoudi, their third scorer and 10th-place finisher at last year’s championships, didn’t even spike up.

While it might be tempting to go ahead and start engraving “Oklahoma State University” into the trophy now, there’s still some intrigue in the fact that OSU has yet to face off against the team with the best shot to swipe their next title: BYU. The Cougars had a near-mirror image showing at Nuttycombe with four runners in the top 10 (and six runners inside the top 21, for that matter) at a higher-caliber meet, at least depth-wise. BYU’s 44 points marked the third-lowest men’s team score in the history of the invitational. 

For now, we’ll have to wait for the OSU-BYU premiere at the Big 12 Cross Country Championships on November 1… with the sequel to follow three weeks later at NCAAs.

The stars of tomorrow have arrived… today.

Villanova’s Sadie Sigfstead winning Nuttycombe wasn’t completely out of left field. Sigfstead is returning Mid-Atlantic regional champion, but she’s flown a bit under the radar given that her highest finish at an XC national meet is 71st at last year’s championships, and she only finished 12th in the 10,000m outdoors. The Wildcats haven’t brought an individual crown home since Sheila Reid went back-to-back in 2010 and 2011, but after her run Friday, Sigfstead is clearly a threat to end that drought. 

Another attention-grabbing performance came from runner-up Florence Caron of Penn State, who made a huge jump from 133rd at Nuttycombe last year (and 182nd at NCAAs). Perhaps it’s the proximity of Wisconsin to the northern border, but these Canadian juniors going 1-2 at Nuttycombe is something to keep in mind ahead of their likely return to the same stage in late November. Seeing as three of the last four NCAA cross champions (Parker Valby and Graham Blanks in 2023 and Katelyn Tuohy in 2022) also won the Nuttycombe Invitational, winning on the Zimmer Championship Course might be good early-season luck, eh?

A pair of names that sound more familiar if you have a YouTube account are Leo and Lex Young, who took second and fifth over at the Gans Creek Classic. The Youngs’ new 8k PBs led the Stanford men to a dominant 31-point win, which boosted their team ranking from No. 10 to No. 6. The Stanford women didn’t do too shabby either, also placing four inside the top 10 for a Cardinal sweep in Missouri.

Early October brings crunchy leaves and even more big meets, like this weekend’s Joe Piane (Friday at Notre Dame) and Paul Short (Saturday at Lehigh) Invitationals. As the season keeps chugging and we get a few peaks, valleys, and loop-dee-loops along the way, we’ll start to find out which runners and teams burned too bright too early and who’s just getting started.

Furman’s Coach Rita Gary On Cultivating An Empowering Team Culture + Elevating Women In NCAA Coaching 💜

Rita Gary, Head Coach of Women’s Cross Country and Track at Furman, joins Jasmine Fehr for this week’s coach spotlight. Coach Gary is in her 12th year at Furman and has coached over 50 All-Americans, 15 top-ten individual finishers at NCAAs, and five Team USA members. 

She shares how she creates a supportive team environment where her women uplift one another, the importance of self-advocacy for women, and how she upholds her core values amidst the changing landscape of college athletics.

The following interview excerpt with Rita Gary has been edited lightly for length and clarity. You can find the full interview here.

CITIUS MAG: Congrats on being promoted to head coach of women's cross country and track! To kick things off, can you share with us what coaching at Furman means to you and what it's like paving the way for female coaches in the NCAA? 

Rita Gary: Even though I just got the title, I have never been unappreciated at Furman. When [my husband] Robert and I came down here, it was my first time working as a coach-mom. I had taken three years off work to stay at home with my son and I didn't know what the balance of being a mom and coach looked like. I wanted to set myself up for success by clearly defining my roles… and I knew my top priority was going to be my son, especially when he was that young. I didn't want to shortchange the women on the Furman team, so Robert and I set it up so that he was the head coach. He is a fantastic boss and has been an incredible supporter of me the entire time. 

It came full circle for me last fall when we took the title of the longest active winning streak in the NCAA – an accomplishment built by women, for women. And yet, it had my husband's name attached (who believe me, has carried my butt more times than not). But the truth of the matter is that we women at Furman did that. That's when I started discussing [having more] ownership of this success. I can't be asking my women to advocate for themselves if I'm not doing the same on my end. 

How do you create a strong team culture and what do you value most as a coach? 

It's my job as a coach to set the vision and values for our program and it's my women's job to bring it to life. What’s cool about culture is it's easily created when you know who you are and what you stand for. 

At Furman, we are a program that values giving opportunities to traditional-aged college students. We believe in cultivating a distance-only program… [at an] academically elite institution… and seeing how good people can be. I try to teach my women to take responsibility for their own growth. Growth is only possible when you have an awareness for a skill that you're missing – and action that pairs with that awareness. And the most important part is some accountability to see that through. 

I talk honestly about investing in the women around us. The truth of the matter is the phrase: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.’ I really believe in that. The x-factor of any great locker room is how much you love each other… and you have to teach that to women.

You have to teach them how to cheer for each other. It doesn't always come naturally. Sometimes it feels threatening when someone else is having success and you're not, or someone else is challenging you and you're not totally up for it. But it’s an important part of the culture: both to own your personal growth and learn to love the women around you. 

I'm curious what your thoughts are on all the changes happening within the NCAA. We're seeing a lot of older athletes join the college system as well as adjustments to NIL, scholarships and roster limits. What is your perspective on this and how have you navigated all of these changes?

You navigate change, whether it's in the NCAA or at some stage of your life, by knowing who you are. At Furman we are an elite academic institution that values athletics as a way to build out the educational experience for our student-athletes, and traditionally, we serve the 18 to 23-year-old group. 

We are incredibly lucky to be at a school where 15 years ago, we had an alum who was successful at Furman but then took that success and built it into professional success in the business world. Chris Borch came back and has been a foundational piece of our program. He invested in our endowment at a time where other schools were chasing NIL deals or big, fancy locker rooms… Chris was always thinking about what we can build for tomorrow.

Today at Furman, Robert and I are coaching within the framework of a program that has a $20 million endowment for cross country and track and field. It means our scholarship opportunities are never going to get cut, our operations opportunities are never going to get cut, and our student-athletes can expect the same amount of support that they see when they come on their visit.

As far as what other programs are doing… I don't get to decide what they do, or what their values are, or what their ethics are. I got into coaching because I wanted to create an impact on 18 to 23-year-old people and I wanted to create an impact on U.S. distance running. 

Looking back over the past few years, is there a moment with the team that stands out to you that you’d like to share?

When you choose to spend 12 years at a place, you’re invested in not just your current athletes, but also the community. The greatest byproduct is that there are so many good memories. I could talk about Allie Buchalski almost winning a national title, or about those top-ten finishes, or even watching Gabbi Jennings and Allie this past summer just miss the Olympics by one spot. But the things you don't see are what I love the most.

My son turned 15 last month and I posted a picture of him with his driver's permit. One of my old athlete’s moms commented on the picture. She said, ‘Rita, I remember when you were coaching Laura at practice during winter break and you had taken Percy out there at three years old. It was raining and he was jumping around in the puddles… You were trying to coach and you've got this three-year-old that's crying because his feet are cold. So I remember grabbing him and playing with him in my car with the heat on high while you coached my daughter.’ 

It might not seem like a big moment to many people, but what an amazing set of circumstances. My son at a very young age is watching his mother do her job. And for Laura, the girl on my team at the time, what a great opportunity for her to see a young mom/coach trying to figure it out and not doing it perfectly. I mean, jeez… I could have probably brought rain boots or dry socks, but instead, my poor little boy is freezing and crying. 

And then what a great lesson for me to have the other mom show up. She could have left to grab coffee or run errands. I mean, when you're a mom, you're like, ‘Give me ten minutes by myself,’ right? But instead, she came and grabbed my kid and took care of him – that was really impactful for me. So it was funny when she posted that on my page, even though it’s cheesy, I was really moved.

Read the full interview here!

Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥

– Our old friend Kyle has been busy: Grand Slam Track announced the signing of the full 100m hurdles podium from Paris (Masai Russell, Cyréna Samba-Mayela, and Jasmine Camacho-Quinn) plus 400m hurdles bronze medalist Alison dos Santos, 400m bronze medalist Muzala Samukonga, and 400m hurdles fourth-placer Clement Ducos.

– If you haven’t yet contributed one of the 2.4 million views to the Athlos NYC meet, you can watch the replay in full on YouTube and find official results here.

– Ethiopian athletics fans had their own mini-Oktoberfest party at the Berlin Marathon, where Milkesa Mengesha took top honors for the men in 2:03:17, while the first woman was Tigist Ketema, who crossed the line in 2:16:42.

– Speaking of World Marathon Majors, Chicago organizers have announced that several athletes including 2:02 man Birhanu Legese and American Shadrack Kipchirchir have been added to the field, while unfortunately perennial top-5 contenders Mary Ngugi-Cooper and Nell Rojas are among those who’ve withdrawn.

– The Athletic Integrity Unit has banned recent Beach to Beacon champ Faith Chepkoech of Kenya for three years after a urine sample collected in July tested positive for EPO.

– For those readers clicking back and forth between their inbox and LinkedIn, the Brooks Beasts are hiring an assistant coach to oversee day-to-day training for the women’s squad. It’s a one-year contract to start with the potential for longer term renewal.

– Galen Rupp is headed back to campus, this time in Flagstaff, Arizona. The two-time Olympic medalist, who trains under Mike Smith, is now a volunteer assistant coach at NAU. 

– Citation needed? (Kidding! Here it is.) Lululemon has parted ways with Camille Herron, after last week’s Wikipedia-related story broke.

– Kenyan superstars Joshua Cheptegei and Peres Jepchirchir are crossing the Arabian Sea to compete in the Vedanta Delhi Half Marathon in India on October 20th. The race is a World Athletics Gold Label event (not that either Cheptegei or Jepchirchir needs to care about their world ranking) and a nice sign of WA’s continued efforts to expand the sport’s global reach.

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