The Short Track Long Newsletter ⏱️

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

Checking In On The State Of American Marathoning 🇺🇸

The Olympics are done. The Olympic Marathon Trials are an increasingly hazy memory. And barely any Americans ran September’s Berlin Marathon. So as we gear up for the next two major events on the U.S. road racing calendar – Sunday’s Chicago Marathon and next month’s New York City Marathon – let’s take stock of the current state of American marathoning.

In some ways, we’re coming out of the U.S.’s best decade of marathoning in the modern era. 2015 to 2024 saw two Olympic medals (Galen Rupp in 2016 and Molly Seidel in 2021), one World medal (Amy Cragg in 2017), three WMM titles (Shalane Flanagan in NYC 2017, Galen Rupp in Chicago 2017, and Des Linden in Boston 2018), and two national records (Keira D’Amato in Houston and Emily Sisson in Chicago, both in 2022). After a down period for American men running fast times, seventeen men have broken 2:10 since 2015.

But 2024 has been a fairly quiet year. A huge part of that is the intense focus that top Americans place on the Marathon Trials, which took place in February and essentially supplanted any of the usual focus on Boston. (That said, between Boston, London, Berlin, and the Olympics, the highest American finish across all four races is CJ Alberton’s 7th-place run in Boston.) The current U.S. men’s leader, Conner Mantz, is 140th on the 2024 world list at 2:08:12. Betsy Saina is quite a bit higher, sitting in 18th at 2:19:17, but that was only good for 5th in the Tokyo Marathon. All that could change in a few days with Saina, Keira D’Amato, Emma Bates, and Sara Hall all toeing the line in Chicago, but this year, we haven’t seen the level of podium-caliber performances we’ve gotten used to.

The same factors that have contributed to the U.S. leveling up – strong talent development, advancements in shoe technology and fueling, and more runners shifting to the roads at an earlier age – are true for the rest of the world. When it comes to international-level contention, 2:02 is the new 2:04 and 2:16 is the new 2:20. And while Americans have recently punched above their weight when times are thrown out and titles are on the line, as the Paris results showed, on a tough, hilly course a “tactical” race can still require the ability to run really, really fast.

Runners like Edna Kiplagat and Sinead Diver have us reconsidering the range of one’s athletic prime, but even for seemingly ageless wonders, the tread does eventually wear off the tire. So while we celebrate the ascension of new talents in the U.S. marathoning pool, we’ll also wonder whether reliable veterans like Rupp or Hall will toe the line for the 2028 Trials. We’re sitting on the precipice of a new era – here are three big questions on our minds:

Will fielding a full squad at major championships continue to be a battle?

In case you missed it in the buildup to the Paris Olympics, the 2025 World Championships qualifying standards dropped and they’re, in a word, insane. In a continued bid to fill the fields with a healthy mix of time qualifiers and world rankings points, the new marathon automatic standards are 2:06:30 (men) and 2:23:30 (women). With the way things are trending on the U.S. women’s side, 2:23:30 may winnow down the list of possible contenders in the selection process, but securing three spots shouldn’t be too much of a problem. At least three runners have dipped under that line in the last three seasons.

On the men’s side, however… our Lenny Korir-induced anxiety isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Only three U.S. men EVER have run under 2:06:30, and only one of them – 38-year-old Galen Rupp – is active right now. What this means is that American men looking to unlock spots for Team USA are going to have to either run a lot faster very soon or start paying a lot more attention to the arcane world rankings system. Pursuing the second route may mean venturing out of the comfort zones – and away from generous local appearance fees – of two domestic marathon appearances a year. There are more points to be scored by poring over the World Athletics calendar in search of high-value races around the world and racing more frequently in the hopes of popping off a Big One while the rest of the field has an off day.

Are the American records living on borrowed time?

One of the older U.S. track and field records on the books is Khalid Khannouchi’s 2:05:38 from the 2002 London Marathon ( Ryan Hall’s non-record eligible 2:04:58 is well over a decade old now, too). In 2018, when Rupp ran 2:06 twice in one season, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the multi-time American record holder on the track would soon knock Khannouchi off the top spot, but Achilles surgery and a back injury over the last few years have kept Rupp from fully delivering on that promise. Most would point to Conner Mantz as the brightest hope. His 2:08:12 on that hilly Paris course is inarguably a stronger run than his 2:07:47 PB from Chicago ‘23, but he’s still a good 2+ minutes away from the record. Mantz certainly has plenty of time left to develop at 27 years old, but it may take a little while for another American to get to the six-years-ago-Rupp zone, let alone national record territory.

The women’s side, however, is a whole different story. The American record was broken twice in the last three seasons, and 32-year-old Emily Sisson, its current holder, has (hopefully) a solid decade ahead of her to chase her own mark. Sisson and any others aiming for 2:18:29 or faster will also benefit from the still-growing depth atop women’s marathoning. As more and more athletes have shown themselves capable of sub-2:18 over the last several years, chasing a record-setting time in a women’s-only field won’t necessarily mean running a lot of miles solo. 

Who are the next great American marathoners?

The most surprising part of Conner Mantz and Clayton Young’s rise to the top of the U.S. marathoning heap isn’t that the duo qualified for their first Olympics and ran the two fastest times of 2024; it’s how easily the Utah-based training partners dispatched with their competitors in Orlando. Combined with their top-10 runs in Paris, it’s easy to look at their results and their ages (Young, the elder of the two, is 31) and assume that their spots on Team USA are spoken for for the next five or six global championships.

But marathoning is far more variable than track: difficulties with fueling or tactics, and the injury bug have derailed the careers of many promising road warriors. Mantz and Young are the top dogs at the moment, but it’s not hard to imagine talented workhorses like Frank Lara or Zach Panning breaking through to the next level at the right time, CJ Albertson finally reigning in his more reckless instincts, or… most intriguingly, any number of current 10,000m specialists moving up in distance. Obviously, the flashiest name there would be 2x Olympic medalist Grant Fisher, but at 27 years old and still in the peak of his track career, it’s unlikely he would make the jump in the next cycle.

On the women’s side, the list of most hotly anticipated marathon debuts is headlined by Weini Kelati, the U.S. 10,000m champion and half marathon record holder. Kelati is also only 27 and just made her first Olympic team on the track, but if there’s anyone who’s already shown she has the makings of a marathoner, it’s her. Of course, when she does inevitably move up she won’t be handed the crown by default – not if Emily Sisson, Molly Seidel, and Fiona O’Keeffe have something to say about it. Sisson isn’t going anywhere any time soon and, when Seidel and O’Keeffe are fully healthy, they’ve shown the ability to contend with (and beat) anyone else on the scene. And though her marathon debut didn’t go quite the way she wanted, another runner in the “10K is just the beginning” category to keep an eye on is O’Keeffe’s teammate Natosha Rogers. Over the last few seasons, we’ve had an embarrassment of riches on the women’s side of the event, and that sense of overcrowding at the top isn’t about to dissipate anytime soon.

If Indoors Can Be Outdoors, Let’s Not Hold Back 🇳🇿

Last week it was revealed that New Zealand wishes to host the 2028 World Indoor Championships outdoors. Remember, “indoor track” is now “short track” in the eyes of World Athletics, so at least from that perspective, the Kiwi bid to host would hold up. New Zealand is a country that really loves athletics. And given its location in the southern hemisphere, early March means pretty ideal indoor outdoor short track conditions – for distance runners at least, with highs in the upper 60s and lows in the 50s for a city like Christchurch.

The World Athletics push to rebrand indoor track stems primarily out of a desire to make it more accessible to countries and athletes outside of the global indoor track belt – primarily the east coast of North America and a handful of European cities. Suddenly you don’t need a fancy, hydraulic-banked track inside of a 200-year-old armory to participate. You only need a 200m surface – it can even be a temporary one – and a dream.

We can definitely get behind expanding the scope of winter track for that reason alone, but there’s a lot more we can capitalize on with this short track blank slate we’ve been awarded as athletics fans. 

First off, let’s reestablish what indoor short track’s focus ought to be: competition, rather than chasing times or marks. We have a real chance here to shift away from our obsession with time trialing, and return to the original spirit of indoor short track – a time of year when not-quite-sharp athletes can hone tactics and take some competitive risks. Racing – not time trialing, but racing – on a 200m track is an inherently different beast. Surges are shorter, passes are more aggressive, and everything in between is more physical. There’s already a different calculus to race strategy.

But a temporarily constructed 200m oval out in the elements (presumably plopped down in some meadow featured prominently in a Lord of the Rings movie) adds in even more variables, forcing athletes to totally ignore marks and zero in on their competitors.

Editor’s note: World Athletics, if you really wanna take the focus on racing to next, extreme level, consider hosting the 2030 championship in March, in Anchorage, Alaska, on the 84.7m unbanked outdoor track located in the parking lot of a local running store.

Now a bit more about the venue. Whatever facility is pitched as part of New Zealand’s bid to host doesn’t currently exist. That committee has total carte blanche to redefine what sort of stadium creates the most optimized spectating experience for fans, both in-person and tuning in around the globe. Unconfined by existing infrastructure, put the stands as close to the 200m track as possible. Even in a roofless setting, the athletes ought to be occasionally startled by how loud the crowd gets during big moments. 

And why not fashion an additional stadium on the same grounds, designed specifically to host field events? If you were designing a track and field facility from scratch, and wanted to shine as bright a light as possible on the long jump, would you really toss it off to the side of the track? Would you relegate the shot put cage to a musky corner of the building where no ticketed fan can possibly follow the happenings? Remember: without the jav, discus, or hammer, you don’t need as much space to pull this off as you would outdoors. And a field-specific arena that changes how present those events would be way more innovative than the current WA proposals to change how they are measured.

Doesn’t this all sound like a spectacle? It should! And that should be the goal! Spectacle is good, so long as it draws attention to the sport, rather than distracts from it. Consider this the unofficial Lap Count endorsement of New Zealand’s bid to host a global championship. 

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We’ll Always Have Paris Eugene 🤪

You knew it was coming. Some part of you has always known it was coming. It felt as inevitable as the rising sun, as unstoppable as a rumbling freight train. You knew it was coming, but that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t sting. Eugene – for the fifth consecutive year – will host the 2025 USATF Outdoor Track & Field Championships. They’re slated to be held on a slightly condensed timeline from July 31st through August 3rd, but they’re still in Oregon.

On one hand, we’re at least somewhat Eugene apologists. It’s a charming college town in a beautiful part of the country, and once you actually make it to TrackTown, USA, Hayward Field is the best place in the U.S. to watch track. But it’s not the easiest or cheapest place to get to. There aren’t as many hospitality options as a major city. And as track fans – nay, as human beings! – we would appreciate a little newness… some novelty… the chance to plan a summer vacation around track and field that takes us to another pocket of this vast country. 

But here we are, and here are our choices. You can drop a couple thousand dollars to join a few hundred of your fellow track nerds on your annual pilgrimage to Eugene, you can throw yourself a one-person pity party as you couch-rot your way through four days of track action all alone, or… you can turn USAs into a party anywhere in the world.

Watching sports is always significantly more fun when it’s done socially. That’s a big part of the reason you’re bummed about the whole Eugene thing – you want to take in the action surrounded by other track and field nuts. You want to high five a stranger after your favorite 200m runner sneaks into the final. You want to slow-clap a pole vaulter to a new personal best. And you sure as hell want to boo your loudest boo when the officials announce the latest BS disqualification.

But what if we told you there’s a way to approximate it right where you live? It’s called rounding up a few pals and finding a sports bar that’s willing to put the meet on at least one of its dozens of televisions.

In an ideal world, whatever spot you pick will have food in addition to drinks, since chowing down on wings is classic “we’re watching sports together” material, and it gives the teetotalers in your midst something nice to indulge in. You’ve got a little over eight months to cultivate a relationship with a local pub/brewery/taproom/public house/meadery/watering hole/etc., so get out there and start scouting and researching places and charming barkeeps.

If you’re not of drinking age or you’re balling on a budget, bring the sports bar home. Pick up a few too many bags of your favorite chips, move a couple extra chairs into the living room, and have the gang over for a watch party. Better yet, invite your whole cross country team or running group and really lean into the whole “run clubs are the new dating apps” vibe by turning some casual acquaintances into fast friends as they find out they both love – or hate – the same hurdler. 

Other sports don’t live or die by where their championships take place; they thrive on the communal experience of hooting and hollering over Super Bowl ads and March Madness upsets. Eugene is a state of mind that you can attain in dive bars and basements everywhere.

Gina Procaccio On Sadie Sigfstead’s Breakout Season + Her Legacy As Villanova’s Head Coach Of Cross Country & Track ✌️

For this week’s NCAA coach spotlight, Jasmine Fehr chatted with Gina Procaccio to hear about Sadie Sigfstead’s rise to the top of the NCAA as well as Procaccio’s growing legacy with the Villanova Wildcats. 

Procaccio is in her 22nd year of coaching the women's cross country and track programs at Villanova, where she's led the team to two cross country national titles, nine individuals to national titles, and has coached 126 All-Americans. 

The following interview excerpt with Gina Procaccio has been edited lightly for length and clarity. You can read the full interview here.

Jasmine Fehr: Sadie Sigfstead just won the women’s race at Nuttycombe. Over the past year, she's really taken off as a top NCAA athlete to watch. Can you share about her improvement and what factors led to this breakout season? 

Gina Procaccio: I usually see a big jump during junior year with my athletes. During Sadie’s sophomore year, she couldn't run. It turns out it wasn't really any specific injury; her biomechanics were just so bad that all the force was going to her hips and knees. We took her to our massage therapist/exercise physiologist and she said that Sadie had to basically rebuild and change her running form or she was just going to constantly have this pain.

Sadie is so tough… The physiologist looked at her and said, ‘I can tell the force is going to your hips and knees.’ And Sadie said, ‘My knees always hurt. I just figured that's the way it was.’ 

We had to take the fall of her sophomore year to just not run, which was hard to get her to do. Once the inflammation came down, she had to start out doing these micro-strengthening exercises that were very tedious… where you're not going to see the results right away. As runners, we're all kind of impatient. We want instant results. But she put in the work and it changed her form. She hasn’t had any issues since and this is her senior year.

Something you mentioned is that you don't always see big improvements until junior year. Is that a testament to taking more of a long-term developmental approach? 

I think a lot of the kids we get at Villanova are developmental-type kids. It just takes a couple of years to get stronger and get that confidence. I see kids improve every year and get better – but usually, I'll see that breakout, superstar year happen by their third year. 

Can you share about your coaching philosophy and how it's changed over your time spent coaching in the NCAA? 

My predecessor told me when I took over, ‘just keep them happy and healthy and you'll do well.’ So that's my philosophy. In terms of my ideals and what I believe: I'm not a super high mileage coach. I'm also a lot more one-on-one. If an athlete is going to benefit from more mileage, then of course that's the route we're going to go. But I believe in speed and turnover. I keep it in our training year-round and I believe in hitting all paces… We're not doing 400m pace in the fall, but we will do some short, quick hills to get turnover in. 

For this cross country season in particular, is there anything that stands out about this team compared to previous years? What are you looking forward to most as you and the team take on the rest of the season? 

It's always good to have a low stick. In addition to Sadie, we have Nikki Vanasse, who is a fifth-year from Columbia and she had a great race [at Nuttycombe] as well. It was a big breakthrough for her. Then we have another girl, Emma McGill, who was fourth in the Mid-Atlantic Region last year and has not opened up yet. We're really excited to get her back into the mix, which should be in a couple of weeks. 

I think we have some pretty good depth behind those three, so we should be able to have a respectable fourth and fifth. Moving forward, we're just going to be a team that keeps getting better week in and week out. And we need to, because our conference is incredibly competitive… and then our region is really competitive too. 

I think that's what makes a great team: you need to be challenged. You need to be battle-tested every week. I think about when we won [NCAAs] in 2010: [Big East rival] Georgetown was fourth. Every time we raced, they kept us on our toes. That's when you have great teams. 

Shifting gears a bit: there have been a lot of recent changes in the NCAA. We're seeing more international and 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 these changes?

For someone who's been around this long, the NCAA has definitely changed. One of my favorite things is to see our athletes go on and make world championship and Olympic teams. What better way to challenge them than having international kids in the NCAA? I think it makes us all better. 

It’s funny to see how much it's changed even from when I was in school. I think we had 16 teams qualify back then… Now it's double that. When I first came on in the 90s as an assistant… you could maybe count on one athlete [finishing a race] per second and now you're talking 10 or 20 athletes per second. It's crazy. 

It's different, but then you go watch the Olympic Games and you see all of these NCAA athletes in there. So what a great system to be able to go through – for all the countries. 

Read the full interview here!

Rapid Fire Highlights 🔥

– Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah have both parted ways with their coach, Reynaldo Walcott, and the Elite Performance Track Club after injury plagued seasons.

– The Diamond League has shared the details of its 2025 schedule. The circuit kicks off next April 26th, so start saving up now to be sure you have the cash to fork over $29.99 a month to FloTrack.

– Enlisting an Olympic gold medalist as your pacer is a pretty cool flex. Keira D’Amato has managed to talk Matthew Centrowitz into helping pace her at this weekend’s Chicago Marathon.

– In this week’s doping ban roundup: Emmaculate Anyango has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for EPO. Anyango ran the second fastest road 10K of all time back in January, when she went 28:57 in Valencia.

– At the Twin Cities 10 Mile, Conner Mantz took home the ‘W’ in a new course record time of 45:13, while Natosha Rogers went 52:29 to claim victory. Shadrack Kimining of Kenya took top honors for the fellas at the Twin Cities marathon in 2:10:17, and American Molly Bookmyer had herself a hell of a day, winning the women’s race in 2:28:52, over a 90-second PB.

– Sad news out of Kenya as former U20 800m champ Kipyegon Bett has passed away from an illness at the age of 26.

– At the UTMB-affiliated Ultra Trail Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur, men’s champion Cristofer Clemente of Spain held off American Courtney Dauwalter for the outright win, 21:22 to 21:35. Dauwalter’s second-place overall finish and five-plus hour margin of victory over the women’s field caps off yet another historic year for the ultrarunning legend.

– 11-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix is launching a sports management firm called Always Alpha that will focus on women athletes. The agency will represent athletes, broadcasters, and coaches from all sports.

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