The Weekend Where Points Matter ⏱️

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Compiled by David Melly and Paul Snyder

Why We Need Conference Meets Now More Than Ever 🙏

For Lap Count readers observing the semi-permeable bubble of collegiate track and field from the outside looking in, the outdoor track season has taken a bit of a backseat these last few months.

Between spring marathons, the pros coming out of hibernation, and the start of Leagues and Slams, there’s a lot of non-NCAA track to focus on. Maybe a highlight from Penn Relays or Mykolas Alekna’s world record(s) in the discus broke through the noise, but generally speaking, the “regular” college track season isn’t always the most fun for fans to track… until now.

It’s hard to say whether conference championships mark the end of the regular season or the start of the postseason, but either way, they always seem to deliver the goods. Between dramatic 4x400m finishes and crazy tactical races, world-class sprint marks, and breakout freshman performances, all of a sudden it seems like there’s a lot more newsworthy content coming out of the collegiate ranks than anywhere else.

A few performances that really stood out: Jordan Anthony’s 9.95 100m/19.93 200m double victory at SECs, the latter of which came over Makanakaishe Charamba after the Auburn sprinter ran 19.92 in the prelims. The women of USC put on a clinic in sprint dominance at Hayward Field for Big Tens, finishing 1-2-3 in the 100m, 1-2-3-4 in the 200m, and 1-2 in the 400m. And remember the name Micahi Denzy: after missing NCAA indoors entirely, the true freshman at Florida State improved his two-week-old 400m PB from 45.00 to 44.38 in one race at ACCs and all of a sudden looks like the favorite in the event for the outdoor championship.

It was a good weekend for steeplechasers as Doris Lemngole picked up the 5000m/3000m steeplechase double win in 15:11.62/9:20.83, the latter of which she took by 33 seconds. Across the country in Kansas, BYU Olympian James Corrigan pulled off a similar performance with a pair of victories (8:22.20/13:25.40) of his own. Distance runners and their coaches around the country are likely breathing a sigh of relief that these two can’t pull the same points-gobbling arrangement due to the NCAA schedule.

But it’s not just individually impressive performances that make conference weekend exciting. Conference championships deliver a perfect combo of three important things that make watching track and field exciting. A few of them may sound familiar, since they’re features the pro track world is constantly trying to manufacture—but they already exist on the collegiate level!

Stakes: Until GST or some other interloper fully disrupts the slow, progressive track and field schedule, outdoor conference weekend still holds the honor of being the first spring meets that feel like they really matter. Until you can put “NCAA champion” or “Olympian” in front of your name, earning a title like “ACC champ” is a succinct, sticky way to tout your athletic accomplishments.

After weeks or months of coaches entering their athletes in off events and holding big stars back, everyone actually has to show up and compete their hardest. Why? Because even with the ever-shifting landscape of conference participation, every program in the country really does want to win a team title and will pull out all the stops to give them the best shot. Instead of carefully-measured early season efforts, you get steeplers and 10K runners doubling back to the 5000m and athletes like Clemson’s Gladys Chepngetich pulling an 800m/1500m/4x400m triple, the former of which she won in 1:59.94 ahead of the likes of Roisin Willis, Makayla Paige, and Lindsey Butler.

Unlike in Who’s Line Is It Anyway, in conference meets, the points do matter. It can be hard to compare relative performances across disciplines, but 10 points in the pole vault is inarguably more than 8 points in the hurdles. It would’ve been pretty impressive to see the men of Wisconsin rack up 21 points in the 5000m at Big Tens… had Oregon not scored a whopping 23 in the men’s 10,000m two days prior. And there’s nothing better than when a team title comes down to the 4x400m, as it did in the ACC women’s competition where UVA led Louisville by one measly point heading into the final event and still emerged victorious after finishing sixth to the Cardinals’ tenth-place effort.

It’s no wonder that Grand Slam Track has built its competition model around the idea of scoring: a points race really is the simplest, most universal way to track and quantify the outcomes of the widely-varied competition styles and formats of each individual event within track and field. And taking home a big-ass trophy is a clear way to show the guys on the lacrosse team what track and field means to your school.

Rivalries: They may have shed the “Pacific” branding, but there’s something awfully familiar about watching Oregon and Washington runners battle to the finish line in Hayward Field. While the national conference realignment has created some strange outcomes and new dynamics, the opportunity to reignite old rivalries and develop new ones is a critical part of in-conference competition. While they held their conference championships a week earlier, Cornell Big Red fans of all ages surely appreciated the redux of a classic UW-UO moment when Derek Amicon pipped Princeton’s Marcelo Parra Ramon at the line in the steeplechase after Ramon celebrated early. (In fairness, Princeton scored 15 points to Cornell’s 10 in the event and swept the men’s and women’s team titles at Heps.)

With the arrival of Stanford and the ascendance of UNC, the ACC is quickly becoming the best middle-distance conference in the NCAA. This weekend, Chris Miltenberg’s new team got the best of his old one, as Ethan Strand outkicked Leo Young (and Cal’s Garrett MacQuiddy) to win the 1500m then doubled back to a runner-up finish behind teammate Parker Wolfe in the 5000m, where both ‘Heels finished ahead of Cole Sprout. Along with Wolfe’s win in the 10,000m, the dynamic duo in baby blue racked up 38 of UNC’s 82 points in their second-place team performance.

And then, of course, there was the cross country dual meet Big Ten 10,000m final. Oregon and Washington successfully shut out every other team from the scoring, splitting the top eight places between Washington’s 1-5-7 finish led by Evan Jenkins’s 29:24.48 title and Oregon’s 2-3-4-6-8 clinic. For the PNW residents who miss the famous Border Clash cross-country meet, this was a thrilling on-track recreation—albeit not quite as visually dramatic a start.

Tactics: One of the main reasons why the NCAA is considered a strong feeder system for international competition is that collegiate runners—especially in the distance events—are forced via trial-by-fire to learn a lot of hard lessons about navigating championship races with different tactics and styles.

There’s the classic 1500m-jog-into-sprint, like the Big Ten men’s 1500m final where Adam Spencer led the top six finishers under 52 seconds over the final 400m to win in 3:53.18. There’s the pure chaos of an overcrowded 5000m final. And while it’s technically not a tactical performance, everyone loves a come-from-behind relay leg, like Nathaniel Ezekiel’s fourth-to-first 44.12 split for Baylor at Big 12s.

Athletes are forced out of the comparative comfort zone of rabbited races and into all manner of strange and unpredictable circumstances. At most conference meets, the 5000m’s placement at the end of the program means that 10K, 1500m, and steeplechase runners are all meeting up on tired legs, clamoring for whatever points they can muster for their team. This arrangement can yield all sorts of crazy results. For the sprinters, the combination of ambitious doubles and multiple rounds of racing serves as great preparation for anyone who wants to rack up medals one day on the global championship scale. And with 100m/200m winning times frequently under 10 seconds, 11 seconds, 20 seconds, or 22 seconds, respectively, the SEC championships are often one of the best sprint competitions anywhere in the world regardless of level.

In a sport where pre-summer excitement can sometimes be hard to find, conference weekend delivers the thrills and spills every time. The narratives are authentically dramatic, not manufactured, and the outcomes are satisfyingly elite. It’s hard to perfectly replicate in other events, but for now, let’s not take what we already have for granted.

What The Heck Is Going On In The Women’s 100m? 🤷‍♀️

It was a big weekend for the women’s 100m, with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Sha’Carri Richardson competing abroad and countless up-and-comers toeing the line in conference meets (see above) and the Atlanta City Games (see below). When all the results were settled, the results were, well, strange.

First up was Fraser-Pryce’s return to Doha, where the two-time Olympic 100m champ was victorious back in 2021. This time around, she faced down World Indoor 60m champ Mujinga Kambundji and three of her fellow Jamaicans… and finished decidedly mid-pack? SAFP didn’t look terrible out of the blocks but she certainly didn’t look as powerfully unbeatable as she does when at the top of her game. Instead it was Tia and Tina Clayton taking the top two spots in 10.92 and 11.02, respectively, with SAFP running 11.05 for fourth.

The last time Fraser-Pryce finished lower than third in a 100-meter dash came four years ago, in her first 100m of 2024. On a cold, rainy day in Gateshead, she finished fourth in a headwind-slowed 11.51—but ran 10.84 in Doha one week later. If Fraser-Pryce turns around and dominates a similarly strong field in her next competition, this will feel like a blip on the radar. Last year, she only opened up her season in 11.15—although she won that race—but after her wind-aided 10.94 to start 2025, expectations were a bit higher.

Two days later in the middle of the night (if you were watching from the U.S.), reigning 100m World champ Sha’Carri Richardson opened up her season at the Seiko Golden Grand Prix in Tokyo and finished fourth as well, clocking 11.47 in a race won in 11.38 by Australian Bree Rizzo (perhaps the 0.9 m/s headwind didn’t quite reflect the conditions).

There was even more to unpack from that race. Richardson showed up to the starting line with her right calf in a compression sleeve, but offering no official comments on her health one way or the other. The first start got called back and Richardson was shown a green card, despite getting what seemed like a fairly slow start out of the blocks. It took the field a little while to reset. When the gun went off the second time, Sha’Carri popped straight upright out of the blocks, demonstrating exactly what not to do in the first phase of a 100-meter race, and though she got back in the mix by 60 meters, she didn’t show off her typical blazing-fast top-end speed that helped deliver her Olympic silver last summer.

Ultimately, there’s a bit of a glass half-full/empty to be viewed here. If Richardson had even an average start in that race, she would’ve likely been able to finish first. But starting has never been a particularly strong or consistent part of her race, and if she has a dud performance at a competition that matters more than the Seiko Grand Prix, that could seriously alter the trajectory of her season.

If year-over-year history is to be considered, Sunday’s performance is also a bit of a Rorschach test for observers. Last year, Sha’Carri clocked two underwhelming 200ms in China before blitzing a 10.83 100m to win the Pre Classic. If you’re looking for trends, you could read that as a sign that Richardson is capable of busting the rust then sharpening up quickly. Or you could read into the fact that it’s her first season as a pro that her first 100m if the season hasn’t been a win.

As far as times go, it’s probably worth throwing out any suggestion that 11+ second performances mean all that much. The whole world has had a relatively slow start to the season in 2025, with only five women under 11 seconds so far (wind-legally) compared to 11 at this same point last year. Between weird wind readings, long travel to faraway competitions, and volatile springtime weather, the larger concern by far is finish place.

How’s the rest of the 2024 Olympic final doing, you might ask? No one has really asserted themselves boldly quite yet, at least in this one event. Olympic champ Julien Alfred has looked great in her few early-season competitions, but hasn’t run a 100m yet. Two-time Grand Slam champ Melissa Jefferson-Wooden has also looked phenomenal but hasn’t had the benefit of a fast, wind-legal time on her docket thus far (although she is the all-conditions world leader with a windy 10.75 in Miami). Daryll Neita and Twanisha Terry, the fourth- and fifth-placers in Paris, have struggled thus far in 2025. Mujinga Kambundji won World Indoors in the 60m but was never in contention in Doha. Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith hasn’t opened up yet, which based on past schedules is unusual for her.

Tia Clayton, who turned 20 two weeks after finishing seventh in the Olympic 100m, may be the one to watch moving forward. She ran PBs in the 60-meter dash and 200m before opening up her 100m campaign in Doha with a world-leading 10.92 victory. No word yet on when, or if, she’ll match up with Julien Alfred or Melissa Jefferson, both of whom she’s 0-2 against thus far in their careers. But Clayton and her twin sister Tina may be the young saviors of the ailing Jamaican sprint contingent that has been dominated by Fraser-Pryce, Elaine Thompson-Herah, and Shericka Jackson for much of the last decade.

Diehard fans of SAFP, Sha’Carri, or both will surely be in our mentions and email replies reminding us in no uncertain terms that this year’s World Championships aren’t til the end of September and that it’s still early in the season. And they’re right. But with the landscape in flux and a wave of talented newcomers reaching new heights, the women’s 100 meters will continue to be one of the most closely watched and hotly debated events of the whole track and field scene as the season continues, and the top spots are looking increasingly crowded.

Sponsored by Grand Slam Track: Philly

This isn’t your average track meet. This is Grand Slam Track™ — where legends are made, the best of the best compete and the stakes are sky-high.

After a sellout crowd in Miami and $100,000 awarded to each Slam Champion, the league now heads to one of the most iconic stages in American track: Franklin Field in Philadelphia, May 31 through June 1. We’re talking Olympic gold medalists in action like Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Cole Hocker, Masai Russell and Gabby Thomas.

The last two Slams brought: World leads. National records. Emotional moments you can’t script. The energy is electric. The intimacy of Franklin Field? Unmatched. You’re not just watching greatness — you’re part of it.

🎟️ Grab your tickets now at grandslamtrack.com/events and witness it all packed into one unforgettable weekend.

Answering Our Questions About Doha With Questions About Rabat 💭

Last week, we asked ourselves and our readers five questions in advance of the Doha Grand Prix:

• Does SAFP still have the juice? TBD.

• Can Tebogo start moving faster? TBD. He won, but barely got out of second gear to clock a 20.10 victory 0.01 seconds over Courtney Lindsey.

• Will we see a women’s steeple WR? No—and Olympic champ Winfred Yavi got beat!

• Will anyone break 70 meters in the discus? No—Matty Denny won in 68.97m.

• Who’s the best women’s pole vaulter right now? In Doha, it was Brit Molly Caudery.

Full results can be found here, but one event still worth unpacking a few days later is the men’s javelin, where Julian Weber and reigning World champion Neeraj Chopra waged a battle for the ages. After breaking 89 meters seven times earlier in his career, Chopra finally cleared the 90-meter barrier for the first time ever with a huge 90.23m effort in the third round, and seemed to have the competition locked up. Until Weber improved to 89.84m on his fifth throw and then 91.06m in an epic final-round haul. Weber has finished fourth in three of his last four global finals, so maybe this is an early sign he can finally crack the podium in 2025.

Heading into Sunday’s Diamond League competition in Rabat, here are a few more questions on our minds:

Can Shericka Jackson recapture the magic?

Jackson has had an underwhelming start to 2025 thus far, clocking runner-up finishes in her first two races of the outdoor season (a 200m in Xiamen and a 300m in Miami) and a couple unremarkable relay legs in Guangzhou. More hater-oriented track fans may be wondering if the 30-year-old who battled injuries in 2024 has lost a step… and a decisive win in Rabat would be a great way to shut them up.

The field isn’t crazy strong for a DL—she’ll have to contend with Bree Rizzo, who beat Sha’Carri et al in Japan, and Jacious Sears, who had a great indoor season but has clocked fairly middling performances in two GST meets thus far. Even if Shericka does come away with the win, her performance won’t be measured against the competition – it’ll be stacked up against the likes of Julien Alfred, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, and others hoping to keep the more decorated Jamaicans off the podium for good.

Will Erriyon Knighton push Letsile Tebogo to the line?

The picture that seems to be emerging around Letsile Tebogo is that he’s healthy and fit, but not exactly eager to unleash many 100% efforts so early in the season. But he’ll have his hands full with Olympic fourth-placer Erriyon Knighton, also the sixth-fastest man in history over 200m. Knighton’s first outdoor 200m of the season practically doubles as the African championships, as South Africans Benjamin Richardson and Wayde van Niekerk are entered as well as Joe Fahnbulleh of Liberia alongside Tebogo.

How low can Beatrice Chebet go?

Beatrice Chebet is the 10,000m world record holder, the double Olympic champion, and a World XC champion, but her 8:24.05 3000m PB puts her 36th on the all-time list. Nevertheless, she’s gotta be considered the favorite in the Rabat 3000m, given her blazing-fast closing speed and demonstrated fitness in the 5000m in Xiamen. The more intriguing question is whether rivals like Ejgayehu Taye, Medina Eisa, and Nadia Battocletti can help push her to a fast time in the shorter distance event. The world record is likely unassailable, given that Wang Junxia’s 8:06.11 is still officially, albeit ludicrously, on the books. But Genzebe Dibaba’s 8:16.60, the fastest mark run outside a very questionable 1993 race in China, feels like an achievable target.

What’s Femke Bol been up to lately?

The second-best 400m hurdler in the world is usually no stranger to racing early and often while her chief rival, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, typically takes the opposite approach—but this year, Bol has only one weekend of racing on her card so far with a relay performance at the European Indoor championships and SML is busy on the Grand Slam circuit. Bol and her coach have attributed the difference in schedule to a much-needed rest rather than any particular injury issue, so it’ll be a bit intriguing to see what kind of form she shows up to Rabat with in her first open race of the season.

Bol will likely emerge victorious, as she only lost one 400H race all year (the Olympic final), and neither woman who beat her—McLaughlin-Levrone and Anna Cockrell—is on the start list. But how fast she runs, and whether she betters SML’s 52.07 world lead, will help set the narrative for another exciting year of racing.

Who comes out on top of a stacked shot put field?

Ryan Crouser won’t be making the trip to Morocco, but the second through sixth placers from last year’s Olympic final will be competing head to head, led by silver medalist Joe Kovacs in his season opener and current world leader Leo Fabbri. Payton Otterdahl prevailed in the inaugural World Shot Put Series competition, and he’ll likely be eager to prove that he can get on top in any sort of meet format.

All these questions will be answered—hopefully —starting at 2pm E.T. on Sunday, May 25. U.S. viewers can stream online if they shell out for a subscription, or on YouTube for most international viewers (full info here).

Imagining The Fever Dream Meet: An Ode To Bizarre Distances 💡

Not to go full Will-Hunting-asking-a beautiful-woman-on-a-date here, but when you stop and think about the events contested at your standard track and field meet… they’re arbitrary. 

Would we still crown the same athletes with the title of “world’s fastest man/woman” if the marquee sprint distance was something slightly different, like 85m or 120m?

Why do we race the 100m? Why 400m? Why 1500m? Yes, yes, we know those distances are based on logical subdivisions of a standard track length or French people really liking 500m ovals. 

But we’ve put a person on the moon. We’ve put a supercomputer in your pocket. We’ve invented the espresso martini.

This is all to say, the world has kept spinning since track and field’s standardized distances were set. And while there are plenty of people attempting to revolutionize the sport right now, they’re largely attempting to do so at the level of bureaucracy. How can we pay the athletes more? How can we improve the product from a broadcast standpoint? How can we incentivize the best athletes to compete more frequently? How can we employ more mixed relays to… we don’t know.

Outside of things nobody wants like World Athletics’s ploy to change how the long jump is scored, basically nobody is attempting to change the geometry of competition itself. But why? Basketball has long tinkered with its three-point line. No two baseball stadiums boast the exact same dimensions. By not even considering playing with the physical confines of the events themselves, we’re leaving a lot on the table in terms of ways to possibly make track more compelling to the masses. Nothing makes an athlete reconsider their tactics like a change in layout of the sport itself. And nothing leads to more interesting outcomes than when all competitors in a contest have to quickly abandon their tried-and-true approach to the sport.

So credit where credit is due to the folks behind the Adidas Atlanta City Games, where a temporary, straight, 200m track played host to two world bests across two scarcely contested distances. Nigeria’s Favour Ofili went 15.85 for 150m, making her the first woman to ever dip under 16 seconds, and Alison dos Santos ran 21.85 in the 200m hurdles. 

Fans were also treated to solid, albeit wind-aided performances from Great Britain’s Zharnel Hughes (19.55 for 200m) and South Africa’s Akani Simbine (9.86 for 100m), and a wind-legal 10.98 for American Cambrea Sturgis, all in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. 

But go back and watch that 200m hurdles footage again. You’ll notice two things. One, that a straight track makes for a very cool visual, even with a general absence of trackside fans. And more importantly, that nobody seems to really know what to make of the race distance so it plays out differently from your typical 400m hurdle attrition race or your full-throttle 110m hurdles affair. Seems like there’s something there worthy of kicking the tires on.

File what we’re about to suggest under “there are no bad ideas in brainstorming.” 

While it would surely be fun (and expensive) to build a series of extremely long straight tracks, or bizarrely shaped ones of varying lengths, the more feasible—while still being a bit goofy—idea is to fuss with race distances more often.

Imagine a meet where the running events are billed to both fans and athletes as follows: a short sprint (50m to 200m), a long sprint (200m to 600m), a short middle-distance race (600m to 1200m), and a long middle-distance race (1200m to 1800m). Athletes don’t even know what distance they’ll be racing until they are called to the track, at which point a random number generator spits out a distance within the event’s parameters. 

That would inevitably create a track event like no other. In all likelihood, athletes would never have contested most of the events cooked up through this zany methodology, sending conventional racing tactics out the window. But there’s a “shoot for the moon and land among the stars” element of this proposal: maybe we can offer a bunch of crazy ideas and then settle on something less daring but exciting nevertheless. Maybe the athletes find out race distances the week of the meet, and are allowed to choose among their options during a floating entry period. Maybe the distances are standardized but the surface changes like tennis opens. The possibilities are endless, but you don’t know what will be a surprise success if you don’t try. 

We’re not suggesting this Fever Dream Meet format be anything other than a once-a-season novelty. It’d be hard to get athlete buy-in—particularly for the 200m/400m specialist sweating out a possible high-stakes 600m race—for anything of consequence, but from a fan perspective, it would be killer for narrative-building. You get a look at which athletes possess surprising range, an underappreciated kick, previously undiscovered strength, and which ones lucked out by having their true best distances align most closely with the ones most frequently contested.

More News From The Track And Field World 📰

– Grand Slam Track hit us with a slew of announcements last week ahead of its Philly meet. Trey Cunningham and Danielle Williams will return as Challengers—both are vying for their second Slam title. The long sprints and short distance lineups have been bolstered with high-level talent in the form of Georgia Hunter-Bell, Hobbs Kessler, Josh Hoey, Nia Akins, and Isabella Whittaker. Not one to duck the competition, Gabby Thomas will stick with the 100m/200m double in Philly and look for her revenge in that group, while Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone will step down to contest the 100m hurdles and flat 100m. All that, plus the whole Philly meeting has been condensed into two days!

– At the Great Manchester Run, Medina Eisa (30:42) prevailed over a deep elite women’s field that included Emily Sisson (second in 31:03) Gotytom Gebreslase (third in 31:11), and Hellen Obiri (fourth in 31:16). Selemon Barega took top honors in the men’s race, covering the 10k course in 27:49.

– Notable YouTube personality (oh, and World Championship medalist in the 800m) Nick Symmonds successfully scaled Mount Everest, making him the first sub-four-minute miler to have ever done so. 

– In sad, but important news, Jakob Ingebrigtsen released a video updating fans on his Achilles injury and a heartfelt open letter highlighting the lack of attention and support most abuse victims receive from the press and general public.

– The Court of Arbitration for Sports has issued a final verdict in the case of 2022 World steeple champion Norah Jeruto, who represents Kazakhstan internationally. Jeruto’s suspension is now officially overturned and World Athletics must pay 5,000 Swiss to help offset her legal fees.

– The Prefontaine Classic fields for the women’s 800m—now the Mutola 800m, named in honor of Maria Mutola, who attended high school locally and won an event at Pre a whopping 16 times(!)—have been revealed and they are fantastic: Keely Hodgkinson, Mary Moraa, Athing Mu, Jemma Reekie, Tsige Duguma, and more. 

– The three fastest 400m hurdlers in history—Rai Benjamin, Alison dos Santos, and Karsten Warholm—will race head-to-head in BOTH Oslo and Stockholm, only three days apart, in June.

– And congrats to CITIUS MAG mainstay and The Lap Count workhorse David Melly on getting married over the weekend!

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