Prefontaine Classic | U.S. Championship 10,000m Races, World Record Attempts To Watch

This is the CITIUS MAG Newsletter by Chris Chavez. We love track and field. If you love track and field and have been forwarded this email or stumbled upon a link online, you can sign up and subscribe here to stay in the know about all the best action happening.

The Prefontaine Classic is so jam-packed this weekend that I’ve decided to separate my preview for all of this weekend’s action into two parts.  Today’s preview will cover Friday night’s events, which include the U.S. Championship 10,000m races. The top three men and women will secure their spots for the World Championships, so long as they have the World Championship qualifying standard (27:28.00 for men and 31:25.00 for women) by the time the rest of Team USA is determined at the U.S. Championships (June 23-26). 

HOW TO WATCH: You can watch Friday night’s action from the Prefontaine Classic starting at 10:30 p.m. ET on USATF.TV+ with a subscription. You can find a complete schedule of events, entries and results here.

I will also be on-site providing you with live updates on Twitter. I’ll also join my colleagues Dana Giordano and Mac Fleet to bring you a special edition of After The Final Lap live from Eugene. Subscribe to the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel and set your reminder.

Part II will preview all of the Diamond League events taking place on Saturday.

WHAT TO WATCH ON FRIDAY – MAY 27

USATF Championship 10,000m Women’s Race | 10:30 p.m. ET

I can still feel the heat from that 86-degree Saturday morning in Eugene. It’s been 11 months since Emily Sisson won the U.S. Olympic Trials women’s 10,000m in meet-record fashion (31:03.82) and secured her first Olympic team berth. It was an incredible performance where took the lead just after the second kilometer and squeezed the pace lap by lap. She split 15:49.15 for the first half of the race and then 15:14 for the final half to win by about 13 seconds. Karissa Schweizer, who was coming back from the 5000m, took second and Alicia Monson held onto the third spot to Tokyo before being taken to the hospital due to heat exhaustion.

The forecast for Friday evening looks to be far more favorable to distance racing, with temperatures in the mid-50s to low-60s. The wind, humidity, and chance of precipitation all look likely they could impact times (it is spring in the Pacific Northwest, after all), but if the weather breaks the right way at the right time, it could make for a quick evening.

A new champion will be crowned this year as Sisson has opted to focus on the roads in 2022 and has not raced on the track since her 10th place finish (31:09.58) at the Tokyo Olympics. 

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Update: Elise Cranny has scratched from the meet. On Instagram, she wrote: “Unfortunately I will not be competing at the USATF 10k championships tomorrow – I haven’t been feeling like myself in training. I'd love nothing more than to be out there competing for a spot on Team USA, but I just don't feel ready to compete right now. I have made the decision to shift my focus to the 5k next month.”

Schweizer, who finished 12th at the Tokyo Olympics in 31:19.96, would also make a formidable title contender, however, she underwent surgery on her Achilles last fall. She skipped the indoor season while rehabbing but did make her return with a 15:02.77 victory at the Mt. SAC Relays last month. She is still looking for her first national title after a pair of runner-up finishes last year. A Bowerman 1-2 like we saw in the 5000m last year wouldn’t be surprising if both are healthy.

The On Athletics Club’s Alicia Monson and 2015 world championship bronze medalist Emily Infeld have made the team before and look to be in the shape to do it again. After a strong winter and spring, Dark Sky Distance’s Weini Kelati and Hansons-Brooks Distance Project’s Natosha Rogers may be dark horse contenders for a spot at Worlds as well.

– Monson, who was 13th at the Tokyo Olympics, has not raced a 10,000m race all season. She had a very strong start to 2022 by winning the USATF cross country championships (the first national title of her career), winning the 3000m at the Millrose Games in 8:31.62 (4th fastest American ever), finishing second at the USATF Indoor Championships in the 3000m and then finishing 7th at the World Indoor Championships in the event. The only outdoor race on her resume this season is a 4:07.36 for 1500m at Sound Running’s The Track Meet. Just two years into her pro career, Monson has proven to show up on the biggest stages. A few of the pundits in the CITIUS Mag Slack channel argued that she should be considered more of a favorite than Schweitzer, which I can also see.

– Kelati (31:10.08 PB from Dec. 2020) making the United States team for the World Championships would be an awesome story. Just eight years ago, she represented Eritrea in the 3000m at the World Junior Championships at Hayward Field and finished eighth in the final. She skipped her team’s flight back home and sought asylum in the United States. Last summer, she finally got her United States citizenship just days before competing in the 10,000m final. Due to the hot conditions, she dropped out of the race and her hopes of representing the United States on the global stage had to wait another season. She’s still looking to get her first U.S. vest and this could be her chance. She enters with the fourth-fastest seed thanks to her 31:11.11 from Sound Running’s The Track Meet earlier this month, and she has not finished below third in any of her races in 2022.

If you want to hear what representing the United States would mean to Kelati, check out her appearance on The CITIUS MAG Podcast.

 – Infeld is an intriguing athlete to watch for this race since she’s shown flashes of success since leaving the Bowerman Track Club and teaming up with coach Jon Green and the Verde Track Club in Flagstaff alongside Olympic bronze medalist Molly Seidel. Infeld was third at the USATF Cross Country Championships in January, third at USATF 15K Championships in March and just three seconds back (15:05.80) of Schweizer in the 5000m at Mt. SAC. This will be her first 10,000m since finishing eighth at the U.S. Olympic Trials. From 2015 to 2017, she was a regular on the podium at the U.S. Championships in the 10,000m, and the Georgetown alumna is still only 32 years old.

– Rogers isn’t getting as much attention coming into this race despite some good results. Cranny drew the headlines in Sound Running’s The Ten for the near-record but Rogers was the next American across the finish line in fourth place with a 31:16.89. It’s the second-best time of her career behind her 31:12.28 personal best from Dec. 2020. She also got her first outdoor track victory since June 2016 when she won the 5000m at Sound Running’s The Track Meet in 15:05.22. At the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials, she came close to making a U.S. team with her second-place finish in the 10,000m, but although she landed on the podium, she missed the standard by 14 seconds. In the years following that disappointment, she took a break from the sport. Her reappearance in the top ranks of pro running suggests she’s put that disappointment behind her and found a second act with Hansons-Brooks. But nothing would bury the ghosts of the past quite like finishing the job she started a decade ago by making a global championship.

Ednah Kurgat, Sarah Lancaster, Marielle Hall, Paige Stoner, Danielle Shanahan, Stephanie Bruce and Emily Lipari all also hold the World Championship qualifying standard. Were another athlete to land on the podium without hitting the standard in the race, she would have a few more weeks to run 31:25.00 or faster as the qualifying window remains open through USAs.

USATF Championship 10,000m Men’s Race | 11:15 p.m. ET

This race was the first thriller of last year’s U.S. Olympic Trials and saw Woody Kincaid capture his first U.S. title with a 53.47-second last lap to win in 27:53.62 ahead of his teammate Grant Fisher (27:54.29) and On Athletic Club’s Joe Klecker (27:54.90). All three are back to try and make another team.

One of the biggest differences this time is that Fisher will be introduced on the starting line as the American record holder after running 26:33.84 (#7 all-time in the world) at Sound Running’s The Ten on March 6. His only other race of 2022 was his indoor 5000m American record of 12:53.73 at Boston University on Feb. 12. Assuming his coursework for his Stanford master's degree in management science and engineering hasn’t left him too stressed out in the past few weeks, Fisher enters this one as the heavy favorite. He has demonstrated recent fitness, the ability to kick off a fast or slow pace, and in his 5000m in February showed he isn’t afraid to squeeze down the pace from a long way out.

Kincaid has yet to race this outdoor season aside from pacing his teammates at Sound Running’s The Track Meet. All three of his professional 10,000m races came last year with a 27:12.78 personal best in February, his 27:53.62 at the Trials and then 28:11.01 for 15th at the Tokyo Olympics. He had a low-key indoor season with a 13:05.56 indoor 5000m personal best, winning the second heat at Boston University after a small setback in training in the fall. If we see someone make a big move with three or four laps to go, it may well be for fear of Kincaid’s lethal kicking speed.

Klecker is coming around at the right time after being sidelined with an injury for part of the winter. He was hit with COVID in late March but opened up running a 3:58 mile split in the OAC 4 x Mile record attempt and then notched a 5000m personal best of 13:04.42 at Sound Running’s Track Meet, which was the top performance of the day by an American. Klecker is more of a pure strength runner than his Bowerman rivals, but if he can hang on when the pace gets hot, he’s shown he can outlast most of his competitors.

Here’s a rundown of the other intriguing entries in this one:

Guys looking to make their first World Championship track team:

– Bowerman Track Club’s Sean McGorty has the fourth-fastest seed time thanks to his 27:18.15 debut at the distance at The Ten. He was an NCAA champion in the 5000m in 2018 and stuck with the event for much of the first few years of his professional career. Last year, he attempted to make the U.S. Olympic team in the steeplechase but finished 7th in the Trials final. The separate 10,000m championship provides an intriguing opportunity for McGorty to further showcase his versatility.

– The US Army’s Emmanuel Bor made the U.S. national team for the World Indoor Championships in the 3000m but was forced to make a late scratch due to the U.S. State Department advisory discouraging travel to Serbia. He has only run two 10,000m races in his career: 27:22.80 in May 2021 and then a 10th place finish (28:05.00) at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

– Conner Mantz, the two-time NCAA cross country champion from BYU who signed with Nike earlier this year, was the next man up to replace Bor for Indoor Worlds but opted to race the NYC Half instead. Mantz has raced quite a bit this year but has been rewarded with personal bests in the indoor 3000m (7:41.43); indoor 5000m (13:10.24); outdoor 5000m (13:13.25) and 10,000m (27:25.23). He likely won’t be a factor if the race comes down to a big final lap, but if the men’s race turns into a grindfest like the women’s Trials last year, he could run the kicks out of the competition.

– Dillon Maggard is looking to make his first outdoor national team after qualifying for the World Indoor Championship and placing ninth in the 3000m Belgrade. He ran a personal best of 27:37.26 at the Payton Jordan Invitational on April 29.

Do these veterans still have it?

– Ben True, who finished fourth at the U.S. Olympic Trials in a performance that actually broke him, has entered his first track race since then. Last fall, he made his marathon debut in 2:12:53 in New York City and returned to the Big Apple in March to claim a half marathon personal best of 62:10. The biggest question is whether he’s got track speed back - and whether it will be enough to earn his first global championship berth since 2015.

– You have to go down to the 11th spot on the entries to find the man who was the U.S. champion in this event just three years ago. Lopez Lomong is entered with his 27:39.96 from The Ten in March, which means if he finishes in the top three in a time not under the World Championship qualifying mark he’ll have four weeks to get it. He struggled in the Olympic Trials 10,000m and withdrew from the 5000m due to injury, ending his hopes of making a third U.S. Olympic team. At 37, he’s looking to recapture that 2019 form, where he won the U.S. Championships and then took seventh at Worlds in a personal best of 27:04.72. 

– The most overlooked man in this field is likely Shadrack Kipchichir. I had the chance to speak with him back in January and it’s not too late to remind yourself of his 10,000m prowess. A torn calf forced him to miss the entire 2021 outdoor season but in my CITIUS MAG Podcast episode with him, he goes into detail about the hours of work he put in at the Olympic Training Center and at a local Lifetime Fitness (where he taught himself to swim) to return to form. He roared back with a win at the USATF Cross Country Championships in January, jumped on the track for a 13:10.79 indoor 5000m at BU in February, ran  27:24.93 at The Ten and nailed his half marathon debut in 61:16 at the NYC Half in March. Let’s not forget that Kipchirchir knows how to perform when it counts: he made every 10,000m U.S. team from 2015 to 2019. 

Women’s Two-Mile World Record Attempt | 11:55 p.m. ET

The time to beat: 8:58.58 by Meseret Defar set in Brussels in 2007

Burundi’s Francine Niyonsaba was announced by organizers as the one to watch back on March 16. She was just two seconds shy of the record at last year’s Prefontaine Classic with a 9:00.75 victory, and she just ran 8:37.70 for 3000m to win the Doha Diamond League two weeks ago. However, triple Olympic medalist Sifan Hassan is also entered here, and while she has no personal best for the two-mile distance, she has a 3000m PB of 8:18.49 (No. 4 all-time) – which is .59 seconds better than Niyonsaba’s. This will be Hassan’s season opener, but she’s rarely known to step on the track without being in winning form, so this should be a good showdown.

Women’s 5000m World Record Attempt | 12:12 a.m. ET

The time to beat: 14:06.62 by Letesenbet Gidey set in Valencia in 2020

Could we see the first-ever sub-14 by a woman? Letesenbet Gidey is just under seven seconds away from making it happen. This was initially supposed to be a women’s one-hour record attempt by her but it was switched last week. 13:59 is 4:30/mile pace. It’s a tall order, but with the increasingly frequent resetting of the women’s 5000m and 10,000m records in recent years, anything seems possible.

Men’s 5000m World Record Attempt | 12:35 a.m. ET

The time to beat: 12:35.36 by Joshua Cheptegei set in Monaco in 2020

Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei is the world record holder and Olympic champion in this event. At the Monaco Diamond League in 2020, he showed what he can do with a pacer and Wavelight technology by knocking two seconds off the time set by all-time great Kenenisa Bekele. Still only 25 years old, the capacity is there, the question is whether May is too early in the season, whether the weather holds out, and if the pacing is strong. Rust may also be a factor, as this will be Cheptegei’s track season opener.

There are 12 other men in this race but it’s a bit of a bummer that this time trial has been separated from a field with 5000m Olympic silver medalist Moh Ahmed, 5000m Olympic bronze medalist Paul Chelimo, 10,000m Olympic gold medalist Selemon Barega, 10,000m Olympic bronze medalist Jacob Kiplimo and 1500m World Indoor Champion Samuel Tefera competing in Saturday’s Diamond League race. It will likely make for more interesting TV on Saturday, but it’s hard to explain to the casual track fan why two races of the same distance will be held at the same meet one day apart.

🙏 Thanks again for reading and sharing. Follow along on Twitter: @chrischavez and Instagram: @chris_j_chavez. Tell your friends to sign up for the newsletter to stay in the know on what and how to watch the best track and field action.

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