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I guess you’d have to be a runner to appreciate the Millrose Games, which celebrated its 100th edition over the weekend at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
The Millrose Games cannot be said to be the most prestigious indoor athletics competition in the world; in fact, it is THE most prestigious invitational indoor track and field meet in the world. As a running back in high school and college, you dream of running across the boards at the Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden the same way a football player dreams of playing in the Super Bowl.
Track and field have fallen on hard times in the United States of late and that’s why the 100th race at the Millrose is so significant. Only the 2007 Millrose Games, as Dick Patrick wrote in USA Today on Thursday (1-2-07), “have survived the demise of a once vibrant indoor circuit that the US monopolized.”
Patrick is right.
Not only did Camelot lose its luster with the tragic loss of President John F. Kennedy, but the Millrose Games have lost some of their flourishing, but they can still flourish thanks to the famous Wanamaker Mile competition and enough world-class athletes to deserve 2 hours. . of live coverage on ESPN2 on Friday and 1 hour on ABC on Saturday.
I was glued to the television for both shows.
Many runners who would watch the Millrose Games on the tube would not if it weren’t for sportswriters like Dick Patrick. His pre-meeting coverage of the event in USA Today was engaging, informative, and plentiful.
The Millrose Games were started in 1908 by John Wanamaker of the Wanamaker department store chain and first gained prominence in the 1920s. Herb Schmertz, who worked for the Wanamaker department store in New York, became the director of the Millrose meeting in 1934 and ran Millrose games for 40 years, until 1974, when his son Howard, a New York City attorney, took over in 1975 and continued until 2003.
The Schmertz family ran the Millrose Games for 69 years and Howard Schmertz continued as meeting director emeritus for the 100th Millrose Games. The new meeting director is Mark Wetmore of Global Athletics Management.
John Wanamaker of Wanamaker Department Stores was a giant of American retail. He opened Philadelphia’s first department store in 1861 and would eventually have 15 more stores in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware.
Wanamaker is credited with being the father of modern advertising in America. He was the first to copyright his advertisements, the first to guarantee his products and offer exchanges and refunds, he created the price tag as we know it today, and he was the first to place a restaurant inside his department store. .
Wanamaker was ahead of its time as the first department store with electric lighting (1878), the first store with a telephone (1879), the first store to install pneumatic tubes to transport cash and documents (1880), and the first store with an elevator ( 1884).
No wonder John Wanamaker sponsored a major sporting event and gave rise to the Millrose Games. As mainstream sponsorship, fixtures and attendance began to fade in the 1990s, Europe became a much more important indoor player; however, the Millrose Games continued thanks to the Schmertz family.
The Millrose Games have been through three Madison Square Gardens, two world wars and a Great Depression and still survived to celebrate their centenary.
In this year’s centennial meet, 40-year-old Gail Devers, already the holder of the meet and the American record in the hurdles, won the event in 7.86 seconds, the fastest time in the world this year and nearly a full second. better than the world record mentioned. for master athletes (40+) at 8.71.
Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva set a record at the Millrose Games while competing for the first time on American soil. Isinbayeva is a 17-time world record holder; she continually breaks her own world record and attempted her last attempt at Millrose, but failed.
At the famed Wanamaker Mile on Saturday, four-time winner Bernard Lagat was up against Craig “Buster” Mottram, the 6-foot-3 Commonwealth Games champion, and Alan Webb, the new “raised in home” from the United States. Lagat, a runner from Kenya, has apparently become a US citizen.
Lagat’s legacy is already secured as he is a two-time Olympic 1,500m medalist. Webb became the first American high school student to break 4 minutes per mile indoors (3:59.86), and at the outdoor Prefontaine Classic in Eugene (OR) he would run 3:53.43 to break the 36-year-old National High School by Jim Ryan. Registration. In 2004, Webb won the 1500-meter Olympic Trials and ran an outdoor mile in 3:48.92 last year.
The Wanamaker Mile is different and difficult because Madison Square Garden has a 160-yard banked plank track compared to the normal 200-meter indoor tracks. Because it is shorter, the turns are more difficult and it is 11 turns instead of 8 turns.
In this year’s race, Alan Webb led behind the 1:54.99 half mile of Pacemaker Moise Joseph, and then Bernard Lagat, the defending champion, took over until Australian Buster Mottram raced in front with 4 laps to go. final.
Mottram knew that Lagat considered leading with two laps to go vital to win, so Mottram pushed on and still led until the final lap. Lagat then changed gears and won with a best finishing speed in 3:54.26. Mottram was second in an Australian record 3:54.81, and Webb was a disappointing fourth.
I really felt for Alan Webb. I was so excited to do better against Lagat. When he interviewed Lagat before the race, the announcer reminded Webb that Lagat had passed him several times and asked how Webb would beat him this time. My heart sank.
I’ve run too many races and I understand how the announcer could have sealed Webb’s fate right then and there. I don’t think Webb was prepared to answer that question right before the competition, and he couldn’t mentally adjust before competing.
Webb’s response to the announcer was that he “needed to be tougher” when a better answer would have been “I needed to be smarter”, especially if Webb had run a more tactical race and knew his leg speed was just as good as Webb’s. Lagat on the run. Finalize.
If not, there’s no way he could have won without pushing harder first in hopes of wearing Lagat down. Lagat is a Kenyan, not a turtle. He can fly as well as run. Webb’s previous best indoor mile was a 3:55.18 win a week ago in Boston.
Remember, Lagat won in 3:54.81, just 37 one-hundredths of a second faster. My guess is that Webb is physically ready, but he has some work to do emotionally and mentally to beat Lagat, whose hardened, winning experience and confidence proved better.
They run the Wanamaker Mile for the same reason they play the Super Bowl. You can talk all you want about who will win or why, but the winning team will have to prove any claim on game day.
Dick Patrick finished his pre-meeting story with this remarkable sidebar:
Howard Schmertz was 7 years old when he saw his first Millrose Games in 1933. Accompanying his father, he met director Herb Schmertz.
Howard Schmertz, who succeeded his father as manager in 1975, has since missed only two Millrose games when fighting in World War II. (Here are Howard’s best Millrose moments) Schmertz:
10) Bernard Lagat wins the 2005 Wanamaker Mile with a time of 3:52.87 at Madison Square Garden.
9) Suleiman Nyambui wins the 1981 5,000 (meter) race after a duel with Alberto Salazar, after winning the New York marathon. Nyambui sets a world record 13:20.4.
8) Irishman Eamonn Coghlan wins a record seventh Wanamaker Mile in 1987, beating Marcus O’Sullivan (another great Irish runner).
7) In the 1984 long jump, second place Carl Lewis takes first place and sets a world record of 28 feet, 10¼ inches.
6) Navy Corporal John Uelses, using a newly designed fiberglass pole, becomes the first to clear 16 feet in the pole vault.
5) In 1974, Tony Waldrop records the first mile under 4 minutes in Millrose history.
4) Mary Decker wins the 1500 (meter dash) for 80 yards in 1980 and sets a world record of 4:00.8.
3) In 1955, Dane Gunnar Nielsen regains his world mile record from Wes Santee in 4:03.6. Meanwhile, Fred Dwyer, forced off the track on the final lap, and Santee practically battled down the stretch after Nielsen.
2) In 1942, Cornelius Warmerdam, borrowing a bamboo cane, becomes the first to clear 15 feet in the vault. He broke Millrose’s record of 14-3, held by Sueo Ohe, killed several weeks earlier in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.
1) In 1959, 17-year-old John Thomas becomes the first to clear 7 feet indoors in the high jump, beating Charlie Dumas, the first to clear 7 feet outdoors.
Kudos to Dick Patrick for bringing back some great memories. And kudos to the Millrose Games, still the best indoor games in the world.
Copyright © 2007 Ed Bagley
