Flintshire, UK –SALLY Peake has taken a huge step towards qualifying for the London 2012 Olympic Games after achieving the Olympic B qualifying standard in the pole vault.

The Hawarden athlete has been in great form in the indoor athletics season, but has been eclipsed by Preston’s Holly Bleasdale, who has achieved the A standard to guarantee her place.

But while Bleasdale and some of her Team GB rivals performed in the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham, Peake was in Nevers, France accompanied by coach Scott Simpson.

She broke the Welsh record for the fourth time this season as she sailed over a bar set at 4.42 metres on Monday evening.

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AFP–Russia’s Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva set a new indoor pole vault world record on Thursday with a clearance of 5.01metres.

The 29-year-old had held the previous best of five metres set in Donetsk in February 2009.

Isinbayeva, who also holds the outdoor world record of 5.06m set in Zurich in August 2009, has now set 28 world records in her career.

“I’m so happy to come back at this level, I’ve been dreaming about this,” she told TV4 news after setting the record on her second attempt.

Double Olympic champion Isinbayeva had already clinched first place at 4.92m, ahead of Britain’s fast-improving Holly Bleasdale and Cuba’s Yarisley Silva who both finished at 4.72m. Continue reading →

HOLLY Bleasdale locks horns with pole vault legend Yelena Isinbayeva tonight for the second time in a fortnight as the Blackburn Harrier star gears up for next month’s World Indoor Championships in Istanbul.

The 20-year-old Olympic medal hopeful came a close second to Isinbayeva at the Pedro’s Cup in Poland earlier this month, after both had cleared 4.70m but with the Russian winning the event on countback.

She gets another crack at the current Olympic champion at this evening’s XL-Galan event in Stockholm, Sweden. Also competing are 2009 world champion Anna Rogowska and Pan American champion Yarisley Silva.

Bleasdale flew to Scandinavia having been voted the European athlete of the month for January following a stunning start to 2012.

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TEMPE – The Arizona State University men’s and women’s track and field teams will begin the indoor postseason this weekend as the squad heads to Seattle, Wash., for the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships at the Dempsey Indoor Track Facility. Essentially the indoor version of the conference championships, the Sun Devils will square off against the majority of the teams from the Pac-12 Conference as well as from the Big West. The event begins at 12:30 p.m. PST on Friday, Feb. 24 and resume at 10:30 a.m. PST on Saturday In 2011 ASU men finished 5th and women finished 4th

IN THE RANKINGS: USTFCCCA TOP 25

The Sun Devil men’s team remains at the No. 7 spot in this week’s USTFCCCA computer rankings. The men entered last weekend in the ‘moving week’ where the rankings stopped taking times from last season into account and only took marks from this year. The men jumped 17 spots into the top-10 for the first time since 2010 and remained there this week.

IN THE RANKINGS: USTFCCCA WEST REGION

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ELMHURST, Ill. – All nine league women’s teams and eight men’s teams head to Fort Wayne, Ind., for the 2012 Summit League Indoor Track and Field Championships at the IPFW Athletics Center Fieldhouse, Friday-Saturday.Heading into the championships, The Summit League men’s track and field is the eighth-best ranked Division I conference in the nation in the most recent conference index by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches’ Association (USTFCCCA). Two men’s squads are ranked in the USTFCCCA top-40 in the nation, Oral Roberts is ranked 26^th and Southern Utah is 36^th, with both teams ranked in the top-15 in their respective regions. For the women, North Dakota State is 13^th in the Midwest region. The Oral Roberts’ men’s team enters the championships ranked 26^th in the nation and 13^th in the Midwest region in the latest USTFCCC rankings … The Golden Eagles are led by three reigning league champions that are all ranked in the nation’s top-20 in the their respective events … Three-time Athlete of the Week and two-time reigning pole vault champion, Jack Whitt leads the league and is tied for second in the nation with a height of 18’1″ (5.51m) … Both North Dakota State squads look to capture their fifth-consecutive Summit League titles Returning champion Leslie Brost (pole vault), atop the league and eighth in the nation in the pole vault with a height of 13’11.25″ (4.25m) … The South Dakota  Coyotes will compete in their first Indoor Track and Field Summit League Championship meet Kyle Ballew is second-best in the pole vault (17’4.5″/5.30m). Emily Grove, also an Athlete of the Week selection, is second in the pole vault with a height of 13’7.25″ (4.15m)

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 The goal is to figure out the Lego Olympics on a 1/50 scale. 

All students should have one Lego Man, Girl, Vampire or Alien each for this exercise.  But this story of the Olympics begins with Carl Lewis, one of the greatest athletes of all time who won 9 Olympic Gold medals in 100m, 200m, relay and long jump.

Mathspig needs to find out how big the Lego Olympics track would be. How? Easy.

Carl Lewis will be our standard Lego Man.

I chose Carl Lewis because he kindly gave me his autograph once when I sprinted in high heels across a ballroom floor at a sports dinner in Melbourne and beat all other journalists. It was my personal best in high heels, I think

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NEW YORK — When USA Track and Field sprinters Walter Dix and Carmelita Jeter line up in the starting blocks in London this summer, they’ll do so wearing recycled plastic bottles. Marathoner Abdi Abdirahman will wear running shoes that look like they were crocheted by grandma. That, of course, is a simplistic way of describing some of the most high-tech, sustainable, performance apparel and footwear Nike has developed to date.

The most attention-grabbing piece in Tuesday’s collection was the Pro TurboSpeed track suit, dubbed the fastest track uniform Nike has ever built. According to Nike, the suit is reportedly .023 seconds faster over 100 meters than the company’s previous uniform, according to wind tunnel data. It comes in a one-piece, full-body suit, a two-piece option and shorter styles for athletes in longer distances.

“When designing these uniforms, we always start with the athletes,” said Martin Lotti, Nike’s Olympics innovation director. “They are always looking for a competitive advantage and we gave them just that in a suit that is faster than skin. How much faster is astonishing. It’s not just the difference between first and second, but the difference in even making the podium.” Continue reading →

INDIANAPOLIS – Recent American indoor record setters Jenn Suhr and Jillian Camarena-Williams along with two-time World Outdoor Championships long jump gold medalist Brittney Reese will lead a number of loaded groups of women’s field events into the USA Indoor Track & Field Championships February 25-26 at the Albuquerque Convention Center in Albuquerque, N.M.  The fourth and final stop on the indoor Visa Championship Series, the meet will be broadcast on ESPN on Sunday, February 26, from 7:30-9:30 p.m. Eastern. Spots will be on the line for Team USA for the World Indoor Championships, which will be held March 9-11 in Istanbul, Turkey.

In the men’s pole vault, three men have all previously won the USA Indoor title: Mark Hollis, Jeremy Scott and Brad Walker. Walker enters the meet with the best mark of the field at 5.80m/19-0.25.

Suhr in search of another USA Indoor title and VCS championship
The 2008 Olympic Games silver medalist in the women’s pole vault, Suhr will be in search of her sixth USA Indoor title in Albuquerque and will be looking to defend her indoor Visa Championship Series (VCS) title from 2011. Continue reading →

Pole vaulter Steve Hooker has gone back to basics in a bid to get his Olympic title defence back on track.

The 29-year-old has abandoned his domestic campaign to focus on his technique, having struggled for confidence after a string of failures in competition.

He reached a low at last year’s world championships in South Korea when he failed to clear a height in an event where he was the defending champion.

Speaking at a Coles Sports for School program launch at Kapinara Primary in City Beach yesterday, Hooker said his goal was to get the fundamentals right before leaving for Europe in May. Continue reading →

European Athletics is pleased to announce that British pole vaulter Holly Bleasdale and Russian high jumper Aleksey Dmitrik have been voted as the European Athletes of the Month for January.

The 20-year-old Bleasdale, 2011 European Athletics U23 Championships gold medallist, moved up to second on the world and European all-time list with her magnificent mark of 4.87m in the French town of Villeurbane on 21 January.

Her performance inevitably puts her into consideration for medals at this year’s three big events: the IAAF World Indoor Championships in March, which will be staged in Istanbul, and then this summer’s European Athletics Championships in Helsinki and Olympic Games in London.

Dmitrik, the 2011 World Championships silver medallist, jumped a world-leading 2.35m at the Moravian High Jump Tour meeting in Hustopece on 28 January.

Helena, Montana — Montana and Montana State track and field teams will be in Flagstaff, Ariz., on Friday and Saturday for the Big Sky Conference Championships.The Bobcats have 21 qualifying marks seeded third or higher — 15 on the men’s side, including Capital High graduate Ryan Kropp in the men’s pole vault.The sophomore entered the season with a lifetime best of 15-5 — a mark he achieved last year during the outdoor season. He heads to Arizona, however, with a season- and career-best of 16-0.75 — tied for third with two others, including teammate Steven Asa. The men’s pole vault will likely be an event dominated by athletes from the Treasure State, despite the presence of top seed and favorite Michael Arnold (17-4.5) of Idaho State. The next five athletes on the list are from Montana or Montana State — UM’s Keith Webber (16-1.75) and Kaleb Horlick (16-0.75), and MSU’s Kropp, Asa and Jeff Mohl (15-9).

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Air Force Academy –Kimber Shealy won the pole vault at the Robert Shine Invitational with a clearance of 12’11½”. It marks the fourth straight year that the senior, who holds the meet and venue records in Wyoming, has finished first in the pole vault. Shealy paced the Falcons lineup on Feb. 17, as Tawny Lambuth and Wren Bonner tied for second (12’7½”), Bizzy Mellado finished fourth (12’3½”) and Paige Shirley placed fifth (11’7¾”). On the men’s side, Cale Simmons’ winning mark of 17’10½” paced the Falcons to the top five spots. Joey Uhle finished second with a career-best 16’6¾”, while Elliott Beski and Cort Rogers tied for third (15’11″) and Chase Cooper finished fifth (15’7″).

The indoor championship season begins this week for the Air Force track and field, as the Falcons travel to Albuquerque, N.M., for the 2012 Mountain West Indoor Track and Field Championships. Action for the three-day meet gets underway at 11 a.m., on Thursday, Feb. 24, and continues through Saturday, Feb. 26, at the ABQ Convention Center in downtown Albuquerque.

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The following is a partial list of the championships:

USATF Indoor Championships
Albuquerque, N.M. * Albuquerque Convention Center

MPSF Championships
Seattle, Wash. * Dempsey Indoor

Big Sky Indoor Championships
Flagstaff, Ariz.

WAC Indoor Championships
Nampa, Idaho * Jacksons Indoor Track

Mountain West Indoor Championships
Albuquerque, N.M. * Albuquerque Convention Center

ACC Indoor Championships
Chestnut Hill, Mass. * Reggie Lewis Track & Athletic Center

SEC Indoor Championships
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Personal bests by Kristen Petry, Shelton McLean, Samantha Olson, Marcus Blessing, and Sam Hunt started off the 2012 season with a bang. Friday night at the Astronaut Invitational in Titusville, Kristen Petry, Cocoa Beach High School, won the girls vault competition with a personal best and school record of 11′. She was followed by Samantha Olson, Merritt Island High School, who finished in 2nd place with a personal best and school record of 10′. Finishing out the girls was Amanda Rigdon, Merritt Island High School, who finished 3rd with a vault of 9′. Corey Smith, Holy Trinity School, and Shelton McLean, Merritt Island High School, finished first and second place respectively both with a height of 13’6″ which is a personal best for Shelton. This is the first competition for Corey representing Continue reading →