A Happy Mary Cain, photo by Peter Abraham,
from 2013 Oxy High Performance Meet
Kirani James, Shanghai DL,
The past two weekend showed one of the newest trends in our sport: the youthfulness of some of the sport's rising stars. Hegos Gebrhiwet wins the 3,000 meters in Doha and turns 19 the next day. Kirani James, who won in London at the ripe age of 19, runs 44.02 to lead the world in the 400 meters, and Mary Cain, all of sixteen, runs an AJR to not only get the Moscow A standard but take second in the Oxy High Performance 1,500 meters.
Again, is the trending youth of our sport good or bad? Exceptional athletes will rise to the top in our sport by pure effort and talent, but, the truth is, athletics, with participation in over 210 plus countries (about 300 countries on our planet at last count), shows that we have a true global sport. The key in near future: how to communicate our sport to eight billion sets of eyeballs?
