byLarry EderElliott Denman covered the USATF announcement about their new sponsor, Neustar, and the .US National Road Racing Championships. While much is still up in the air, the direction that USATF is going, and the managing and development of their own events should be applauded. Stay tuned for future developments.
NEW USATF ROAD RACE 2013 ANNOUNCEMENT
By ELLIOTT DENMAN
NEW YORK – Alex Berry is a runner – but he’s never run a race.
All that may change, though, sometime in October or November.
Finally, the lanky senior vice president and general manager of Neustar, Inc., the
information services company that administers the .US global registry
(as in dot-com US) on behalf of the Department of Commerce, has a race he can
sink his teeth into.
And lace ’em up to train for.
“I ran four miles this morning; I worked up an honest sweat,” said Berry after an early-afternoon press conference Wednesday at Le Parker Meridien Hotel. Clearly, he’s getting the running bug.
Just as clearly, he’s put his previous sport – basketball – on the furthest back burner.
He’d been a basketballer first at California’s Menlo College, an NAIA Division II small
college member, then as a walk-on at biggest-time UCLA.
For a year, he was a member of the high-powered Bruins’ team – but hardly played.
He got his best workouts in practice – and even they came to an end after a while.
“I was just a 6-6 slow, white guy,” he said, laughing about his short-lived hoops past.
When the injuries came, they represented the clearest signal yet that he’d never be
material for the NBA, or the UCLA varsity, either.
So he stuck to his academics, got his credentials together and embarked on a series of successes on the corporate telecommunications trails. Pre-Neustar, he was senior vice president of client services and business development at Convergys Corporation, a Cincinnati-based provider of customer care, billing, human resources and learning outsourced solutions. And he worked at Lucent Worldwide Services, where he led and grew a new managed services sales group in North America.
Obviously, this is one busy guy. But so are most of the other 14 million Americans
reckoned to have finished a U.S. road race – or several of them – in 2012.
And that’s where the .US (make sure of that dot) National Road Racing Championships – the new one, thebig one, announced Wednesday, that USA Track and Field will launch, in partnership with Neustar, eight or nine months hence – fits into the picture.
It’s designed as much for a runner like Olympian Deena Kastor, also on hand for the
launch festivities, as it is for an Alex Berry.
Other than the distances to be run – 12 Kilometers (7.2 miles) for the elites as well as the
recreational/fitness runners and 5 Kilometers (3.1 miles) for the community joggers; and the prize money (a combined $100,000 purse divided between men and women) – details
remain very sketchy.
It may be run in October, but then again maybe November. It may be run in
Northern Virginia (Neustar is headquartered in Sterling, Va.) Or anywhere else. While
it’s a USATF-staged event, it will encourage the non-elites to join USATF, but it will probably not require USATF membership to enter. Will field limitations be made? To be announced.
It will cap the season-long USA Running Circuit, but on the hectic domestic calendar, will it tread on the heels of existing events?
There’s a two-word answer to all these: “stay tuned.”
The vast majority of USATF events “piggy back” on either existing events, or the efforts
of local organizers staging track, road, cross country, racewalking and trail events, staging these competitions under USATF sanctions.
But this one will be far different – it’s USATF doing the actual organizing, with the wherewithal coming from sponsor Neustar.
“The .US brand is a perfect fit with USA Track and Field,” said USATF CEO Max Siegel in his prepared statement. “We have been impressed by the organization’s commitment to our sport and, especially, this race. They are eager to engage all segments of the long-distance running community, from lifestyle runners to our elite athletes. We thank them for their support and for helping us launch this exciting new event.”
These are busy-busy-busy days for 2004 Olympic marathon bronze medalist Deena Kastor.
She will celebrate her 40th birthday on Thursday, Feb. 14, but may not be sure which time zone she’s in. On Feb. 2, she ran third in the USA Cross Country Championships in St. Louis, thus qualifying for the IAAF World XC’s, in Poland next month, and that will be the 18th USA national team she’s made over the past two decades. She’ll be back in California this weekend for the festivities at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in Pasadena. And she still finds time to serve as a member of the USATF national board, as well as president of the Mammoth Track Club.
“This is a very exciting day for professional runners and weekend warriors alike,”
said Kastor.
She predicts that the National Road Running Championships, staged under a three-year partnership with Neustar, will prove itself “an awesome event.”
We can make our own call on that – by late 2015.
