Biggest Winner: Bobby Kersee

The legendary coach doesn’t have much left to “win,” per se, as his athletes have more medals and records than he can count. But the success of two big bets placed by Kersee, on 400m hurdles world record holder Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to thrive in the flat event and 800m Olympic champion Athing Mu to take to the 1500m, showed that the 69-year-old maestro of the oval continues to get the job done in new and innovative ways. After McLaughlin-Levrone started the season with results that could only be considered middling by her sky-high standard and Mu went months without competing at all, many keyboard warriors began to question if “Formula Kersee” really was best for his athletes and for U.S. track. A 48.74 meet record for McLaughlin-Levrone and a 4:03.44 2nd-place finish for Mu silenced even the most critical of voices, and now the question is whether Kersee will advise his athletes to double in Budapest, stick to their best bets at gold, or give their new events another shot. (Update: Sinclaire Johnson has announced that she will be competing in the 1500m at Worlds as Athing Mu has declined her spot.)

Biggest Loser: NCAA Runners

It wasn’t a great weekend for collegiate athletes. Headed into the competition, some thought that the longer-than-usual gap between the NCAA Championships and USAs (four weeks) would allow for collegiate athletes to rest, regroup, and recover for the professional championships. But stretching a season that began in January or even the previous September out longer can be tough. On the women’s side, the only collegians who made the team on the track across 10 events and 30 spots were Britton Wilson and Talitha Diggs in the 400m and Masai Russell in the 100m hurdles. And Diggs turned pro shortly before the 400m final, so she’s not technically in the NCAA anymore. The men fared only slightly better, with 4 of 30 track podium spots going to NCAA athletes.

Biggest Winner: Elise Cranny

After a tough fall and a rocky start to the 2023 outdoor season, there were a ton of question marks around Bowerman Track Club’s Elise Cranny. Cranny, who’s been open about her struggles with RED-S in the past, has certainly experienced high highs and low lows in recent years, but there was not much to complain about with this weekend’s performance – she picked up her 3rd and 4th national titles in the 10,000m and 5000m. Her 2023 5000m title was her third straight in the event, and just to be sure, she punched her ticket to Budapest by clocking a World standard of 14:52.66 in the race itself. Cranny was also literally the biggest winner of the weekend, as she was the only athlete, male or female, to pick up multiple U.S. titles.

Biggest Loser: BTC Runners Not Named Elise Cranny Or Sean McGorty

Outside of Cranny and Sean McGorty, who finished third in both the 10,000m and the 5000m, it was a pretty tough weekend for BTC. There was some seriously bad luck for Cooper Teare and Courtney Frerichs, as Teare missed the 1500m final by inches and Frerichs took a spill in the prelim of the steeplechase that aggravated an old injury. Health was a persistent problem across the board as Evan Jager was a no-show, Karissa Schweizer and Grant Fisher scratched the 5000m with precautionary concerns, and BTC regulars Lopez Lomong and Thomas Ratcliffe haven’t raced all season. One new bright spot for Bowerman was the signing of Montana State steepler Duncan Hamilton, NCAA #2 all-time in the event, who made the final, finishing 8th, and is clearly just getting started on his pro career.

Biggest Winner: Tracksmith Amateurs

Cravont Charleston winning the men’s 100m will surely become a signature moment for Tracksmith and the stable of “amateurs” it supports through an athlete program that provides unsponsored competitors with gear and additional support throughout the year. But athletes in the distinctive red-striped uniforms also picked up titles in the men’s javelin (Curtis Thompson) and hammer throw (Rudy Winkler), along with Freddie Crittenden making his first U.S. team in the 110m hurdles and Marisa Howard finishing 5th in the steeplechase a year after giving birth.

[Full disclosure: I run for a Tracksmith-sponsored club but they didn’t tell me to write this!]

Biggest Loser: World Rankings

Not only is it a shame for Team USA that from such large, high-quality fields we can’t simply name our top three finishers to the team, but the complex world ranking system made it much harder to follow the sport as a fan. Every time an athlete finished on the podium without the standard, observers and commentators had to start doing back-of-the-envelope calculations and online research to figure out whether the person who just crossed the finish line would be headed to Budapest. There is a strong argument for the value of a well-crafted ranking system that incentivizes head-to-head competition and works to balance field quality with empirical outcome. But the emphasis has to be on “well-crafted” and the current setup has yet to make the case that it’s working well, particularly as NCAA meets and championships in large nations continue to be undervalued.

Biggest Winner: Sha’Carri Richardson

What a weekend for one of the biggest stars of the sport. The big knocks on Sha’Carri headed into this weekend were that she had never made a U.S. team (although her fate in 2021 was arguably unfair) and that she was talented but inconsistent on the track. Well, she put both criticisms to rest as she strung together six strong rounds of running between the 100m and 200m, winning the 100m in 10.82, dipping under 22 seconds wind-legal for the first time in the 200m, and joining Noah Lyles as the only athletes on Team USA this year who will be competing in both events in Budapest. Her electric presence made every moment she was out on the track thrilling, and her viral Latto moment may end up the most-watched clip of the weekend. The one downside was her refusal to speak to most media members on Sunday after the competition as she’d previously announced. Richardson has a famously complex, bordering on adversarial, relationship with the press, but as she’s grown more and more vocal with her criticisms of the institutions governing track and field, it feels like a loss for the sport at large that she passed up that opportunity to speak her mind.

Biggest Loser: Last Year’s Worlds Sprinters

Of the 12 podium spots between the men’s and women’s 100m and 200m, the only athlete who finished top 3 in 2022 and 2023 was Erriyon Knighton. On the women’s side, all six of the women who made the team last year competed in the same event this year but did not repeat. Pour one out in particular for TeeTee Terry, who got a big PB in the 200m and equaled her season’s best in the 100m but finished 5th and 6th in each respective final. Her 6th place finish in the 100m should put her in the relay pool, however. But 2022 100m champ Melissa Jefferson finished 5th in the final, runner-up Aleia Hobbs failed to make it out of the semi, and 2022 200m champ Abby Steiner missed out on another team by 6/100ths of a second. On the men’s side, Fred Kerley didn’t contest the 100m as he has a bye to Worlds, but he finished 4th in the 200m, only 1/100th of a second behind Texas Tech’s Courtney Lindsey. His 100m teammates from 2022 had particularly rough efforts, as Marvin Bracy-Williams pulled up in the prelims with an injury and Trayvon Bromell will have to shut down his season and undergo surgery after this weekend. It just goes to show how hard maintaining year-over-year health, fitness, and consistency really is when the rest of the sport is elevating around you.

Biggest Winner: 1500m Finals

The men’s and women’s 1500m were some of the most exciting and dramatic races of the whole weekend, with big first-time wins for Nikki Hiltz and Yared Nuguse and a ton of excitement around the medal-winning potential of the teams the U.S. is sending to Worlds. The perfect combination of tactical brilliance, aerobic strength, and top-end speed required to be good at the 1500m makes it so fun to watch, and in both finals this weekend, the heavy hitters delivered. History was made as Hiltz became the first openly non-binary athlete to win a U.S. outdoor title, and the addition of Athing Mu to a 1500m field added a level of wild-card intrigue and excitement that kept fans and competitors guessing.

On the men’s side, Nuguse’s 2023 season is shaping up to be historic in its own right, as he’s already entered his name into the record books indoors and every day looks more and more like a serious medal threat. The anticipation of watching someone get better and better with no end in sight is one of the best parts of watching track and field all year long, not just during championship season.

Biggest Loser: Pole Vault Finals

The men’s pole vault final was a weird and wacky affair, with new American record holder KC Lightfoot withdrawing from the competition with a hamstring injury and Sam Kendricks missing the World team on attempts after jumping 5.81m, the same height as 3rd placer Zach Bradford. The women’s final was a little more predictable, but it was a shame to see Sandi Morris have to retire at 4.61m after battling illness all week, as we love watching her and teammate Katie Moon battle it out for gold. Get better soon, Sandi!

Biggest Winner: Running A New Event

It’s always thrilling to test the “what if”s of track and field in action. What if an 800m World champ ran the 1500m? What if a great 400m hurdler took away the hurdles? How will the 100m champ stack up against the best of the 200m? That’s why it was so fun to see so many big names take advantage of a World championship bye or a shift in training focus to try something slightly different, from Noah Lyles in the 100m and Fred Kerley in the 200m to Quincy Hall in the flat 400m and Josette Andrews in the 5000m. (To be fair, most of those races aren’t truly “new” for those athletes, but their focus on them as a primary event is.) Versatility is part of what makes the biggest stars so good at what they do, but the safe path to victory often makes the most sense. So kudos to the athletes who went out of their comfort zone this weekend!

Biggest Loser: Not Running The Final

Now, there are all kinds of very valid reasons why an athlete might choose not to contest a U.S. final. It might be injury concerns; it might be a coach’s advice. For reigning World champions with hefty contracts, the $8,000 first prize is quite simply not enough incentive to risk jeopardizing a medal later in the season. But whatever the reason, it’s a shame that many of the sport’s biggest stars competed in just the first few rounds of their respective events or entered multiple events then contested only one.

Biggest Winner: Fans of Rivalries

Heading into Worlds, the matchups between U.S. athletes and their international rivals has to be a major source of hype after this weekend. Watching Rai Benjamin and Karsten Warholm solo 46-mid efforts in the 400m hurdles from across the world, seeing Shericka Jackson and Sha’Carri Richardson climb up the 100m all-time list, and wondering whether Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone or Marileidy Paulino has a higher ceiling is what makes this part of the track season so fun. We’ll have a couple more big meets before Budapest for folks to really get cooking, but I personally am going to be on the edge of my seat for the next seven weeks waiting to see the big stars finally go head-to-head.

Biggest Loser: Watchers of Track and Field

Between the difficulty of getting to Eugene to watch in person, a slew of issues with the online streaming, to the mid-race commercials once the race was finally on television, it quite simply shouldn’t be this difficult for fans to watch track and field. How can you convince new people to become fans of the sport when the existing fans are so frequently frustrated with their own experience? In a world where we’re constantly talking about how to grow the fanbase, there needs to be a higher emphasis placed on improving the viewing experience of those tuning in and serious changes to business as usual if we’re going to have any chance of bringing in significant numbers of new eyeballs in the future.