Elle St. Pierre’s Massive 5000m PB

The American women’s 5000m discussion got a lot more interesting this weekend when the national record holder over the mile and 3000m (both indoors), ran her first 5000m race since 2022 when she finished 20th at USAs. Elle St. Pierre’s return to the 5000m wasn’t quite as incredible as Faith Kipyegon’s last year, but it may be the next closest thing.

St. Pierre ran 14:34.12 for the win at the LA Grand Prix on Friday night – taking more than 24 seconds off a five-year-old personal best – for only her second career sub-15 clocking. This result, paired with her epic gold medal performance over 3000m at World Indoors, shows that she has immense promise at longer distances. St. Pierre’s knack for making U.S. teams (something she’s done four times since 2019), as well as the relatively open nature of the American women’s 5000m scene, raises the possibility of a 1500m/5000m double for her at the Olympics this summer.

The only runner to keep up with St. Pierre was Venezuela’s Joselyn Brea, who ran 14:36.59 to take over eleven seconds off her own South American record (she also owns area records over the mile and 3000m), and all but assure her spot in Paris by running under the Olympic standard. It would be the first Olympic Games for the soon to be 30-year-old.

Maia Ramsden’s New Zealand 1500m record

There were a number of other standout women’s distance performances in LA over the weekend, but the most impressive may have been buried deep on the results page of the meet’s last event. Harvard’s NCAA champion Maia Ramsden took a break from racing collegians between her conference and regional meets to set a massive four second 1500m PB (4:02.58) back in 11th place, breaking a 13-year-old national record.

Ramsden was heartbreakingly .08 seconds shy of the Olympic standard but stands only a few places out of the world rankings quota (her NCAA results are severely undervalued by the ranking system). With a few more big races this summer, Ramsden could easily earn a trip to Paris, if she is inclined to extend her season that long.

There were impressive results up and down the finishing list in this race. Behind the Ethiopian studs making 3:55 look easy up front (Diribe Welteji and Frewenyi Hailu), Kenya’s Susan Ejore, who runs for Under Armour’s Mission Run Dark Sky Distance, broke four minutes for the first time with a three and a half second personal best (3:58.63). The former Oregon Duck is off to a great start to her season that included a national record for the indoor mile at Millrose. Ejore certainly has a shot to make one of the most difficult Olympic teams in the sport after multiple narrow misses at previous Trials (4th in the 800m in 2023, 4th in the 1500m in 2022).

A quartet of Americans also clocked fast times throughout the race. In fifth, Emily Mackay (4:00.08) continued the momentum from her stellar indoor season that was punctuated by a World Indoor bronze medal. In seventh, 2022 U.S. champ Sinclaire Johnson (4:00.67) showed that she will certainly be in contention to make the 1500m team for the third year in a row as she works her way back from injury. In ninth, Dani Jones (4:02.09) ran the second fastest time of her career, and back in 12th, veteran Cory McGee (4:02.96) ran the fastest season opener of her career as she looks to make her fourth straight U.S. team.

The night before in the B heat of the 1500m, Tokyo Olympian Heather MacLean took home more than a three second win to dip under the Olympic standard by .01 seconds (4:02.49). MacLean has knocked six seconds off her season’s best in each of her last two races.

Kate Grace Makes Her Return

In 2021, American Kate Grace ran sub-2:00 ten different times and finished second at the Diamond League Final. Since then, a bout with long COVID and pregnancy have kept her out of competition, but on Friday, 978 days from her last race, Grace made her long awaited return.

In her first race, she won the D heat of the 800m going away with an impressive 2:01.93. Just an hour and a half later, Grace doubled back in the C heat of the 1500m and finished fifth (4:11.92), behind 10,000m Australian record holder Lauren Ryan who took the win in a personal best 4:08.15. The 35-year-old Grace’s first night back in action makes for an inspiring story, but if results like these continue to come, she’ll be much more than that, given her resume as an Olympic finalist.

Ceili McCabe’s Canadian Record

In the women’s 3000m steeplechase in LA on Friday night, West Virginia University’s Ceili McCabe cut five seconds off her personal best and set a Canadian national record en route to the win (9:20.58). McCabe led five women under the Olympic standard, including American Madie Boreman (2nd, 9:21.98) and 2022 World champion Norah Jeruto (3rd, 9:22.45).

Jeruto raced for the first time since last February as she was suspended by the AIU for the bulk of last season due to irregularities in her athlete biological passport. Her suspension was overturned on appeal last November, and could have major implications on the steeplechase scene come August.

Boreman, meanwhile, could play a major role in the steeplechase final at the U.S. Olympic Trials, a wide-open race given the recent injuries to the two most prominent steeplechasers in American history, Emma Coburn and Courtney Frerichs. Boreman made her debut on the Diamond League circuit earlier this year, and set a personal best in Friday’s race, giving her the second fastest time by an American woman so far in 2024.

Cooper Teare And Cole Hocker Hit The 5000m Olympic Standard

The premier event on Friday night in LA was the men’s 5000m, which saw 11 of the 13 men in the field run under 13:00. Behind a talented slew of East Africans at the front of the race, on-again-off-again training partners Cooper Teare (9th, 12:54.72) and Cole Hocker (11th, 12:58.82) clocked massive personal bests and ran well below the 13:05 Olympic standard.

Teare, who placed fourth in the 5000m at the 2021 Olympic Trials, lowered his PB by 12 seconds for his first career sub-13:00 run. The 2022 U.S. champion over 1500m didn’t make the final in that event last year at USAs. He faces very stiff competition once again in Hocker, Yared Nuguse, and Hobbs Kessler, and may have a better shot at an Olympic bid over the longer distance, where he placed fifth in the U.S. final last year.

Hocker, on the other hand, is more of a 1500m specialist, but now holds the standard in his pocket as a backup plan if he surprisingly gets bounced early in the 1500m in Eugene, just as Teare did last year. After not running a 5000m race all of 2023, Hocker ran 13:08.25 to shave a couple tenths of a second off his PB last month in a Teare-paced effort.

There were other notable yet under the radar results around the two Americans, including Australians Stewy McSweyn (10th, 12:56.07) and Morgan McDonald (12th, 13:00.48), who all but booked their tickets to Paris as the only Aussies with the standard after hitting it on Friday after a few near misses for each.

In the subsequent B heat, Drew Hunter (2nd, 13:08.57) entered the Olympic Trials 5000m discussion after knocking nine seconds off his four-year-old PB. Hunter, who used to put all of his focus into the 1500m/mile, seems to have discovered some untapped potential in longer events this year, including running 27:38 in his 10,000m debut. The second heat was won by Abdi Nur (who was originally supposed to be in the fast heat) as he pulled away for a relatively easy looking 13:04. Nur is expected to be one of the favorites to make the 5000m team in June.

Hobbs Kessler And Jake Wightman Drop Down In Distance

Notable times came across all distances and heats in LA, including another “B heat” performance, this one in the 800m from Hobbs Kessler. The 21-year-old 1500m specialist ran a personal best and an Olympic Trials qualifier of 1:45.07. Last year Kessler clocked his top time of 1:45.80 in late June, so the fact that he is running nearly a second quicker – and more than a month earlier in the season – is a good sign for fans rooting for Kessler to make his first Olympic team.

The next day in the featured heat, 2022 1500m World champion Jake Wightman clocked his second fastest 800m time ever, finishing third in 1:44.10. Wightman has always been a speed-based 1500m star, and has a faster 800m PB than fellow milers Ingebrigtsen, Kerr, or Nuguse by over a full second (via Jonathan Gault). 1:44.10 is the fastest Wightman has ever run in the leadup to a global championship, and he just took down a number of the event’s best specialists. We’ll soon get to see how that translates to his longer races, Wightman is a featured member of one of the best mile fields ever assembled at this weekend’s Prefontaine Classic.

Kyree King Tops Letsile Tebogo

Finally moving on from the distance events, there was one more performance in LA that deserves a little more shine, and that was American Kyree King taking home the win over 100m. It wasn’t necessarily the 10.11 time that King ran that should turn heads, but the world record holder that he outdueled. King came from behind to nip Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo at the line, marking the second surprise American to take down Tebogo in as many months (Courtney Lindsey is the only other runner to best the African star in 2024).

King has had an impressive spring, including strong legs on the gold medal winning American 4x100m team at World Relays. He has finished seventh in the 200m at each of the last three U.S. championships, but this may be his year to break through.

King is another athlete runner with a lot to prove this weekend at Pre, where he is entered in the men’s 200m that effectively serves as a Trials preview minus Noah Lyles. King will line up alongside Kenny Bednarek, Erriyon Knighton, and Lindsey, not to mention Tebogo, who will undoubtedly want to restore order to the sprinting universe in this rematch.

Akani Simbine’s “World Lead” In Atlanta

The best action for sprinting fans last weekend came in the streets of Atlanta, where some of Adidas’s best athletes raced to incredible times. South Africa’s Akani Simbine won the men’s 100m with a 9.90 clocking, the fastest wind-legal time of the year, but it won’t count as the world lead due to the fact that races were held on a straightaway constructed above the Georgia streets. Simbine ran the fastest time in the heats, and then handled Africa’s fastest man Ferdinand Omanyala (10.00, -0.4m/s) among others in the final. Simbine is a seasoned veteran who won the final two Diamond League 100m races leading into Worlds last year before false starting in the semifinals. He has made five World and Olympic finals in his career, but has yet to take home a medal. For my money, he is as good a bet as any to do so this summer in Paris.

There were other impressive results from Atlanta, particularly in the featured 150m races where American Candace Hill took home the win on the women’s side with the sixth fastest* time in history (16.30), outleaning Nigeria’s Favour Ofili by .006 seconds. It was a meaningful performance from Hill who has had an up-and-down career after going pro at the age of 16.

On the men’s side, Adidas’s poster boy Noah Lyles closed out the meet tying Tyson Gay for the American record (14.41) and second fastest 150m in history behind only Usain Bolt. As Lyles himself mentioned after the race, Gay was a “9.6-high” runner, implying that is the form that he thinks he is in (Gay’s season best in 2010, the year he ran 14.41, was 9.78).

*Hill’s time was the second fastest in history, and an American record, for a 150m race run on a straightaway

Prudence Sekgodiso’s 800m World Lead

Finally we get to the “highest” level of track that took place this weekend, the Diamond League meet in Morocco. With many of the bigger stars in the sport opting (or contractually obligated) to run in LA or Atlanta, a number of less established athletes were able to make a name for themselves on the Diamond League circuit.

Chief among those surprise performers was South Africa’s Prudence Sekgodiso. The 22-year-old took home her first Diamond League win by sneaking past Ethiopia’s Habitam Alemu – who ran the fastest indoor time of 2024 – on the inside down the finishing stretch. Sekgodiso’s time of 1:57.26 marked a significant PB and a world lead, at least until this weekend’s Moraa vs. Hodgkinson showdown. It’s a huge breakout for an athlete who nearly walked away from the sport due to the heartbreak of testing positive for COVID-19 on the eve of the 2021 World U20 Championships in Nairobi.

Angelina Topic Follows Footsteps Of A Champion

One athlete who did get to compete at those championships was 16-year-old Serbian high jumper, Angelina Topic. Topic, now 18, won her second Diamond League competition in as many weeks in Marrakech, and raised her own national record to 1.98m.

Topic, who finished seventh at Worlds last year, is now two centimeters away from being just the second woman since 1990 to clear 2m before turning 20 years old. Ukrainian superstar Yaroslava Mahuchikh first cleared the barrier nearly three months before her 18th birthday, and then proceeded to do it five more times before turning 20, including her World U20 record of 2.04m that earned her a silver medal in Doha in 2019.

While Topic may not be on that trajectory quite yet, it took until 2022 for Mahuchikh’s marks to translate to her first outdoor global title (roughly six months past her 20th birthday). Topic has plenty of time to live up to her potential, and her results this summer could put her ahead of schedule depending on how she performs at the Olympics and European Championships.