With less than ideal sprinting conditions, the distance events took center stage at the Prefontaine Classic on Sunday at Hayward Field.
Meet records were set in every race 800 meters or longer sans one, including three Hayward Field records. In the biggest surprise of the day, Oregon Track Club Elite’s Nick Symmonds, a former NCAA Division III champion at Willamette University, came from behind with a stunning charge in the last 100 meters of the men’s 800 to upset 2004 Olympic gold medalist Yuriy Borzakovskiy of Russia in a personal best and meet record 1:44.54.
Other highlights included:
– Australia’s Craig Mottram pulled free of Tariku Bekele of Ethiopia in the final lap of the men’s two-mile race to win in a meet and field record 8:03.50, the sixth-fastest time in history. Matt Tegenkamp finished third in 8:07.07, dropping more than four seconds off Alan Webb’s two-year-old American record.
– Daniel K. Komen broke world record-holder Hicham El Guerrouj’s meet and field record by winning the Bowerman Mile in the fastest time ever run on American soil, 3:48.28. Nine runners finished in under 4:00, raising the total number of sub-4:00 performances in meet history to 199.
– Maria Mutola won her 15th consecutive Prefontaine Classic race, holding off Jamaica’s Kenia Sinclair in the women’s 800 meters.
– The men’s long jump, which featured more fouls than clean jumps, was won on Panamanian Irving Saladino’s only fair jump of the afternoon, a meet-record 27-10 1/4.
– 2006 world leader Barbora Spotakova destroyed the meet and field record in the women’s javelin. Her winning throw of 213-11 was more than 20 feet farther than runner-up Kim Kreiner and almost 25 feet farther than the old field record. Former Duck Sarah Malone finished sixth.