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Scott Jurek Wins Silver Medal, Team USA Men Earn Bronze at 24-Hour World Championships in France
Serge Arbona of Baltimore, MD is Third Best American
By Dan Brannen, Running USA wireMay 17, 2010
The opening hours of this year's 24-Hour World Championships on Thursday-Friday, May 13-14, saw Americans leading both individual and team races in Brive, France. Scott Jurek and national champion Jill Perry went right to the front and stayed there for more than 4 hours. For the men, Americans Serge Arbona and national champ Phil McCarthy (who in 2008 placed 4th in this race) situated themselves among the top 10 early and stayed there for more than half the race.
After 4 hours, Japan's Shingo Inoue surged to take the lead from Scott Jurek and never looked back. He controlled and dominated the race, maintaining his ability to surge even in the closing hours, when it appeared the American might be able to close a 5-mile gap. At the final horn, Inoue had become only the 7th man in history to run more than 170 miles (273,708m) in 24 hours, in the process leading Japan to the team gold medal as well.
After two 24-hour run disappointments, Scott Jurek (36) put it all together as the Minnesota native now leaves no question about his legacy in the sport. His final distance of 165.70 miles (266,677m) for the silver medal not only broke the 11-year-old U.S. road record of Mark Godale, but also went beyond the 20-year-old U.S. track mark of Rae Clark as well.
On paper, Arbona and McCarthy were in over their heads, but they hung on heroically during the final 12 hours to keep the Yanks in the team medals. When they needed reinforcements, up from the middle of the pack came Michael Henze, who only a few years ago was a 300lb. non-runner. The Americans lost the team silver medal to the Italians in the final 15 minutes, but Henze's late charge (from 30th to 12th place) and Arbona's pure grit saved the bronze. It was the first time in history three U.S. men had run over 150 miles in the same race.
For the U.S. women, Jill Perry, Suzanna Bon and Amy Palmiero-Winters, the latter running on a brand new, custom designed prosthesis engineered specifically for the sometimes tight turns of the course that meandered around Brive's central town park, put the U.S. women in the team lead early. The three women are novices in international racing and in the 24-hour event. They paid a price for their fast start: Perry was eventually pulled from the race for medical reasons.
As expected, defending world champion Anne Cecile Fontaine of France gravitated to the front and ran away from the field, carrying the French women's team with her 149 miles (239,797m); the French placed three athletes in the top 8. Closing surges by Americans Anna Piskorka, Deb Horn and a rejuvenated Amy Palmiero-Winters were not enough to secure a team medal for the U.S. women, who dropped to fourth.
See complete results at www.24h-brive.fr/index.php?lang=en
Ultrarunning Gains Increased Acceptance
For the past decade, Scott Jurek has been the preeminent American male practitioner of the art of racing beyond the standard marathon distance. But the 7-time winner and course record holder of the Western States 100 Mile and 3-time winner of the grueling 153-mile Spartathlon (from Athens to Sparta in Greece) had been noticeably off form for the past year and a half. A recent feature profile in Runner's World appeared to show him as a man without a mission.Historically, the Spartathlon has been the premier international point-to-point road version of ultrarunning's crucible event, the multi-lap 24-Hour race (typically run on a track or short, certified road loop). Its winners' list reads like a "Who's Who" of the world's best 24-Hour specialists. And Jurek sits at #2 on that all-time list (behind only the legendary Greek Yiannis Kouros). Yet in his previous two 24-hour race attempts, at the 2008 and 2009 USA Championships, Jurek, a Seattle resident, seemed unable to get in gear, faltered and retired early.
Meanwhile, during the past year the 24-hour event itself has undergone a virtual revolution, both domestically and internationally. The IAAF finally agreed to grant the event full-blown "World Championship" designation, and the 2010 host event (Brive-la-Gaillarde, France) has brought the event's budget, venue, promotion and overall quality to an unprecedented level.
On the domestic side, after 15 years of lobbying by ultrarunners, USATF finally added funding of ultramarathon national teams to its annual budget. The USA 24-Hour Run Championship also finally secured significant prize money. Coincidentally, the quality of U.S. performances of both genders took a quantum leap upward. After remaining basically stagnant for about 20 years, the performance quality of the upper echelon of American 24-hour runners rose by almost 8% in 2009. Of the candidate pool to determine the 12 athletes who would eventually comprise the 2010 national team, as many as 7 of them were new to ultrarunning (two who would become team scorers at this year's World Championship had only taken up any running at all in the past 5 years). Last year's #2 scorer on the USA Women's silver medal winning team, Annette Bednosky, could not qualify for this year's team with her top 10 World Championship performance from 2009.
Amy Palmiero-Winters, the single-leg amputee who had only taken up ultrarunning in the past year, became the last women's team member on the last possible qualifying date (bumping Bednosky off the squad by less than 1 mile). Palmiero-Winters recently won the Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete; there were featured profiles of her in USA Today and The New York Times. The 24-hour event and the team has acquired a new identity, personality and self-consciousness.
8th IAU 24-Hour World Championships Results
Brive, France, May 13-14, 2010
Top Men
1) Shingo Inoue (JPN), 170.07 miles, gold
2) Scott Jurek (USA), 165.70 miles*, silver
3) Ivan Cudin (ITA), 163.94 miles, bronze
4) Yuki Sakai, age 41, JPN, 160.87 miles
5) Vladimir Bychkov, 43, RUS, 160.64 miles
Other U.S. Men
12) Michael Henze, 41, USA, 154.48 miles
21) Serge Arbona, 45, USA, 150.48 miles
32) Phil McCarthy, 42, USA, 143.23 miles
103) John Geesler, 51, USA, 108.70 miles
125) Dan Rose (USA), 91.27 miles (withdrawn for medical reasons)
*U.S. road record (previous record, 162.46 miles / 261,454m, Mark Godale (OH), USA 24 Hour Championship, September 19, 1999); also further than the U.S. track record, 165.24 miles / 265,932m, Rae Clark, September 29, 1990
Men's Team Standings
1) Japan, 483.84 miles
2) Italy, 471.57 miles
3) USA, 470.66 miles
Top Women
1) Anne Cecile Fontaine (FRA), 149.00 miles, gold
2) Monica Casiraghi, 41, ITA, 143.77 miles, silver
3) Julia Alter (GER), 143.07 miles, bronze
4) Annemarie Gross, 40, ITA, 142.39 miles
5) Sylvie Peuch, 48, FRA, 140.19 miles
U.S. Women
10) Anna Piskorka (USA), 133.23 miles
14) Deb Horn, 50, USA, 129.13 miles
17) Suzanna Bon, 45, USA, 126.31 miles
19) Amy Palmiero-Winters (USA), 123.99 miles
26) Jamie Donaldson (USA), 120.61 miles
69) Jill Perry (USA), 80.36 miles (withdrawn for medical reasons)
Women's Team Standings
1) France, 426.13 miles
2) Italy, 408.93 miles
3) Australia, 406.91 miles
4) USA, 388.68 miles