Ian Roberts   from Olympedia While reading that liberal British daily  The Guardian  yesterday (Sept. 26, 2025) I was drawn to a story about the ICE arrest of the Superintendent of Schools in Des Moines, Iowa.  WTF?   I thought they were only going after slaughterhouse workers and farm workers in Iowa.  In reading the article it only got more interesting.  The Super, Ian Roberts, Phd.  had been pulled over by police while driving a department vehicle.  In it he had a loaded weapon.   He then made the mistake of fleeing by driving away, and then abandoning the vehicle.  Subsequently he was arrested.  Oh, did I mention that racially he is a person of  African heritage?  He is originall...

      August 25, 2025      While on a recent visit to my boyhood hometown of Dayton, Ohio I found a book on Knute Rockne titled of all things  "Rockne of Notre Dame,  The Making of a Football Legend" by Ray Robinson, Oxford University Press, 1999, 290 pages.   Why does a track blogger even bring up such a book on a blog devoted to a very different sport?  The reason being is I remembered reading somewhere that my former coach at the University of Oklahoma ,  John Jacobs, had been inducted into the Drake Relays Hall of Fame and Knute Rockne was also inducted along with Coach Jacobs at the same ceremony.  "Jake" was actually retired long before I arrived at the campus at Norman, OK, but he was still acting assistant coach in those days and was usually around offering us words of encouragement and condemnation in the tones of the 1920's.  His wit was classic old school stuff.  "That was a good throw, son, only thing...

  Also  some of you have asked about the old car that now sits on top of this blog.  I think it is about a 1940 Plymouth that guards the entrance to a trail I ride my bike on frequently in the Comox Valley of Vancouver Island, British Columbia This week the USATF meet will be held in Eugene, OR and I will be there, but due to restrictions at the border and fear of invasive actions on my computer, I 've decided to leave it at home coming down from Canada.  Instead I've begun going through some of our old blog posts over the last 15 years and am reposting the best or my favorites or whatever.  The first is a series of chapters below that are John Lawlor's experience as a foreign athlete at Abiliene Christian College from   1960-1963.   At around that time there was a swarm of Aussies coming to the US to run and doing very well.  The Australian track federation eventually put a stop to that exodus but for a few years they were a major influ...

Roger Howard, author of this article was my roommate in 1965 during our three months of training to go into the Peace Corps as teachers in Tanzania.  We trained at Syracuse University which had a department of East African Studies that could provide us with experts who knew the lay of the land in that far off country.  For relief from the stress of training and knowing that we were still in a  pre-selection process, we could be entertained on the  campus of good ol' Syracuse U.  by Larry Czonka and Floyd Little on the football field and Dave Bing on the basketball court.  But when sport could not provide relief, we could also follow a narrow trail down a hill to Ozzie's Bar on the old two lane highway that led south out of town.   The challenge was getting back up that hill when the stress was no longer in our young frames. Roger was a studious lad, ex-high school football player, graduate of a small liberal arts college in Nebraska called Doane C...

         Frequently while reading or working on a story, something will stimulate memories from other events or one might see that particular event in a slightly different light based on one's own personal experience.  While posting the previous story about Ted Haydon and the University of Chicago Track Club history, I remembered attending that USA - Poland dual meet held at the U of Chicago campus.  Paul O'Shea's review mentioned that the track that Roger Bannister first broke the four minute mile, the Ifley Road Track on the campus of Oxford University had been dug up and replaced with more modern material, and those famous cinders and clay and peat mixture had been transported to the City of Chicago and used to surface the new track at Soldier Field where the 1959 Pan American Games would be held.   Then those famous cinders were removed from Soldier Field and replaced in the barrels they had been transported from England in to Stagg Field...