800m
Kamloops’ Reed captures 800m silver
Great way to close out the season! Reed was also third in the last Golden League event of the season a week ago in Brussels.
VANCOUVER SUN
SEPTEMBER 12, 2009British Columbian Gary Reed’s silver-medal finish in the 800-metre race led Canadians at the IAAF World Athletics Final meet in Thessaloniki, Greece Saturday.
Racing before a crowd of 27500, Reed was lying in seventh place with 200 metres to go when he put in his final kick that pushed him past South African Mbulaeni Mulaudzi, the world champion at that distance.
Reed finished in second behind Kenya’s David Lekuta, who claimed gold with a 1:44.85 time.
Read entire article here.
Bolt wins Weltkasse race, Gary Reed 5th in 800m
ZURICH — Assoc. Press
Last updated on Friday, Aug. 28, 2009World record-holder Usain Bolt shook off Jamaican teammate Asafa Powell to win the 100 metres in 9.81 seconds at the Weltklasse meet on Friday.
Bolt, the world and Olympic champion, trailed Powell halfway into the race then used his huge stride to pull ahead and even eased up in the last couple of metres. Powell finished in 9.88, followed by two Americans, Darvis Patton in 9.95 and Michael Rodgers in 9.98.
In his first race since smashing world records in the 100 and 200 at the world championships in Berlin, Bolt did not crush his rivals but still had enough to win ahead of Powell, the former world record-holder.
David Rudisha of Kenya won the 800 in 1:43.52 by beating world champion Mbulaeni Mulaudzi of South Africa and silver medalist Alfred Kirwa Yego of Kenya. Mulaudzi was third and Kirwa Yego second.
Victoria’s Gary Reed was fifth in 1:44.26.
Read entire article here.
London Grand Prix win for Gary Reed
This one fits into the “better late than never” category but it’s impossible to pass over Gary Reed’s success at the London Grand Prix from a week ago.
For background, see this feature about Gary …
Canada’s Reed scores big track win
Gary Reed of Kamloops, B.C., fought off international competition Friday night to win the 800 metres at the London Grand Prix.
Reed finished in a time of one minute, 45.85 seconds to earn the big win just a few weeks ahead of the world championships in Berlin.
“The race was great, I am thrilled to get the win,” Reed said in an email to The Canadian Press. “It’s very important to be in the mix heading into the world championships.”
Reed is looking to improve on his showing at the Beijing Olympics, where his finishing kick came just a hair too late in a fourth-place finish.
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And to get completely caught up, check out this article …
Banner weekend for Island athletes: Kabush, Cochrane, Hesjedal, Whitfield and Reed soar, Times Colonist
Because of certain advantages, such as the year-round mild climate and the national training centres based here, it is in the summer sports season where the Island shows its best …
50 metre reps
Gary Reed doing 50 metre reps for our cameraman at the gull-dropping encrusted track at the University of Victoria.
Dave Feschuk on Victoria’s Gary Reed
Follow up to my earlier post and video feature on Gary Reed …
Reed feels both pain and gain on track
Reed, a Victoria native, will be on the track at the University of Toronto’s Varsity Centre this week, vying for his sixth 800-metre national championship in the lead-up to August’s world championships in Berlin. And while watching him run can be an inspiring vision, hearing him talk about running is, depending on your taste for matter-of-fact recounting of bodily distress, an even better trip.
He’s a relatively rare breed: A Canadian who excels in a truly global sport; an endurance-running contender who doesn’t hail from Africa; an opinionated purist who’s in it to win it, knowing full well the price of a podium perch.
“There’s this big thing happening in North America where people have already given up the fight before they’ve even started. They’re doing rankings like, `Oh, he was the first non-African.’ Well, first non-African? What if you’re in a race with 100 guys and you come 100th, but you were the first non-African? Is there some type of award?” Reed was saying the other day. “It doesn’t make sense. A race is a race. Whoever’s in the race, whether they’re from Mars or Jupiter, they’re all in the race.”
This is why it’s nice to see elite athletics making a return to our city this summer. For all its warts, and every game has them, it’s one of the scarce domains of athletes of Reed’s ilk: Men and women who’ll make a no-excuses dive into a snakepit, and tell you the venom’s not so bad.
He seems undeniably driven and refreshingly unentitled. (As he said the other day, “You hear a lot of athletes say, `I’m sacrificing this. I’m sacrificing that.’ … (But) nobody has a gun to my head saying, `Gary, you have to live like this.’ I choose to live the (Spartan) track-and-field lifestyle.”)
Gary Reed: “you’ve got to fight like hell …”
This feature was made just prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
After winning Silver in the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Reed found himself just out of the medals last summer in Beijing. Despite missing the podium he considers his results to be a major success. So he should. A second and a fourth in successive years among the world’s 800m elite? That’s better than any other middle distance runner in Canadian track history.
Reed: “Finishing fourth at the Olympics is better than finishing 10th, and 10th is better than finishing 20th and so on. Obviously, you want to win a medal. But do I feel better coming fourth at the Olympics as opposed to ’04, when I came 17th? Yeah, I do. It’s a great accomplishment.”
inklake 