Tucsonans Lagat, Abdirahman absent
When the U.S. track and field team leaves late this month for the World Championships in China, it will be without two of America’s leading distance runners of the century, Tucsonans Bernard Lagat and Abdi Abdirahman.
Bernard Lagat, right, reacts as he wins the senior men's 5,000-meter run at the U.S. Championships athletics meet, Sunday, June 23, 2013, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Neither qualified for the team. But Lagat, 40, and Abdirahman, 38, have said nothing about retiring. Abdirahman plans to run in the USA Olympic marathon trials next February. Lagat is expected to return to the European Diamond League circuit this month.
Lagat has won nine U.S. titles (and five world championship medals) at 5,000 meters in the last decade. He had qualified for the last six U.S. World Championship teams.
After finishing 10th in the 5,000 meters in the U.S. finals, Lagat became emotional and was teary-eyed when his two small children met him near the track.
“I was going to do it for them,’’ he told reporters in Oregon.
Abdirahman was the U.S. 10,000 meter champion four times from 2001-08 and made the 2012 Olympic team in the marathon.
“Number five is what motivates me,’’ he said last month. “That’s why I’m still running’’
It was Abdirahman’s way of saying he hopes to make his fifth consecutive U.S. Olympic team next year. He was eighth in his last major race, the New York City 10K in May.
The world’s top distance runners of the modern era were not competitive by the time they reached Abdirahman and Lagat’s age. Jim Ryun retired at 27; Kip Keino walked away at 34; Said Aouita was done at 33; Haile Gebrselassie ran until he was 37, but won his last major event at 34.
Lagat and Abdirahman are treading in the no-man’s land of distance running, but neither seems daunted by the challenge.
