Ditto, Jack's comments. You'd be amazed at some of the track and field
abilities that racewalkers have. Many of us were pretty decent collegiate
runners, but found our true event with racewalking. In the past, in the Ohio
Racewalker, Jack has published a list of best all time track and field records
by a racewalker. It might be interesting again to see how well racewalkers
stack up.

Steve Pecinovsky
A former 400/800 runner at the Univ. of Notre Dame, turned racewalker thanks to
Jack Mortland's and Frank Alongi's encouragement and mentoring
(Trevor just beat my 10K racewalk PR. Way to go, Trevor!)


--- In racewalking@yahoogroups.com, "Jack Mortland" <jmortlan@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks Bruce for letting us in on the full story of Trevor's rise to
success. A wonderful letter and marvelous story No doubtit will receive some
apace in the next Ohio Racewalker. ALso, congratulations to Trevor for his
stunning perofmance. The fact that he broke Ben Shorey's U.S. Junior record by
nearly 28 seconds is remarkable by itself. But remembers that Junior goes
through age 19, and Ben was 19 when he set that record. Only a handful of U.S.
juniors have broken 45 minutes and probably all of those at age 18 or 19.
Trevor has three more years to chop away at his new record. Also
congratulations and thanks to all those who helped Trevor along the way as
outlined in his father's post.
> Now, I have to take issue with one thing in that post. "Because
racewalking is so far down the food chain of U.S. athletic activities, great
swimmers don't racewalk and great runners don't racewalk. We tend to get only
the middle-of-the-barrel athlete who may be good but not stupendous in other
disciplines." This would seem to suggest that racewalkers are lesser athletes.
I would suggest that most of those great runners and swimmers might be good, but
not stupendous, in racewalking, just as great sprinters are not great distance
runners, and vice versa, and great high jumpers are not great runners or great
swimmers, nor great swimmers great at track disciplines. I have always thought
that for whatever reason great athletes at any discipline are great both because
they work very hard and because they were born with an aptitude for a particular
discipline. Some are born to run fast, some to run far, some to jump high, and
so on, including some to walk fast. So, I just don't think that, for example,
all the great distance runners of our time would be dominating racewalking had
they chosen that route. Some might rise near the top, others would come no
where near. My opinion. No doubt in my mind--Trevor is a great athlete and he
has been fortunate enough to find the sport at which he can excel. Those who
were beating him in running races would not be doing so in walking races.
>
> Jack Mortland
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>