In yet another bizarre turn of events, Gabriele Grunewald has been reinstated as the 2014 U.S. indoor women’s 3,000-meter champion and named to Team USA for the 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships to be held in Sopot, Poland from March 7-9, USATF CEO Max Siegel announced Monday.
According to a release sent out by USA Track & Field on Monday, Siegel spoke with representatives for Grunewald and Jordan Hasay, the two athletes who made contact with one another in the women’s 3,000 final on Saturday in Albuquerque. Grunewald kicked past Hasay and her Nike Oregon Project teammate Shannon Rowbury to win the race in 9:23.15. Rowbury was second, Sara Vaughn took third and Hasay crossed in fourth. Later in the day, after two rounds of appeals, Grunewald was disqualified by the Jury of Appeal for clipping Hasay’s stride. The final disqualification was made on the basis of enlarged, digital footage of the legs and feet of both athletes, according to USA Track & Field.
The scene was unprecedented: seven runners walking off the track hand in hand, in quiet protest against their own governing body. The women had just run the 1,500-meter race at the U.S. indoor national championships on Feb. 23 in Albuquerque. The day before, the winner of the 3,000-meter race, Gabe Grunewald, had been disqualified by one of the most powerful men in track, Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar, for supposedly interfering with one of his athletes. How Salazar managed the feat is still unclear, but to fans and to other runners it was obvious what had happened: The people who really run the sport had prevailed upon the people who nominally do to change a result in their favor.
It's not unusual for tempers to flare between opposing coaches. But the bad blood between Alberto Salazar and Jerry Schumacher stands out. Both are Nike Inc. coaches who manage elite groups of runners at company headquarters in Oregon.
After one of Salazar's runners, Galen Rupp, finished second in the 3,000 meters at last month's U.S. nationals, Salazar publicly accused several Schumacher runners of conspiring against Rupp in the race.
When Schumacher stepped forward in defense of his runners, Salazar charged toward him and had to be physically restrained, according to press accounts of the public encounter as well as people familiar with incident. Later, Salazar apologized to Schumacher and one of his runners, Lopez Lomong.
In a 2011 email, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Salazar described Schumacher as a mortal enemy.
Nike declined to comment, while Salazar and Schumacher didn't respond to requests for comment.
Turdacious