With about 500 meters to go in the Boston Marathon last April, Desiree Davila took the lead. The crowd lining Boylston Street went berserk. The television announcers were agog. Longtime reporters in the press room gasped. An American woman had not won the Boston Marathon in 26 years. An American woman had not even been
The broad shoulders, the gleaming smile, the tan, the tousled blond hair – Brett Gotcher looks like he should be surfing off the coast of his native California. And for good reason: Gotcher, 27, grew up surfing in Watsonville, known as home to vast fields of strawberries and abundant great waves. It’s only 26 miles
Dathan Ritzenhein knows what it’s like to make an Olympic team. He also knows what it’s like to fear that it’s all over: the 29-year-old spent much of 2011 fighting a gruesome Achilles tendon injury that put his career in peril. Last winter, Ritzenhein was bothered by an irritated sheath of his Achilles tendon. As
Growing up on a dirt road in rural West Virginia in a house with no TV, Clara Grandt was up and out early every summer morning with her five brothers and sisters to bike, hike to the tops of nearby hills, or swim in the creek. The only thing that would lure them back inside
By Barbara Huebner On December 14, one month out from the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials, fastest qualifiers Ryan Hall (2:04:58) and Desiree Davila (2:22:38) spoke to the media via teleconference. Among the topics: How their lives have changed since the last Trials. For Hall, who set a Trials record (2:09:02) with his runaway victory, the
