In the wake of last weekend’s North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association (NACAC) Championships in Toronto, Canada, confusion has abounded regarding whether or not first-place athletes from the event would receive 2019 IAAF World Championships “A” standards as a result. 

The Diamond League picks back up in Birmingham, England, on Saturday after a three-week hiatus for the European Championships. The narrative of the season has been altered a bit by the results at those championships—standout performances elevated several runners and set the stage for an exciting last two weeks of the Diamond League season. 

Jason and Kevin tackle some unexpected questions after European Championships, including:

Teenage fever is currently sweeping across the world of track and field. 

Reverberations from 18-year-old Mondo Duplantis’ electrifying 6.05m pole vault clearance on Sunday at the 2018 European Championships are still being felt, and among them is the peculiar question of whether the mark will be ratified as an American record.

NYRR Press Release                            

There’s a reevaluation that happens when professional runners start to creep into their 30s. Sure, a marathoner might still be in the potential prime of his or her career, but the likelihood of continuing to improve in leaps and bounds decreases significantly with age—especially when you’ve never won a big one before.

But that hasn’t been the case for Stephanie Bruce, who trains with Ben Rosario’s HOKA ONE ONE NAZ Elite training group in Flagstaff, Arizona. When the 34-year-old mother of two won the AJC Peachtree Road Race in July—which doubles as the USATF National 10K Championships—she captured the first national title of her career with a late-race surge over teammate Aliphine Tuliamuk, the defending Peachtree champion and a nine-time U.S. champion.

The way Shalane Flanagan tells it, she and her cookbook co-author Elyse Kopecky had no intentions of producing a follow-up to their 2016 New York Times bestseller “Run Fast. Eat Slow.” 

This is the third entry in a series from Jordan Mann, this year's surprise fifth-place finisher in the U.S. steeplechase and mixed zone media darling. This weekend, he chronicled his experience competing at the North American, Central American, and Caribbean Championships (NACAC) in Toronto, Canada. On Sunday, he finished third in a three-person field. 

The times were fast, the stars were young, and the meet might have been the best in all of 2018. Let’s recap the 2018 European Championships by handing out some much-deserved awards.