Friday, August 25, 2006

Combining my passions, part 3

Okay, for all of you who have been forced to suffer my babbling about track & field over the years, I have a good reason for you to watch the sport this weekend. There is a very important meet in Brussels today, and the guy picture here is going for the world record in the 3,000 meter steeplechase. If he gets it, everyone in the stadium gets A FREE BEER. And I assume it will be BELGIAN BEER. Let's see the NFL or MLB top that! If you want to see if he made it, turn on OLN tomorrow at 4pm and watch the tape-delay broadcast. (Karla, you can probably watch it live. I think it starts at 8pm Norway time.**EDIT: Oh, I just remembered Karla is in London today and won't give a flying flip about anything on TV, much less sports. Drink some killer beer for me, KKP!) Yeah, yeah, I know – you won't be getting the free Belgian beer – but it's the principle of the thing. If anyone, anywhere can get free Belgian beer, we should be pulling for them. So cheer mightily and keep your fingers crossed for them. It's just good karma. His name is Saif Saaeed Shaheen, he is from Qatar, and the time he is shooting for is 7 minutes, 53.63 seconds.

I'll actually be watching the meet live over the Internet today. I think I'll go buy a Belgian brew so I can join the celebrations if he makes it. (In the highly unlikely event that any of you give enough of a shit to watch it live, you can go to WCSN.com and pay them five bucks to see it. The meet netcast starts at 1pm Central Time; the steeplechase starts at 1:30.)

UPDATE: Alas … failure.

Rank Athlete Nat Result
1 SHAHEEN, Saïf Saaeed
QAT

8:04.32
2 MATELONG, Richard
KEN

8:08.98
3 TAHRI, Bouabdallah
FRA
EL 8:09.53
4 KEMBOI, Ezekiel
KEN

8:14.54
5 OBAID, Musa Amer
QAT
SB 8:14.70
6 KIPRUTO, Brimin
KEN

8:15.26
7 KIPYEGO, Mike
KEN
SB 8:15.39
8 TALEB, Brahim
MAR

8:15.48
9 SALEM, Jamal Bilal
QAT
SB 8:17.26
10 MARTÍN, Luís Miguel
ESP

8:17.43
11 POPLAWSKI, Radoslaw
POL

8:22.10
12 MISOI, Kipkirui
KEN

8:25.27
13 CHERONO, Abraham
KEN

8:27.85
14 KIPROTICH, Wesley
KEN

8:28.01
15 DESMET, Pieter
BEL

8:28.11
16 TAHER, Tareq Mubarak
BRN

8:31.81
17 KOSGEI, Reuben
KEN

8:33.70
18 ABDI, Youcef
AUS

8:50.19
PEREZ, Cesar
ESP

DNF
VROEMEN, Simon
NED

DNF
DE SOUZA, Hudson
BRA

DNS



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