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- #41 - Fisher Smashes Another Big 10K
#41 - Fisher Smashes Another Big 10K
Jeff Hollobaugh
March 20, 2024
In This Issue:
Sponsored by the Ann Arbor Running Company.
Fisher 26:52.04!
Fisher didn’t lead until the final 200.
Grant Fisher blasted the fastest 10,000 in the world this season with his win at The TEN in San Juan Capistrano, California. Staying behind almost the entire way, he ripped his final lap in 56.78 to win in the No. 4 U.S. time ever. For those of you who would rather read 1600 splits than deal with all that silly kilometer stuff, here’s how Grand Blanc’s favorite son paced it: 4:20.76, 4:19.12 [8:39.88], 4:19.37 [12:59.25], 4:21.09 [17:20.34], 4:18.56 [21:38.90], 4:16.37 [25:55.27] + a 56.78. His 5K splits were 13:31.8/13:20.2.
The time bettered the 27:00 Olympic standard. That’s not a guarantee he will be in Paris, but it makes the qualification process easier should he place near the top at the Olympic Trials, where conditions will surely be too hot for a sub-27 performance.
For more on the race, check out my article for Track & Field News.
Keeping Track Of Our Tracksters
We love to keep track of our alumni and how they do after they leave the high school ranks. Some are easy to follow, especially when they step right into a high-visibility role on one of the nation’s top D1 teams—yeah, I’m thinking of Renaissance alum Kaila Jackson here. She’s already made D1 All-American at Georgia 6 times and she’s still a teenager.
Some are really hard. Typically the toughest category for me to follow are the female marathoners, in the sense that they often disappear off our radar after high school and don’t reach national class status until many years later, often in another state and sometimes another last name. Every four years, I usually have fun “discovering” a few new ones for the alumni lists at Olympic Trials time.
There’s another category that can be tricky. Just today I was looking at the D1 state pole vault results from 22 years ago (yes, wasting time when I had more important things to be working on!). The 7th-placer that year, at 13-6, was Marco Boni of Grand Blanc. And then I spotted a note I made to myself back then, that he was a foreign exchange student. He wasn’t at “star” level then and he did not compete collegiately in the U.S., so I lost track.
Marco Boni, from 14-6 to 18-4.5.
A look in the database today was like finding buried treasure. Marco Boni indeed kept competing back home and he improved substantially on his high school PR of 14-6. He jumped his PR of 18-4.5 indoors in 2012! Only three Michigan HS alumni have ever jumped higher indoors. His outdoor best of 18-1 came two years later; only 6 alumni have jumped higher outdoors. He never quite made it the the Olympics or World Champs, but he competed in the European Championships and many times finished in the top 3 in the Italian Champs.
Our most successful foreign exchange athlete ever? That’s a sad story. Ralf Reichenbach was the Class C runner-up in the shot put in 1968 for Akron-Fairgrove, more than 10 feet behind the winner. He returned home to West Germany and years later became one of the world’s best. Five times he was ranked among the top 10 throwers on the planet by Track & Field News, and in 1980 he had the farthest throw in the world, but missed the Olympics because of the U.S.-led boycott. Unfortunately, there was a dark side to Reichenbach’s story. Following the conclusion of his career, he admitted that he had been a long-time steroid user, and he argued that steroid use should be legal for athletes. He died in 1998 at age 47 of cardiac issues.
Honestly, it’s much more fun to focus on the young people who are doing things right. Federico Bruno was an Italian exchange student at Benzie Central. He won the 2020 MITS Indoor title in the triple jump, but lost his outdoor season to the pandemic. He is turning 21 this week and is currently one of Italy’s most promising jumpers. He recently won the U23 national title in the TJ, leaping a PR 53-4.25. That’s the farthest a Michigan HS alum has ever gone indoors.
The High School “Outdoor” Season Begins
This weekend will offer up the Huron Relays, the Gardiner Catholic Schools Invite at Aquinas and the GVSU Invitational. They’re all indoors, but that’s not going to keep people from saying the outdoor season has begun! While I think that’s a little silly, I understand that they are merely distinguishing it from our indoor club season. Everything’s official now: school uniforms, transportation, school records can be broken and regional qualifying marks can be gotten.
At Michtrack.org, however, these marks will go on our indoor lists (because there’s a roof involved). We’ll roll out our outdoor lists once we start seeing worthy marks without a roof.
Risch Makes Team USA
Back at Williamston High, John Cody Risch was a solid runner, hitting 9:50.60 for 3200 in 2009 and making D2 all-state in cross country with his 16:02.1 PR in 2008. At Cornerstone University he tried the racewalk after losing a bet with his coach. Since then he’s become one of America’s best, ranking in the U.S. top 10 for the 20K 8 times by Track & Field News. He’s also twice made the top 4 in the longer walk, which is now a 35K at the world meets.
On March 17 he covered the 20K distance in 1:31:16 to place 2nd in the U.,S. Trials for the Racewalk World Team Championships. He will be competing in April in Ankara, Turkey.
Legend: Leon Jasionowski, Prep Road Warrior
Leon Jasionowski, showing his walking form.
Believe it or not, there was a time when it was not uncommon for high school runners to give the marathon distance a go occasionally, sometimes as a summer long run or in the late fall after cross country season. One of the most notable in Michigan history was Leon Jasionowski.
A 1964 graduate of Detroit’s Servite High, Jasionowski, a 4:25 miler as a 10th-grader, placed 2nd in the Class B state XC finals as a junior, running 10:14 for 2M behind Vicksburg’s Steve Bishop (10:08). As a senior he placed 3rd in 10:22.
It was the longer stuff that really interested him, though. In March of his junior year, he traveled to Chicago to compete in the Windy City Marathon, coming away with the win in 2:40:01—that was good for a nearly 12-minute margin over Hal Higdon, the running writer and no slouch of a competitor. A couple months later he ran a PR 4:29.7 for 2nd in the Catholic League mile.
That summer, before his senior year, he decided to go even farther… but a bit slower. The Detroit-Windsor Freedom Festival hosted the AAU Championships for the 50K (31.1M) racewalk and Jasionowski placed 5th in 5:58.56. “Walking races are a lot tougher, believe me,” he told the Detroit News. He trained year-round primarily for running, logging 10-15M each morning with “a few miles” of fast stuff each evening “to keep my speed up.” He would only work on walking technique prior to a competition. (Another newspaper account at the time of his marathon said he trained 18M a day.)
Jasionowski went on to compete for Wayne State as a runner, but his love for racewalking kept going. Digging through the Internet, we have found results for him all the way to 2017 (age 72)!
College Signings
If you know of one that wasn’t previously reported here, please let us know! [email protected]. This has been a feature since issue #28. To check back issues, go here.
Michael Magnoli (Romeo) - Nova Southeastern
Other Things
RIP: Joe Shay: A major force in the northern Michigan running community for many years, Joe Shay passed away on March 14 at age 74. The longtime coach at Central Lake, his work touched the lives of many runners, as well as his own children, who piled up more than a few all-state honors. Funeral details.
That 2003 D1 3200 race: Last week we brought up the mystery of the 2003 D1 race, where there appeared to be a timing discrepancy. While we didn’t score a video of the race, we got the confirmation we were looking for in the form of witness accounts that included the winner of the race. The revision affects our state’s all-time list (in addition to at least one school’s record for the 8-lapper). The incorrect results still show on the MHSAA website as well as athletic-net. Here are the correct times for the top 8:
(Grand Rapids, May 31)
1. Dustin Voss (Saline)11.............................................. 9:08.53
2. Frank Tinney (Ann Arbor Huron)12........................... 9:13.37
3. Michael Hanlon (Ann Arbor Huron)12........................ 9:16.12
4. Seth Thibodeau (Milford)11....................................... 9:19.28
5. Neal Naughton (Walled Lake Western)11................. 9:20.92
6. Matt Wish (Rockford)12............................................. 9:21.61
7. Ryan McCarl (Muskegon Mona Shores)11................ 9:22.81
8. Andrew Manning (Traverse City Central)12............... 9:23.19
Feedback on this newsletter? We’ll gladly take it. Over the last few weeks, literally half my feedback has come from my dad. [email protected]
Other resources:
Michtrack Results Archive: The Archive now includes 11,309 old results and clippings, thanks to the many people who have scanned old results and sent them. Check out the Archive!
Past Issues of the Michtrack Newsletter: Can be found here.
Michtrack Books:
XC! High School Cross Country in Michigan 1921-2020
The Fleet Feet of Spring: Michigan's High School State Championships in Track & Field (includes 2023 season)
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