That's How You Win Championships

This SUV was painted for the meet.

Here, Craig Forys powers toward the finish, you'll note that his dominating performance meant nobody was in sight.

Danielle Tauro leads Ashley Higginson to the finish line.

Jim Schlentz, who coaches the top boy and #2 girl in the state, and the #1 girls cross-country team was overheard in discussion with someone tied to Jackson Memorial HS talking about a kid. The guy from Jackson said that Chris had been tripped, got up and finished sixth in the race. Without skipping a beat, Schlentz' reaction was, "That's how you win championships." Jackson had just won the state's team championship.

It's this kind of lesson that every runner should learn, and by my thinking, there's no better way to learn it than from the history of our sport. While this incident points out the lesson, a kid at NJ's state meet bears little merit to most people, but the same lesson was taught by Lasse Viren in the 10,000 meters in the Munich Olympics in 1972. Viren was tripped, went down and made chase. He finished with an Olympic Gold, one of two that year, and he became a true legend of the sport by repeating this 5000 and 10,000 meter double in Montreal four years later. The "double double" marked him as THE dominant distance runner of the era. Without getting up, he wouldn't have achieved the legendary status he attained.