A March 7 "Brief Chat With..." interview from the Runner's World Daily News reports that North Carolina freshman Shalane Flanagan, out of Marblehead High School in Marblehead, Massachusetts, is the daughter of distance runner Cheryl Bridges. Flanagan won National Scholastic and Millrose high school miles, plus a U.S. junior cross country championship, and was 29th in the world junior cross country in Portugal just short of a year ago. Last weekend at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, she placed 7th in the mile final on Saturday (4:45.25) after a mile heat (4:44.45) and leg in the distance medley relay (4:41.05), a bit over two hours apart, on Friday. The Tar Heels were 2nd in the DMR. Flanagan finishes the 2001 collegiate season with the fastest NCAA Division I indoor mile of the year, a 4:37.41 to win the Atlantic Coast Conference meet in Blacksburg, Virginia, on February 17. Meanwhile... Bridges' name comes up in Frank Murphy's new book, The Silence of Great Distance (Kansas City, Missouri: WindSprint Press, 2000), available from Track & Field News. Chapter 4, on the career of Doris Brown, says that her school principal and a man down the street raised money via a spaghetti dinner to send her to the inaugural world cross country championships in Wales in 1967. Brown, one of only two Americans entered, won the first of five consecutive world cross country titles. The next year, the U.S. sent a full team and took home the team title. According to the book: "Doris gives much of the credit for this victory to Cheryl Bridges, who finished fourth at the U.S. National Championships, but picked up a bunch of places with a strong drive late in the international race." (p. 93) Other sources indicate that the following year, competing for Indiana State, Bridges captured the first women's national collegiate titles in the middle distances, winning the 800 (880?) and mile at the 1969 DGWS meet (Division of Girls' and Women's Sports, which preceded the AIAW, which preceded women's incorporation into the NCAA). Murphy in his book then reports that 542 girls and women competed at the U.S. cross country championships later that same year. In brief, boosted in part by the world cross country win, U.S. women's distance running reached a critical mass of competition participation. According to the Runner's World Daily News piece, Bridges later set a 2:49:40 American record in the marathon. Fellow list member Dr. Kamal Jabbour did a piece on her two years ago ago in the Syracuse newspaper. It's online. The URL is below. Jabbour credits the 2:49:40 marathon, run in Culver City, California, on December 7, 1971, as a world record. More qualified statistical historians can sort this out as to whether it was really both an American record and world record. Kamal Jabbour. "Cheryl Bridges: A Historical Figure." Syracuse Post-Standard, February 8, 1999. http://running.syr.edu/column/19990208.html Enjoy. Chris Kuykendall Austin, Texas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
