NEW YORK (19-Jan) -- Both Liliya Shobukhova and Andy Baddeley ran with confidence at the 13th New Balance Games here today at the Armory, winning the invitational miles held during one of the largest and loudest high school indoor track meets anywhere, with some 5000 competitors.
Shobukhova, of Russia, the former world indoor record holder for 3000m, loosely followed the pacemaker, Caryn Gehrke of the Nike Central Park Track Club, preferring to stay a few meters back because none of the rest of the field of 14 runners was with her. She hit the half-way in 2:16.1 with Canadians Hilary Stellingwerff, Carmen Douma-Hussar, and Megan Metcalfe in a group just a few meters back.
Shobukhova looked comfortable, but she was actually feeling a little off balance. "It's my first race on the track (of the season)," she said through her agent Andrey Baranov. Baranov explained that Shobukhova had done no track training prior to this race. "I didn't train on the track at all," she said. "I had a very bad start."
The Russian drifted back and with three laps to go, and a tight pack formed again, with Shobukhova, Amy Mortimer, Douma-Hussar, Stellingwerff and Metcalfe all in position to win. Coming to down the homestretch to answer the final bell, Metcalfe burst into the lead.
"I just have to learn to be aggressive," she said after the race. "I usually don't take the lead like that."
But Shobukhova had something left in the tank. She drafted Metcalfe on the backstretch, then went past her before reaching turn three. She powered home with her first-ever win on U.S. soil in 4:31.90. Metcalfe held on for second in 4:32.28, and Mortimer got third (4:33.34).
In the men's invitational Baddeley, from Great Britain, ran a smart race, staying just off the lead, and closed with a 26.7 second final 200m. That's all it took for him to beat New Zealand's Adrian Blincoe, the leader at the bell. Baddeley passed his New Balance teammate just before turn three. Both men went under the four minute mark: 3:59.29 to 3:59.98.
"You never know," said Baddeley who has run 3:51.95 outdoors. "Last lap I felt really good. I realized that I had another gear."
There were also high school invitational miles and the winners, Robby Andrews of Manalapan, N.J., and Kristin Reese of Carmel, N.Y., both earned berths in the Millrose Games high school invitational miles by virtue of their victories here today. Both athletes won by comfortable margins, with Andrews clocking 4:12.48 and Reese finishing in 4:52.65.
For Reese, who had a stress fracture in her foot last year, the win was partiularly sweet. "It's awesome," said Reese. "I just felt so strong the last two weeks."
In a special 500m invitational high school race for girls, Chanelle Price of Easton, Pa., broke the U.S. high school record for the distance with a 1:10.30 clocking. The teenager, who made the 800m final at last summer's U.S. Outdoor Championships, didn't know if she had it in her to topple the existing record by a whopping 1.14 seconds as she did.
"I wasn't sure," she said. "I was just going to come out here and run my race. I just ran the race I wanted to."
The complete elite results for this meet are at this link: ny.milesplit.us. There are also several videos of the meet at www.armorytrack.com.
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