Australian junior record of 3:37.23 run by third-placed Ryan Gregson at Sydney Track Classic (© David Tarbotton)
Wise old heads of the track lost their dignity and some were temporarily delirious last Saturday night all because a boy became a man to be reckoned with in a 1500m race.
In fact Ryan Gregson, 18 and just out of Bulli High school, had run the equivalent of a mile in 3:54.5 - equal to the fastest time ever run by Australia's Herb Elliott, still rated by many as history's greatest miler.
Well, there was some cause for Ian Hatfield, a silver-haired gentleman with a jutting off-set jaw, to bellow and cry and wave his arms in the grandstand at Homebush where Gregson came of age in the Sydney Track Classic in front of 7480 screaming, clapping fans.
His protege since the age of six, Gregson, now 18, had just run a four second personal best to finish a close third in a quality field stacked with Kenyan and Australian internationals.
Gregson ran the 1500m in 3:37.24 which is a World championship B-qualifying time, giving selectors the discretion to pick him to race at the Berlin titles in August.
The time was also an Australian junior (U20) record, chopping two seconds from the time (3:39.67) run by Michael Hillardt in Sydney in 1980.
Tucked away in Bulli on the NSW south coast not much has been heard of Gregson yet outside of specialty athletics magazines and websites.
But one of the biggest independent athletics websites, LetsRun.com based in the US has been tracking Gregson's progress for years and his breakthrough time is big news there.
The Americans have a rising star of their own, Oklahoma's German Fernandez, about whom there are currently six stories on the site, with his indoor mile time of 3:55.0 last weekend drawing most attention and inevitable comparisons with Gregson who is the same age.
The site even has a poll: When It's All Said And Done Who Will Have The Better Career? 83 per cent of the 1600 votes cast as of yesterday were in favour of Fernandez.
One of the nice things about Gregson is he knows the history of the Mile and 1500m. He talks about the race to break four minutes involving primarily the American Wes Santee, the Australian John Landy and the Englishman Roger Bannister who prevailed in May, 1954.
This is a different era of course but Gregson's 1500m is the equivalent of a mile in 3min 54.5 - faster than Landy's best of 3:57.9, equal to the peerless Herb Elliott's 3:54.5.
Today there is a sense of the Santee-Landy contest about Fernandez-Gregson, although of course the main players are still coming out of Africa.
And the challenge is not so much records as medals, although Gregson has the capacity for both.
“I just want to do everything,” Gregson told The Daily Telegraph. “I don't just want to make the Olympics _ I want to win. And I think I can. It will be really hard but I think I can win it.”
Gregson, fifth in last year's World Junior championships 1500m in Bydgoszcz, Poland, despite giving the field a year, said he wants to specialise in the 1500m and back up with a tactical 5000m - “like Hicham El Guerrouj and Bernard Lagat” - winners of the 1500m/5000m double at the 2004 Olympics and 2007 World championships, respectively.
To that end no longer an unknown quantity he will compete in the national open 5000m championship in Melbourne on Thursday night (5 March) at the World Athletics Tour Melbourne, a Grand Prix status meeting which is part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour.
Mike Hurst (Sydney Daily Telegraph) for the IAAF