Aussie native Morgan McDonald leads the Wisconsin Badgers to the team title by winning the individual men's race in the Big 10 Championships. Photo by Gene Niemi |
"Three points!! Don't do that to me!!" he said, reacting to the fact that the Badger's margin of victory had everyone enduring an excruciating wait until the official announcement of what team emerged triumphant.
For the first 5K of the 8K men's race it appeared that Michigan State was in the driver's seat with nearly the entire team at or near the front of a lead pack that had few stragglers. The difference between first to last place was merely the length of a dense group of runners who hit the 5K mark within seconds of the one another in a time of 15:20.
A fan standing by the finish watching watching the race unfolding on the jumbotron said that someone in that crowded pack should sacrifice himself by surging to the front and challenging others to cover his move. The objective being to break up the field and the seeming stranglehold the Spartans had on the team title.
The runner who bolted, however, was Michigan State's Sherod Hardt. He was shadowed by Wisconsin's McDonald who seemed on "cruise control" as the duo battled for the top two spots.
Their acceleration fractured the pack, stringing out the runners who had seemed to have been shoulder-to-shoulder, pasted together for more than half the race. Following their leader, McDonald's teammates began grinding through the now fractured pack toward the front as Michigan State's men were displaced from their domination of the team race.
In the next two kilometers McDonald easily pulled away from Hardt as his teammates confidently crushed the Spartans, moving from to 58 points behind to two points ahead. Michigan State could not respond as the Badgers ground away toward the front of the chase pack and held on to win the team race by three points.
There was no matching drama in the women's race as Finn, not wanting to repeat her only defeat of the season in September at the Griak Invitational, took off during the first mile and never looked back. Her teammates were equally dominant "grinding out" a win by gradually opening an increasingly larger gap over the Spartans and holding off a late charge by Penn State.
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