Track dominates British competition

The Penn/Cornell squad finished the two-week overseas tour with an undefeated record by defeating Oxford/Cambridge. Each year at the Penn Relays, professional track athletes comment that the size and enthusiasm of the crowd is something they usually only see on the European circuit. Track is huge in Europe, with Continental track fans constantly crowding into huge stadiums to see the stars in the world of track and field -- to the extent of which is rarely seen in the United States. The Europeans may have enthusiasm on their side, but, unfortunately for them, as shown last month, their talent level is still not on par with their American counterparts. This is a point the Penn track teams helped prove when they teamed with Cornell to go undefeated in four meets in the United Kingdom from June 15 through July 1. After departing for London on June 15, the combined team of Penn and Cornell -- which makes the trip once every four years -- travelled to Dublin where they faced Irish club teams in their first competition of the tour. "We annihilated the Irish teams," Penn women's track coach Betty Costanza said. The annihilation, however, did not stop when the Americans crossed the Irish Sea. The Quakers and Big Red competed in three more meets and dominated the competition in each of them. After the Dublin meet, Penn/Cornell faced the University of Birmingham team -- who Costanza acknowledged as Penn/Cornell's toughest opponent -- at their home track. While the team only competed in four meets over the entire two-week span, there was not much time to rest. When not competing, the team was usually traveling to its next competition. In fact, because there was so little time, they only had three days of practice over the entire trip. Practice, however, was not the only thing in short supply. By the time the team arrived at its third meet on the island of Guernsey near France, most of the athletes were somewhat tired. "We were sleepless," Costanza said. "We were literally without sleep." Had the Penn/Cornell team been well rested, it may have performed better, but that may have been difficult to do. In its sleepless state, the Penn/Cornell team totally dominated the competition in the all-comers meet in Guernsey. At this particular meet, records were broken one after the other. When all the damage was done, 16 meet records had come crashing down -- all by American athletes. The American dominance was evident in most athletes on the Penn/Cornell squad. It was the Penn athletes, however, who were the most dominating performers. "The strength of the Penn/Cornell team was the Penn men and women," Costanza said. This superiority became even more apparent in the final meet of the tour, the face-off against Oxford/Cambridge. On the women's side, the Penn/Cornell 4x100 meter relay team not only blew away the Oxford/Cambridge squad, but it also blew away the meet record. The four runners on the squad -- Renata Clay, Jen Roy, Richelle Clements and Shana McDonald-Black -- were all Penn runners. When all the points were tallied, the Penn/Cornell women's team had beaten Oxford/Cambridge by a score of 111-68, and the men had outpaced their British counterparts 124-75. The Oxford/Cambridge team offered better competition than Penn/Cornell saw in earlier meets -- including several top men steeplechasers and women middle distance runners. The strength in these events, however, was not enough to overcome the Americans. By finishing the tour with a 4-0 record, Penn/Cornell remains the only combined Ivy League team to never lose a meet in the 103 year history of the athlete exchange. Harvard/Yale and Dartmouth/Brown, the other two participating squads, have both lost to Oxford/Cambridge in the past. With its perfect record intact, the Penn and Cornell teams returned to the United States last week. "Overall, it was a very tiring trip," Costanza said. The experience of competing against international athletes, however, will help Penn in next year's track season. And with the remainder of the summer to rest from the trip, they should be fully recovered by then.

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