Records fall at Fast Cow meet

The USA’s Raymond Martin led the way for a record-breaking night at the Fast Cow Invitational with two unofficial world record performances at the Michael A. Carroll Stadium at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Thursday (26 June) night.

Martin, a winner of five world titles in 2013, won the 1500m in 3:34.40 to knock a second and a half off of the men’s T52 world record that was previously set by Spain’s Santiago Sanz in 2007. In the men’s 400m, Martin improved the world record by nearly four-tenths of a second as he crossed the line in 56.89 to better the previous record set by Japan’s Tomoyo Ito in 2008.

In the men’s 5,000m T34, Austin Pruitt broke a world record that had been in the books since he was four years old. Pruitt won the event in 12:21.64 to slash more than 12 seconds off of the previous record that was set by Japan’s Kazuya Maeba in 1998.

The women’s 5,000m T53 saw a scorching pace as three women bettered the previous American record. Chelsea McClammer won in 11:24.60 to lower the record by more than five seconds, with Amanda McGrory and Susannah Scaroni also dipping under the previous record of 11:29.95.

After narrowly missing out on the 5,000m T54 American record by less than a second at last week’s U.S. Paralympics Track & Field National Championships, Tatyana McFadden was victorious in adding another record to her name as she won in 11:23.88.

Two days shy of her 14th birthday, Alexa Halko set two American and one Pan American record in the women’s T34 class. In the 100m, Halko improved a record set long before she was born, as she crossed the line in 19.95 to improve the previous American record of 20.02 set by Linda Mastandrea in 1996. In the 400m, Halko broke her own American and Pan American records with a new time of 1:06.48.

The fifth annual Fast Cow Invitational is a wheelchair racing specific meet named for an actual cow that used to race alongside the road while the University of Illinois athletes were training.