A Fantastical Armory Night

"Fantastic, just fantastic," Dr. Norb Sander kept saying, nearly all night long.

He looked around the New Balance Armory Track Center and the sellout crowd of over 5,000 gathered Saturday night for the 105th Millrose Games and called that fantastic.

He ran through the list of superb performances and stirring footracing duels — a rollcall topped by Bernard Lagat’s 13:07.15 American-record 5,000-meter win over Lawi Lalang’s 13:08.28 and Matthew Centrowitz’s late rush to a 3:53.92 Wanamaker Mile victory over Miles Batty’s 3:55.24 — and he called that fantastic, too.

He had heard the praise heaped on meet management for  having the courage to move the meet 135 blocks north, from Madison Square Garden to the Armory, in the face of the critics who said it would represent the death knell of Millrose, and then heard all those once-negativists admit they had it all wrong, and he called that fantastic, too.

So you know he was a fantastically happy man by the time the whole gala show — subtitled “Uptown Saturday Night” — reached its finish line around 10 pm.

"And you know what?"  he then asked/told people, "we can do a lot better next year, and we will do a lot better next year."

Fantastic-er? You bet.

Count this modern-day miracle worker as a man of his word. The 2013 Millrose Games surely hopes to lure a cast of celebrities, fresh from their successes at the London Olympic Games, to Washington Heights. And just think of all the noise and juice and good-old enthusiasm for this grand old sport, that that kind of a show would generate.

The New York Baseball Giants skipped out of the Polo Grounds, on the Harlem River side of the borough, for San Francisco all the way back in 1957.  So the coming of the Millrose Games to 168th Street and Fort Washington Avenue became the biggest sporting event to be held in Upper Manhattan in 55 years.

"This is different, that's for sure," said Marcus O’Sullivan, the former magnifico of the mile, runner of 101 sub-fours and a three-time world indoor 1500-meter champion now doing super things as head coach at Villanova, his alma mater.

"Certainly, like a lot of others, when I heard they were moving Millrose out of the Garden, I had my doubts." said O'Sullivan. "But they’re all gone now. This has been a great meet. It had to be done. In track and field, things have to be consistent, the same conditions everywhere. And a 200-meter track is the standard of the sport. I've now been convinced it's a great move."

While some nay-sayers out there may forever feel Millrose can never be Millrose if it's not at the Garden, a young man named Joe Warne felt he'd just stepped into paradise.

Warne ran the leadoff 1200-meter leg on Dublin City University’s distance medley team that had itself a ferocious battle with Villanova. It was a race that boiled down to a pair of stirring anchor carries, with Villanova sophomore Samuel McEntee (out of Perth, Australia) fighting off DCU’s John Coghlan. McEntee’s 1600 meters took 3:59.8, Coghlan’s 4 flat.

"This building is wonderful," said Warne, "especially where we come from."

There's not a single proper indoor track in the Republic of Ireland.

"The best we have in the whole country right now is an old cowshed, in Menagh," said Warne. "Sure it's 200 meters, but it's got a cement floor, and strange bends, inside it's as cold as a fridge. And it's miles away from Dublin, too. For our National Indoor Championships, we have to go to another country, to Belfast, in the North."

But hope is underway. The first proper indoor track facility in the Republic is being built, right now, in Aphlone, at its Institute of Technology. A 2013 opening is planned.

John Coghlan, of course, is the son of the great Eamonn Coghlan, seven times a winner of the classic Wanamaker Mile at Millrose and a winner in the 5,000-meter final at the first World Championships of Track and Field in 1983. 

"Where's John Coghlan?" Warne was asked. "Oh, he's puking his guts out somewhere under the stands right now," said Warne. "John really gave it everything he had, maybe a little more than that, actually.  He surely knew how much running at Millrose means to his Dad."

Jen Simpson had never felt the Millrose experience before this one. She'd never made it to the Garden for previous Millrose editions.

But she’s surely happy she came to the Armory for this one, and felt buoyant after her 4:07.27-to-4:07.66 Women’s 'Metric Mile' 1500-meter win over Shannon Rowbury.

"Shannon and I were really racing hard, and the crowd really appreciated it," said Simpson, the world 1500 champion who also happens to be the American 3000-meter steeplechase record-holder.

"That’s what every runner likes. When the crowd's behind you, it drives you even harder. Winning here is a big stepping stone to everything else."  (Meaning all the way to the Olympic Trials...and the Games.)

The 500-meter race is on the slate of a many college conference meets but it's rarely held on the card of major invitationals.  But there it was at the Armory — billed as the Mel Sheppard 500 (successor to the classic Mel Sheppard 600-yard race, a forever feature of Garden Millrose meets) — with reigning Olympic 400 champion LaShawn Merritt there to give it meaning.

And Merritt came through handsomely to win in 1:01.39, fighting off 400 hurdles star Jeshua Anderson.

"I did have a plan for this race coming in," said Merritt, "but then everything changed when I got here, it was kind of weird." His main points: no starting blocks were used, and it became a two-turn stagger instead of three.

"But it didn’t really matter, in the end," he said. "I still did better than I thought I would. And I still got to be part of a great meet." The Mel Sheppard race was a Millrose fixture through to the year 2000, but not run again until 2006, when Merritt won it, then not run again until 2012.

So, in a sense, it took Merritt six years to 'defend' his Millrose crown. "I don't want to wait another six years to win the next one," he kidded.

The high-flyers had their moments, too.

Jesse Williams soared 7 feet, 7 1/4 inches, without a pole, and Jenn Suhr went 15-0 1/4, with one.

The 5,000-plus got to see lots of great relays, an array of talented high schoolers (wowing them: Edward Cheserek's 13:57.04 5,000, and Ajee Wilson's 2:04:13 800), top collegians and club runners, as well as some truly spirited Masters runners.

And here’s another one to remember. The night's closest race around the 200-meter oval, billed as "the world’s fastest," was not Lagat over Lalang, Centrowitz over Batty, or Simpson over Rowbury.

It was Michael Mannozzi over Dan Serianni in the Susan Rudin men's one-mile racewalk, 6:19:40 to 6:19.42, and a panel of world-class racewalking judges assured it was all "legal."

Of course, Dr. Sander was enthused by this one, too. It was one more happening he could call "fantastic."

Others who weighed in:

New York Times' Ryan Goldberg

New York Daily News' Seth Walder

Newsday's John Jeansonne

IAAF's Parker Morse