Nieto Hollas at Thurmond; Taiwo blogs about Moscow & light cross country weekend...

Retired high jumper Jamie Nieto (left/photo by Mike Scott), who spent his early childhood in the Seattle area before moving to Sacramento, then on to Eastern Michigan, before making the 2004 and 2012 US Olympic teams, has kept himself busy by working as an actor and as a producer of short films and videos, through his production company, Raising The Bar Entertainment.

One of Nieto's projects is a series of interviews with leading track and field athletes called "Holla Atcha Boy".

In the latest segment of "Holla Atcha Boy", he interviews University of Washington and Renton HS alum Aretha Thurmond, and asks her questions about last year's Olympics, how she's managed to compete at a world class level for all of these years, and advice to give youngsters looking to compete in track and field.

Courtesy of Nieto, here's his interview with Thurmond.


Readers are encouraged to visit jamienieto.com and view the archive of interviews with many of the world's top track and field stars.

Although his world championship experience didn't end the way he wanted it to, University of Washington alum Jeremy Taiwo blogs about his experience with Team USA, beginning with the training camp in Linz, Austria, all the way to Moscow.

On the final day of competition at Luzhniki Stadium, Taiwo sat near the coaches' area on the backstretch to watch the finals of the men's triple jump, an event that his father Joseph competed in as a two-time Olympian and a world championships finalist in Rome in 1987, where he finished sixth.

After France's Teddy Tamgho joined the 18-meter and 59-foot clubs with his 59-2 1/4 (18.04m) jump, Tamgho's coach suddenly found himself swamped by journalists wanting to know his reaction to his athlete's big jump, when Taiwo, who was sitting behind him during the competition, realized that the coach didn't speak French, but was speaking Spanish.

Taiwo found himself translating questions from the French media sitting by Tamgho's coach, who turned out to be none other than former Olympic champion Ivan Pedroso from Cuba.


Finally, it's a light weekend for Washington's Division I and II cross country squads, with only Central Washington and Western Washington in action Saturday at the WWU Invitational at Lake Padden Park in Bellingham, with the women's 6k starting at 10 am, and the men's 10k an hour later.

For the Vikings, this will be the final tune-up race before the Great Northwest Athletic Conference championship meet on October 26th.

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