Records Earns Readers' and Editors' Choice Awards

Track and field fans voiced their choices in this week's DyeStat's Performance of the Week poll, while DyeStat's editors made their own selection.

Readers’ Choice: Emanuel Joseph

With 65.82 percent of the vote, Emanuel Joseph won our Readers’ Choice vote, beating Gavin Sherry with his second-place tally of 17.24 percent.

The North Rockland NY junior showed he was the class of the 55-meter hurdles field at the Section 1 State Qualifier Sunday at the Armory when he broke the New York state record with his 7.21 clocking. That record has stood on the books since 1987.

Joseph started his day by running 7.38 in the prelims. That time was 0.03 seconds off his best from a week earlier at the Purple Champions High School Invitational. It was a sign of things to come.

In the final, Joseph stormed out ahead of his competition to break the state record by 0.01 seconds. He won the event by over half a second.

Next up for Joseph will be the New York Federation Indoor Championships.

Editors’ Choice: Yulimar Rojas

This week we saw a number of record-breaking performances, including two world records and a collegiate record. Chris Nilsen broke Mondo Duplantis' collegiate indoor record in the pole vault, a record that lasted for one year. Ababel Yeshaneh won the RAK Half Marathon, shaving 20 seconds off the world record.

However, this week's award goes to Venezuela's Yulimar Rojas, who broke the world record in the triple jump at the Meeting Villa de Madrid, the final stop on the World Athletics Indoor Tour for 2020, which marks the end of the professional international indoor circuit.

Rojas jumped 50-2 (15.29m) in the fourth round of the competition to break her South American indoor record and move up to second on the all-time list.

Then after a round-five foul, Rojas closed out the competition with a leap of 50-7.50 (15.43m) to break the 16-year-old world record. The previous record of 50-4.75 (15.36m) was set by Russia's Tatyana Lebedeva at the 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships.

If this indoor season had gone as originally planned, Rojas would be continuing her season with the World Athletics Indoor Championships next month. However, due to the Coronavirus outbreak, those Championships, which were scheduled to take place in Nanjing, China, have been rescheduled for 2021.

That means this is likely the end of the indoor season for Rojas. We will likely see her next competing outdoors as she prepares for the Olympic Games.