Last year, the IAAF put on a fantasy track & field league for the Osaka world championships. This past Winter, the USATF put on an event for the Visa Championship Series of races. I really enjoyed taking part in both leagues last year.

Well, this Summer the fun begins again. Both the USATF and the IAAF are providing an outdoor Fantasy Track series.

The USATF is going to center around it’s popular Visa Championship Series of races again, with the first meet happening this weekend at the Adidas Track Classic. There are two deadlines for making your picks. The 800m and the 5000m events are tomorrow night (Saturday) so those picks need to be made by 10:55 PM Eastern Time tomorrow. All other picks need to be made by 1:55 PM EDT on Sunday. A cool new twist on this season is that you can see who the favorites are based on who has already picked which athletes to win in each event. The entrant list sorts each athlete by their fantasy popularity.

The IAAF Fantasy Track game will begin with the June 1^st meet at the Golden League meet in Germany. The rules are a little different than they were for the Osaka games or for the USATF games. Rather than picking the athletes in individual events, or choosing a full complement of athletes with a maximum of 1 athlete from each country, you choose 4 captains that follow you from meet to meet and then you choose 5 additional athletes for each meet. If you choose athletes who score in the top 8 of their events, you score points.

Both leagues are free to join, although you are of course welcome to wager locally with your friends. Speaking of which – is anybody interested in a little friendly competition? Time is short for the start of the first USATF meet, but we could certainly get something together for the additional meets in the season and for the entire IAAF season. Let me know if you have any interest.