Alison Crocker 15th in the Sprint Final

Spectators watching the coverage of the Sprint Final may have missed Alison Crocker's impressive performance on Sunday in Forres, Scotland where she ran her way into 15th place, the best individual result ever achieved by the US at the World Championships. Ali was largely overlooked by the video coverage and arena announcing and thus her fantastic result was a surprise, even to her.

                                                                                   Flying into fifteenth                                    Photo Credit: Ethan Childs

In the moments after finishing she explained that she had a small mistake on the second control but was satisfied with the rest of her race. The mistake occurred when she misread the control description, and expected the flag to be at the end of the wrong stone wall. She figures she lost 20 seconds there, and after that she really pushed hard with nothing to lose. When she crossed the line with several runners still to finish, she thought that she would be satisfied to finish in the top 30. The final result of 15 was a bit of a surprise.

Ali just after the race

Perhaps Ali's facebook update says it best:

World of O has a nice analysis of the race here.

Check out the split times here.

After the Sprint Final was over, Team USA did our best to avoid the traffic jam of spectators heading back to Inverness and instead headed out to celebrate with a fantastic dinner at The Abbey Inn in Kinloss.

Ali's next race will be the Forest Relay on Wednesday, August 5th. However, you can watch Team USA compete in the Middle Distance on Tuesday.