LOADED FIELDS SET FOR USATF 1 MILE ROAD RACE, CHANCE AT RECORD-BREAKING WOMEN’S MILE, ELITE MEN’S 1500
DES MOINES, Iowa – The stakes have been raised heading to the 2025 Drake Relays for a collection of distance races. The USA Monitor & Discipline 1 Mile Street Championships, hosted as a part of the Grand Blue Mile offered by Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Protect, will once more deliver among the nation’s prime milers to Downtown Des Moines for an opportunity to qualify for Workforce USA. The Blue Oval may even characteristic a loaded lineup within the girls’s mile and a shot at a 50-year-old stadium report whereas the lads’s 1500 is ready to be one other spectacular contest with a number of athletes hoping to higher the stadium report set final yr.
“It’s an honor to once more host the USATF 1 Mile Street Championships have as a part of the Grand Blue Mile offered by Wellmark,” Franklin P. Johnson Director of the Drake Relays Blake Boldon stated. “The occasion has constructed a popularity among the many self-discipline’s best runners as a premier vacation spot, and this yr’s race will add an additional degree of motivation to that custom. It’s a degree of satisfaction for Des Moines and a distinction for all concerned with America’s Athletic Traditional.”
The fields for the Girls’s USATF 1 Mile Street Championship and Girls’s Mile in Drake Stadium will embody a number of of the identical athletes highlighted by a pair of internationally famend Iowans. Karissa Schweizer, a 2-time Olympic finalist and 2014 Dowling Catholic Grad, and Shelby Houlihan, a Sioux Metropolis East prep and 2016 Olympic finalist, will spotlight each races. Schweizer was a 6-time NCAA title winner at Missouri the place she additionally received a Drake Relays flag. She has received 13 Drake Relays medals throughout her profession and is at the moment ranked third all-time within the American girls’s 3000m and 5000m. Houlihan additionally has priceless Blue Oval expertise with eight Drake Relays titles to her credit score. She ran collegiately at Arizona State the place she received the 2014 NCAA 1500m crown and was a 10-time All-American. This yr, Houlihan completed second at each the U.S. Indoor Championships and Indoor World Championships after logging the second quickest time on the earth for the indoor mile.
Each Schweizer and Houlihan might be out there to nationwide and native media in a Zoom press convention on the afternoon of Thursday, Apr. 17. Additional particulars are to be decided.
Defending 1 Mile Street Race champion Rachel McArthur might be returning to Des Moines for an opportunity to repeat downtown. She received final yr’s race with a private finest time of 4:32.20.
Different twin opponents in each the highway mile and Drake Relays mile embody 2024 Olympic Trials semifinalist Eleanor Fulton, 2023 U.S. steeplechase champion Krissy Gear, 2016 Olympic eight-place winner and 3-time World Championship qualifier Colleen Quigley, 2-time Olympic Trials 1500m finalist Dani Jones, and 2022 Street Mile runner-up Jenn Randall.
Alex Teubel, 3-time U.S. Championship steeplechase finalist and the present Head Cross Nation and Assistant Monitor & Discipline Coach on the College of Northern Iowa, highlights the rest of the ladies’s highway mile lineup. Different highway milers embody 39-year-old 2024 World Masters 800m and 1500m champion Anna Connor, 2024 Street Mile fifth place winner Angelina Ellis, NCAA All-People Cailee Peterson and Taryn Rawlings, highway mile veteran Maria Seykora, 3-time World Championship qualifier and 2023 Street Mile runner-up Sinclaire Johnson, and final yr’s third place winner Micaela DeGenero.
World Document Manner may even see three girls make their debut as NAIA steeplechase star Hannah Eagon, NCAA Division III all-time chief within the out of doors 5000m and 10000m Kassie Parker, and Missouri Valley Convention champion Rachel Anderson will hit the pavement for his or her first shot at a highway race title.
“We’re not solely thrilled for the 1 Mile Championships,” Boldon added. “However we’re additionally anticipating the ladies’s mile and males’s 1500 to hit the Blue Oval. 2025 has been a yr of celebration for ladies’s sports activities at Drake College, and the Drake Relays are proud so as to add to that recognition. Francie Larrieu’s brilliance 50 years in the past has stood the check of time, however this crop of elite athletes are decided to rewrite historical past right here at Drake Stadium.”
Houlihan and Schweizer is not going to be alone of their quest to reset the 50-year-old Drake Stadium report within the girls’s mile. Polish steeplechaser Aneta Konieczek will tempo the sector that features countrywoman and 4-time Polish nationwide champion Eliza Megger. 2024 Olympic qualifier Kate Present of Canada, 19-time Luxembourg nationwide champion and Olympian Vera Hoffman, Mexican Olympian Alma Cortes, and 11-time Swedish champion Hanna Hermansson will add extra worldwide flare.
Wilma Nielsen and Silan Ayyildiz, each present standouts for the monitor juggernaut that’s the College of Oregon, will deliver extra collegiate and world success to the Blue Oval. Nielsen, one other Swede, received the NCAA Indoor Mile championship whereas Ayyildiz holds the Turkish nationwide report within the mile at 4:23.46. 2024 Olympic Trials finalist Christina Aragon and NCAA All-American Flomena Asekol spherical out the ladies’s mile area.
The lads’s Street Mile and 1500m in Drake Stadium may even see loads of crossover. Defending champion Vincent Ciattei, who set a course report in his downtown victory a yr in the past, returns to aim to keep up his crown. Ciattei completed fourth at each the 2025 US Indoor championships and 2024 Olympic Trials within the 1500. Shane Streich, a 3-time prime seven Drake Relays finisher, Tanner Maier, who completed eleventh in final yr’s highway mile, Craig Engels, a 2019 US champion, and Josh Thompson, a 2022 Indoor and Outside World Championship qualifier, will all be competing in each races.
Drake Bulldog followers will be capable to witness a well-recognized face compete in each the USATF 1 Mile Street Championship and Drake Relays 1500m as Isaac Basten is ready to make his USATF 1 Mile debut. Basten completed fifth within the 2024 Drake Relays WACT 800m whereas nonetheless a member of the Bulldogs’ monitor and area staff. He was additionally a 3-time All-American and 6-time MVC champ. Damien Dilcher, Silas Winders, Gabe Sieperda, and Sam Ellis may even be making their highway race debut.
The lads’s 1 Mile Championship roster may even embody returners like 2-time Des Moines highway race winner Sam Prakel, 2023 runner-up Casey Comber, 2024 bronze medalist Alec Basten, 8-time US finalist Abe Alvarado, 2024 entry Nick Randazzo, and 2023 Pan America Video games 5000m winner Kasey Knevelbard. Mikey Brannigan, the primary Paralympi ambulatory athlete to interrupt 4 minutes within the mile and a 2016 Paralympic gold medalist, is a part of the highway race roster. Olin Hacker, an NCAA champion at Wisconsin, and Riley Osen, a 2024 Drake Relays steeplechaser, spherical out the sector.
The lads’s 1500m in Drake Stadium will run on Saturday afternoon and that area is finalized with the inclusion of Qatari runner Hamza Driouch and the Canadian duo of Foster Malleck and Max Davies. Malleck certified for the 2025 Indoor World Championships within the 1500 whereas Davis competed within the 2022 World Junior Championships in the identical race.
USATF 1 Mile Discipline
Males
Abe Alvarado
Alec Basten
Isaac Basten
Vincent Ciattei
Damien Dilcher
Sam Ellis
Craig Engels
Olin Hacker
Kelsey Knevelbard
Tanner Maier
Riley Osen
Sam Prakel
Nick Randazzo
Gabe Sieperda
Shane Streich
Josh Thompson
Silas Winders
Girls
Rachel Anderson
Anna Connor
Micaela DiGenero
Hannah Eagon
Angelina Ellis
Eleanor Fulton
Krissy Gear
Shelby Houlihan
Dani Jones
Rachel McArthur
Colleen Quigley
Kassie Parker
Cailee Peterson
Jenn Randall
Taryn Rawlings
Karissa Schweizer
Maria Seykora
Alex Teubel
Drake Relays Girls’s Mile Discipline
Christina Aragon
Flomena Asekol
Silan Ayyildiz
Alma Cortes
Kate Present
Eleanor Fulton
Krissy Gear
Hanna Hermansson
Vera Hoffman
Shelby Houlihan
Dani Jones
Rachel McArthur
Eliza Megger
Wilma Nielsen
Colleen Quigley
Jenn Randall
Karissa Schweizer
Drake Relays Males’s 1500m Discipline
Isaac Basten
Vincent Ciattei
Max Davies
Damien Dilcher
Hamza Driouch
Craig Engels
Tanner Maier
Foster Malleck
Shane Streich
Josh Thompson
Silas Winders
2025 Drake Relays tickets can be found right here.