It’s hard for a race to be much closer than this.
Eastern senior Brandon Lamon edged Moorestown senior Sean Sobin by 5-1,000ths of a second to win the 800 on Day 1 of the Olympic Conference Championships Wednesday in Mount Holly.
Both were timed in 1:58.61, but when their times were broken down to thousandths of a second, Lamon was credited with a 1:58.601 and Sobin 1:58.605.
Lamon is the first Eastern half-miler to win the Olympic Conference 800 in 35 years, since Bryn Haines won another very close race, running 2:01.3 hand-timed at Overbrook and edging Overbrook’s John Golden, who ran 2:01.4.
Lamon ran 1:56.39 indoors at Virginia Beach Nationals, but the 1:58.61 is an outdoor PR. His previous outdoor best was a 2:00.42 at Cherokee last May.
His 1:58.61 makes him Eastern’s fastest outdoor 800 runner since Nicholas Pschunder, who ran 1:55.61 in 2016 at Haddonfield.
This was Sobin’s first time under two minutes. MileSplit only shows him competing in two previous 800s, including a previous PR of 2:00.98 earlier this month in a batch meet on his home track.
Lamon is scheduled to anchor Eastern’s 4-by-8 on Thursday.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 