Millrose Games HS Event By Event Preview Breakdown

Two New Yorkers lead the field here, but both comes in with some handicaps.  Conor Lundy comes in with the top seed, and NY #3 All-Time, but that comes from an All-Professional field race, and lost head-to-head to Jaxson Hoey.  Aidan Tooker is coming off a third place finish in Boston just last week, after which he considered it a bit rusty hitting the track.  With each refocusing, you can expect all three to be on their A-Game for the premiere race of the season, and should still be considered the favorites.

Two wild-cards, for the exact opposite reasons, would be Noah Affolder and Isaac Cortes.  While Cortes has had the best training weather of anyone in the field by far, Noah Affolder just had a training weekend where temperatures reached -37.  Both athletes could be major factors in the race as they are unpredictable.  Those from the Northeast won't care about CA's distinct competitive advantages on the starting line, and Affolder won't hold anything back because it was colder to get the mileage in.  Affolder, who has only raced once this season to get the qualifying mark in, could pop out a big performance a la McQuaid, and steal the whole race.

This will be a very interesting race to watch.