American Stars Added to Reebok Boston Indoor Line-up

                    
Flanagan chooses
hometown for 2009 debut

BOSTON (Jan.
15) – Reigning Olympic bronze medalist and American Record Holder

Shalane Flanagan will make her 2009
debut at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games on February 7th. Organizers also
announced the addition of American record-holder Alan Webb and 2008 NCAA Cross Country
Champion, Galen Rupp, to its
featured list of stars for 2009.

Hailing from
Marblehead, MA, hometown favorite, Shalane Flanagan, will make her professional indoor
debut at 5000m on the same track in which she set one of her three American records
(3000m – 2007 Rebook Boston Indoor Games – 8:33.25). Flanagan is launching her 2009
season after one of the most successful campaigns by any American women in the history
of the sport.  Her 2008 season
included a trip to the medal podium in Beijing with a gutsy
bronze medal run in the fastest Olympic 10,000m final ever.  Her time of 30:22.22 at the
Games bested her own American Record set earlier in 2008 in Palo Alto, CA.  She is scheduled to face Ethiopian Tirunesh
Dibaba, the woman who crossed the line first in Beijing in both the
5000m and 10,000m races. 

 Galen Rupp finished his 2008 competitive
season by leading his team, the University of Oregon, to victory at the NCAA
Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, IN. He also scored his first individual NCAA
title at the event.  Rupp, from
Portland, OR, also finished second at the 2008 US Olympic
Trials in the 10,000m and went on to be the highest placing American with his 13^th
place finish at the Olympic Games.  

 In 2007, Alan Webb, began his season at the
Reebok Boston Indoor Games with a victory when he won the mile
in an attention-grabbing time of 3:55.18. 
That summer, Webb went on to break Steve
Scott’s 25-year-old American Record in the event when he clocked 3:46.91. He will face his former
college teammate Nick Willis, the reigning Olympic bronze medalist at 1500 from
Beijing. 

 Since the Reebok Boston Indoor Games began in
1996, more than 100 Olympic and World Championship medalists have
competed in the event, which has also played host to 6 World Records and 29 National Records.
The event has sold out for the last 5 years and is expected to do so in 2009.  

The
14th-annual Reebok Boston Indoor Games, the second stop in USA Track
& Field’s Visa
Championship Series, begins at 5:00 p.m. on Feb. 7 at the Reggie Lewis Track and

Athletic Center at Roxbury Community College, 1350 Tremont St. Information
is now available
on-line at www.BostonIndoorGames.com, and
tickets are available on-line or by calling
1-877-TIX-TRAC.