The Morceli site was created in December of 1995 to chronicle the athletic career of Algerian Middle Distance Star Noureddine Morceli. To my knowledge, it is the first site on the internet devoted to a track athlete and still the largest and most comprehensive.Why make this site? Well, I was first introduced to Morceli by my high school track coach Rick Eaton. He let me borrow (which I still have) the issue of Track and Field News in which Morceli ran his 3:44.39 Mile World Record and became athlete of the year. Being an impressionable youngster, and a miler at the time, I became a big fan. Throught out the years I would keep newspaper clippings and whatever I could find on Morceli.
My sophomore year at Harvard, I learned HTML and decided to make good use of my skills by putting something useful and informative on the internet. Basically, I wanted to avoid the usual student homepage trap of "here are my interests..." while honoring my hero.
Since its creation, it has undergone several face changes. I have decided to keep the glitz and glamor of the site to a minimum so that people in other countries can easily load up each page. The goal of the site is to document Morceli's racing career through statitics, news reports, quotes, thoughts by his contemporaries, and pictures.
The future of the site: the site will be updated regularly as long as Morceli is continuing running (probably until the Olympics in 2003?). The site will stay up even after he has retired and serve as a repository of information on the great miler and mid-90s middle distance statistics.
One popular question that I always get is: do you know Morceli? and if so, can you send him my fan mail? Sorry, but I have never met Morceli, though I have come close on two occasions. I do keep all fan mail, however, in the hopes that if I do meet him I can give it to him. I am sure it would make him happy.