Has a lapped runner ever come back to win a race?

One of these, except on a track.

I've seen a guy get a lap dance on the track and come back to win.

Fairly certain that Shorter fell during the '72 OT 10,000 final and was over half a lap behind and came back to win. Pretty f*ckin' amazing.

Funniest thread of all time. I need to get t-shirts made up!

T Bone Pickens wrote:

here's proof:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWHOF_0-6Hg

That's a Peter Cetera video you idiot. Attach the right videos in the future.

Well this one time I signed up for a 10000m on the track that my local running shop was hosting. I thought it'd be cool because I've never run one and I like new things. So I payed my $20 and headed over the day of the race. It was summer but in the late afternoon so like low-90s. That didn't deter me because I had been running in the heat all summer. So there were like 13 other people brave enough to do it. Good enough for a race. My warm up felt great. I did it barefoot but slipped on my fivefingers for the race after my dynamic stretching. I felt great. We lined up and the gun went off. Man I felt good. I just started clicking off quarters in 75 seconds. No problem. Not world-class of course, but this was a local race. Some fools tried to hang with me early but dropped back and it was all me in the lead. By 5k I had already lapped half the field. The other guys I picked off eventually. Coming up to 8k I was really hurting but I was on such a good pace there was no way that I would relent. I just kept pushing. The last two laps were excruciating. I gritted my teeth and held on. I remember seeing the finish line while coming up the straightaway the final time. What relief. When I got there I was told that I wasn't done. I had somehow miscounted. I asked how many laps then? 80. The race had been a marathon. I lost

The 100 mile track world record involved two Russian runners coming down to the last 10K with one of the runners 2000 meters (5 laps) ahead. The leader died badly and the runner who was 5 laps down caught him in the final straight. Time was 11:30. Yes, that was 160,934 meters or 402 laps plus an additional 134 meters.

Our local track club used to host an event unlike any other. It was psychedelic in nature, starting from the outside lane each runner would start seconds apart, running one lane in per lap, spiralling until they reached the centre. This would happen until the lead runner reached the finish line of lane 1, the runner would then begin to run back out to the outside lane, spiralling outward. Pure pandemonium ensued. This continued for the whole race, until the race distance was covered. Faster runners were lapping slower runners and judges were throwing hats. It was a marathon effort to keep track of who had run what. 42.2km of pure unadulterated lapping chaos.

If you don't read this (http://www.wikihow.com/Win-a-Running-Race), you are in danger of having it happen to you! Did you realize that on an oval track, you may be running farther than necessary if you don't stay in the innermost lane? Thank goodness that the experts at wikihow are willing to share their nuggets of wisdom!

it doesn't get better than this.

henry rono ran 27:40 10k or something like that when he was about to be lapped and then woke up from his hangover, blasted off and won the race, taking the world lead in time....

witness: rod dixon

What's the cutoff for being a lapsed runner?

Just got back from Panama City. There was a marathon on a track. Leader lapped everyone but he fell apart badly and got 3rd place. So 2 people that got lapped came back and won the race.

That's right. 2 people won the race.

At the NCAA meet in (circa) 1996 in Boise, Leigh Daniels of Texas Tech had her shoe stepped on in the 1st 100 of the 10K. She stopped, untied it, put it back on and re-tied it, and when she started back running was around 350 meters behind the field. She Came back to win by a fairly large margin. Wasn't totally lapped, but still one of the most impressive things I've seen in 20 yrs of Track.

sunny runner man wrote:

Just got back from Panama City. There was a marathon on a track. Leader lapped everyone but he fell apart badly and got 3rd place. So 2 people that got lapped came back and won the race.

That's right. 2 people won the race.

So empirical speaking, a lapped runner has come back to win a race, the race of course being a marathon on a track.

Back in the 1870s and 1880s, the multi-day indoor pedestrian, or race-walking contests were extremely popular and had lots of money wagered on them. They frequently had some guy go way out in front by many laps to try and wear his opponents out, but the tactic didn't always work and sometimes he fell far back by the 30th hour or so or even drop out. Not really running of course, although the race-walkers were not banned from running at that time if they wanted to for short stretches to loosen up their knees.

The NY Times covered these races and there is an article from 9/24/1879 that has a title (plus the usual racist incidents) that I can't repeat here for risk of turning an extremely silly thread into something a lot more, but let's just say the title runs close in spirit to another article of the times on 9/11/1886: "Crack Athletes to Meet." And we thought today's athletes had drug issues. But the other article describes a pediatrist race at Madison Square Gardens (the really old one) where some of the guys had endurance problems and the race standings changed around.

NY Times archives have a lot of good stuff on old meets, though the titles listed in search results are guesses from OCR scans and sometimes read instead of "Starting on a Long Race," a somewhat odder "Starting oh a Long Rage." But the second version probably works for most respondents on LR.

College Coach wrote:

At the NCAA meet in (circa) 1996 in Boise, Leigh Daniels of Texas Tech had her shoe stepped on in the 1st 100 of the 10K. She stopped, untied it, put it back on and re-tied it, and when she started back running was around 350 meters behind the field. She Came back to win by a fairly large margin. Wasn't totally lapped, but still one of the most impressive things I've seen in 20 yrs of Track.

Ms. Daniels was not lapped; however, your post does provide some worthwhile insight into how a athlete can potentially be lapped in a race on a track. As we increase the length of a multi-lap race, it becomes progressively more likely that a lapped athlete can potentially come back from being lapped to actually win the race. Given the fact that the aforementioned athlete in your post won despite being 350 meters back (although never actually lapped), it seems quite likely, all variables considered, that a lapped athlete can come back to win a longer race, such as a marathon on a track.

Citing concerns with smog and traffic jams, race director, Nick Curl, has decided to move this weekend's L.A. Marathon to Santa Monica City college's Corsair Stadium. Curl deflected concerns about issues such as parking or lapped runners, "People can park along Lincoln blvd or any of the other service streets near the campus." "I sincerely doubt that lapped runners will be an issue. Heck, it might even be possible for a lapped runner to come back and win."

Dude, Nolan finished 2nd in that race and was voted Athlete of the Meet that year at Clemson after winning the steeple and 5k. He didn't drop out.

i'm so glad this thread got un-deleted