douglas burke wrote:
lane 8 wrote:The announcer mentioned him being a future Olympian.
Will not happen!!
I predict he will not even be running by the time he is a HS senior.
You heard it here first!!
didnt mary decker run a few minutes over 3 hours on the hilly palos verdes marathon course at age 10 or 11?
and she kept on running for decades, only getting caught for doping stopped her from competing 25+ years after she ran that marathon.
haile gebreselassie is still competing in his 40's after running a 2:48 marathon at age 14 on a hilly course at 9000 feet altitude.
running a marathon at a young age, does not mean you will be ruined forever running wise, that's a myth.
Don't think it has anything to do with the distance but it does have to do with their motives. Are their parents pushing them or do they really love it? If it's the latter, they'll probably continue for a while. If it's the former, we'll probably never hear about them. We also don't know how puberty is going to impact him, and some people hit puberty, aren't very good anymore, get upset and stop. Beyond that, doing anything super competitively as a young kid can lead to burnout (which is why I stopped swimming at age 18, after ten years of super competitive swimming).
So if this young fellow really loves running, matures well, and is in an environment that nurtures his love for the sport rather than trying to grind everything out of him at a young age, he may well be world-class as an adult. But there's way too much to be able to tell ahead of time.