cat scratch fever wrote:
Star;
What makes you think Coe was a 400/800 runner? He is not near the top UK rankings for either event in his developmental years.
Ovett was on these lists (48.4 as a u17, and 1.52.5; later a 47.5 as u20 and 1.45.7) He was a relatively early maturer (vis-a-vis Coe anyway).
I would call Coe at this point more a 1500/3000 runner (3.45.2/8.14) as a Junior, who isn't under 1.49.2 for 800m at this point. Seems to me, based on "better training for distance runners", that it was the strength work while at Loughborough that developed (adding 10ibs of muscle to his 5'9" frame - 119 to 129) his speed, both in terms of specific training and strength development. Maturing also helped. This environment provided Coe the opportunity (training with sprinters at times as well) to develop areas which were perhaps not available to him earlier.
You're right. As a teen Coe was a 3000m runner, winning the English Schools 3k title (73 I think), and then a 1500/miler, winning European Junior bronze in 75. At this stage he expected to end up as a 5k guy. It wasn't until the end of 76, when he made a big improvement in his 800 pb, that his father stated something along the lines of, "I think we may have found your event!". It was then, as he was about to go to Loughborough and begin work with George Gandy, that they decided to work on his 800 speed, with a view of improving his ability over 1500m. The 1500 in Moscow was always the end goal from this point.
What a lot of people aren't aware of, unless they read his autobiography, is that when he first tried athletics as a sport after watching the 68 Olympics, he won his district schools title over 60m and the long jump! He went on to run in the County Champs in the sprints (60yds or 100yds, can't recall the exact distance otomy) and came 3rd. So he always had basic natural speed, that wasn't really revisited until years later, c. 78/79.
He was never a 400/800 type, but I think his success over the middle distances was due to him being a 'naturally' very good sprinter, who just happened to join a club where he ran a lot of X- country and distance as a teen with much older and bigger guys.
He is the only man with actual pbs that are sub 47, 1:43 and 3:30.