Never had such a response to any of my previous posts!
I was not really being critical of Willis - how could any of us mere mortals seriously criticise someone with his career? - merely pointing out that his race strategy - conservative, sensible, cautious call it what you will, does seem to be more directed towards winning a medal than winning the race. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, in many sports nowadays the aim seems to be "to podium" (horrible verb!!).
But there was a time when top runneres regarded anything other than a win as failure - best example from my youth being Ian Stewart's reaction to his 5000 bronze in 1972. And my all time hero said in his autobiography "The only tactics I admire are do or die".