Roberto Mandje - PRs?

Olympic Rob!

He ran in college in the US. Competed a few years afterwards.

His PR's are fabricated. He's closer to a 4:00 1,500m runner than a miler.

https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/equatorial-guinea/roberto-mandje-202792

I really like Casey's work but this video just urks me because I find it so hard to believe this Olympic Runner was ~17 seconds slower than his best when he competed. I also hope I'm wrong but this guy is well-enough covered, I'd think his results are around somewhere

The makes up his pr's. He ran 4:03 1500 at Olympics which is like 4:20ish mile. So he ain't no where near 4 minute miler. His prs are fabricated, none of his times are on certified courses. He tries to say he ran these ridiculous times for half marathon yet every race I saw him at including xterra trail races, he was no where near the front. Guys like him are either delusional or trolling

Well it seems his time spent competitive running was not really representative of being "pro" or atop The national standings. I believe it was more to do with the social media platform he provided that was especially strong since being 10years ago.

In today's platform you can have participants not that close to "age groupers" but because they blog, YouTube, IG etc they're just as if not more relevant to an athletic/lifestyle company.

Mandje did this on a more competitive level representing, Newton, Kswiss, Skechers, Puma, and maybe more. His transparency with workouts and having good to solid performances probably attracted the mainstream audience more which is probably why he was a natural fit for an organization like nyrr

He went to my university years after I was there. My understanding is that he's a good guy and was well liked by his teammates. A solid runner, but nothing spectacular and not what one thinks of when you think of an Olympian or a professional runner. Seems to be more of a lifestyle/social media driven thing than anything else.

Checked out his Athlinks bio. He did race a downhill mile (4:02), so maybe the claims in the video (which I did not watch) are just misleading rather than outright false.

For the record, I wouldn't claim to have been close to a 4 minute mile based on a downhill time, and if I ever claimed my Olympic status to another runner (as compared to using it to try to hook up with a chick), I'd automatically qualify it and note that I didn't hit the Olympic standard.

But, a man's gotta eat, I guess. This would probably rub me the wrong way more if I didn't have some indication that he was a decent guy.

I think this is more than misleading. His claimed PRs look to be outright lies:

https://www.athlinks.com/search/unclaimed/?term=Roberto%20Mandje&category=unclaimed

Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

I just watched the video for the first time and saw the claimed PRs. I assume the 4:01.7 is the downhill mile. He previously competed under the name Rob Caracciolo.

https://www.athlinks.com/search/unclaimed?category=unclaimed&term=Rob+caracciolo

There is nothing in either Athlinks search, however, to evidence the 14:10/sub 30:00 (split time or otherwise)/64:xx times, or that suggests that those perfromances could be reasonably expected from a runner who otherwise seems to have been a middle of the road college runner with 4:18 mile/9:15 steeple/25:40 Central Park 5 mile times. You almost have to wonder if there was some Revel style downhill race in which he went balls out early and then DNF's and used his split times as his PRs. I have no explanation for this.

Has anyone ever called him out? These are pretty big lies.

Meh. Those guys at least gave sound advice in the video, and at least some of the statements (mile time, Olympian) are technically true, even if lacking details that any competitive runner would reasonably expect to hear as part of the story. Who knows if he ran a downhill race in some far off land? Seems like it is hard to prove any outright lies at this point. It seems more of a situation of omitted facts on some claims and an absence of proof on others. I'd want a much stronger case than this to call a guy out.

Was actually talking about this clutz at work today. I actually saw him run his PR for 1500m in a race in Belgium back in maybe 2007 I think it was. Prior to the race (I didn’t know him at all) he was talking about running 3.45 like it was no thing. However he ended up in like the national B race or something which I thought was odd. Anyway I remember the race clearly - he went though 400m in about 61 and I thought he was just going to beat up on these local hacks however next thing I know he’s through 800 in like 2.09 and starting to eat complete sh$t. Dude finishes basically dead last in 4 minutes or thereabouts. When I checked the full results on the printed results board I saw he had actually had PRd in that time.

So to answer the question is he trolling or just a pathological, delusional liar - it’s the latter. He’s actually a comically tragic figure - I feel sorry for him. He clearly was so desperate to be an elite runner he fabricated a bunch of lies he ended up believing himself and managing to convince people that a) never had the “fortune” to ever see him ACTUALLY run or b) never bothered to fact check any crapollo that exited his mouth.

God Bless the legend of Roberto Mandje.

olympic rob! wrote:

Olympic Rob!

He ran in college in the US. Competed a few years afterwards.

His PR's are fabricated. He's closer to a 4:00 1,500m runner than a miler.

https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/equatorial-guinea/roberto-mandje-202792

Shannon Rowbury would beat him. Yet he's a former Olympian! WTF

Switching his last name from Caracciolo to Mandje, he's probably trying to cover his tracks. Was able to dig this up: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics_2004/athletics/3570018.stm

"But I can't complain too much. I got a free trip to the Olympics, I'm surrounded by world-class athletes and it's a great vacation."