Men’s 4 X 1,500: A Kenyan Team For The Ages Goes For The World Record, The US Battles Ethiopia For Silver

by LetsRun.com
May 23, 2014

Where you stand on Sunday night’s men’s 4 x 1,500 relay (6:46 pm ET) at the inaugural 2014 IAAF World Relays depends on what you define as a good race. If you’re a fan of close races and exciting finishes, this probably isn’t the one for you. But if you’re a fan of GREATNESS and world records, this is the race to pay attention to.

The entrants in the race are (in alphabetical order):

Australia, Bahrain, Ethiopia, Kenya, Poland, Qatar, Spain, and the USA.

Five thoughts:

1)      Hand the gold medal to Kenya now.

The Kenyan team – some collection of Collins Cheboi, Nixon Chepseba, Silas Kiplagat, Asbel Kiprop and James Magut – is the greatest collection of 1,500 talent ever assembled on one team. Going by the fastest times put up in the world so far in 2014, Kenya has five of the top seven runners in the world on their team, of which they have to choose four, including #1 (Kiprop, 3:29.18), #2 (Kiplagat, 3:29.70) and #3 (Magut, 3:30.61).

Here’s one little indication of how good this team is. Magut ran 3:30.61 in Doha earlier this month. That would place him fourth on the all-time American list, but when he ran it he was only the third-fastest Kenyan IN THAT RACE.

If you take the average of the top four Kenyans’ PBs, it comes out to 3:29.34. In world history, only 13 humans have run faster than 3:29.34. Put more simply, by PB, the average Kenyan leg on this relay is equivalent to the #14 runner of all time.

2)      Wouldn’t this be better as a 4 x mile?

With that much talent, the Kenyans will be able to run something really fast for the 4 x 1,500 … does anyone know what a good time for the 4 x 1,500 is? Nearly every year, there’s talk of a team trying to go sub-16:00 in the 4 x mile Championship of America at the Penn Relays. It’s an easy number to calculate performances off of because a 4:00 mile is a nice round number – a team runs 16:20 and you know immediately that’s 4:05 a leg. It’s way harder to figure out what a good 4 x 1,500 time is.

In honor of our friends at Bring Back the Mile, we’ve converted the Kenyans’ 1,500 times to miles (we multiplied by 1.08) to figure out what they could run for a 4 x mile. Going by PRs, the top four Kenyans would run …

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Asbel Kiprop is simply the world’s best.

15:04.41!

American distance fans get pumped up when a collegiate team threatens 16:00 and here are the Kenyans knocking on the door of 15:00. That’s ridiculous.

Guess what that averages out to per leg? 3:46.10 per man – faster than Alan Webb‘s American record of 3:46.91.

Okay, you’re thinking, you’re using PRs, which isn’t fair. It’s only May and people aren’t in shape yet. We’ll go by season’s bests instead. Again converting the top four times to miles, the Kenyans would run:

15:09.13 (3:47.28 per man). Pretty lousy, right?

For comparison’s sake, we ran the same numbers for the top four Americans and churned out the following:

Based on PR: 15:22.86 (3:51.34 per man)

Based on SB: 15:45.10 (3:56.27 mile per man)

Those are pretty darn good numbers but the Americans would finish more than a straightaway behind the Kenyans based on PR. Based on SB, they wouldn’t even have entered the final turn as the Kenyans crossed the finish line. There’s no way a single runner on the US team would be selected for the Kenyan team. Even if World Championships silver medalist Matthew Centrowitz was running, we aren’t sure if the Kenyans would pick him for their team. His personal best of 3:31.86 is barely faster than the fourth-fastest Kenyan seasonal best this year (3:32.30).

Here’s how the US and Kenya look on paper:

Leo won’t be wearing a Hoka One One shirt in this one.

3)     Do the Americans have a chance for silver?

Yes. The American squad will likely consist of four of the following five: Patrick Casey, Garrett Heath, Will Leer, Leo Manzano and David Torrence.

(Update: Garrett Heath has been left off the team. He’s not happy about it and we totally understand as he had been told he was on the team. He’s off apparently because he lost to Pat Casey last week when he was training through the race).

Casey just posted a breakout 4+ second PR at Oxy, Leer is coming off a great indoor season and Heath ran 3:36 at Oxy. Manzano won the U.S. road mile last month and is the best tactician of the group. It makes sense to put him on anchor here since the race for silver could get tactical if the field decides to let the Kenyans go. If he doesn’t run anchor, he needs to run leadoff as he’s very bad at running all alone in a time trial-type situation.

The stats say look for the Americans to battle it out with Ethiopia for silver. The Ethiopians’ average PR is better than the Americans’, 3:32.69 to 3:33.63, and they’ve got a very good 1-2 punch in Aman Wote (#6 time in the world, World Indoor silver, crushed everyone at Drake mile) and Mekonnen Gebremedhin (7th, 6th and 7th at last three global outdoor championships). Both of them have faster PRs than any American, so if it’s close at the end, they have the edge. The other two Ethiopian legs haven’t raced yet this year so don’t hand silver to the Ethiopians yet.

Note: While editing this piece in the Bahamas, Joe Battaglia has told us there is a chance the Ethiopians may not even have a team here. They are still on the entry lists but here’s what he tweeted last week. We’ll try to confirm at the press conference.

From Gen Sec of Ethiopia Ath “I would like to inform you that concerning IAAF World Relay Bahamas 2014, we cannot be able to participate…

– Joe Battaglia (@JoeBattaglia75) May 12, 2014

More fro@ Ethiopia “because of we tired to get the transit visa USA and other country”

— Joe Battaglia (@JoeBattaglia75) May 12, 2014

4)      Will the world/American records go down?

Kiprop is already on record saying he’d like the world 4 x 1,500 record of 14:36.23 (set by Kenya in 2009) and that should fall fairly easily. It’s only 3:39.05 per man. Even without rabbits and if the Kenyans are all alone for most of the race, there’s no way they don’t break it barring a ridiculous wind storm, especially with the $50,000 world record bonus as an incentive. If the Kenyans are smart, they’ll pull a Sergey Bubka and barely beat the record so they can get the bonus in future years (Bubka used to beat the pole vault world record by the smallest margin possible to keep getting bonuses).

The American record of 14:46 from 2009 is also VERY vulnerable here, especially if the U.S. is in a close race for the silver with Ethiopia. It’s 3:41.57 per man which is very doable.

5)      Who else is running?

The medals will almost certainly go to Kenya, the U.S. and Ethiopia in some order, but there are some other teams worth paying attention to. Australia has 3:31 man Ryan Gregson and Rupp-slayer Collis Birmingham, though some of its team will be doubling back from the 4 x 800 the night before. The same goes for Spain and Poland, who are heavy on 800 types but offer little depth behind 1:43 men Kevin Lopez, Adam Kszczot and Marcin Lewandowski.

Qatar has three legs with  3:36 or faster PRs (Mohamed Al-Garni, Hamza Driouch and Abubaker Ali Kamal) but their fourth leg is over 4 minutes and the 3:36 guys aren’t 3:36 guys any more. Bahrain’s lineup is fascinating: 1:43 man Abraham Rotich, 2009 world 1,500 champ Yusuf Saad Kamel and disgraced drug cheat Rashid Ramzi, who has been MIA since he was stripped of his Olympic 1,500 title from 2008. Like Ramzi, Kamel has done very little since his triumph at Worlds. This is the only team Bahrain has entered in the meet.

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