You people really need to give it a rest. Worlds is in mid August. Why should she or any athlete start racing in Jan or Feb. 8 months of racing is a ridiculous heavy load. Mu has her eye on the prize of Worlds. Good for her.
The "season" hasn't even started. The ones running fast now will be tired and burnt out come July.
This has been proven false over and over again. You don't need to hide 11 months out of the year to win championship races
I agree with you. People are always using Worlds, Olympics, a spring marathon as an excuse not to do World Cross.
Check out the 1982 World Cross then 1983 Rotterdam marathon and 1983 World Track Championships just a one example. 1984 World Cross and 1984 Olympic Marathon.
2021 she ran a decent amount (collegiate season) 2022 (first pro season) she ran 2 400s outdoors, 2 600s outdoors, won Rome Diamond League 800, Michael Johnson Invitational 800, USAs and Worlds, along with 2 early season miles, one of which was a DNF, and a casual 4x400 in March. This is including getting COVID, which made her pull out of Prefontaine, she was scrambling to even get back to shape for USAs and Worlds, hence why she almost lost both of them. After this she decided to take the rest of the year off as she'd had a hard time.
I think if you actually look at the facts, saying she "races once a year" based on what's happened so far is just extremely false and unfair to her.
That being said, going forward I know Bobby Kersee is going to force her to race scarcely so that's unfortunate.
I think most USA Fans would be happy if she did the following:
-LA Meet -NYC Meet -1-2x European Meets for DL Points -USAs (Likely off event ~ 400) -Worlds -0-1x European Meets for DL Points -Pre Classic (DL Final)
Not too high of a bar, 2 domestic meets for the fans, 2 DL fans to get her into the final in the US. And then the DL Final. She doesn't have to be Femke Bol, McSweyn or Dos Santos in terms of racing.
It would be nice for the fans to see the stars race head to head more often, but if the trials are in July, perhaps it makes more sense to open your season in late March - early April?
We already had a thread on this topic 2 weeks ago when she announced she withdrew from Millrose and would be focusing on getting ready for the outdoor season. My guess is she tweaked something in training and didn’t want to risk injury.
Perhaps we should have seen this coming with Ajee' Wilson joined the field for the 600 last week but Athing Mu is out of the 600 at Millrose this weekend.https://twitter.com/athiiing/status/1622716877377269760She hasn't raced...
It's indoors right now and there's no world championship for it. Outdoor is what matters, it's easier to make sure you're 100% for outdoors when you aren't going 100% indoors, and it's tough to stay at a high level for 7 months straight.
We already had a thread on this topic 2 weeks ago when she announced she withdrew from Millrose and would be focusing on getting ready for the outdoor season. My guess is she tweaked something in training and didn’t want to risk injury.
I think we all *hope* it's that. I think concerns about Athing's mindset when it comes to the potential of losing in races and/or excitement about competing are 100% legitimate. She has not shared an injury.
Contrast that with say Raevyn Rogers who's had a similar lack of racing since Worlds last year. We learned from her coach and her own comments that she was planning on racing multiple times in Europe after Worlds but was feeling muscle tightness in warmups and scrapped both races. She showed up to the Lilac meet and was honest about being antsy to race, but having made the decision with her coach that her style of running and racing indoors don't mesh well. So we don't have to speculate and I'm not really concerned. But for Athing, touting her undefeated streak and just how hard she took the Millrose loss, then completely shutting down her season post-Worlds with a non injury-related reason. Sydney has also intimated that last year with her wedding and so on, that impacted her schedule. With Athing we just haven't gotten much except for non injury-related withdrawals as far as we know.
Bit of a stretch putting Mo on the list. Most of his meets were set up for him by Nike or UK. Jakob is probably the only one to take it on any where, any time.
This has been proven false over and over again. You don't need to hide 11 months out of the year to win championship races
I agree, but the opposite is true too. Athletes don’t need to run indoors to have a successful outdoor season. I don’t recall Rudisha competing indoors.
I agree, but the opposite is true too. Athletes don’t need to run indoors to have a successful outdoor season. I don’t recall Rudisha competing indoors.
This is true, but probably worth noting that Rudisha frequently opened his season in Australia in late Feb/March during his best/healthiest seasons.
Bit of a stretch putting Mo on the list. Most of his meets were set up for him by Nike or UK. Jakob is probably the only one to take it on any where, any time.
Yeah that made zero sense, Mo was notorious for ducking competition at 5,000/10,000. He was legally obligated to run Pre as a Nike athlete and he would run a watered down 3K every year in the UK, but outside of that he never showed up on the DL. It was a common complaint here on the boards from 2012-2017.
Can't say the results weren't effective, but he absolutely does not belong on that list.
Yeah that made zero sense, Mo was notorious for ducking competition at 5,000/10,000. He was legally obligated to run Pre as a Nike athlete and he would run a watered down 3K every year in the UK, but outside of that he never showed up on the DL. It was a common complaint here on the boards from 2012-2017.
Can't say the results weren't effective, but he absolutely does not belong on that list.
Also somewhat crazy the guy who ran 3:28.x for the 1500 never had the interest to try to chase a 3K/5K mark...
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