Why is Gabby Thomas so inconsistent?

There are a few explanations but one obvious one, is not only what you wrote above but why she did what you wrote.

You said she was “coasting or slowing down.” Of course those things are going to lead to a slower time. You hat said, why did she coast & slow down?

If you really were a sprinter as your username suggests, or any sort or another athlete, you would know the unmistakable feeling of an impending hamstring injury. If one were to push through that, a strain would be sure to result. The only thing way to prevent injury is to back off. It may have been something else and not a hamstring but that is probably the most likely explanation.

Another feasible explanation is jet lag. If you’ve ever traveled between time zones yiu would know this. Perhaps other athletes prepared better than Thomas did. She will not let that happen for Budapest if, indeed, that was the cause for her performance.

Most here have made some sort of a PED insinuation. If she was using PEDs when she had her WL time a few weeks ago, the effects would still be with her. She’s not an endurance athlete that is getting an immediate boost from a blood transfusion and/or EPO use. That’s not how PEDs work for sprinters. Let the insinuations from the losers continue, though.

People using PEDs never have a bad race?

Maybe she had to poop? Had to let up to not have an embarrassing situation.

Side note- who the hell registered the handle “poopy pants”?

On and off PEDs equates to on and off performances. Just ask ShaCarri Richardson who reached a plea deal to use Marijuana as a front and also miss the Olympics in exchange for hush regarding a real PED positive. She had to pay a big fee but it was worth it to maintain her sponsors and she also evidently gained more notoriety and money missing the Olympics for "Marijuana."

I agree that she's inconsistent, but the massive drop she had in Monaco was due to jet lag, as she confirmed on Twitter.

The snide remarks about Thomas are so overdone and boring, especially when she never had any doping violation for whereabouts failures. There are multiple athletes and World Champions who have been caught actually missing 3 tests in a year with no explanation and LR does not have as much energy for them as they do a woman who recovered from a serious injury one year ago and is now back to running very fast.

Also, she's run fast outside of the USA, although she has set two PBs in Hayward Field. She ran 21.87 to win Bronze in Tokyo (would have been Silver if DSD rules were in place back then), and has won two DL races outside USA in 21.98 and 22.05.

Literally what are you guys smoking

It's called jet lag, lol.

She's an obvious doper for breaking her PB by 0.01s at USAs, where her training has timed her to peak?

In a sport where athletes are setting 3 WRs in a single year (before World Championships), and are breaking Soviet-era and EPO-era records every month?

Please be serious.

You don’t understand PEDs, do you?

Serious question - if Thomas & Richardson were white males would you still be insinuating that they use PEDs?

Hell, you’re not even insinuating it. You’re flat out saying that they’re using them. Are you a tester? Have you seen glowing urine from both of them?

She does have major swings in times and places . I mean a whole second in the 200 . Crazy stuff!

jet lag is a BS excuse. plenty of athletes traveling from further away ran PBs or broke records. Hiltz came out from Flagstaff and broken an American record.

Gabby should be serving a BAN right now. She missed 3 whereabouts tests and was lucky to win an appeal of one of them based on a technicality because allegedly the drug tester didn't knock on the door loud enough.

It's a clear lie. She was there, she heard the drug tester but she hid in the closet because she knew she would test positive. She decided she had a better chance of winning an appeal of the missed whereabouts than her chance of passing the drug test.

In college she was very well coached and only ran 22.32 and 11.19. NOTHING indicated she could run 21.9, and her 21.60 is should a blatant slap in the face to the integrity of the sport.

Distance and sprints are not the same thing. the number of times ive had a distance runner say they felt like crap then went on to win a race or set a PB. Doesn't work the same way in sprints/jumps. They need to have that pop.

You do realize Thomas arrived 2 days before the race? And that Flagstaff is only a 2-hour flight from Austin, where Thomas' group is based—so the "traveling from further away" that Hiltz did was really not that significant. Do you even know when Hiltz got to Monaco? (Let's not even get into the inane comparison between a sprint and a distance event).

LOL how do you know she was hiding in the closet? Maybe this is information you or your source should have provided to the AIU when it was relevant and important.

And you think she was very well coached in college? At Harvard? How many sprinters has Harvard sent to the Olympics??? How many sprinters from Harvard have medaled at the Olympics???? How many NCAA Champions have they had in the sprints (outdoors or indoors), compared to other far more successfull programs?

Also you do realize that just a month after NCAAs in 2018 she ran 22.1 in the London DL, right? Or are you saying that an athlete who ran 22.1 in their 3rd pro race was never capable of running 21.9, or that she hopped on the juice immediately after NCAAs ended in 2018? Because that doesn't make sense.

I really don't get what's hard about this. Thomas has not had a doping violation, and she had jet lag before the race in Monaco. The fact Letsrunners seriously believe someone can go from 21.60 to 22.67 in two weeks (even if they stopped their doping regimen) just because they couldn't dodge the testers is hilarious. Really shows this board knows nothing about sprinting. The simplest explanation is the truth here—she was jet lagged, tired, and couldn't put her race together because she just got to Europe.

Still beating the whereabouts drum, eh? The BS is coming from you.

haters gonna hate...

This thread is full of people who want Gabby Thomas to be doping and so will use that as an explanation for anything. If she was doping to the extent she could run 21.60 into a headwind a week ago, this would make it even less likely that she'd run 22.60 now. Doping doesn't even work like that: for professional dopers, they will do it in training, not in competition, the benefits gained from the training would not simply evaporate after 1 meet, that would be asinine.

What is much more likely is that she was jet lagged (as she literally said before the race), slightly perturbed by the last-minute lane swap, and that she is generally better in Hayward Field than anywhere else in the first place. I bet if she had run 21.60 again you guys would've said "who can go 21.60 back to back after travelling on a plane within a week! Obvious doping".

There's also the fact that sprinting is an art form and requires race execution: just because you are in shape does not mean you are guaranteed a good race. It's much easier to mess up a sprint execution-wise than a long-distance race. One bad move and the race might be unrecoverable.

Harvard's sprint coach, Kebba Tolbert is one of the most well respected coaches in the world. he is extremely active in the coaching education circuit because he has some of the best scientific understanding of the sprints and because he is notoriously meticulous with his data and record keeping.

No top sprinters want to go to college in Boston where there is cold weather. None of the Ivy League schools have strong sprint programs. Most sprinters also cannot get into harvard, and harvard has no scholarships. Do you think Sha'Carri could have gotten into Harvard? He's received a lot of job offers but he enjoys it at Harvard.

Your lack of knowledge regarding Kebba shows just how clueless and ignorant you are.

jet lag is honestly the dumbest excuse i've ever heard for a bad performance. Gabby has started 400m races faster than her 200m open time at Monaco. she should be able to run 22.00 after staying up for 72 hours with no sleep.

if she knows she has a tendency to jet lag, why not travel earlier? why even travel and race at all? BECAUSE IT IS A LIE. She is a doper.

She is more suspicious than Shelby Houlihan.

To be fair, your body is virtually the same right after you have run an ultramarathon, but its not like you would run the same time in any race even though you are psychologically strong.

Gabby's relatives have entered the thread.

She's a liar and doper. She said on tiktok she never missed a test. (she missed 3, but got two over-turned). NO ONE with an Ivy League education misses three tests unless they are doing it on purpose.

She's a doper. A pretty, affable doper, but still a doper.