Ben Allen is one of the most beautiful, flawless runners I ever saw with my own two eyes. And that was *by far* one of the most intelligent and thoughtful pace jobs I've witnessed in decades. Maybe ever. The amount of precision that all took..... they don't call him
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On the contrary I think he did a superb job. He was instructed to go a pace and the field obviously didn't want to go with him - at the point when he started putting a gap on the field he had the presence to turn around, see what was going on and then actually slowed his pace down perfectly to reconnect with Hocker and give him as much further help as possible. That's exactly what you want.
Contrast that with Victoria Bossong in the womens 1000m who did one of the worst pace jobs I've ever seen - and I'm not exaggerating that.
The absolute worst thing you can do as a pacer, ever, is get out super hard off the line and over-index that first 100-150m because even if you slow down to get back on pace, the field will just do that in unison with you however far back they are. She ran 28.5 for the first 200m but was out in about 14.0 flat (that's 1.52.0 800m pace) and then just had the blinders on kept going, zero f--ks given about if anyone was behind her or not. She ended up getting to 600m - fantastic, except she was 3 seconds ahead of Wiley - almost 20m up the track so was completely useless to the field. I never have been able to understand this - your primary job as a pacer is to help the field and not run a split, not vice versa. So if you are asked to run 90 seconds for 600m and the field obliges, you do it. If at some point you realize they don't, then you need to adjust and do exactly what Allen did in the 2mi.
He did his job, Hocker didn't go with him on purpose because he wanted to slow the race down. Pacer kept opening a gap and hocker wouldnt follow.
And credit to him he kept checking rather than tear off into the distance.
You could argue that he should've just done that too. The guys didn't go with him. He did nothing wrong. Hocker didn't follow him. Nobody wanted to go around Hocker.
Ben Allen of Empire Elite. Great runner, would have been an amazing pacer if anyone had been interested in actually being paced 😂
Correct. Anyone criticizing him is way off-base.
When the field chooses not to follow, and the pacer does continue on at pace, the TV commentators and internet pundits inevitably criticize the pacer. So they really can't win in this situation.
Once the actual pace is thrown away by the field, it's better to at least fulfil the role of diminishing the front-running burden for the first racer (rather than pointlessly running half a lap ahead of the field).
That pacer completely messed up the 2 mile milrose race, get that guy out of track
Probably the best pace job I have seen in quite some time. My only worry is that Ben may be sought after for pacing duties from now on and have trouble getting into races
He did his job, Hocker didn't go with him on purpose because he wanted to slow the race down. Pacer kept opening a gap and hocker wouldnt follow.
I wouldn't necessarily say that, Hocker just didn't want to go that fast and everyone else stayed behind him. Other people could have gone with the pacer and passed Hocker but they didn't want to go sub 8 pace either.