The stats don't lie: Lieke Klaver is in the wrong event

bad argument wrote:

KlaverPalaver wrote:

Last week someone on Twitter/X tweeted to Lieke Klaver's coach Laurent Meuwly that he should let her run more 200s & 100s this season.

It lead me to check some stats, and the 100m/200m PBs of the top 15 women in the 400m from Tokyo 2025 - see below. If their 100m PB was too old (some went back to 2017) I didn't reference it. So I have ranked the women primarily based on their 200m PB, and included their 100m where relevant and recent.

Clearly SML is head & shoulders above the rest in terms of speed (well, 100m & 200m PBs at least...) but Klaver slots in at number 4. (NB she has also run a 10.07 split on the second leg in the 4x100m.) However, in terms of 400m PBs, she is in joint 10th place.

In Tokyo she finished 4th in her SF and 11th fastest overall (so aligned to her 400m PB). She has now missed both the Paris & Tokyo finals, whilst other women are progressing but she is not.
We know she goes out hard & can die in the final 50m. Should she not just switch back to the 200m which she used to run up until 2019 as a junior? Her flying 10.07 suggests her top speed is excellent. If she worked on her block starts, got back to pure speed training, I can see her easily getting down to 22.0, surely? Has Meuwly's goal of building a mighty 4x4 team meant he is stopping her from shining in her true event, the 200m?

Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone 11.07w/ 22.07 (47.78)
Marileidy Paulino 11.27w/ 11.38/ 22.30 (47.98)
Salwa Eid Naser 11.24/ 22.45 (48.14)
Lieke Klaver 11.33/ 22.46 (49.58)
Henriette Jæger 11.51/ 22.58 (49.49)
Sada Williams 22.59 (49.58)
Amber Anning11.30w/ 22.60 (49.29)
Aaliyah Butler 22.61 (49.09)
Nickisha Pryce 22.62 (48.57)
Natalia Bukowiecka 11.54/ 22.70 (48.90)
Isabella Whittaker 22.76 (49.24)
Martina Weil 22.82 (49.72)
Stacey-Ann Williams 22.87 (49.59)
Wadeline Venlogh 11.68/ 22.91 (49.60)
Roxana Gómez 23.71 (49.71)

Klaver would not have had an Olympic Gold and a World Championship gold in the 4x4s if she focused on the 100 and 200.

She has no chance of beating the Jamaicans and Gabby Thomas, Melissa Jefferson, Sha'Carri Richardson, and Julien Alfred in the short sprints.

She is focusing on the correct event, she just needs to produce more consistent results.

BemkeFol wrote:

Awsi Dooger wrote:

Klaver has been a known quantity for a long time. Nothing is going to change. On swimming sites nobody is projecting a 27 year old who is 8th or 10th best in the world to suddenly vault toward the top. Why does it happen in track?

At 400 Klaver needs everything to unfold her way to get a minor medal. That can happen indoors due to absences and some good fortune, like Jaeger stumbling into the infield.

It's not going to happen outdoors. The 4th place in 2022 gave her a false sense of being close to the medals. It may have been 4th but 50.33 was not a good time, more than a half second slower than the bronze. Naser was absent, Adeleke still too young and Kaczmarek had a poor meet. Nowadays it's even worse, with Sydney in that event and the emergence of others like Jaeger and Bella Whitaker.

If Klaver ran 200 on the Diamond League circuit she would be outclassed around the bend. It would look far worse than 400, where she is in contention midway. Klaver is overly muscle bound and simply not as good of an athlete as others in these events, including the young Lurdes Manuel now part of her training group. Sometimes it's as simple as that. Training is not going to overcome an ability deficit.

However, Klaver can be unusually good on relays. She looks great on the second leg of the 4 x 100. Excellent timing on the exchanges. There's no question Meuwly should give her more sprint work, toward those relays. There will be a 4 x 100 mixed relay in 2028 and beyond. Klaver can factor there and also in the women's 4 x 100. The Dutch can be a contender for women's bronze with Visser/Klaver/Bisschops/Jiya. But only that lineup. If anyone is absent they fall way off.

You say Klaver would be outclassed on the bend of a DL 200m, but that's based on your opinion of her now, which is her training for the 400m. The whole point is, if she switched to 100/200 training, she wouldn't be so behind on the bend of a 200m!

Clearly if she specialised in the shorter sprints she would get better at them. As the OP says, she's run 11.33/ 22.46 as a 400m runner. That 10.07 leg was pretty fantastic for a 400m runner.

I agree that others, such as Manuel, have caught up. And your point is she won't get any better or medal at 400m. And that is precisely the reason why she needs to consider changing events: she hasn't progressed in the last couple of seasons, and she has been frustrated herself. Age 27 is not too late at all to change events, especually considering she was a fairly late developer & not a teen sensation.

Now Meuwly's time is spread too thinly over multiple runners, and Klaver has spoken how she didn't get as much time with him as she would like. Ramsey Angela left the Meuwly group last autumn. Others such as Peeters as excelling with other coaches. If she was coached by Bennema, and his priority athlete, and did the 100/200, I am sure he could get her to finals for sure.