abdi's a better bet than hall, in that he is more consistent and we know that he will try to stay with the leaders, unlike culp. Is ritz running? hall's hit or miss. he could crush the field or he could bomb. But bombing for him might still be fast enough to qualify. (let's define bombing as running 5 minutes slower than his pr). we don't know how meb is doing. abdi surpassed him in the past year and meb's best days are behind him, but going on past history, you'd expect meb and abdi both to qualify, with hall there as well. Or, alternatively, we could pick the worst possible result for an american team, something like meb and abdi drop from injury or sickness, ritz doesn't run, hall runs 2:20, and we have a team like our wc's marathon team.