that was legitimately entertaining. i was on the edge of my seat, just waiting to see who would win.
i see it turning out more like this though:
Wariner takes it out hard from the gun but no way is he running away from a field like this. The entire pack moves to stay on his heels but the grizzly is bounding right on Wariner's heels in lanes one, two, and three. The rest of the field gets caught up behind the grizzly and is stalling. No one wants to swing wide around the grizzly on the turn.
On the backstretch Juantorena makes a huge move to pass the Grizzly bear. Kipketer, Kaki, and coe try to cover it but cannot get by the bear before the turn and are forced way, way wide. The Grizzly knows tactics and swings a bit wide into lane two so that now he is covering lanes two, three, AND four, instead of just 1-3. Kipketer, Kaki, and Coe are screwed.
Meanwhile up front Wariner is still running the 800 like it is a 400, as is Juantorena, who is trying to pull even but simply cannot match Wariner's turnover.
As the two gold-medallists go at it, the Grizzly Bear, Kipketer, Kaki, and Coe and coming into the homestretch, with Cruz drafting off the grizzly and Pistorius and Snell a few yards back.
At the top of the homestretch there is some commotion. Coe, Kaki, and Kipketer are pretty pissed they had to run so wide, and Kaki throws some elbows at the grizzly, and tries to cut him off as he runs up next to him. The grizzly's paws get tangled with Kaki's spikes (for obvious reasons the grizzly does not need to wear spikes) and Kaki goes down and trampled by the unwitting grizzly. The grizzly stumbles slightly, and Oscar Pistorius sees his opening and makes a huge move up to pass the grizzly on the inside. Kipketer is furious and hits the grizzly hard, causing it to stumble again and knock over Kipketer. In the ensuing jumble of paws and spikes Cruz is able to dodge it but Snell tries to hurdle the whole bloody mess and lands right in the grizzly's mouth and is promptly devoured.
Meanwhile, the field is coming through 400 meters. The 400 split looks like this:
Wariner 47.6
Juantorena 48.0
Pistorius 49.2
Cruz 50.5
Coe 53.0
Grizzly Bear 53.8 (snell, in the grizzly's belly, passes 400 in 54 flat)
Kipketer not sub 60
Kaki still hasn't gotten up and things aren't looking too great for the world junior champ. his only hope for glory now is in the team competition.
Up front things are looking grizzly (no pun intended) for Wariner, Juanoterna, and Pistorius. Each of them begins massively slowing down. It turns out Wariner has no experience with the pain past 400 meters and cannot handle it. He begins tying up badly in the turn and cannot understand how he is still in front. This is because his deterioration is matched only by the disgusting form of Juantorena who is beginning to look more like a javelina -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelina
- while Pistorius is discovering that all of the lactic acid is building up in his hamstrings instead of his calves because, well, he doesn't have calves.
Cruz flies by all three of them before they enter the backstretch. He has run a calm race and stayed out of the ridiculous antics of the 400 meter runners who think that huge positive splitting is the way to win all races. Coe is nowhere, exhausted from making the huge move into lane 4 around the grizzly bear. And speaking of the grizzly bear, he is hot on the 400 meter runner's tails. He sees Pistorius' artificial legs and thinks it is cheating, so as he goes by Pistorius he rips them off with his claws. He passes Warniner and Juantoerna by the 550 and when they hit the turn with 200 to go, it is Cruz in the lead, Grizzly second, with Coe, Wariner, and Juantorena fighting the battle of who could care less -
http://youtube.com/watch?v=M7-jiEbWUUc
- and it looks like Kipketer has also decided to get back into it, gaining on them on the backstretch. Kaki is just passing 400, realizing that he has to go back and fight a civil war in his country if he doesn't finish.
On the turn, the Grizzly bear's coach, Alberto Salazar, yells for the Grizzly to wait. "Wait for the straightaway!" The grizzly is anxious but listens. In the straightaway it is down to just Cruz and the Grizzly, side by side, both tying up, but the grizzly gets the lean at the line, and immediately pukes out peter snell, who appears to be okay.
Several long seconds later, Kipketer comes down the straightaway, followed by Coe. A struggling Juantorena and an even more desperately struggling Wariner are next. The 400 meter duo cannot even manage a final quarter at marathon world record pace.
Finally Pistorius crossed the line, who, to everyone's shock, had a second leg transplant, was brought back to the track, and still managed to finish before Kaki, who was mauled pretty thoroughly by the grizzly.
After the race, it is decided that the grizzly should be dq'd for eating Pistorius' implants. Alberto tries to comfort the grizzly afterwards by taking off his breathe right strip for him. The Grizzly is still not happy so Alberto feeds him Galen, watching from the sidelines with a frown, so that there is no more trouble. The Grizzly had stolen all of Galen's breathe-rights anyway so it wasn't a big deal.
Technically, then, Peter Snell was the second finisher to cross the line, so the final results are as follows:
Male Mammal 800 Meter Run
===========================================================
World: W 1:41.11 8/24/1997 Wilson Kipketer, KEN
American: A 1:42.60 8/28/1985 Johnny Gray, Santa Monica
OT: T 1:42.80 6/24/1992 Johnny Gray, Santa Monica
Hayward: S 1:44.01 2008 Alfred Kirwa Yego, Kenya
Name Year Team
===========================================================
Finals
1. Joaquim Cruz 1:40.8 WR
2. Peter Snell (regurgitated) 1:40.8
3. Wilson Kipketer 1:52.5
4. Sebastian Coe 1:54.0
5. Alberto Juantorena 2:03.4
6. Jeremy Wariner 2:05.0
7. Oscar Pistorius 1:17:22.1
8. Adubaker Kaki 1:58:49.0
--Grizzly Bear DQ
A new world record for Cruz who was motivated to run a new PB not because there was a ferocious, man-eating Grizzly Bear hot on his tail, but because he did not want to become the first runner ever in track history to be beaten by a regurgitated man.
This race was not what it could have been. The Grizzly showed amazing leg speed in the final quarter chasing down the entire field, and at the line it was truly a toss-up between him and Cruz. Before the DQ was ratified officials looked it over and believed that the Grizzly had won, but seeing as they were bigots and biased against the other species, they gave the nod to Cruz, one of their own. At first they were happy to see that Snell, another one of their own, was now the one challenging Cruz for first, but upon seeing what he looked like after being covered in vomit and stomach bile and bits of Pistorius' artificial legs, they decided that he was not really human either, and had no problem giving the nod to Cruz.
