Would Haile have won the 2008 Olympic Marathon if he had run it?

ventolin^3 wrote:

of more interest is how close sammy couda run the kennster over 10k

he ran 26'41 off wild +ve splits as a raw 18y ole ( 13'12/13'29 )

he was probably worth 26'30 - 26'35 right there & then at even pace

3y later & immensely stronger, that 26'30 - 26'35 cannot fail to have been significantly faster ( he stopped running track because the turns caused him achilles tendinitis, so he had to move to the roads )

as for the M, geb traditionally had best 10k speed of any guy in the field which he built on for the M

i don't believe in any way or form geb had faster 10k speed than sammy in '08

He went through 5000m in 13:10, 2 sec faster than his 5000m PB

I suppose you are the master troll because most are pretty sure that Geb was not going to beat Wanjiru that day.

Yes Geb ran 2:03 that year but four men ran 2:03 last year and none of them were able to win the Olympics this year - none of them.

Would your aunt be your uncle if she'd been born with balls?

ian edwards wrote:

I know, I know.

But Wanjiru wasn't a world record holder.

Wanijiru held the half marathon world record at the time and it was 22 seconds better than Geb's best. He clearly had more base speed than the Geb of 2008 and he was a far better tactical marathon racer.

Haile had an excellent chance at a medal. But no one would have beaten Wanjiru on that day. He ran the greatest marathon in history. No rabbits, high heat and humidity, lead the whole way and broke the Olympic Record by 3 minutes. Wanjiru was a beast!

I think their is a Prefontaine aspect going on here, if you know what I'm talking about.

There is no way he would have beat Geb.

It's kind of like saying Pre would have won the olympics in 1976.

sub3over40 wrote:

He ran the greatest marathon in history. No rabbits, high heat

Low 60's is not high heat.

sub3over40 wrote:

Haile had an excellent chance at a medal. But no one would have beaten Wanjiru on that day. He ran the greatest marathon in history. No rabbits, high heat and humidity, lead the whole way and broke the Olympic Record by 3 minutes. Wanjiru was a beast!

He did not lead the whole way. Merga did a lot of the pacing during the second half of the race but paid the price and hit the wall completely at the end.

There is no way that anybody was beating Wanjiru that day. He was unstoppable.

wanjiru would have won the race. if wanjiru was in the 2008 berlin marathon, he would have won that race and broke the WR. haile is scared of wanjiru. thats why wanjiru was rejected from the 2009 berlin marathon. haile wouldn't allow wanjiru to run it because obviously he was scared of a beatdown

Not truee wrote:

sub3over40 wrote:

He ran the greatest marathon in history. No rabbits, high heat

Low 60's is not high heat.

But low 80's is quite warm for a marathon.

oijfaiosjfi wrote:

But low 80's is quite warm for a marathon.

Yes, but it was low 60's. Forecast was high, actual temperatures rather pleasant.

pr100 wrote:

Raptured wrote:

Odds are good that he would've dnf'd, which is usually what happened to him when he had stiff competition in marathons at that stage of his career...

Is that so? Isn't the only marathon he DNF'd in prior to that was London 2007?

He was in the marathon form of his life around then. Sept '07: 2:04 (WR), Jan '08: 2:04, Sept '08: 2:03 (WR), Jan '09: 2:05, Sept '09 2:06, Jan '10: 2:06. All first place.

He DNF'd New York in 2010, but that was more than two years after the Olympics.

Which of the above races that you list had stiff competition? Every one of the races you list above is Berlin or Dubai. Those races paid a lot of money to Haile and didn't bring in other top runners. The races were set up as rabbited record attempts by Haile.

Not truee wrote:

it was low 60's. Forecast was high, actual temperatures rather pleasant.

-At the start, they had conditions in Beijing at around 70F degrees and 70 percent humidity. -The temperature was said to be anywhere between 84-88F degrees after two hours, with humidity "dropping" to the mid-70 percent range,depending on the source.

I can make up facts, too. How about you show me a source for your claims? You can't.

Science of sport. What is your source? It was a sunny summer's day in Beijing. Not the high temperature expected, but not low 60's.

Not truee wrote:

Yes, but it was low 60's. Forecast was high, actual temperatures rather pleasant.

Do you have a source for that? Here's what letsrun said at the time:

The article by John Kellogg starts out, "With a starting temperature of 74 degrees in the shade and 84 degrees on the course, conditions were not as difficult as they could have been in Beijing, but the weather was typical for the Olympics - warm and muggy."

The race started at 7:30 AM so if it was 74 at the start, it likely was in the upper 70's or low 80's by the finish.

Haile would not have won. He won time trials. He didn't win marathons with people the caliber of Sammy Wanjiru in them.

Haile ran London 3 times. He finished 3rd, 9th, and DNF. He ran New York once and DNFed. He won 2 marathons outside of Berlin and Dubai, Amsterdam in 2005 and Fukuoka in 2006.