Biggest Choke / Chokingist Performance Ever?

Ron Clarke's chokes were almost always mental. A few days before the 1964 Olympic race, he ran a work out of about 4 miles at world record 10K pace. He blew himself out before the race. That doesn't take away anything from Mills. The best runner on that day won.

Bedford 1972

Evan Jager - no medal at all in a slow race

Row 5 wrote:

Dan O'Brien

no height PV at '92 US Olympic trials

effectively killed the Reebok Dan and Dave ad campaign

(in addition to his place on the team and shot at decathlon gold)

he set the world record a couple of weeks after the Barcelona Games so I'd bet he was pretty fit when it woulda', shoulda', coulda' counted

Its a tie between this and using the word "chokingist" in a thread title.

I was terrible at just about every sport I tried. You can't really choke if you're expected to strike out all the time and miss every free throw. I tried running and found I was half-decent, which was wonderful. I wonder how many others were like this? Probably quite a few.

I'm on the fence on this, but I would say no. He almost certainly ran too fast for the first few laps of the 10k but I really don't think he had much of a medal chance anyway. Maybe he could have made a long run from the 5k point, but I don't think it would have mattered considering who else was in the race. He was a front-runner who used his only tactic and it didn't work. He seemed to be a little off-form after the British trials anyway. He was in both Viren's and Puttemans's world record 5ks right after the olympics and was well-beaten in both.

I wondered when someone would comment on this.

Bedford Munich 72 = Jager Beijing 15. Almost exactly.