Breaking: Nick Willis DECLINES to Represent his Country in Doha!!

well actually wrote:

Bjfkn wrote:

He doesn’t meet the requirements. Then whines and whines to get in. Gets in then claims he 1 week into his break before Tokyo build up.

He a dope. His porn addiction mess up his brain. He won’t make Tokyo either

He didn't whine about it one time you idiot

He did on the NBC broadcast.

Michiganrunner50 wrote:

You are ignorant. For one he does not drink he has not touched it for years and I am 100 percent certain does not smoke weed. Stop the sensationalism and grow up

You are either Willis or his spouse. Those are the only two individuals on the face of the earth who know if Willis drinks alcohol &/or smokes weed. If you want to push me, I'll tell you extactly how I feel. Since Willis' season is over, maybe this is the time of year Willis takes high doses of HGH or steroids. That is the logical reason why Willis cannot go to W.C. now. You fans are pathetic. You do know fan is short for fanatic.

passive agressive drama wrote:

Michiganrunner50 wrote:

You are ignorant. For one he does not drink he has not touched it for years and I am 100 percent certain does not smoke weed. Stop the sensationalism and grow up

You are either Willis or his spouse. Those are the only two individuals on the face of the earth who know if Willis drinks alcohol &/or smokes weed. If you want to push me, I'll tell you extactly how I feel. Since Willis' season is over, maybe this is the time of year Willis takes high doses of HGH or steroids. That is the logical reason why Willis cannot go to W.C. now. You fans are pathetic. You do know fan is short for fanatic.

"You are either Willis or his spouse. Those are the only two individuals on the face of the earth who know if Willis drinks alcohol &/or smokes weed."

Five Eyes knows.

I say good for Willis. He'll have an advantage over the rest for Tokyo, and Tokyo should be everything for him now. Just getting to Tokyo would be historic (fifth Olympics) and reaching the final would be incredible (fourth 1500m final) and cement his position as an all-time great.

Drainthefecesswamp wrote:

Avocado's Number wrote:

I agree that he apparently did not meet the requirements when invitations were initially sent out. The outcry about that (by, among others, at least one of the cofounders of this site) was disgraceful, and seemed to be based on some combination of ignorance about the rules, ignorance about the specific facts of the case, and a highly selective sense of entitlement.

Knock it off. People were upset because the rules don't make sense because there could be an arbitrary number of "free entries" in any given event. What if 30 countries with no qualifiers all decided to pick the same event for their free event, as a sign of unity? Only the top 15 are allowed to run world's in that case?

You either haven't read the rules, or simply don't understand them. The rules clearly set forth four categories of qualifiers: (1) athletes who meet the entry standard (for the 1500m, the entry standard may be met with a 1500m or mile time) during the qualification period, (2) athletes who are deemed to have met the entry standard by virtue of high places in designated competitions (for the 1500m, this category consists only of area champions), (3) wild cards (for the 1500m, this category includes the reigning world champion and the Diamond League champion), and (4) other athletes who are on the IAAF's top performance list for their event during the qualification period.

At the end of the qualification period, the IAAF takes all of the athletes in the first three qualification categories (I believe that there were a total of 51 such athletes in the 1500) and a group of so-called "unqualified" athletes (athletes who are selected as a federation's sole entrant in the championships and athletes who are selected as the host federation's sole entrant in each event). After applying various limitations on the number of athletes from individual countries (generally three per country, but it's a little more complicated than that), if the total number of athletes in the field is less than a certain "target number" (for the 1500m, the "target number" was 45), then athletes from the fourth category of qualifiers could be added, in descending order on the performance lists but excluding any athletes from countries that had met their maximum quota, to reach the event's target number.

Contrary to the apparent assumptions of some, the rules do not authorize any of the so-called "unqualified" athletes to displace any athletes who have met the entry standard, or have been deemed to have met the entry standard, or who have qualified as wild cards. And I am not aware of any cases in which that was done.

In the 1500m, even if one were to exclude all of the so-called "unqualified" athletes, Nick Willis was still nowhere close to the top 45 qualifiers. There were 64 faster 1500m runners (44 of whom met the automatic qualifying standard of 3:36.00) during this season alone, and there were a number of additional runners who qualified ahead of him by virtue of better mile times and victories in area championships. The small number of slower "unqualified" athletes who displaced him in the selection process because of country- or federation-specific minimum quotas was dwarfed by the number of faster athletes who were nevertheless not selected ahead of him because of country- or federation-specific maximum quotas.

Sesamoiditis wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Only the top 12 athletes, at most, should compete in any WC or olympic event. Only the top 8 in 800 or below. No heats, no semis, no countries. If you didn't at least have a better than average season, you do not deserve a chance to be champion, period. Sports that aren't jokes understand this and save the title shots for a few candidates.

Most sports allow mediocre teams into their championships and the make cuts. NFL, Final Four, FIFA, PGA, etc. What sports aren’t a joke to you?

Ridiculous. The NFL playoffs is between 12 teams, and used to be 10. PGA is golf, not a sport, and traditionally has dozens playing at once.

FIFA is special events between select national teams, nothing "mediocre" about them. Pro soccer leagues like Premier and Bundesliga have no playoff at all - the season winner has proven they're the best, and they don't second guess a whole season on a single match.

Final Four, are you kidding? Four teams kind of says elite, doesn't it? Make it that far and you've proven yourself better than mediocre.

Dumb fans are dumb who like how in a championship race "anything can happen." Such as the best runner doesn't win, and maybe a 3:40 guy sneaks in on a slow pace. That's not how you find out who is best. It's good that Willis isn't making a big deal out of this, knowing full well he is not even close to the best.

alsmost as lame as an ankle injury wrote:

Pretty lame to not take the invite. It was just a short time ago he was getting last in races and now he needs a break just as he gets it together?

It’s not that he needed a break. It’s that he was already 7+ days into a break which is far from idea for going into worlds.

Hardloper wrote:

Michiganrunner50 wrote:

He never whined about not getting in. He acknowledged publicly that the only sure way was to get the standard. Get your facts straight

Exactly. The NZ federation complained but it's their job to advocate for their athletes

You seriously think NZ fed advocate for thier athletes? Ask any NZ athlete and you'll quickly learn that the athlete is the last thing the NZ fed gives a shoot about. For some strange reason they actually go out of their way to be anti athlete. It was only cos they screwed up and had spent money on flights that they thought they should try to recover something from the situation. You do remember that they forgot to enter a gold lock (shot put Valeria) in to the 2012 Olympics?

Same thing for Heidi See:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2sdR2xnl_e/

passive agressive drama wrote:

Since Willis' season is over, maybe this is the time of year Willis takes high doses of HGH or steroids. That is the logical reason why Willis cannot go to W.C. now. You fans are pathetic. You do know fan is short for fanatic.

^This. Probably glowing a bit too much in his off season.

Nick can do what he wants. I would have been interested to see what the results of a layoff might have been if he had chosen to compete in Doha. Some athletes do surprisingly well under such circumstances. I'm thinking of Shalane in 2008 (got food poisoning just before 10000, couldn't train for a few days, got a bronze which was upgraded later to silver, scroll down to husband Steve's comments):

https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/shalane-flanagan-survives-bout-food-poisoning-win-long-distance-bronze-article-1.316044

Also Rui SIlva had abdominal injury before 2004 Olympic bronze that limited his speed work. I think the fastest training he could do was 5 x 500m in 73 or something like that. He closed like a MF to cruise in for a medal (one of the commentators is Ovett):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRImmnwryNM

The week off must be key. Otherwise, why fight and then give up when you get want you wanted? He was planning already to start his break after Doha, so ultimately, he should be going and it will tell on his final career biography. When Symmonds pulled the clothes issue and thus missed worlds after being a silver medalist in the previous one in 2013, it was clear that he didn't have the will to compete anymore. I don't like to see this from Nick Willis. Just go and compete. Badly handled by the IAAF, of course. How is Seb Coe, as a former middle distance runner, allowing this kind of thing to take place?

passive-aggressive drama wrote:

Bjfkn wrote:

He doesn’t meet the requirements. Then whines and whines to get in. Gets in then claims he 1 week into his break before Tokyo build up.

He a dope. His porn addiction mess up his brain. He won’t make Tokyo either

+1

So what if he's five pounds too heavy. So what if he's been drinking alcohol and smoking weed for a week. All of his crying and whining over the past few weeks, mainly by his entourage who have been posting here and advocating for Willis over the past few weeks. Willis needs to take himself to 2019 W.C., barely get out of first round of 1500m, and get his ass kicked in semi-final. Even if he had not gained five pounds, even if Willis had not been drinking and smoking weed, Willis still could not get out of semi-final, 1500m.

Maybe his invitation will fall to you now?

Or to the other numbnut.

probably the clean winner?

NFL let’s teams that are barely over .500 (9-7) into the playoffs. FIFA World Cup is expanding to allow more teams including those from uncompetitive regions like Africa, North and Central America and Asia. The NCAA Final Four Tournament invites one team from each D1 conference no matter how uncompetitive their conference is while better team from better conferences stay home or go to NIT. What are they up to 70 teams now? Track & Field is no different than most sports. Only a few people care about the prelims unlike these other sports. Nick Willis had a good shot to make it out of the prelims into the final based off his win at 5th Avenue.

Why is everyone saying he was whining. All he did was express his thoughts and facts on the situation. He had been chasing the standard all summer and got bumped by gift athletes. He's a highly notable athlete with 2 olympic medals. It was going to be big news whether he said anything on social media or not.

If he couldn't even get the standard, how in the world do you guys think he's going to preform well after a week off? Why interrupt his break when Tokyo is CLEARLY the priority? Stop blowing this up out of proportion.

Look at the facts. Over a week ago he is told he is not being invited to Worlds. Instead of crying about it he is already ? no ahead to Tokyo July 2020. He shuts down his season smartly so and then over a week later 7 days before Worlds start gets an invite. He has had over a week off. He is a world class racer not a let me run this race on a whim even though I have not trained for over a week. Everything has to be calculated. He probably no I am sure he does have target races already set up to get the qualifying time for Tokyo. He knows what he is doing. This is not his first rodeo

Please on drugs. If he was on drugs and there will be many drug cheats at Worlds don’t u think he would have run faster than 3:36.99? Stop all the hating crap

The whole thing is silly, but at this point to complain that they bought a plane ticket, and now to backtrack and no go is also silly.

Athletics are always a bit political but I can't see who wins here - they both look like they lost this one.