Bolt vs Bekele in a 600m

from the article it says:

Breaking new barriers until everyone is forced to recognise his greatness; for Bekele it is the only way. Either that or a race against Bolt.

Asked who would win between them over 600 metres, Bolt smiled: "I'd take him". But over 800m? "Oh, I'd win that," Bekele said with surprising bravado – and Bolt did not argue. So let's get it on; any gimmick to give the invisible master his due should be welcomed.

Ahab says...How's that for a thread LR.commers?

This thread should go into the message board hall of fame.

ahab:

You should be on a $ % for this!

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-09-03-bolt-bekele_N.htm

I would love to see this race happen. It's awesome that their agents are trying to work something out for it.

what spikes will Bekele wear? distance spikes?

what spikes will Bolt wear? his gold sprint spikes?

Bekele says:

"If Usain agrees, if someone wants to organize this, I am ready."

Well.....that someone is ahab. Ahab will organize this. And UKathletics coach as assistant.

This race will take just over two minutes.

The pre-race hype, the clips of their championships. 1/2 hour program.

Plenty of Puma and Nike commercials. Probably telling us all how green they are now and blabbity blah.

But here is the venue-

Trinity Great Court in Cambridge- just like Chariots of Fire- but twice around it which would be 682 meters.

Bolt claims he would win 600 Bekele says he needs 700, well how about almost 700 with hard turns. The shorter distance favors Bolt, the turns favor the xc and more nimble Bekele.

Alright lets get it on!

I just started a thread that changes the event for Vegas reasons.

Instead of a race of an arbitrary distance that could either be a sprint or not a sprint.....

how about an endurance event of sprints.

UB v KB in a 5x400 with 2 min rest.

I say Bekele wins 3-2

Whatever this is, I think would be great for the sport. It should bring a lot of press and make Bekele more of a household name.

I am volunteering in Ethiopia, and I figured I would check out what the national stadium looks like. When I got in I had the great surprise and pleasure to watch the greatest athletes working out. What follows is a description:

When I got there, there was a croud of maybe 15 people sitting in the stands waiting to watch the athletes. I saw near the starting line Geb taking off his pants and putting on his shorts while talking to the Dr. guy who is the national coach. What was funny was that he was wearing a white coat like an MD! On the outside of the track was a large group of runners including K. Bekele, Sihine, T. Bekele, I think Ibrihim whatever his name is and two pacers. Everyone was stretching (not dynamic stretching) and peeling off their sweats. The whole scene looked like anything you would see at any track in the world.

After some time they started to do strides. No one really did them together. All strides were between 100-200 meters with the majority being towards the longer end. After doing 200 in 29 or so, they would "jog" 200 in maybe 2 minutes or more. This went on for some time.

Then Bekele and his group did a 400 in 50 (everyone else was like 52 or so) with a guy jumping in to run the last 200 with him. Sihine then did one in 51. After 5 minutes rest, Bekele did a 200 in 24.5 followed by Sihine in about the same time.

All this time Geb was doing strides of 200 working from 30 down to what seemed a little faster but nothing too bad. I saw during Bekele's 24.5, Geb did a 100 meter stride a little bit slower than that pace.

Geb was very vocal, always joking in Amharic which prompted everyone in the stadium but me to smile. He also loudly encouraged Bekele over the 200 in a team captain like manner.

Geb continued his never ending strides as K. Bekele, T. Bekele, Sihine, and some others all gathered for longer itnervals (about 5 minutes after the 200). They ran 2k in 5:15 including a 59 last lap. Geb tagged along on the train for the last 800 for a 2:04 or so.

After a long break, they did another interval. Geb and Tariku ran the first 1200, Sihine managed 1600 in 4:15 and K. Bekele then dropped a 56 for a 5:11. Based on that interval alone, he looked far superior.

I asked some people who said that Geb will run in Beijing and that he joked to his teammates that he is coming in to form. As is his habit, he wore flats while everyone else wore (cool, new, colorful) spikes.

Geb then stretched a little and left in his Mercedes he won at the 1993 WC. The others cooled down more than he did. I was fortunate enough to get a photo with Geb from someone that I really hope will get around to emailing it to me.

What I got from watching these guys is that they do things exactly how everyone else does (except the pace at 8000 feet). The whole atmosphere (except for the 15-20 fans) looked like any track workout anywhere. They didn't even look to be running all that fast (until I looked at my watch of course!)

Also working out together were Defar, E. Dibaba and two others one of who wore high socks so might be Tola?? I don't know their whole workout, but I know that Defar dropped the other three with E. Dibaba the second fastest. BTW, E. Dibaba is gorgous in person just like in the pictures. T. Dibaba was no where to be found.

The people there told me that the athletes will fly in next week b/c they don't like arriving too early and will miss the ceremonies tommorow. It will be fun watching the races in a country where distance running is the #1 sport. These guys are true celebrities here and are greatly admired.

To give the crowds even more of a spectacle, how about having a best of three race event as follows:

Race 1. 650 or 700 meters.

Race 2. 200 meters.

Race 3. 3,000 meters.

Add up the total minutes and seconds to get the winner.

This way, we'd get to see the big close match-up in the first race, followed by a display of how much faster Bolt is in a sprint, and how much faster Bekele is in a distance event.

Swedish 5K Runner wrote:

To give the crowds even more of a spectacle, how about having a best of three race event as follows:

Race 1. 650 or 700 meters.

Race 2. 200 meters.

Race 3. 3,000 meters.

Add up the total minutes and seconds to get the winner.

This way, we'd get to see the big close match-up in the first race, followed by a display of how much faster Bolt is in a sprint, and how much faster Bekele is in a distance event.

Having a total time would be completely pointless. Bolt would beat Bekele by 2-3 seconds in the 200m, which is a huge margin but those 2-3 seconds would be a close race in a 3000. To win on total time, Bolt would have to be a truly world class 3000m runner!

Straight-up time could be used for the first race, and then a formula for determining which of the two won the other two races by the greater margin percentage-wise, perhaps.

Just use the IAAF scoring tables for the 200 and 3000m runs.

Bekele 1:13 (48, 25)

Bolt 1:14 (47.5, 26.5)

Totally agree with this guy (apart from the abusiveness) , I am a 200m 400m runner of average ability pb 22.40 and 48.93, I am sprint biased (10.98 sec pb) with average aerobic power- for a sprinter, I ran a 600m tt in 1:22.3 when i was in 50 point shape, running 53 and 29. Some of my training buddies 47 mid runners who are untrained as 800m runners have hit 1.19 for 600m just off pure speed. They would roll around laughing if someone seriously suggested that they would beat bolt in a 600m.

Even if Bolt went solidly through in 47 (which is 4 seconds slower than what he is capable of- trust me, and died out the arse he wouldnt be slower than 29 seconds for the last 200m and there is 1:16.

We have running blog sites in NZ dominated by distance running specialists who have very little idea/experience about the physiology of sprint athletes and I have seen comments which have me rolling my eyes in disbelief.

I firmly believe that Bekele would beat Bolt at 800m (unless Bolt trained for it), BUT to suggest that would happen over 600m, I definately agree would have to be a joke.

ok - now that we have this one worked out, what would bolt run for a mile, 5k, 10k, half marathon and marathon?

i am trying to work out at what distance i should challenge him.

thanks

Bolt 1:13.3 and Bekele 1:15.2.