Tokyo World Champs Day 1 Live Thread!

Chef Gordon Ramzi wrote:

Bummed but Femke looked fantastic. Easy to see why Syd ducked.

gglg wrote:

Looked like Femke knew gold wasn't possible, so made sure she did exactly enough to lock up silver and no more. Looked very calm.

Nice job by team USA.

high school xc coach wrote:

She might be regretting the way she ran that. Don't look back...a lot of work ahead.

wannabepro25 wrote:

Netherlands third leg sold.

CalicoCat wrote:

Airport lounge wrote:

Everyone in the field is an elite athlete with a high Vo2 max, running efficiency etc. Yet, it looked like a high school dual meet with the runners being lapped and gapped by 30 seconds plus. The distribution should be much closer. Are we supposed to believe that some athletes just train harder and are more gifted? Gifted to the extent of lapping other elites?

World champs/olympics are always like this. There are like 20 countries where its normal to run for a career. Then you have a meet where a country is limited to 3 or 4 per event and also now you 100s of countries needing to enter athletes. What did you expect lol. The gap is always bigger on the world stage vs a diamond league meet lol. Are you new to this sport?

CalicoCat wrote:

Airport lounge wrote:

Everyone in the field is an elite athlete with a high Vo2 max, running efficiency etc. Yet, it looked like a high school dual meet with the runners being lapped and gapped by 30 seconds plus. The distribution should be much closer. Are we supposed to believe that some athletes just train harder and are more gifted? Gifted to the extent of lapping other elites?

World champs/olympics are always like this. There are like 20 countries where its normal to run for a career. Then you have a meet where a country is limited to 3 or 4 per event and also now you 100s of countries needing to enter athletes. What did you expect lol. The gap is always bigger on the world stage vs a diamond league meet lol. Are you new to this sport?

Fan Out West. . . . wrote:

Bol appeared to concede the win on the back stretch, holding back to kick home for silver. Split a bit above 50-flat.

However, she was closing on Holmes/USA. Probably didn't expect Holmes to tie up down the homestretch, only running a 50.73.

If Femke runs a 48.8 -- her best is 47.9 -- Netherlands wins.

Highly Disturbed wrote:

Crouser should be shrined.

zdf wrote:

CalicoCat wrote:

World champs/olympics are always like this. There are like 20 countries where its normal to run for a career. Then you have a meet where a country is limited to 3 or 4 per event and also now you 100s of countries needing to enter athletes. What did you expect lol. The gap is always bigger on the world stage vs a diamond league meet lol. Are you new to this sport?

Oof, on ARD in Germany they actually had a split screen of this poor German runner getting lapped TWICE during the 10k final. Talk about schadenfreude 😬

JC100 wrote:

Some here may remember the debacle with reaction times at the 2022 Worlds, where the equipment consistently measured faster than usual reaction times, resulting in DQs for several runners. The likely explaination was an error in the calibration of the equipment.

Here are average reaction times for the heats of the women's 100m at the last 6 worlds:

2015 0.165
2017 0.167
2019 0.163
2022 0.141
2023 0.161
2025 0.192

You can see the really fast reaction times in 2022, but the reaction times in 2025 are measured as really slow. I think there might be another big problem here, but in the opposite direction to 2022.

Reaction times at Diamond League event this year have been really consistent (I record them all) and this is just totally weird.

The men's heats will add more data but this doesn't look good so far.

CalicoCat wrote:

Airport lounge wrote:

Everyone in the field is an elite athlete with a high Vo2 max, running efficiency etc. Yet, it looked like a high school dual meet with the runners being lapped and gapped by 30 seconds plus. The distribution should be much closer. Are we supposed to believe that some athletes just train harder and are more gifted? Gifted to the extent of lapping other elites?

World champs/olympics are always like this. There are like 20 countries where its normal to run for a career. Then you have a meet where a country is limited to 3 or 4 per event and also now you 100s of countries needing to enter athletes. What did you expect lol. The gap is always bigger on the world stage vs a diamond league meet lol. Are you new to this sport?

Bol Me Over wrote:

What was Bol's split?

Don't you just want to scream at her to stop jogging? She has the most deceptive stride.