People please.... Cole Hocker DQ was the most obvious DQ in the history of Track and Field. He had no room to go through and he elbowed and pushed himself through. Easy DQ. For a guy that thinks he has great tactics, he allowed himself to get boxed in on a slow pace race with 10 guys running next to each other.
Yes. He should have gone wide and kicked.
In a race you make a decision of either conserving energy by running on the rail but risk boxing yourself OR you go wide running longer distance and getting less help with somebody blocking the wind BUT you have more space.
Hocker wanted to take a risk by staying inside. He was greedy in terms of wanting to save every little bit of energy for the final.
The strategy has worked for him, somewhat haphazardly, several times.However, if you keep playing with fire eventually, you’re going to get burned. he can only blame himself for the DQ.
and Clayton Young’s stupid “let me fall over and then hang with the leaders without actually ever bothering to make a move” strategy,
Actually laughed out loud reading this, as if falling over and getting trampled was part of his race strategy 😆
Regarding Hocker, I agree with the others that the front view is misleading- with the side view you can see just how much his arms knocked Farken back and led to his immediate reduction in speed. He pretty much slowed to a crawl to avoid causing a massive pile up.