3 heats wrote:
Do you think it would be fairer to have 3 heats of 16 (3 place + 3 times) instead of 4 heats of 12 (2 place + 4 times)?
16 people per heat is pretty messy. Gets congested especially when you have a bunch of guys running relatively the same time. Speaking from experience... That would suck.
Looks like I was right. 3:40 was good enough to make the finals, and (amazingly) the fourth heat was the only one where someone tried to make it reasonably fast from the gun. They were rewarded by picking up all four time qualifiers.
Tough to figure out what Webb has in him from that heat. He came extremely close to not making the final. His little burst to go by Torrence right at the end made the difference. If Webb was under control, it still seems awfully risky to wait until the last 20 meters to put yourself into auto-Q position.
Heat 2 was pathetic. Lomong and Lukezic run away from the field with pedestrian 3:44-3:45 times.
The results with top 12 by time.
This has the advantage that those who run fast enough do advance.
Preliminaries
1 Leonel Manzano Nike 3:39.91Q
2 Stephen Pifer Oregon TC Elite 3:40.83Q
3 Jeff See Ohio State 3:40.95q
4 Craig Miller unattached 3:41.10q
5 Jordan McNamara Oregon 3:41.15q
6 Dorian Ulrey Arkansas 3:41.42Q
7 Darren Brown unattached 3:41.60q
8 Andrew Jesien Virginia 3:41.78Q
9 Garrett Heath Stanford 3:41.83 [3:41.828]
10 Aucencio Martinez Boulder R C 3:41.83 [3:41.829]
11 Liam Boylan-Pett Georgetown 3:41.85
12 William Leer Oregon TC Elite 3:42.18Q
Not Qualified
7 Alan Webb Nike 3:42.35Q
4 Lopez Lomong Nike 3:44.62Q
8 Christopher Lukezic Reebok 3:45.60Q