common wrote:
Just to pile on what sprintgeezer wrote above, the "how" is what is important with Makhloufi. In all three of his 1500m races at this Olympics, he won by a significant margin. In two of those cases, the heats, he didn't need to win, and should have been practicing the logical (and expected) strategy of conserving energy.
Does it make sense for the guy with the sixth fastest time in the field to purposely lay waste to everyone in the heats? In the 3:42 heat, I can see it, because it was extremely slow. But when you run 3:35 in a 3:36 semi-final heat loaded with talent? There's no excuse for such a flagrant waste of energy. After all, isn't that why he dropped out of the 800m? So why conserve in that case, but be wasteful elsewhere?
Round 1 - last 400m (hand timed from video)
=======
13.96
13.25
13.32
14.01
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54.54 (3:35.15 won by 1.4 seconds)
Round 2
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13.53
12.94
12.31
13.45
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52.23 (3:42.24 won by .68 seconds)
Round 3
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13.33
12.51
12.69
14.22
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52.77 (3:34.08 won by .71 seconds, easing up last 80m!)
Finally, I see a lot of people on here defending Makhloufi by saying the rest of the field just happened to suck. Yes, all FIVE of the guys who are faster than Mahkloufi ALL sucked, in ALL three rounds, in slow races, and in fast races. ALL of the major players sucked except a nearly unheard of Algerian who ran the final "injured", and recovers almost instantly from back-to-back 12.x surges delivered from 300m out in two of his three rounds.
MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME.
Thanks for those splits. Let me playing devils advocate here.
So if you are a doper, why would you win in a dominant way to bring suspicion on yourself? If i was a cheat , I"d barely win to make it believable.
Also, do you think he was lettign up the last 100 or tying up? That to me is the real question. If we knew that, then we'd know a lot more.