Greene was a 9.79/9.80 guy, NOT a 9.75 guy

You claim that his body was not capable of running faster than 9.79 based on the fact that he was injured and you claim that as fact.

You don't know the conditions of his injury yet you claim that his body was not capable.

You claim that because he did not do so in his other one-off attempts that that is reason to believe that he could not have ran faster.

You have not presented any relevant FACTS (hey look I can use caps to make my words seem like facts too!!!), just assumptions based on what you know.

So before I continue where are your FACTS! The fact is there aren't any and only logical assumptions can be made based on what is know about Mo, as well as that race.

I have no problem that you believe that he was not capable of running faster, but when you present everything you say as fact then we have a problem.

Ahh excuse my spelling/grammar, keyboard is broken

"...his body could NOT handle the stress of performing any faster than 9.80"

... yeah, that day! not necessarily in ultimate terms as you claim.

"There is absolutely no way that Greene could have gone 9.75, ever, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T"

Begging the question never proves anything

I understand the matter of fact approach bro, but I've heard people say Edmonton was a 9.65 race!!! That season, I think he was physically ready to run another 9.79. And it's plausible that 9.76 was within his reach(wind or no wind).

Going into the Edmonton final, I'm sure Greene believed he could eclipse his 9.79. After all, 9.76 had been his magical number for quite some time. John Smith had put 9.6hi out there. And I'm thinking if a coach puts that out there, he's tailoring his athlete's training (mind and body) to achieve that, OR has already seen the potential for it to be run(you can argue as to whether it was drug related or not for all I care)

But there's no concrete way of proving whether 9.79 was his cap or if he could have run faster. But hey, it's fun to speculate, aint it? :)

LM wrote:

I actually do feel as if V3 is missing, or ignoring, the point that several people are arguing.

Ventolin, I don't think anyone is arguing that in absence of injury that race would have been 9.6x, that's pretty clear.

What people are saying is that it doesn't matter as Mo's body was physically incapable of handling the race itself and/or the training. I.E. he could never run 9.6x because any time he tried he would get injured. THAT is the argument being presented.

Seems like a dumb argument though because how would someone have any idea whether it was a random one off injury, versus his body being unable to take the stress of going faster than 9.8??

Thanks LM for bringing the original point of Sprintgeezer and myself back around.

I would say that this is not a dumb argument, as I have a hard time believing that there is anything such as a "one-off" injury for elite athletes.

Unless you get hit by a car or are struck by lightning, the vast majority of injuries are avoidable by training smart and resting at the appropriate times. It's only negligence or over-training that can turn a minor tweak into a career threatening injury, and this extends to distance running.

All of that being said, hypothetical arguments are useless on the track. The track never lies, and last time I checked, Mo did not run 9.75. Those are the facts.

It's a different debate, admittedly. However,

Sprintgeezer wrote:

There is absolutely no way that Greene could have gone 9.75, ever, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T. He TRIED, and he FAILED, MASSIVELY.

Just as you are correct in stating that Greene "isn't" a 9.75 sprinter because he has never run 9.75, you are wrong in inferring from the fact that he failed to run 9.75 the hypothesis that he would have never been able to do so.

Straining a muscle in your thigh isn't a continuous process that happens predictably when you run 100m at a certain speed. It's a singular event whose probability is, of course, related to how much stress you put on it, which relates to how fast you run. He ran 80m before tearing his muscle. There were three false starts in the race, maybe that's what put him over the limit on the day. We'll never know.

Greene had plenty of opportunities to run faster than 9.79 and didn't. But that does not mean there was no way he could have achieved it. You just don't know.

Sprintgeezer wrote: ... There is absolutely no way that Greene could have gone 9.75, ever, BECAUSE HE DIDN'T.

He TRIED, and he FAILED, MASSIVELY ...

All this gibberish from a guy (?) who repeatedly asserts who's clean and who's a doper, with absolutely nothing to back it up beyond his own (nonsensical) conjectures.

This entire board is little more than people guessing at who might've run faster if a-b-c ad nauseum. And you, geezer, are one of the first to jump in with that kind of stuff. Yet you give Mo Greene nothing more than his actual times. The inconsistency in your approach to posting suggests you simply don't like Mo.

Where are you from? One doesn't "fail" "massively".

I'll take these in reverse order.

wtfunny--

As a matter of fact, you are quite correct--I don't like Greene. I never have. He's Johnson 2.0--only unlike 1.0, he's neither humble nor a nice guy.

"Failing massively"--I think it can be done. You can fail by just failing to achieve a result, or you can fail by failing to achieve a result AND by finishing in worse condition than you started.

Greene didn't just not run sub-9.80, he also broke his body in the attempt. In my book, that is "failing massively"--he failed to achieve the desired result, AND he failed to maintain his physical integrity.

Querfeldein--

First paragraph--good paragraph.

My inference clearly relies on 2 different species of fact: 1) that he did not actually go sub-9.80/9.79 on the many opportunities that he had, in which he went hard and ran through the finish, indicating that on those occasions he could not have run sub-9.80/9.79 otherwise he would have; and 2) that on those occasions that he did not run through the finish he was actually incapable of running through the finish, and was therefore incapable of going sub-9.80/9.79 on those occasions.

There is absolutely no evidence other than wind to suggest that he could have gone sub-9.80/9.79 on any other occasion. The arguments such as those I have suggested for Bailey--that he would have gone faster if he hadn't had the false starts--are unsavory. They are unsavory as far as Bailey is concerned as well, and I have acknowledged that repeatedly. The only reason I made them for Bailey was not to show how good HE "actually" could have been, but to show that performances like Gay's 9.69 (+2.0) could actually be in the realm of possibility for clean performances.

So the argument in Bailey's case was done not primarily to speculate on his performance, but to think about performance in general.

Bailey WAS a 9.84 guy, NOT a 9.75 guy. Like Greene, he never actually demonstrated the capability to go sub-9.80/9.79, even though he had the opportunity on many occasions.

I don't think it's logically incorrect to infer that someone was incapable of doing something, when they actually DIDN'T do it when they had the chance, unless there was some sort of mitigating circumstance like letting up before the finish--like Bolt in Beijing.

The argument that he was in better shape before the false starts than before goes like this: each start attempt takes something out of you, that is not completely replaced by the time of the next start attempt. In my experience, that is true--however, militating against that is the gained comfort in the blocks, learning the starter, and dialing in your start position and attitude.

On balance, I don't think that he was in any worse shape after the false starts than before--and you don't need to take my word for it, because that is what Greene himself said. Also, it is what Bailey said about Atlanta.

The other part of the argument is that he actually injured himself on those earlier start attempts, or aggravated an already-existing injury. That is certainly possible. Militating against that is that he did actually get injured when he was finally allowed to run the race, suggesting that he would have injured himself at the 85m mark no matter when he reached it--on the first attempt, or on the third, because the injury was the result of what happened to 85m.

In the final analysis, you're right--I just don't know if he ever "could" hypothetically have achieved it--however, the onus isn't on me to prove that he might have, because the observable performance fact is that he DID not, ever. Lots of people make that claim, but have little to back it up. The wind is the best argument, the injury argument is very weak.

moron

mo was an improving sprinter from '99 when he ran 9.79wr

in sydney he ran 9.87 into a wind on a cold day which was sh!t poor for sprinting - he walloped ato by 0.12s

he was worth 9.70 - 9.75 with hot weather & 0 wind

he was improving more still in '01, but he had an injury sometime in that year

idiot

he always ran thru the finish except in '01

idiot

get a clue

watch/read about sydney

idiot

he was in peak shape of his life & ran peak race except for poor start

he was a 9.80/9.81 guy that day with his usual start

idiot

you have no idea of peak career shape

mj ran 19.32

mo was in his personal "19.32" shape in '01 apart from the pre-existing injury

fool

1 false start may not matter much

3 false starts & the repeated drive of an injury afflicted knee probably caused his injury

without the false starts there is good chance he wouda completed the race without injury flaring up

drivel

i've never read this anywhere & i've read helluva lot about mo

bailey wasn't carrying an injury

fool

it happened nearer 60m

you ever watched the race ???

idiot

6.33 split is 9.66 pace

his finish was 3.49 or a 9.98 finish

this is nothing about wind slowing him

drivel

in his 9.79 he split 6.40

in his 9.80 he split 6.39

both absolutely consistent with

double 60m split + 3

to a coupla 100ths

with a 6.33 he couda expected 9.66

nonsense

his previous ~ 6.40/3.40 finishes balance perfectly

his initial 60 & last 40 were same quality

same as bolt's 6.29/3.29 which matches above formula & again shows bolt ran = good initial 60 & last 40

if you are idiotic enough to believe mo used to "hold back in initial 60m" then you have to apply same to bolt in his 9.58

idiot

6.33 split in a 0 wind race is the evidence