Yankee wrote:
You guys know Farah told the GB selectors that he wasn't going to run for GB if Vernon was picked, right? Vernon may have a big mouth, but seems pretty childish. Hard to root for Mo, will be interesting when all of the NOP stuff comes to light.
You do not know for certain whether or not there is any truth in that first statement. Vernon seems to believe it's true, but he also is very clearly bitter (not unreasonably so) about this whole affair. I'm at least somewhat inclined to agree with you, but please, don't present speculation as fact.
In my opinion, Vernon should have been on the GB team: he met all the necessary criteria, and would have been another capable athlete for them to bring. I can, however, understand why the British team wouldn't want him: a mid-pack (at the world level) guy who has openly picked fights with some of your nation's successful athletes of the last couple years threatens to cause more trouble than he's worth.
I like Vernon. He's been a solid presence in British athletics for the last few years, and has done well in a few Euro championships (all while being built like Solinsky, another thing I find pretty cool). But that being said, ad-hominum and personal attacks at Farah and Sharp don't do the guy any good. I'd assume those attacks hurt sponsorship opportunities, and one has to assume that they played a role in his not being selected here.
Since people were comparing Vernon to Centro in regards to social media use, I'd like to point out something else: Centro posts a lot of junk (some of which, for example the yawn, being clearly inappropriate), but I've never seen him tweet anything along the lines of, say, that Lagat or Manzano isn't a "real American" and shouldn't be at the US champs, or something similar. Vernon, on the other hand, has done essentially that (and worse) towards Mo, and his comment against Sharp was also really disappointing.