Official 2023 Prefontaine Classic Day 2 Live Discussion Thread

In 3 months. Enjoy cross country until then

Well, that was 2023 then.

Anyone fancy a pint?

She has always been exciting to watch. She has always been a great runner. Today she became a role model by taking an outcome that she didn't want and learning from it and showing back up. Even if she hadn't had such a stellar performance today, I admire her for showing back up with a different perspective. Just like with Sha'carri, I am an even bigger fan. Athing Mu is total class!

Valbymania!!!!!!

Just got home from Hayward. It was. Fantastic couple of days of track and field.

Grant needs to get off the rail earlier. He broke his rhythm throughout the last 3 laps because he can’t feel what is happening around him. Too robotic. He could have been much closer to the move made by the first two places.

fantastic interview with Athing. 13 minutes. admits she needs to run on the rail and bobby has been pushing it. she was smiling and laughing the whole time. very self aware. You can not watch that interview and not like her.

And JG was on point with his questions.

I'm hyped

They're not forcing her to stop. She can run to the end

That was pretty much the upset of the weekend. Definitely not his best season with not even qualifying for the Canadian 100m team and looking like a different runner in the 200m in Budapest.

hopefully a sign he’ll be a threat in 2024

Nice points

- You hate to be that guy(s) but I find it a little hard to believe as well. Yeah I am the biggest proponent of the impact Wavelight has had on distance running in particular and you could even see the benefit today as she fought back to the lights with what 1600m to go (?) then settled down again before pushing on in the final 600. But it's not new now and she has run many races with it and while 14.12 was a great time - to lop almost a second a lap off it in one race? I just don't know.

- Mu ran great today and looked happy (the most important thing). But she is still 1.69 seconds away from the WR. Semenya was 1.54.25 and (this sounds crude but it's true, she was half male) and I never felt like even they had a shot at it. Mu has a shot at running in the low 1.54's and maybe in a dream situation running fractionally under 1.54.0, but the WR is not realistic and it's not her fault - it's the IAAF's for ratifying that bogus record and not having the guts to do anything about it decades ago

- Jakob is really now in rare air. He's pretty much on the Mt Rushmore already. He was not his best at the World Champs but these races are very very different to those types of races. He's still vulnerable in non-paced, non-lighted races where he has to do a little more guess work on his pace (not as easy as we think it is). If he can find a way to get it done in Paris over the 1500m and goes El G style and wins the 5000 and he picks up the mile and 3000 records, he will be the greatest MD runner in history.

- Agree. I don't know what's up with Holloway but he seems a little stuck. Gets out too fast and that's actually not what you want to do in the hurdles (unintuitively).

- Touch and go with Jackson because since it's become a real possibility (the WR) she keeps visibly pushing at the wrong points in the race going after it. Funny how that works in the sprints.

- I need to start doing cross-fit too if those are the results. What a performance by Fisher today.

Not necessarily winning, but after his recent 3rd place in 19.8, I knew he would show up. Just a delayed season for him.

Yep. Very classy, and I never thought otherwise.

I think there’s an embarrassing tendency here for posters to credit their psychological “advice” — you know, what they should have thought or done all along — for a triumph by a previously out-of-favor athlete. Think Mu or Richardson.

“See, she just needed to get that loss behind her and she’d get her mind right,” or “She ditched the wig, fingernails and grievances and now she’s free to run her best.”

What drivel. You fantasize their mental framework as idiotically as the nitwits who blather on about Val Allman’s background as “a competitive dancer” having some role in her success.

I’d rather see more “pure hate” than all y’all faux-Freuds tardily bandwagoning some great athletes you didn’t understand (or like) then and don’t understand now

I believe they combine classifications in the same race to provide meaningful competition for the athletes.

Sometimes for certain competitions there are not enough athletes competing in some classes in certain events to have races that provide meaningful competition. There are over 50 different classes in which paralympic athletes compete in the sport of athletics.

To provide that meaningful competition, and avoid having races in which there is only one athlete competing, they sometime run different classes together simultaneously in the same race.

It would be disrespectful to provide no competition if they ran races with only one entrant in a class running separately as a race of one.

Hopefully they announced that the race was grouping classes together and introduced/ announced entrants individually, stating what class they were in. The NBC broadcast mentioned the grouping, but failed to identify what classes the athletes were in

At the award ceremony athletes will be separated out/grouped together by class, and get their due respect.

It is similar to how it's not disrespectful to start everyone together (men, women, all the different age groups, non binary etc.) in a 5k road race, and then respectfully recognize division winners separately at the award ceremony.

It's incredible to think that Komen's 3k record is almost 3 seconds faster than the winning time today. And i'm pretty sure he ran it mostly alone. Whatever people's doubts about his possible 'enhancements' it's still amazing.

Just saw some of the NBC feed of the women's 800m. They should employ Hutchings and Cram.

Another poster about Mu:

"Her tactics that race were so bad in lane 2 almost the whole thing, still closed like a train."

Jeesus--so which is it? You have to run on the rail all the time or you can't run on the rail all the time? When will people learn that races are live in-the-moment events and you have to do what feels right (and what is permitted by the other runners) at the time?

Mu ran on Keely's shoulder to let her know that she was there and to be IN the race the whole time, and she went by her when it counted. What could be wrong with that?

Is there recap show today?

You're wrong. Athing Mu doesn't do "what feels right at the time." She ALWAYS runs away from the rail.

And as Mu herself admitted today, her coach doesn't like it and he is trying to get her to change.