Andrew wheating, and NW Missouri’s Reece Smith. Smith won 3 straight steeple titles and ran a competitive D1 mark at a D2 after spending most of his falls injured. Kid never ran a full 3 seasons
He may have some terrible ideas these days, but he was still just a kid when he got hit by a truck.
I'm not talking about that, I mean more so when he was actually an athlete, and decided to piss all of his potential away at the worst possible time because he was a wannabe triathlete, which got him absolutely nowhere
He was steadily improving at Triathlon and would probably be one of if not the best triathlete if it weren't for his accident.
Andrew wheating, and NW Missouri’s Reece Smith. Smith won 3 straight steeple titles and ran a competitive D1 mark at a D2 after spending most of his falls injured. Kid never ran a full 3 seasons
What if I had had a coach in high school who knew how to coach….what if I had run more miles in college…what if I had dedicated solely to running in my early to mid 20s…we will never know
I'm not talking about that, I mean more so when he was actually an athlete, and decided to piss all of his potential away at the worst possible time because he was a wannabe triathlete, which got him absolutely nowhere
He was steadily improving at Triathlon and would probably be one of if not the best triathlete if it weren't for his accident.
He was far too good a runner to consider being a triathlete. It would be like a potentially great boxer competing in UFC.
What if British selectors had sent Coe to the 1988 Olympics? Would he have won his third straight 1500 meter gold medal? Truly a shame we never got to find out.
What IF he hadnt been banned by AAU and continued to run, including at the 1956 Olympics? He very likely would have been the first American to break 4:00 and only third or so to do it. He certainly would have been a medal contender and maybe even held outdoor mile WR for a spell, taking it from Bannister or Landy in the mid 1950s.
Sydney Wooderson hadn't lost what would probably have been the best years of his career to WWII. Could he have broken the 4:00 mile?
Wes Santee been allowed to run in the U.S. 1500 trial for the 1952 Olympics, instead of being prevented since he'd already won the 5000m. And had he not been banned early in 1956 and missed that Olympics. He had beaten eventual 1952 Olympic Silver medallist, McMillen in the AAU 1500m earlier in the year.
Steve Ovett had not fallen on that church railing late in 1981 and damaged his thigh, and then suffered what was likely a viral heart infection that left him with an arrhythmia in 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympics. He said he lost a gear sprinting after the 1981 accident and I was told the heart problem limited some of his training after LA. Despite all that, his coach, Harry Wilson said 1987 and 1988 he was in shape to break the world 5000m record but was prevented by some minor niggles.