Gault seems to be reinforcing a misconception about Pre being a frontrunner. He was not unless he was going for a record. Most of the time, he sat in the pack until the last 3 laps then did a long kick. He was never going to win an Olympics because he wasn't strong enough to run away from a world class field -- few athletes are -- and his last lap kick was substandard. Rod Dixon, I believe, beat him every single time they raced, usually with a kick.
From someone who, decades of posting here, knows and was there. Les didn't read about it, or watch a movie. This is the way Pre ran most of his races. He did not go out and run like a maniac. Gault should really stay in his lane, or at least cut back on the drink during the podcasts. It's a bad look.
Silly little Brit makes inflammatory statements in order to drive traffic to the dying website that “employs” him. Not a whole lot to see here.
Anyone who disagrees, go ahead and look up Pres win/loss record.
Yup. Read as much as you can about those races -- especially the Ore-OreSt dual meet with Pre and Hailu Ebba not giving an inch to the finishline in lane six!
This post was edited 22 seconds after it was posted.
One thing I'm 100 percent sure of -- Jonathan Gault doesn't have an effing clue about the concept of winning. Not even a smidgen about winning. Not even a single molecule in his brain does he know about winning. He's never won anything! He never had the courage to win.
Talented runners love to chalk their running success up to “courage” or “heart” that less talented runners supposedly lack.
I don't know what was stated in deleted posts but posts remaining, no mention of Myrtus Yifter. A lot of what if THIS and what if THAT statements on this thread but I am not reading what IF M Yifter showed up for 5000m. If M Yifter showed up for 5000m, Prefontaine, still no better than 4th place regardless how fast Prefontaine did or did not race from 4700m to 4800m.
Running hard and forcing your competition to work hard to beat you might be great, but it isn’t really “winning” as Gault was using it in his sentence. He clearly used “winning” to mean coming in first place.
If we want to broaden the definition of “winning” to mean something other than coming in first, that’s fine, but then we could find a lot better examples of “winners” then people running around a track for fun.
There’s no need to change the definition of winning. Pre won LOTS of hard-fought, competitive races. He was a winner.
And he won the last race he even ran...just a few hours before his death. Just think about that...how often can this happen? After celebrating with his parents, coaches and friends. Just surreal. Pre lives.
I'm far more impressed with Dave Wottle coming from last to 1st in the 1972 Olympics 800m. Wottle was last at 100m, but he didn't panic. He was last at 500m. It takes a lot of courage to be last in the Olympic final and still have the discipline to run your own race. Wottle won in one of the most epic come-from-behind races in Olympic history. Wottle understood the concept of winning.
Dave Wottle got lucky and ruined American middle distance running for the next 40 years. Heck, I'd argue that result still stains American thought process, based on how often it's touted and the number of ignorant coaches who teach it that way.
In Las Vegas sports betting there is the well known concept of the right side and the wrong side. Lots of guys show up in the community, win early, and squawk. It means absolutely nothing if the games selected are clearly the wrong side. They become a laughingstock even while collecting. Nobody cares about short terms results. Keep applying wrong side variables like giving points with mediocre teams based on current form and you'll leave town broke on a bus.
In that realm everybody understands long term foundational truths, that if you continue to apply methods that defeat the norm by a vital few percent, it turns into a gold mine grind. Volume and an edge. Ceding ground in top company is the wrong side. It will always be the wrong side, regardless of sport or the occasional outlier like Dave Wottle. Wrong side types are forced to rely on outliers because their overall thought process is so screwed up.
Ethiopians and Kenyans in distance running. Yes, there will be flops. Yes, there will be dopers. That is all normal distribution. But if you continually apply right side tactics like sending out waves of your most athletic youth to train at altitude and run fast from the front, that is classic right side. Heroes emerge, ones who never know that Dave Wottle types even exist, far in their wake.
Naturally the doping dunces don't understand as much. I wasn't surprised at all by the identity of one poster in this thread who proclaimed that a sole result is everything, while raving about Dave Wottle. That genius is forced to denounce every front running assembly line right side East African as nothing but a doper, because his lilliputian mind has no concept of defeating norms via volume and edge.
Steve Prefontaine was right side. Dave Wottle was wrong side. If the years had mounted the results would have added clarity. Regardless, the United States has recently and finally emerged from the Wottle malaise with a genius frontrunner like Mu, even as there is still pathetic devotion to Hocker types and the ever-brilliant obsession with closing times.
It's also hilarious that the doping dunces desperately root against Jakob. His tactics are the essence of right side. Make yourself the pacer while scoffing at conventional wisdom.
A gold medal beats 4th place every time. The rest of your post is diarrhoea.
One thing I'm 100 percent sure of -- Jonathan Gault doesn't have an effing clue about the concept of winning. Not even a smidgen about winning. Not even a single molecule in his brain does he know about winning. He's never won anything! He never had the courage to win. Sorry, that's your reality. Guys like him are so far removed from competitive running that he actually believes his own s/hit, and doesn't even understand who Pre was (other than the movies). Pre's entire career was about winning. If he didn't win the race then he was going to be right there in it, and was going to force him competition to extend themselves above and beyond what they had do before to beat him. He was a badass and all of his competition respected him.
Stop posting. This thread is stupid.
So much tongue in cheek and hyperbole in this thread I don’t what is legit and what is satire.
One thing I'm 100 percent sure of -- Jonathan Gault doesn't have an effing clue about the concept of winning. Not even a smidgen about winning. Not even a single molecule in his brain does he know about winning. He's never won anything! He never had the courage to win.
Talented runners love to chalk their running success up to “courage” or “heart” that less talented runners supposedly lack.
This is so true !
And they claim they're successful because they're training hard.