JENNY BARRINGER!!!! JOINS THE SUB 4 RANKS WOW!!!!!!!!!!

the commentators were sleeping, as they do in every distance race, because they know that if they hype American runners (other than Lagat), they'll look foolish. The end of every race is the same, African runners crushing Americans--who fade more and more the last 100m. But this race was different. You could point to how fast the Americans were at 1100m, and they did not do that. But what really made Barringer's race, what separated her from the other Americans, was the last 100m. She ran 14.6 and closed the gap to Burka dramatically. With a better lean, Barringer would have won. And that was not predictable. The race was almost over when it happened. What was inexplicable was that after saying the college record was 4:06, Johnson saw them finish under 4 and said that it was close to the college record. But at that point, the pressure was off and the unexpected had happened, and yet as they saw Barringer reacting to what she had just done, they still did not get it. They did not correct themselves or say, holy crap she just broke the college record by six seconds and moved to #3 performer on the American outdoor lists. This was almost as bad (because a more obscure bit of information was required to recognize the significance) as their failure to adequately cover Dwight Phillips's 28'8" performance. In the latter case, the significance is obvious and I believe that he had two great jumps.