Uceny goes down! Uceny goes down!

no the real mystery is why a genius like you hasn't won several Olympic medals by now

J.R. wrote:

75 seconds the first lap, 2:24 at 800 meters, no wonder she fell again.

I told my friend they were running too slow and that someone would fall.

Why people run so stupidly is a mystery, especially in an Olympic event.

I don't like quitters and this needs to emphasized. If you fall down in a race, you get up and finish. What did Uceny do? She acts like a spoiled brat, punches the track and crys like a baby. You suck it up and finish.

Uceny is a cry baby wrote:

I don't like quitters and this needs to emphasized. If you fall down in a race, you get up and finish. What did Uceny do? She acts like a spoiled brat, punches the track and crys like a baby. You suck it up and finish.

And what would finishing the race have accomplished?

How do you know she was not injured?

How is she spoiled, she worked her ass off to get where she was, won the olympic trials.

People cry sometimes, have you ever cried after the age of 3?

You're an idiot

Moron

Imbecile

Drivel

fu.ck off

idiot

"I don't like quitters and this needs to emphasized. If you fall down in a race, you get up and finish. What did Uceny do? She acts like a spoiled brat, punches the track and crys like a baby. You suck it up and finish." Quote

**********

Well, over the past year she had a lot of time to think about how to react after falling in a championship final. While I would have liked to have seen her bounce right up and try to compete if she wasn't hurt, I also don't think it is a moral victory to hobble in 30 seconds behind everyone to a standing ovation. Indeed, that is kind of pathetic. Might have gotten her a blurb in USA Today, however (snark).

justafan wrote:

Thank god for Rudisha. Finally a track athlete (above 400 meters) who actually competes, pushes the limits, and doesn't tolerate the bullshit games that have been plaguing championship mid-D and Dist racing for too long. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, this Womens 1500- with or without the fall - set a new low for embarrassing competition. How does a fringe sport that loses more fans with each passing year ever hope to regain popularity when it allows the competitors in a championship race to effectively not show up for 75% of the race. The IOC should not award any medals for this race - I'm sure there's some arcane rule about maintaining the integrity of sport and competing in good faith. This was a joke. Who cares is she fell - this wasn't even a race.

I second that. A 75 second opening lap? 4:10 winning time? The entire field should have been DQed for "Incredibly dull non-competition & lack of any entertainment value." What a snooze-fest! As soon as I realized someone fell, I thought "I bet it's Uceny!" The At least that spiced up the insipid coverage for a few minutes.

A fall was Inevitable. I kept saying to my wife that someone is going to go down. I was almost surprised that there was not ore of a pile up. Pathetic run by the field. Uceny was not in a good spot but the Ethiopian moved right suddenly and clipped her. In retrospect, she should have gone for position earlier. I think she waited to save energy and had some really bad luck. Bad race by everyone. Worst 1500 of any Olympics I have seen in 30 years.

justafan wrote:

Thank god for Rudisha. Finally a track athlete (above 400 meters) who actually competes, pushes the limits, and doesn't tolerate the bullshit games that have been plaguing championship mid-D and Dist racing for too long. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, this Womens 1500- with or without the fall - set a new low for embarrassing competition. How does a fringe sport that loses more fans with each passing year ever hope to regain popularity when it allows the competitors in a championship race to effectively not show up for 75% of the race. The IOC should not award any medals for this race - I'm sure there's some arcane rule about maintaining the integrity of sport and competing in good faith. This was a joke. Who cares is she fell - this wasn't even a race.

I second that. A 75 second opening lap? 4:10 winning time? The entire field should have been DQed for "Incredibly dull non-competition & lack of any entertainment value." What a snooze-fest! As soon as I realized someone fell, I thought "I bet it's Uceny!" The At least that spiced up the insipid coverage for a few minutes.[/quote]

I see there are a lot of experts on here tonight.

I have been wondering why the women were so cautious, and I can only guess that the clean athletes were gun-shy about pressing doped-up ringers who can pop 3:57 without breathing hard, and the ringers were happy to jog and sprint to the inevitable result. Doping is eating at the sport not just in results, but in crushing the spirit of clean competition.

This is supposedly the most tested competition in history. We await the final results....

What's with all the people comparing 800 to 1500 race tactics? Have you never noticed that virtually no one wins from the front in the 1500??

Without assigning fault, it was hard to watch how she conducted herself. The next best thing to winning is losing with dignity and grace.

Oldest distance runner trick in the book. YAWWWWN.

i hate to be insensitive, but i agree, she should have gotten up and kept running. she wouldnt really have been that far out of it.

also, you would think after falling once in a big meet you would change your race tactics to create some space.

just saying, i feel like theres a lot she could have done differently both before and after the fall, to help her situation. shes insanely talented but her tactics confuse me? (but what do i know?)

uceny's masculine, tree-trunk legs and broad shoulders are not good for negotiating through traffic. it looks like she tried to squeeze her way outside to take the lead and put it away, and tripped clumsily tripped on the girl in front of her before faceplanting

i feel bad that she failed two years in a row due to poor foot skills

I agree, you have to believe in the sovereignty of God in these moments, that he is in control and has allowed this to happen to you...prepare yourself for what you will do if you can win Gold, but also prepare yourself for what you will do if the worst happens and you are tripped...show the world on the last 300 meters that you could have won gold!

I've never seen a more sanctimonious, rude bunch of finger wagging know-it-alls in my life.

Not Uceney's fault that she fell but it IS her fault how she handled it. Throwing a fricking tantrum on the track . Get the Flop up and finish the galdurn race. Crybabies suck. Never been so embarrassed for one of my countrymen at the Oly's before.

Yeah, anybody who's saying "you don't know what it's like to fall, it takes it out of you" or "what would finishing the race accomplish" blah blah blah, how bout you watch this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO8b-zIKixM

THAT'S what the Olympics is about...not throwing a fit that would put a five year-old to shame. She earned that fall.

Seems like fall-downs and dramatic agony-of-defeat reactions have become a part of the American Women's Distance scene. Just like flexing is part of sprinting but you don't see it from Africans or others who frankly have to go through a lot more just to get to the starting line.

I have to say I wasn't surprised to see it, nor was I surprised to see that her competitors were not having it AT ALL.

I'm sad to see her go down and miss out on something she worked so hard for, but everything about her reaction to adversity (isn't that what sport is for?) is repulsive.

From the temper tantrum to her post-race delusional comments that she somehow had the race in the bag (might the other contenders have something to say about that?)--it all erodes sympathy.

This stuff is a performance: lights, camera, stage, audience equals performance. She chose to to play a very pathetic and self-pitying role.

It's sad really, but I find her self-pity sadder than her interrupted dream. She seemed to see it more as an entitlement than an opportunity anyway. Sadder still what that communicated to those who see her as a role model.

One thing did make me smile: Rowbury's "I heard something go splat," kinda summed it up in a hilariously off-the-cuff and later-adjusted way.

I would not have tried to finish the 1500M either after what happened at Worlds. Just 1 in a million bad luck at the worst possible times. I would have been devistated-- as anyone here would have. Its easy to complain and bash her from behind a keyboard but put in that position, most of us would have reacted like she did.

30:45X-C1978 wrote:

I would not have tried to finish the 1500M either after what happened at Worlds. Just 1 in a million bad luck at the worst possible times. I would have been devistated-- as anyone here would have. Its easy to complain and bash her from behind a keyboard but put in that position, most of us would have reacted like she did.

Actually, no--that reaction is an outlier in high-level sports. For example, people with broken legs continue just because you don't do something 99.9999% of the way and sit out the last .0001%. But it's true that I'm not a female distance runner.

One thing she did that's also unusual but in a classy way is that she didn't try to undermine the race's legitimacy, while not exactly praising it either.