This is Bol's fault for crushing the 500m WR. That has nothing to do with skin color. No one with two objective eyes would not see that door opening. Britton Wilson also opened a door towards the 800 as well last week with her 600m CR (but she has many years of development in the 400H yet).
Keep your racist ideology out of this.
I care not a whit for race in this matter. I'm simply observing a LR tendency. It's not an absolute one - as I said, it sometimes works the other way racially, as in the few whackos who think J.Fahn should abandon the short sprints for the 400.
Bol crushed the 500 meter world record. That's 100 meters longer than the 400 and 300 meters shorter than the 800; what makes it so obvious that the "door opening" is the longer open event, rather than the closer-in-distance open event she just won at Euros in August?
If people are lobbying for a Fahnbulleh 400 it is because he closes the 100/200 like a freight train. It is unlikely he will ever have the start needed for a 100 gold; 200 might be doable. 400 is huge ??? Can he have Kerley-like range?
The Bol 800 argument has been well-discussed upthread if you really want to know what that is about. No 800 coach would fail to see her potential there.
No. You just disagree with a few posters who think she would be good at 800. 9 out of 10 don't think she woukd be good at it. You ha e the tendency to focus on the few rather than the many when the few disagree. It is human nature. I think she would be great at 800. I think Tuohy should focus on the mile. I thought Kerly should move down in distance.
With low 23 speed, sub 50 at 400m, 52 flat at 400mH, and 1:05.63 - yes she could run 1:56 and perhaps faster with some experience. She is a top 400mH and has some performance indicators that show she could be a 400mH / 800m runner like Harald Schmid was.
Schmid ran 1:44.x twice which was national class in late 1980s Germany but he would probably not have reached an international final in the 800m.
1:56 for women is more like 1:42 for men. Femke Bol being as good as Schmid in the 800m would definitely not mean her being a world class 800m runner. It would mean around 1:58.x with a decent finale (but very slim medal) chance but we don't know how good she could handle running without lanes and using tactics/positioning, usually essential for reaching finals.
Or maybe I should say "world class" in the sense of qualifying for Olympics, yes, but not nearly as good as in the 400m hurdles and not a likely medal candidate in the 800m.
It's hard to say. You may be right and I also don't see her going to the 800m. She does have times which would indicate she could run well at 800m. Potential and achieving the results are two different things. As long as the top 800m runners hang around with times around 1:57 she may take a look at 800m. She is a young talent and I wouldn't put a limit on what she may be able to achieve. Definitely a great runner.
It’s because Dobek was never a 400m or 400mh runner to begin with. His 46.xx and 48.40 is eons back from what is considered the top of the food chain. He made the right choice because he was never getting anywhere near medals in those events. Christ Sydney would be right on his heels almost in a bad race for Dobek. If he was winning medals in the 400mh and then moved up and won one in the 800m, then maybe I would approach the situation differently but so far I haven’t seen any major correlation that’s any different from any other 400m specialist.
Dobek is an 800m runner who messed around with hurdles for too long.
femke Bol is a 400m runner, who could use better technique to bring her 400mh time down some more. She’s not going to jump in the 800m and win anything important not run any great times. Sub -2:00 would be a great accomplishment.
It’s because Dobek was never a 400m or 400mh runner to begin with.
So by your logic, someone like Rai Benjamin who is faster at 200 and better at the 400H would be worse at 800m than Dobek? By being a worse athlete than Karsten Warholm, Dobek is a better 800m runner? Wouldn't Warholm kill him over 800m? He beat at everything else including tetherball.
Maybe you are right though. And sadly, we will never know because people fear the 800m and refuse to even run one. All I am saying is that I love the 800m and wish more people would run it! We could see so many weird match-ups!
Long live the 800m! (Despite being the weakest of all events right now.)
I’m not seeing the connection, and because there isn’t any. Rai Benjamin and warholm would get whooped by Dobek in an 800m. But both of those guy would kill him in a 400m flat probably by at least two seconds. Dobek doesn’t hav me the basic speed to compete with those guys in those events, but what he does have is a unique ability to run 800m. Which should have been his event from the get go. Again, back to my main point is that 800m requires a unique specialization. You can run “good times” being a hybrid athlete, but usually your talent leans towards one or the other, let’s not fool ourselves. Bol knows better, that’s why she said in that interview the 800m is too long for her. Any pure 800m runner will also say the same thing about the mile, or anything above 800m for that matter. Any one in tune with their bodies at that level knows what they can tolerate.
I don't actually disagree. The 800 is the weird "ugly duckling" of running. Mid-distance runners and distance runners can't really dominate it. The best milers are rarely also the best 800m runners. You are right. And you are certainly right that the sprinters are terrible 800m runners. Fair enough.
That said, there are people who have been good at an "800-something" double. I just assume that mutants like Bol, Mu, Warholm, etc. could be one of those exceptional athletes.
Edwin Moses was the most dominant 400 hurdler of all time (Sydney will surpass him eventually). He ran an 800 in 1983 in 1:48.98. At that summer's world championships, only one guy in the final ran slower than 1:46. Moses would have been SMOKED. Instead, he toasted the field by over a second in winning the gold medal in the 400 hurdles.
Edwin Moses was the most dominant 400 hurdler of all time (Sydney will surpass him eventually). He ran an 800 in 1983 in 1:48.98. At that summer's world championships, only one guy in the final ran slower than 1:46. Moses would have been SMOKED. Instead, he toasted the field by over a second in winning the gold medal in the 400 hurdles.
Thank you for providing anecdotal evidence for why Sydney should not move from the 400H to 800m.
It's again (although admittedly Bol is a more plausible case than Bolt or Wariner) the idea that athletes better at shorter distances are in some absolute sense "better" and only the weak ones "move up", so if the faster in the shorter distance would hypothetically move up, they would run fantastic times. But this is just not true in general, especially not between 400 and 800m. There were some cases, but not many.
And we know fairly well why it is different in 1500m up. 1500m is already so aerobic that there is a good chance that a (say in youth) better 1500m runner will also be a better 5000m or 10000m runner, once they are moving up because they have better basic speed and similarly good aerobic abilities as the slower runner mainly doing 5k and longer. It's still not a general rule but there is some justification to it in 1500/mile -> longer track. But neither in 100 -> 400m nor in 400 -> 800m.
With low 23 speed, sub 50 at 400m, 52 flat at 400mH, and 1:05.63 - yes she could run 1:56 and perhaps faster with some experience. She is a top 400mH and has some performance indicators that show she could be a 400mH / 800m runner like Harald Schmid was.
She is better than 'low 23 speed': her PB from last season (where she only ran two outdoor 200s, at the NC's) is 23.00 with a -1.7 wind. That's around 22.84 with no wind.
This winter she looked good in speed sessions, only a stride behind Kielbasinska in their 4 x100 session (the Pole has a 100m PB of 11.22 from last season)
I think Bol will officially go sub 23 this summer, no question.
That's the split I was referring to in my post; Bol ran 48.52 on the anchor, despite starting off in lane 3 and running wide for half the second bend. Note Klaver also ran a 49.2 leg:
The Dutch splits from Munich:
Eveline Saalberg (51.9); Lieke Klaver (49.2) Lisanne de Witte (51.26) Femke Bol (48.52).
Bol also ran 48.9 in the mixed relay in Eugene, as well as 48.9 in Tokyo. She also ran a 49.99 split indoors in Tourn in 2021.
That's the split I was referring to in my post; Bol ran 48.52 on the anchor, despite starting off in lane 3 and running wide for half the second bend. Note Klaver also ran a 49.2 leg:
The Dutch splits from Munich:
Eveline Saalberg (51.9); Lieke Klaver (49.2) Lisanne de Witte (51.26) Femke Bol (48.52).
Bol also ran 48.9 in the mixed relay in Eugene, as well as 48.9 in Tokyo. She also ran a 49.99 split indoors in Tourn in 2021.
Thanks for finding those splits; they were not given in the Euro results. Where did you locate them?
That's the split I was referring to in my post; Bol ran 48.52 on the anchor, despite starting off in lane 3 and running wide for half the second bend. Note Klaver also ran a 49.2 leg:
The Dutch splits from Munich:
Eveline Saalberg (51.9); Lieke Klaver (49.2) Lisanne de Witte (51.26) Femke Bol (48.52).
Bol also ran 48.9 in the mixed relay in Eugene, as well as 48.9 in Tokyo. She also ran a 49.99 split indoors in Tourn in 2021.
Thanks for finding those splits; they were not given in the Euro results. Where did you locate them?
They were initially publicized at the time on the official live results, but you can find them on the alltime-athletics.com website maintained by Peter Larsson. He takes official splits, but when he gets chance, also does his own split analysis, as well as use Pierre-Jean Vazel's analysis (French coach to some French throwers, previously he coached Nigeria's Fasuba & France's Arron. He's a pretty renowned analysts & statistician too)
