Aggie Track Fanatic wrote:
Not her agent, just an (admittedly biased) Aggie track fan who closely follows the program and knows the context of her training and racing much better than most others here. Indeed, I really want to see her stay in college and help A&M win some national titles over the coming years rather than go pro!
At any rate, you seem to be missing the larger relevant context for evaluating her performances and potential in the 800m.
First of all, it's totally irrelevant how well she has run open 200m (which she has not run since HS) and 400m races out of blocks. She's a tall lean athlete who is not good at starting from blocks, and no one uses blocks for the 800 regardless. The only relevant data point is what her top end speed is for 200 or 400 once she's a few steps in. And I guarantee you she can run at least 49 low and sub-23 outdoors when fresh and running from a flying start (again, she's already run 49.52 indoors[!] less than an hour after running an all-out championship 400 individually and she's split under 24 for the first 200 of her 400 even out of blocks).
Clearly, again, she has greater physical tools than any clean 800m athlete in history, and even greater physical tools than many drug cheats. Again, almost all of the top 200/400 runners in the past two decades have come through the NCAA system and run on top 4 x 400m teams (including Miller-Uibo, Richards-Ross, McLaughlin, Okolo, Ellis, and so on) and none of them ever ran an indoor split as fast as Mu.
Second, you keep evaluating her based on what she has run in the early spring as if she was peaking for the Michael Johnson Invite on April 17th rather than for NCAA Outdoors, the US Olympic Trials, and the Olympics in June and July. She ran 1:57.73 in her third collegiate 800, on a miserably cold and windy day, with no one within 3 seconds of her. That performance is worth 1:56 mid on a nice day with good competition. And that's where she's at in mid-April! In a program that has produced numerous NCAA champions in the 800m over the past decade and that knows how to have athletes ready to win or podium in mid-June.
Again, she's not topping out at 1:57.73 even now, let alone in June or July. She will be much closer to 1:54 in about 6-8 weeks time, and the gap you're so focused on will look much more manageable at that point.
But here's the bottom line: you should be able to see the potential (not a guarantee, or even an expectation, but potential) to threaten the WR (or at least Jelimo's dubious 1:54.01) simply from knowing that Mu ran 1:23.57 for 600m indoors as a 16-year old. It is just not that big of a stretch to think she could develop enough to cover another 200m in 30.4 seconds, especially if running outdoors in Monaco in a rabbited race that was set up to maximize her chances.
As I've already said numerous times, no one should expect that she's going to do this or place that pressure on her; but the idea that it's preposterous is simply not credible given all the evidence we have from her performances and development thus far. She's a generational transcendent talent and it's plainly obvious to anyone who really knows the context.
I don't doubt your estimation of her talent, and if she is clean (no one can be guaranteed as clean) she might be one of the best athletes to have run the 800. It certainly isn't a stretch to consider that she may dominate the event over the next few years.
However, to beat the world record she would have to improve by nearly 5 seconds. That's a huge margin in this event. It is a record that has last nearly 4 decades and has resisted every onslaught, including from athletes who would have been doped. It was also accomplished by a runner who was much faster than Mu over the 400 - and who many believe was doped. I don't think that even a gifted athlete like Mu has the potential to knock a doped world mark from the books. Unless she also dopes.