I have got an absolute beauty.
The 1500m WR is not actually El G's 3.26.00 from 1998, but his 3.26.12 from 2001. The details....
So over the years I have heard rumors/been told by multiple and non-connected sources that something went wrong in Rome that night with the timing and that a hand-timed mark was used as an electronic one. Now in reality that makes no difference to him breaking the WR because even if it was a HT mark it's way under the 3.27.37 of Morceli which was the record at the time, but I don't know if/how the IAAF would have gone about that because you can't just void the performance/discount it because it's not electronically timed - at the same time it's quite embarrassing to have your 1500m mark with basically an asterisk of being hand timed. What I heard was that there was an issue at the end of the race specifically with the clock not stopping/the photo timing not being triggered.
So the theory/possibility that the electronic timing malfunctioned in some way is in itself not that crazy. Sh-t like this does happen - I have raced at meets and even in races where we were told after the meet that there was a timing issue and we were given hand times. It's actually incredible that it doesn't happen more often. I think it's definitely plausible given the following...
The first thing that is odd and frustrating is that there is no timer/clock shown on the screen and this is directly mentioned as a "technical problem" by channel 4 (UK) commentary team featuring Iain Hodge and Steve Cram. So as he's blazing round this oval we have no context of where he is relative to the clock at any point. There are numerous commentary feeds that are giving us info - the channel 4 feed with Cram trackside has the pacers at just over 54 through 400 (El G mid to high 54), and 1.50.8 through 800 (he gets a little closer so maybe 1.51.1'ish). With 200 to go they state he needs a 54.6 to break it so given the record was 3.27.37 he must have been at the bell somewhere around 2.32.7. On another commentary feed Peter Matthews is with Ovett and says the same thing - 54.4 to break the record and Ovett gives us the stadium clock split of 2.46.34 at 1200m.
All of these seem pretty accurate and reasonable especially lining up the 1100 and 1200 splits. A 13.6 100m split from the bell to the 1200m mark (54.4 pace) is right in line with that.
But this is where it gets weird and it was an interaction on this messageboard a while ago that made me revisit and think about this. There was mention about the legendary 39.66 final 300m of El G and this guy was like "there is no way he ran that fast - it was in the low 40's - you can time it" to which I initially called him crazy. Because Ovett calls the 1200m split and well, 3.26.00-2.46.34 = 39.66 so how is it possible he runs anything but that. That is unless the finishing time is not 3.26.00.
When I thought about though I was like - that is an insane finish for a race this fast and one that El G was never able to replicate (and honestly even come close to replicating). That would also mean he ran a 53.3 final lap which I have to admit seems crazy. The lack of on-screen clock is maddening because we could solve this all with the real-time data feedback. Even more annoying is that they do these weird camera close-ups on El G through the bell and with 300 to go so timing it with your stopwatch is hard. However on some of the better quality feeds you do see him passing the 300 to go point on the closeup and you can do the old "pause and start" method to get an idea (he's right in the front of the picture with a white "BNL" advertising hoarding). I have sat there and timed this multiple times from a paused video, trying to catch the moment as he's moving, even using an onscreen timer synced to the video on VLC media player, and I have to be honest, not once did I ever record him running 40.0 seconds for that final 300. I got, drumroll, almost every time in the 40.1-40.2 range. It's the same with the final 400m - we get this front on shot as these come through but you can start a stopwatch to get an approximate time (though obviously not perfect) - and again, I am always under 54.0 seconds, but more in the 53.7/8 range than I am in the 53.3 range - all of it adding up except for the credited finishing time.
Going back to the commentary with Steve Cram trackside. These are his exact words as he enters the final 10m of the race are
"the clock stopping now....three twenty-seven, three twenty six(?), it must be the clock hasn't stopped I reckon that's a new world record for El Guerrouj...."
And this is odd because all stadium clocks, and 1998 is not far enough back this wasn't the case, stopped for the winning time and would display the winning time on the bottom of the trackside clock with the running clock continuing on top of it. As we know from Steve Cram, this didn't happen.
When I combine this together from what I have heard anecdotally, it seems to support the theory that maybe something went wrong and because of the performance being so good, they had no option but to stick with the old stopwatch time. Now, this being said. I don't think this counts as a conspiracy per se - that would mean people had conspired in private before the race to make sure the record happened anyway and actually the record did happen because irrespective of anything weird he was definitely under Morcelis mark. But it's also more potentially believable he went from 3.28.91 to say 3.26.4 from 97 to 98 and then down to 3.26.1 in 2001.
This is the Hodge/Cram channel 4 commentary feed
This is the Matthews/Ovett commentary feed (final 450m)
I honestly don't know what exactly I believe here (did he run 3.26.00 or was it more like 3.26.4/5) but it's something I have heard about over the years and seen for myself with the footage etc. Definitely a great "Running Conspiracy"
