Pete Julian the genius coach - Brazier has a broken foot...

an injury or illness is the only thing that could really explain what we witnessed last night. lets not forget how jenkins just dropped out of the 10k too. very poor showing so far, but im really pulling for craig and in general am big fans of these guys so gutted for eric and donavan.

Craig Engels Instagram story seems to indicate that Brazier is injured and based on what I saw in that race he is injured. A 1:42 world champ does not blow up like that if they are healthy.

Tar Heel Runner wrote:

Craig Engels Instagram story seems to indicate that Brazier is injured and based on what I saw in that race he is injured. A 1:42 world champ does not blow up like that if they are healthy.

He also looked like he was limping down the homestretch. But he was walking fine after the race.

I believe the stress fracture story.

He was clearly healthy enough to run decently well throughout the trials, so why not at least try I guess. The Olympics only come once every 4 years, or 5 years in this case.

Let it Rupp wrote:

He was clearly healthy enough to run decently well throughout the trials, so why not at least try I guess. The Olympics only come once every 4 years, or 5 years in this case.

He's lucky that the next ones are only 3 years away. He might get another shot while in his prime.

I don’t doubt it. It would make sense as to why his form doesn’t look as fluid this year.

Even with his slower times this year he should have been a lock for the team. It’s normal for brazier to make a big move 400-600 so something is clearly quite wrong.

I hope the best for him. Guy is seriously one of my idols. Hopefully he can get back in the right mindset and come back stronger than ever.

Would certainly explain some stuff. Thanks for sharing.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Maybe the Brojos can swing their figurative dongs and try and get a response from Peter J to confirm this but there you have it - poor dude was running on a broken foot. Massive bummer

You think they'll try and confirm a LRC forum post rumour? Doubtful.

I'll add fuel to the speculative fire and also note that he seemed to be running in different spikes than he has been previously. I couldn't quite tell what they were but they were certainly not Dragonflies or Victories and could've been a pair selected because of his foot issues.

Are you all too young to remember Holman or Webb or Favor? All 3 could run a world leading time one week and then get 8th in a high stress race a week later.

Roflcopter wrote:

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Maybe the Brojos can swing their figurative dongs and try and get a response from Peter J to confirm this but there you have it - poor dude was running on a broken foot. Massive bummer

You think they'll try and confirm a LRC forum post rumour? Doubtful.

They did with (just an example) the DeGrasse situation back in 2017. So yeah, I do and I think they will. Nice try pal.

crisscrosscountry wrote:

I'll add fuel to the speculative fire and also note that he seemed to be running in different spikes than he has been previously. I couldn't quite tell what they were but they were certainly not Dragonflies or Victories and could've been a pair selected because of his foot issues.

He was wearing white Nike Zoom JA Fly (sprint spikes) in the final but wore orange Dragonflies in the semis

Brazier clearly wasn't himself and the hitch in his stride was present in both the semifinal and final. A stress fracture in the foot would make sense. Makes me respect the guy even more that he gutted it out and tried to make the Olympic team. That's how much it meant to him.

Julian clearly isn't working for middle distance runners. Brazier ran 1:43.55 while still in college, so Julian has effectively improved his best time by 1.2 second in 5 years and gotten Brazier injured a lot. I think that Brazier needs to take a page out of Clayton Murphy's book and go back to his college coaches in Francique and Henry (Hoppel has also never left his college coach). He has to see that they just developed another world class 800 meter runner in Athing Mu.

Should’ve gone old school with the Jasari or the Eldoret. Kipketer style.

Braziers an awesome runner. Like someone else posted, “you don’t run 1:42 by accident.”

Good luck to him. He’ll be back.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Well sure, but there is a difference between a guy a step behind because he is rounding into form and someone visibly under duress which is what Brazier has looked like all summer.

To be fair to Donovan, Summer had only been on for 21 hours when he ran the final.

He did not lose this race because of a foot injury, at least not directly, he lost it because he ran a dumb race and could not handle the pace set by Jewett through 600 in the 95 degree heat. Honestly, at the end he had the look of our hs runners at the end of a hard race, not the look of a world champion. Whether or not an injury this year drastically impacted his prep and led to this disaster, that is certainly plausible. He may be too cool to say this and may be asking others to keep it to themselves. This is the sort of information best released after he wins the next WC or the gold in Paris.

It’s not a stress fracture from what I heard. Basically he needs to have arthroscopic surgery on his ankle. Thankfully that’s a pretty quick surgery to recover from.

migroc wrote:

Tar Heel Runner wrote:

Craig Engels Instagram story seems to indicate that Brazier is injured and based on what I saw in that race he is injured. A 1:42 world champ does not blow up like that if they are healthy.

He also looked like he was limping down the homestretch. But he was walking fine after the race.

I believe the stress fracture story.

^^^^This!^^^^

I am certainly no expert , but have run and watched more than my share of races over the last nearly 50 years of running.

I thought the same thing too that he was slightly limping (or at least favoring one foot) over the last 200m.

Wise Old Man wrote:

He did not lose this race because of a foot injury, at least not directly, he lost it because he ran a dumb race and could not handle the pace set by Jewett through 600 in the 95 degree heat. Honestly, at the end he had the look of our hs runners at the end of a hard race, not the look of a world champion. Whether or not an injury this year drastically impacted his prep and led to this disaster, that is certainly plausible. He may be too cool to say this and may be asking others to keep it to themselves. This is the sort of information best released after he wins the next WC or the gold in Paris.

I am in awe of the fact that you found his tactics to be dumb. You must be truly wise! Do you have discounts for seniors? I'm assuming you are expensive since you probably only work with world class pros.