Normally Weldon and I love the work Jonathan does for us, but after going to bed at 4 am while Jonathan was still working on the 1500 recap, I eagerly got up toa nd read his 1500 recap and was stunned it begins with the following lines:
Gault wrote:
Matthew Centrowitz had four months, thirteen days, and a five-hour weather delay (it was 106 degrees in Eugene today) to make his move on Cole Hocker.
And he still went too early.
What?
This is the perfect example of a writer wanting to craft a nice narrativeeven if the facts don't match up. It's fine. That's fine. Some would say Maclolm Gladwell has made a killing doing that.
But how in the world can anyone watch that race and think that Centro lost because he went too early? Yes, that's what Centro told Jonathan but athletes often don't want to admit the truth to themselves - Centro just got beat. If Centro hadn't gone with 120 to go, his lead would have been smaller. Maybe he would have had a slightly faster final 30 but so what - Hocker still would have beaten him as he would have had less ground to make up.
Hocker made up something like a 5 meter gap for a simple reason - he was flying. He closed in an unofficial 12.2 - that's insane.
https://twitter.com/athletetracking/status/1409380206012354562PS. If you want to analyze what Centrowitz could have done differently to avoid the L, maybe analyze how much extra ground he ran. Hocker, while boxed for vitually the entire race ,ran it almost entirely on the rail save for the final 50% of the final turn. Centro ran a lot of this on the outside of lane 1.
Here is the recap.
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2021/06/duck-duck-goose-cole-hocker-takes-down-matthew-centrowitz-to-win-mens-1500-as-yared-nuguse-grabs-3rd/