Bower Man wrote:
What's also impressive is Elise's first win over GDS --and by a good margin.
GDS won Prickly Pear bacin Feor the bruary in 8:38 pr over Cranny in 4th in 8:40pr, so today was probably an off race for Gabriella. Nonetheless, both have bounced around the world --- from Park City to Tokyo to Eugene to Paris -- and Elise is just absorbing all e training/racing/fatigue and keeps getting better.
Based upon what's happened this spring and summer, and with Shelby on the shelf, an argument can be made that Elise is now -- for the moment -- the best of the Bowerman Babes. Karissa's prs are better but Elise beat her at the Trials and Karissa has shut it down for the summer.
Canadian media were saying GDS picked up an injury at Pre; thought she could race through it and give Paris a go but clearly that wasn't the case. She was slated to do the mile in Brussels, presumably Zurich, and was also meant to do 5th Ave, but has called it quits and is apparently already back in Canada. Given her 5km PB, and the fact that she closed that February 8:38 in a 29 last 200, then 8:44 and 2nd last is more than just a bad day. It's by some margin her worst race since she was still in college, so I'm inclined to believe the injury narrative.
I would say Cranny is arguably the most versatile woman at BTC, being top 2 on the team 1500 thru 10,000. Not however the best compared to the rest of the world. 13/15 at the Olympics, vs. Stafford coming 5th in Tokyo, 6th in Doha. Although that 13 was probably an underperformance itself for Cranny, given she needed a ton of medical help for Hyponatremia post 5000 heats in Tokyo.
I'd put Cranny over Stafford in the 5,000 and the 10,000, and Schweizer over them both in the 10,000m, but the Canadian is still in another league at the 1500 and 800. It slipped under the radar a bit, but she ran 3:58 twice in less than 48 hours in Tokyo. In the heats, she led wire to wire, and closed her 4:03 with a 43/59/2:02 last 300/400/800. That kind of close/those performances would have been more than enough for to medal at more than a couple global champs in the past decade. Cranny's 1500m PB from this year is still only 4:02 in an even, rabbited race, and Stafford's 1:58 (beating Rogers and Grace less than a month before trials) this year is no slouch of a time.
I'd put the BTC women's pecking order something like this:
10,000 - Schweizer then Cranny (yes Cranny beat her in February, but she used Schweizer as a rabbit til the last 100m. In the one bona fide race between them at trials Schweizer won comfortably).
5,000 - Cranny, Queen of the middle ground, solid 1500m speed meets great 10,000m strength.
800/1500 - Stafford best over both, Cranny 2nd in the 1500, Johnson 2nd in the 800.