So I'm writing from Serbia where it's 4:15 am. Did this race really happen?
This is quite honestly disgraceful. Not necessarily by them. I get it - they are young. But someone with experience, their agent or coach ,etc. needs to tell them, "This is a bad look. The world needs to be less self-absorbed."
We were told they needed to skip World Indoors as they didn't want to race much so they could get ready for World Outdoors. Instead, they run a mediocre 13:06 on the same day as World Indoors. I mean my god. I used to be a college coach. If they need a hard effort - then a hard 3k at Worlds would have worked perfectly. I don't want to hear a bunch of crap about how the travel would cost them a lot of time - it would have cost them to miss 2 workouts.
And I don't want to hear a bunch of crap about how Teare needs the standard. If he can't hit the standard at Pre, then he shouldn't be considering going to Worlds.
Someone in the comments section of our live podcast asked us what I thought they'd run. I said, "My God, they'd better break 13:00 or I'm irate."
I think another t-shirt needs to be made. "I skipped World Indoors and all I got was this lousy 5k pb."
Weldon is right. When World Athletics issues qualifying standards, the window should only include dates after the end of the indoor season unless the race is run indoors.
inagine writing, “they better get under 13:00 or I’m irate” 5 years ago.
someone write up a list of the sub-13:00 Americans in the last 25 years. It’s only recently more common.
You do realize that with the new spikes you can't compare times from today to the past, right? Add 10 seconds. But even with that those are more than decent times.
I was at Stanford to watch the race. It was fun to see in person.
Kudos to both Cooper and Cole for being super gracious after the race. They spent a ton of time with the fans - high-fiving, signing autographs, taking selfies. They came across as just super nice and down-to-earth. A lot of fans, including me, left with smiles on our faces.
When you say "a lot of fans", what are you talking? Hundreds? Thousands? 10K?
Horrible for the sport but hopefully they gave his spot away to the next best finisher?
Don’t go to qualifying if you aren’t going to run in the worlds. It’s that simple. Cut these prima donna weirdos off at the legs.
What evidence is there that he was trying to qualify for anything. The meet was the national meet. He may just wanted to win an indoor national championship.
They would have been destroyed by Ethipians? Have you been drinking too? Tefera and Lemi don't stand a chance against them. I think one of them would have gotten silver behind Jakob.
Good call. Tefera stinks.
Lol. Tefera only ran just under 3:33. Lucky for him Jakob had covid. But yes, that post is generally correct. Tefera sux as do the other runners there. Hocker would have destroyed tefera.
Barega won the 3000m final just because the race was slow.
If the pace was faster (kind less than 7:32) it's Lamecha Girma that would have won.
I beat my money on this.
Barega is the best tactically by a large margin. It helps to have the engine he has, but he wins races like yesterday's because he strikes at the perfect time. It matters even more indoors on the smaller track.
That being said, I agree with you outdoors that if Girma runs the 5,000 I like his chances for Gold over Barega (and even Cheptegei) in any sort of sub 13:10 race. His explosiveness on his kick is superior to Barega and reminds me of Edris. Ironically, all these guys are training partners (Wale as well). And you thought Bowerman was loaded...
I wouldn’t discount the E that the Brit announcer referred to as “With No Form at All. He out kicked Mo and in the 2017 WC 5k final and also out kicked the field in the 2019 WC final. Last year was not a great year for him. I expect Muktar Edris to rebound this year. The man can sprint at the end of a race.