Iowa State Meet: Runner gets shoved and falls badly in 800, then wins 1600 in 4:07 and is granted solo 800 rerun (video)

What's the backstory here that we are missing? These two have had a run-in before, I'm sure. Heidesch's bump was intentional. The normal reaction to that would have been of surprise unless something like this has happened before. To just completely lay him out suggests that Smith has had run-ins with Heidesch before or Heidesch has a reputation for such crap.

The Heidesch and the Iowa City kid rarely race. Iowa City doesn't compete with Dowling, outside of Drake and State...and Heidesch is relatively new to running the 800, so I don't think there's a backstory. From what I gather, they are friends.

Yes. This wasn’t merely “rubbing shoulders” as you tried to describe it.

Competition? Heidesch finished 3rd in 3200, 4th in 800, 2nd in 4x8, and 18th in 1600 at Drake. He finished 8th in the 3200 at this meet which was his only event prior to the 800. So hadn't won a race all year that had top competition in it.

Eh, I think stuff like that happens almost every high school race. To make it seem like cutting in a little too quickly is something uncommon in a high school race, especially an 800 with 12 kids in it, is being disingenuous. He deserved a nice shove to the back, to let him know, "Hey, get over," but a DQ? No? Multiple punches to the back? No.

B10 dude, I was talking about races outside of Drake and State, which is 90 percent of the meets he goes to. Most of those aren't going to be competitive enough where the beginning of the race is going to have a bunch of jockeying for position.

No different for anyone else in the race. They all are the best runners in the state. Heidesch lost as many races as he won on the year.

Regardless, these are kids, and they will make some errors in how they negotiate the race sometimes. My point is that these kids aren't experts in racing tactics by any means. Acting like cutting in a bit early in an 800 is uncommon and an "egregious" act is just plain dumb. People who watch that and think he did it on purpose...he came around the curve, knew he was allowed to cut in, and did so, thinking he had space. He cut in too soon and bumped the Iowa City kid. He didn't "body check" him, as some have said. I think you'd be DQ'ing kids in every race if you found that to be too much, given it didn't cause a fall and came in the early portions of the race, so it wasn't having a direct impact on the finish. Punching someone after being cut off, though, is definitely going too far.

He caused the other kid to step on the rail. that is very dangerous.

At this point in the race (before the Dowling sprinter randomly decided to become the fastest 100+200 runner in Iowa history) this race was likely to determine the team championship. The Dowling kid absolutely new where Ammon was, and was trying to cut him off without being too obvious. Ammon likely overreacted and perceived it as intentional, since at this point in the meet the team scores were tied. Literally track and field at its best.

Complete BS. I just watched the video again. He was shoulder to shoulder when he initiated contact, no way does he think he has position, and he is clearly doing it on purpose because the angle of his body shows he was preparing for contact. If he was close enough to get punched in the head, he wasn't in position to cut in.

I can get behind this. You can look at how collegiate and even pro athletes manage the cut-in on an indoor 400m -- even they sometimes look like they have no idea how to handle it.

Meet management absolutely should not have had 12 athletes in the final, either. That's dumb.

Tall kid flopped like a sissy. Definitely deserved it, trying to purposely run someone off the track deserves instant consequences.

The other kid just reacted in the heat of the moment with adrenaline pumping. Have you ever had someone push you off the road before? It'd be understandable for you to an angry reaction and defend yourself.

Basically, I applaud the short guy for not allowing himself to be bullied by that dweeb.

It wasn’t merely “cutting in early” or “rubbing shoulders” despite how many times you frame it as such. This is a running message board so you can’t pull the wool over an 800m runner/coach’s eyes by claiming this happens in almost all high school records. This went beyond that and warranted disqualification.

The problem is that they refused to review any video. Everything looks different live. The official put the white flag up but the head official talked to the Dowling coach and ended up making this decision. I thought it was clean when I saw it live but I would have DQed Heidesch after watching the video. I think his coach should have watched the video prior to the rerun and declined the race which would have been the end of it. Dowling easily won the meet so there was no point in running the solo race. The 3rd place runner was impacted by having to jump over Heidesch and then Heidesch ended up pushing him to 4th after the rerun.

Why can't they be civilized?

Putting the video on 1/4 speed makes it easier to see what happened.

Heidesch is going for sub 4 tonight.