Why no love for El Bakkali?

Love, El Bakkali es dominante como El Bekele!

Awesome destruction of Kenyans in this one. Kenyans are done. Love the fact he's destroying E. Africa in the event.

Think you’re being sarcastic but Morocco is now doing a crap-ton of testing due to the increased scrutiny by the AIU.

El Bakkali is great but Girma overthought it or the other way around I don’t know which. He should’ve been looking to be in position to pass on the backstretch or starting the last lap with a surge for the lead. El Bakkali is too good to give a gap too in a slow race

He just sits and kicks every race. I'm not shading the tactics, but as a fan it gets boring if that's all you expect to see. And that's exactly what happened here. After the first 2 laps the race was already boring to me cause they (especially the Ethiopians) didn't make it fast enough to suppress his kick so I already knew he was going to win.

Mo Farah ran 12:53/26:46 in 2011. He won 8 global track medals between that race and the 2017 DL final when he effectively left the track for the roads. His PR's are still 12:53/26:46. It was exciting to see him when all those titles, but he did so much sit and kick and never took any serious attempts at fast times. Farah is a phenominal athlete, but because of this he never really moved the needle for me as a fan. Same for El B.

My apologies, Sir Farah won 10 titles 2011-2017, 5 in the 10k, 5 in the 5k

Do you remember a time when America had perhaps,only,one finalist in the OLympics [it was a sprint event. I forget which one]?

that is the period Jamaica was sweeping races.

WEll, it happens. The uSIS now back….the men.

All Jamaican female sprinters are old…the ones who swept on Sunday.

The uS HAS Young athletes all round.

the same with KEnya.

our best athletes in a generation aged and retired.

we are finding our bearing and soon, we’ll get our groove back.

we needed this.

It’s nothing to cry about.

we’ve had the ride of our [collective] life with those guys. We’ll be back,

My thoughts too. I expected Girma to take it at the curve before the 300m mark. I was shocked.

I think we were all surprised it was so tactical, especially with the way Girma has been casually dispatching fields with sub 8 races. But El Bakkali showed he could beat him at that game so maybe he thought he’d try something different. He still got silver, so maybe not a bad bet

Soufiane El Bakkali and I had breakfast at our motel (yes, motel) this morning and he was kind enough to pose for a photo. Too bad only one person in the whole place recognized him. Now Olympic and two time world champion.

Here is one for you, in the 2015 World Champs in Beijing, the Kenyans had a plan to beat Mo in the 10,000m. They would team up, trade the lead, and run the legs off Mr.Sit-&Kick. The race was at night, but conditions were still warm, and the race was not quite as fast as expected. It was a hard fought battle, but Mo blasted them in the last lap.

So one would think Mo should have been a little tired, and the way to beat him in the upcoming 5000m was with a fast race. But noooo; it turned out be a slow sit-and-kick race, serving up Mo the best possibility for another double-Gold.

What I don’t understand is why a young Kejelcha, who had already run a sub-13 that season, finished with a 13:5x; he didn’t start running fast until the last lap, and was consequently off the podium.

I sometimes wonder how much political subterfuge goes on behind the scenes.

The secret is out

Who recognized him?

Exactly. You'd think a true fan of the sport would understand dominance is cyclical. Kenya has had lean Olympic years in '96, '04 and '12, but always bounced back majorly.

I love you, Soufiane. There, I said it.

Great race from the Olympic and World Champ. The only thing bigger than his kick was the flag he had draped around him during his victory lap.

Swimming in the steeple pit with Girma was epic.

I like El Bakkali, not gonna say love though. He's pretty good. World record good, no, that WR is way out there

There's literally no pace that the ethiopians could have run that would have killed El Bakkali's kick more than it would have killed their own. It's always the same thing when someone wins with a good kick, people say this is the solution, it usually isn't.