American track and field delusions and hypocrisy explained. Here’s how it goes : 1) 90s was full of cheaters and blatant EPO usage. 2) Americans own runners start running out of this world times that El G, Komen, Lagat would have called a great day (3:46 mile, 1:43 800) 3) American runners can’t replicate performances on WC stage and can’t even place top 5 the same exact year 4) “that’s just our guys having a bad day , we’re still clean and making sure to catch all the cheaters.” We’re doing great things for the sport!
So your theory is that he purposely sandbagged the big meets that mattered, but juiced up for the small meets that nobody gave a sh!t about?
Sandbagging means being a slacker and milking out your dominance. Clearly , this would be extremely stupid given all of the money on the line. He had to lay off the juice. And yes, these small meets , while not giving out much money still keep the shoe sponsor money and incentives.
Well first of all this was a high school only race with Sowinski pacing and dropping out. Webb did his at the Pre classic with pros.
It's hard to call this a "high school only race" when a 33-year-old professional pacer leads most of the way. Considering Sowinski's participation, I was a bit shocked that it was labeled a "high school race." I don't know what the rules are these days, but it wasn't long ago that pacing on a track by an individual who was not even eligible to compete in the race was grounds for disqualification.
In any event, Webb's performance was obviously vastly superior by any reasonable measure. But as excited as I was to witness Webb's performance, I really do believe that Ryun's 3:55.3 actual victory over the Olympic champion Peter Snell (as well as the Olympic Silver Medalist and most of the other top U.S. milers, including Jim Grelle) on a dirt track in the 1965 AAU Championship was pretty clearly superior to Webb's fifth-place performance at the Prefontaine Classic in 2001.
(By the way, to correct someone else's comment, three U.S. high-school milers -- Jim Ryun, Tim Danielson, and Marty Liquori -- all broke four minutes in the 1960s. Tim Danielson's life, of course, eventually became a huge tragedy, but I would be surprised if any of these guys ever approaches the careers of Ryun and Liquori.)
Well first of all this was a high school only race with Sowinski pacing and dropping out. Webb did his at the Pre classic with pros.
It's hard to call this a "high school only race" when a 33-year-old professional pacer leads most of the way. Considering Sowinski's participation, I was a bit shocked that it was labeled a "high school race." I don't know what the rules are these days, but it wasn't long ago that pacing on a track by an individual who was not even eligible to compete in the race was grounds for disqualification.
In any event, Webb's performance was obviously vastly superior by any reasonable measure. But as excited as I was to witness Webb's performance, I really do believe that Ryun's 3:55.3 actual victory over the Olympic champion Peter Snell (as well as the Olympic Silver Medalist and most of the other top U.S. milers, including Jim Grelle) on a dirt track in the 1965 AAU Championship was pretty clearly superior to Webb's fifth-place performance at the Prefontaine Classic in 2001.
(By the way, to correct someone else's comment, three U.S. high-school milers -- Jim Ryun, Tim Danielson, and Marty Liquori -- all broke four minutes in the 1960s. Tim Danielson's life, of course, eventually became a huge tragedy, but I would be surprised if any of these guys ever approaches the careers of Ryun and Liquori.)