Damn, Grijalva's better than I thought

I hope he can take part in the Olympics under no flag, representing himself or whatever.
We want to see the best athletes. It's not his fault that the government of his country is full of corrupted politicians and people linked to cartel...

I’m old enough to remember when Arturo Barrios held the 10000 WR. Hispanic success in distance running has plenty of precedent. Hopefully more young athletes can see Grijalva’s success and follow in his footsteps.

I said no Mike Smith-coached athlete had broken 13 before, but technically Woody Kincaid ran 12:51 indoors after he had been running in Flagstaff for several months and Mike Smith had been coaching him or advising him for a month or so at the time. But that was an athlete who had been in BTC for many years and broken 13 there, so it was not the same as an NAU athlete doing it. By the way, Grijalva was already a very good prospect in high school in California, when he ran 4:02.64/8:46.68 for the mile and two mile.

That would be tragic if Grijalva can't run at World's or Olympics because of the Guatemala Olympic Committee ban. Ridiculous to ban every athlete for an organizational issue that does not involve systematic doping or cheating. Grijalva's already had to go through this ridiculous effort to be able to run outside the U.S. in past years (easier now, I think) and can't be a citizen of the country he was brought to as a child and has lived all these years. His Spanish isn't even very good. As for the race, almost every athlete could have run significantly faster. They were champing at the bit, 5 to 7 wide at times in the last few laps, all ready to go but not wanting to be drafted off of. Grijalva did take the pace for a few laps around 63 to high 65. I have never seen that many guys running nearly that easy at sub-13 pace before. They needed a Kejelcha to take up the pace after 3k but he wasn't willing and no one else would do it. Woody, by the way, got right up into 3rd or 4th early on to go with the pacers, but he was on the inside and bit by bit through the race was shuffled to the back by people going around him, so I'm not sure that it was his decision to be completely out of the running when the kick came.

I’m sure Luis is happy getting the pro glory and he’s cool with Cooper having had the high school glory

He's developed tremendously well under Mike Smith. Love it.. any more details to their training?

Maybe most importantly, he really seems to be enjoying himself.

He is more American than most Americans

You assume that negatively affected him, but I don’t think there’s enough data to draw a conclusion. Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitched a no-hitter while tripping, so who knows, maybe it actually aided Abdihamid. Will be interesting to see if he adopts that as a regular part of his race plan.

As far as I know it has nothing to do with the world championships. The Olympic committee doesn't pick that team. Its the same in the USA. USATF picks and enters the team for the world champs. The US Olympic committee picks (in theory although they just enter whoever USATF said qualified) and enters the team in the Olympics. So I think he has no problem competing in Budapest just Paris. And I think if he switched countries its too late for him to run for the USA in Paris.

In fairness to Teare, the reason he finished 13th in the first heat in Eugene last year is the same reason Hocker was ousted in the heats at USAs: they were injured. Teare hadn’t run in something like 3 weeks before the heats. Everything about his season prior to Worlds indicated he was WC-finalist caliber. Indoors this year he ran 7:34 in the same race Grijalva clocked 7:33, and then ran 3:52 and it was a disappointment. His 3:32.74 last weekend was a nice PB that was understandably overshadowed since Kessler beat him. So yeah, he can’t be considered as globally competitive at 5k as Grijalva at this point, but it’s not clear he’s all that far behind. Surely I’d expect him to have run sub-13 yesterday, maybe even beating one or more of the other Americans.

If both are healthy and fresh, I think I’d consider Teare and Klecker a wash in a championship style 5k right now. It’s true it would be very tough to finish top-3 against Kincaid, Fisher, Klecker and Nur, but Teare’s in the mix—and I don’t think he’ll need to beat 2 of those guys to make the U.S. team, because he’ll already have qualified in the 1500.

Mike Smith knows what he is doing. Why didn't the Ruppster take more advantage of his coaching relationship? ...seems it was more of an advisory role.

Cuz it'll be a "tactical race" won in 13:42.

he ran 5.02 for the last 2k. that’s just wild.

Yes, I see he is growin out his hair into a Geronimo flow. He had it pinned up, but when he lets it flow it will strike fear into the hearts of his opponents.

S H O E S