Could Graham Blanks be the next Grant Fisher? What do you all reckon, LRC?
Yes, could be. I was also thinking after the 3000 that Nico Young might be, though. Grant was an all-timer HS talent that won a single NCAA title despite a lot of good runs in college — Nico may be in that zone as well, and that 7:37 / 13:22 double was mighty impressive.
I don’t think this is a well thought out argument. Nico is training at altitude with one of the best coaches in the country at a not particularly academically testing school. what area of his life is not already optimized for running. Fisher and Blanks essentially trained at sea level at academically rigorous schools. It seems to me that Fisher and Blanks are much much more like Nuguse who points out that one of the biggest factors for his improvement as a pro after he left notre dame was moving to train at altitude with a good coach and shedding the volume of hours of heavy academic load which he could shift to recovery.
Yes, could be. I was also thinking after the 3000 that Nico Young might be, though. Grant was an all-timer HS talent that won a single NCAA title despite a lot of good runs in college — Nico may be in that zone as well, and that 7:37 / 13:22 double was mighty impressive.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. The parallels almost go a bit further, too. Grant's only NCAA title was the 5000m his sophomore year. Nico's sophomore year, he came 3rd in the 5000m behind 2 covid seniors. But yeah, both HS phenoms, really good college runners, aerobic machines, but struggled to get the big win.
What sets Blanks apart from the other distance greats is that he wasn't a HS phenom. Fisher, Ritz, Rupp, and pretty much all the other American NCAA greats were big HS names. Even when he ran 13:27 during a gap year, he barely got any attention. Part of that was due to Covid, and part of it (imo) was the fixation everyone had on Newbury Park/Nico. For as much as people say "The phenoms burn out/They're training too hard too young/Save it for college/etc", most of our best runners were phenoms. Rupp, Centro, Jager, Fisher, Brazier, Ritz, Webb, Hall, Solinsky, Hocker, etc.
So he's really flown under the radar until very recently. He's definitely one of the best in the country now, though. I think the best comparison we're gonna have is Abdi Nur. Nur ran 13:06 in March and made the World team that summer. He didn't win XC, won the 3k/5k double indoors, got food poisoning before the 10k and came 3rd outdoors. Blanks won XC, ran 13:03 in December (with a kick), and is shooting for the team. If Blanks wins the 3k/5k indoors, or the 5k/10k outdoors, I think he makes the Olympic team. If you can't dominate the NCAA, you can't make the Olympic team. The field is gonna be too stacked.
No these guys are not close to Fisher. Before you all freak out, yes I know they have significantly better PR's and have won NCAA titles. However, the difference is in the training. Blanks is already running 100 miles a week @ 6 min pace, compare that to Fisher who was running 60/70 miles in college. The reason Grant got way better is his training got significantly harder. The question is how much more can Blanks do??
Could Graham Blanks be the next Grant Fisher? What do you all reckon, LRC?
Yes, could be. I was also thinking after the 3000 that Nico Young might be, though. Grant was an all-timer HS talent that won a single NCAA title despite a lot of good runs in college — Nico may be in that zone as well, and that 7:37 / 13:22 double was mighty impressive.
The Fisher Blanks comparison may be apt. Blanks was running super low mileage in HS and had barely reached puberty when he graduated, so he was not ready to be a HS phenom. Honestly though, it’s Nuguse who is far and away the US distance talent. He’s on the threshold of breaking historic world records and taking down Jakob after training like a pro for less than 2 years.
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