Zach Panning… American Hero

Modern day Beardsley

A lot of respect for him. Gutsy as hell.

Watching Clayton Young shoutout Zach as one of the first things he said in his interview was one of the most wholesome moments I've seen in running.

Hell yea man ran like a savage

I don’t see the heroism in ruining your chance at making the team.

2028? Why wait? There's Worlds in 2025 & 2027.

A Mormon hero for sure

Humble and smart too...

agree about clayton. surprised by it too. his speech on the whole was kind and gracious (esp his mention of chelanga). panning mentioned in his post-race interview that those guys tried to help, but it didn't look that way. i mean i wasnt there but i did watch the race, and what i saw was a guy grinding it out for the majority of the race with those two basically coasting on his heels the whole while. they're obviously in great shape, couldn't they have helped share the lead? leading for that long in arguably the most important race of your life has got to be exhausting. no fan of the byu boys before and this certainly didn't endear them to me.

panning is mormon too?

I think that when Connor and Clayton took the lead around 22-23 they were trying to hype him up to stick on them

i get that. but w 3mi to go when the guy is already showing signs of fade...ok. it's championship racing (with the olympics on the line no less) so i get it, but i thought he had a chance. his run was inspiring

I don't think so.

The guy came to race unlike many and put it out there. Wins respect in my book.

Panning's race reminded me a little of Brian Sell's run in the 2004 trials in Birmingham, which I drove to and watched. Sell faded badly, but there was a while in there where he gave all the better-known guys a big scare.

en.wikipedia.org

Brian Sell

Brian Sell (born April 11, 1978) is a retired American long-distance runner who specialized in various long-distance track events before specializing as a marathoner in his professional career with Hansons-Brooks Distance Pro...

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It made no sense for them to help push the pace if Panning was going to keep doing it. Only top 2 are guaranteed to go to the Olympics so their #1 goal was to be top 2. Why risk taking the lead and then blowing up and missing out on top 2 (or even worse, top 3)? Mantz himself said that he wasn't feeling great the last two miles. I picked Panning to finish third in the prediction contest so I was rooting for him but clearly he pushed a bit too much.

boards seem super choosy about who they criticize for running races in this manner

Why would they have taken the lead from Panning when he was on 2:07 pace in the heat? That was already plenty fast.

Looked more like he came to rabbit… Racing is running to win not to maximize tv time. See the woman’s race for more examples of people pushing early and ruining their chances..