Grand Slam Men's Long Distance DISGRACE

Fan Out West/ wrote:

Correct.

Maybe dunking on Grant for not attempting to win is warranted, but criticism needs to be directed at Cooper & Dylan for doing the same. These three beat everyone else on Friday, so why not try to stay close -- could anyone have beaten Bekele if they would have least made the attempt?

Since the long distance group is presumably drawn from steeplers, 5000 and 10,000 specialists -- and they have to double within a 3-day window in heat & humidity -- I would much prefer to see what they can do in the 1500 & 3000 rather than their specialties. If the 1500 comes first, a day off will be plenty of time to be fresh for the 3000. Which might put them in the mindset to go all-out in the latter race vs. running for place/$ as we saw today.

Lesson Learned: either ditch the double for the distance group, or change the 5000 to the 1500 or even 2000.

Fan Out West/ wrote:

we_are_cooked wrote:

What about Cooper Teare, Dylan Jacobs, Ronald Kwemoi, CPT....?? Also Fisher put himself in a position where he HAD to win. Could've made it a race and then been able to get top 3. If Teare had nipped him at the line he would've looked like the world's biggest idiot.

Correct.

Maybe dunking on Grant for not attempting to win is warranted, but criticism needs to be directed at Cooper & Dylan for doing the same. These three beat everyone else on Friday, so why not try to stay close -- could anyone have beaten Bekele if they would have least made the attempt?

Since the long distance group is presumably drawn from steeplers, 5000 and 10,000 specialists -- and they have to double within a 3-day window in heat & humidity -- I would much prefer to see what they can do in the 1500 & 3000 rather than their specialties. If the 1500 comes first, a day off will be plenty of time to be fresh for the 3000. Which might put them in the mindset to go all-out in the latter race vs. running for place/$ as we saw today.

Lesson Learned: either ditch the double for the distance group, or change the 5000 to the 1500 or even 2000.

high school xc coach wrote:

Fan Out West/ wrote:

Correct.

Maybe dunking on Grant for not attempting to win is warranted, but criticism needs to be directed at Cooper & Dylan for doing the same. These three beat everyone else on Friday, so why not try to stay close -- could anyone have beaten Bekele if they would have least made the attempt?

Since the long distance group is presumably drawn from steeplers, 5000 and 10,000 specialists -- and they have to double within a 3-day window in heat & humidity -- I would much prefer to see what they can do in the 1500 & 3000 rather than their specialties. If the 1500 comes first, a day off will be plenty of time to be fresh for the 3000. Which might put them in the mindset to go all-out in the latter race vs. running for place/$ as we saw today.

Lesson Learned: either ditch the double for the distance group, or change the 5000 to the 1500 or even 2000.

it 100% should be either 15/5 or 15/3.

I'd say 15/5, just to give the truly distance oriented runners a fair shake.

we_are_cooked wrote:

First you embarrass the sport with a time that wouldn't win high school nationals. Then you LET GEBRIWHET RUN AWAY? I understand Fisher mathematically doesn't need to beat them but there are MULTIPLE men who didn't even attempt to run with him. I'm watching a stadium of fourteen total spectators and Gebriwhet is running alone while the Americans JOG for THIRD PLACE. No wonder no one wants to watch this sport. It's a race! F*cking race! For christ sakes. I want to know what was going through the mind of the guys who decided to let two guys get over 150m on them in less than 4 minutes. This made me (a diehard fan) want to turn the TV off, throw it out my window, and pray that it hit someone on the way down.

Prefontaine is rolling in his grave right now. I'd rather watch professional jigsaw puzzle contests than another second of this stupid track meet. Michael Johnson spent too much time getting 100K prizes for running 14:40 and forgot to get 100 people in the stands. Every Diamond League in existence (even the covid ones) have had more people in attendance than Grand Slam. Next Slam I'd love to see Kyle Merber vs. Michael Johnson in an ego inflation contest. It'll be a guaranteed world record.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

we_are_cooked wrote:

First you embarrass the sport with a time that wouldn't win high school nationals. Then you LET GEBRIWHET RUN AWAY? I understand Fisher mathematically doesn't need to beat them but there are MULTIPLE men who didn't even attempt to run with him. I'm watching a stadium of fourteen total spectators and Gebriwhet is running alone while the Americans JOG for THIRD PLACE. No wonder no one wants to watch this sport. It's a race! F*cking race! For christ sakes. I want to know what was going through the mind of the guys who decided to let two guys get over 150m on them in less than 4 minutes. This made me (a diehard fan) want to turn the TV off, throw it out my window, and pray that it hit someone on the way down.

Prefontaine is rolling in his grave right now. I'd rather watch professional jigsaw puzzle contests than another second of this stupid track meet. Michael Johnson spent too much time getting 100K prizes for running 14:40 and forgot to get 100 people in the stands. Every Diamond League in existence (even the covid ones) have had more people in attendance than Grand Slam. Next Slam I'd love to see Kyle Merber vs. Michael Johnson in an ego inflation contest. It'll be a guaranteed world record.

Just put this on the day 3 thread - you fix what happened today if you give in and concede that performances (by way of times) matter. If the "100k" was decided by combined time across both races, today would have been awesome. Gebrhiwet would have had to beat Fisher by 1.07 seconds and Fisher would have had to defend that. So the whole race would have been HG trying to break Fisher and Fisher obviously not allowing him to jog in the final 100m of an international, pro track race in 17.1 seconds and win by 60m.

Anybody got a better suggestion than that? Love to hear the problem-solving.

Still interesting wrote:

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Just put this on the day 3 thread - you fix what happened today if you give in and concede that performances (by way of times) matter. If the "100k" was decided by combined time across both races, today would have been awesome. Gebrhiwet would have had to beat Fisher by 1.07 seconds and Fisher would have had to defend that. So the whole race would have been HG trying to break Fisher and Fisher obviously not allowing him to jog in the final 100m of an international, pro track race in 17.1 seconds and win by 60m.

Anybody got a better suggestion than that? Love to hear the problem-solving.

You can’t do a simple adding the times. You have to prorate them to make the distances equal. You could maybe combine the world athletic points of both races. It is antithetical to racing though.

My take, which people here will hate, is that the race within the race is still compelling. It is like the decathlon where the winner of the 1500 maybe is less compelling than 1 and 2 back in the pack battling for the final points in the over all. People here are too caught up in fast times versus racing.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

Explain why you would need to prorate them to make the distances equal? I get why you would potentially need to do this if you were comparing a 100 to a 400, but considering that at the end of a 3000 or 5000 the guys are running approximately the same speeds (let's 54.0 in a tactical race give or take) and the winning "gaps" are essentially the same, why is "prorating" necessary?

I'm not caught up in fast times at all. Hagos could have won that 3000m today in 7.50 - I couldn't care less. What I thought was a mockery was Grant Fisher being able to let him win by the length of the straight and that actively running for a minor placing was enough to "win". If Hagos won in 7.50 but Fisher had to be right there fighting to stay within 5 meters of him that would have been really interesting and exciting.