I love watching her lose because I can’t stand seeing Ritz’s head swell any further as he pretends he has anything to do with her success.
Yet he still managed to pop up in the finish zone laughing and smiling with race royalty. It's a good life if you can make it.
As for Obiri - classic Frog-in-a-Blender. What's genuinely impressive is how despite her upper body with all that wasted movement and energy, she has been so good and successful. You wonder if she would also be down in that sub 2.15 club if she had ever wanted to clean this up.
Her vs Hassan in an upper body battle is like watching hand to hand combat - elbows, forearms, flat palms flying all over the place.
And yet time and again the people whose form is 'bad' i.e., Obiri Hassan are the ones on the podium
Obiri with her 64pb will likely end up a 2.12-14 marathoner when hopefully she does Berlin, Chicago Valencia and once again people here will be talking about her form as if she hasn't won titles indoors, outdoors and XC and Marathons running like that.
If she were an American she would be hands down the best female distance runner ever for our country.
When it comes to running "form" just think how much energy Obiri would use trying to "look good" rather being relaxed and allowing her body to move naturally, for her.
Obiri form has always been noticeable but I respect her. I remember when Ayana and the Ethiopians started dominating it was Obiri who said, "we (Kenyans) can beat them". She took up the mantle after Vivian Cheriyout's reign.
So while I'm not a fan of her or her form , I do respect her competitive fierceness and longevity.
I love watching her lose because I can’t stand seeing Ritz’s head swell any further as he pretends he has anything to do with her success.
Yet he still managed to pop up in the finish zone laughing and smiling with race royalty. It's a good life if you can make it.
As for Obiri - classic Frog-in-a-Blender. What's genuinely impressive is how despite her upper body with all that wasted movement and energy, she has been so good and successful. You wonder if she would also be down in that sub 2.15 club if she had ever wanted to clean this up.
Her vs Hassan in an upper body battle is like watching hand to hand combat - elbows, forearms, flat palms flying all over the place.
At least Hassan's form isn't as horrible, since she doesn't swing her arms like fricking pendulums as much. There's also less lateral movement. Not to say that her arm movement is good though
She runs a bit dirty for my taste. She is constantly in the middle of physical conflict and will cut you off at the finish.
Please qualify your answer with a few examples of her constant conflict
The arm swing is definitely tactical in how she deploys it. It annoyed me initially, but I have to say I respect her game from a 'WTF' perspective. If you watch her arms swing in the pack vs in head to head action, the swinging is wider and more violent, but it's just subtle enough that she gets away with it. I'm not knocking her - what she does is within the rules, but her opponents would be well-pressed to answer back with their own motion to push her away. The motion seems to have coincided with her success in the marathon, so why would she get away from it? Yesterday, she just didn't have the answer for Lokedi, which was almost shocking to see - Hellen's kick is brutal, but she finally got beaten at her own game.
Please qualify your answer with a few examples of her constant conflict
The arm swing is definitely tactical in how she deploys it. It annoyed me initially, but I have to say I respect her game from a 'WTF' perspective. If you watch her arms swing in the pack vs in head to head action, the swinging is wider and more violent, but it's just subtle enough that she gets away with it. I'm not knocking her - what she does is within the rules, but her opponents would be well-pressed to answer back with their own motion to push her away. The motion seems to have coincided with her success in the marathon, so why would she get away from it? Yesterday, she just didn't have the answer for Lokedi, which was almost shocking to see - Hellen's kick is brutal, but she finally got beaten at her own game.
It's not just the arm swing though. The legs are also working as violently, like another poster mentioned somewhere, she's semi-bounding. Anyone who's done bounding drills knows how much that takes out of you. Perhaps the extra energy expenditure required is made up for with the energy return of the supershoes.
And yet time and again the people whose form is 'bad' i.e., Obiri Hassan are the ones on the podium
Obiri with her 64pb will likely end up a 2.12-14 marathoner when hopefully she does Berlin, Chicago Valencia and once again people here will be talking about her form as if she hasn't won titles indoors, outdoors and XC and Marathons running like that.
I mean are they? For one Lokedi - who has beautiful form, was top of the podium yesterday and Yehualaw who came in 3rd is a very tidy runner. Irrespective of what you think about Assefa (2.11.53) and Chepngetich (2.09.56) both of them are extremely efficient runners.
A statement like "time and time again people whose form is bad are the ones on the podium" holds no weight because it's really only Obiri and Hassan that are the only two with ungainly form that have managed to really do it. I can't think of one top male marathon runner in the last 20 years that has inefficient or ungainly form. On the womens side since Radcliffe, I can't think of anyone except Obiri and Hassan. Picking two massive outliers to try and confirm a normative statement doesn't really work.
Studies show that people, including highly experienced coaches, are completely unable to predict running economy based on looking at someone's form. There is no hard data to back up conventional wisdom about form cues, footstrike, cadence, etc. It may be counterintuitive, but the person with the "best" form (fastest, not prettiest) is whoever has allowed their body to optimize the most, which is done simply by running the most miles.
I don't find it painful to watch because I find it terribly entertaining and amusing.
What I don't like is that she is notorious for interfering with other runners. She clips other runners constantly. It may not be intentional but it happens with such frequency that she seems to not care.
People say she is a very nice person and she may well be. But you couldn't tell it by her tactics.
Imagine her in an indoor track event. How many runners would she take down with those elbows.
World Championships 10,000 meters 1993. ...but Sally Barsosio, the Kenyan teenager, had other ideas. A graceful lope could hardly disguise the ruthlessness with which she began using her elbows on both Chinese girls and then, twice in two laps, on Elana Meyer... Albertina Dias and Conceicao Ferreira then took up the struggle of getting by Barsosio... there was a pitched battle... Barsosio went stumbling across the track, falling from fourth to ninth and then shooting to first place - all in the space of 100 metres.
