The fact that Brazier is even at Worlds already makes his 2025 season a huge success and is beyond anything his coach Mike Smith could have imagined when the pair began working together earlier this year.
"He asked me after a workout in May if I thought he’d be able to race, and I was like, 'Donavan, you might be looking at racing in 2026,'" Smith told LetsRun.com.
Should Brazier win, it would cap one of the sport's greatest comebacks. And Tokyo is a fitting venue. Had the 2020 Tokyo Olympics gone ahead as scheduled, Brazier would have been the heavy favorite to win gold. Instead, the meet was delayed by a year due to COVID and Brazier broke his foot and missed the team. Five years later, he will finally get the opportunity to race on that Tokyo track.
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
You know who expressed a similar sentiment to me? Mike Smith.
I wouldn't say that it's zero percent -- Mike has given him workouts and managed to keep him healthy. That's not nothing. But he gave pretty much all of the credit to Brazier when we spoke last week.
"I don’t know how much of this is coaching," Smith said. "I think a lot of it is a highly talented athlete that needed to get healthy. A lot of people probably could have guided him to the place he’s in."
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
It’s due to EPO being a helluva drug.
Five months training, a new PR after five years. lol AFTER three years of nothing. lololololol
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
You know who expressed a similar sentiment to me? Mike Smith.
I wouldn't say that it's zero percent -- Mike has given him workouts and managed to keep him healthy. That's not nothing. But he gave pretty much all of the credit to Brazier when we spoke last week.
"I don’t know how much of this is coaching," Smith said. "I think a lot of it is a highly talented athlete that needed to get healthy. A lot of people probably could have guided him to the place he’s in."
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
It’s due to EPO being a helluva drug.
Five months training, a new PR after five years. lol AFTER three years of nothing. lololololol
It's ridiculous to be honest. So nothing, roll out for 5 months and be a world beater. Even knowing he is on drugs it is super impressive.
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
You know who expressed a similar sentiment to me? Mike Smith.
I wouldn't say that it's zero percent -- Mike has given him workouts and managed to keep him healthy. That's not nothing. But he gave pretty much all of the credit to Brazier when we spoke last week.
"I don’t know how much of this is coaching," Smith said. "I think a lot of it is a highly talented athlete that needed to get healthy. A lot of people probably could have guided him to the place he’s in."
I was gonna say I got this vibe but I love to see it come from the man himself.
Smith gets some of credit from me for keeping him healthy (Brazier has said he’s learned things himself over the years too). Julian couldn’t, so that Smith has is important to me. It’s truly incredible and inspiring to see Brazier comeback though, and he does get all the credit from me for not giving up. Can’t imagine being injured for years like him and still trying like he has.
Mike Smith is a great coach but make no mistake - Brazier's success is 100% due to Brazier's grit and resilience (and talent) and not anything that Mike Smith did.
No disrespect to Mike Smith, but after all Brazier has been through I think he deserves 100% credit for not giving up and still grinding every. single. day.
No amount of Mike Smith worship on these boards is going to make me believe that Smith "saved" Brazier. Brazier saved Brazier. PERIOD.
It’s due to EPO being a helluva drug.
Five months training, a new PR after five years. lol AFTER three years of nothing. lololololol
Such a stupid accusation. If EPO is so great and prevalent then how is he catching all the people who have been healthy the last 3 years, training hard and using EPO themselves? Of PEDs are you explanation for everything then they explain nothing.
Five months training, a new PR after five years. lol AFTER three years of nothing. lololololol
Such a stupid accusation. If EPO is so great and prevalent then how is he catching all the people who have been healthy the last 3 years, training hard and using EPO themselves? Of PEDs are you explanation for everything then they explain nothing.
Actually, that is (part of) the point to anyone paying attention. He PRs at 28 on five months of training after three years of zilch training? Please. Calling it fishy is being too nice. Could be GW1516 along with EPO and some selected anabolics and other peptides. All we can hope is Cooper and others keep improving over the next few years and take this fraudulent story out of the picture.
You know who expressed a similar sentiment to me? Mike Smith.
I wouldn't say that it's zero percent -- Mike has given him workouts and managed to keep him healthy. That's not nothing. But he gave pretty much all of the credit to Brazier when we spoke last week.
"I don’t know how much of this is coaching," Smith said. "I think a lot of it is a highly talented athlete that needed to get healthy. A lot of people probably could have guided him to the place he’s in."
Yeah this is it 100% I think.
Of course the number one and overriding factor had to be Braziers focus, determination and will to come back. You wouldn't have blamed him one bit after Paris, maybe his last chance to run at an Olympics (???) if he just said, "World title, AR, made a lot of money, I'm good". It doesn't and can't happen without this being there.
But beyond that it needed someone with some knowledge and more importantly lack of ego to evaluate everything perfectly and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Probably the best insight into this is Smith throwing out there 2026 which says to me he was far more on the side of caution and moving things slowly with Brazier, and that was probably the secret sauce in all of this. I've said this so many times about coming back from injury - and I know from my own experience. When you are young and motivated, things can turn around very quickly but you have to 1) get healthy and 2) just hold back in those first few weeks and not undo everything. This was specifically around this notion that had Jakob not been injured for 6 weeks at the start of 2024 he would have smashed the WR and run 7.15 for 3000m but didn't because of the "time he lost". Utter BS - look at Brazier here. Dude lost almost 2 full years and in his 6th race back ran a lifetime PR already under his old AR performance.
A lot of coaches would have been so fired up to get their hands on Brazier "healthy" and just had him ploughing into the work (which he himself would have excitedly had no issue with I'm sure). Mike Smith has played a considerable role in this - just not on a surface level basis.
This post was edited 28 seconds after it was posted.
You know who expressed a similar sentiment to me? Mike Smith.
I wouldn't say that it's zero percent -- Mike has given him workouts and managed to keep him healthy. That's not nothing. But he gave pretty much all of the credit to Brazier when we spoke last week.
"I don’t know how much of this is coaching," Smith said. "I think a lot of it is a highly talented athlete that needed to get healthy. A lot of people probably could have guided him to the place he’s in."
I was gonna say I got this vibe but I love to see it come from the man himself.
Smith gets some of credit from me for keeping him healthy (Brazier has said he’s learned things himself over the years too). Julian couldn’t, so that Smith has is important to me. It’s truly incredible and inspiring to see Brazier comeback though, and he does get all the credit from me for not giving up. Can’t imagine being injured for years like him and still trying like he has.
I think the super shoes and bicarb played a bigger role in the PR than Mike Smith's workouts.
Such a stupid accusation. If EPO is so great and prevalent then how is he catching all the people who have been healthy the last 3 years, training hard and using EPO themselves? Of PEDs are you explanation for everything then they explain nothing.
Actually, that is (part of) the point to anyone paying attention. He PRs at 28 on five months of training after three years of zilch training? Please. Calling it fishy is being too nice. Could be GW1516 along with EPO and some selected anabolics and other peptides. All we can hope is Cooper and others keep improving over the next few years and take this fraudulent story out of the picture.
I just laughed out loud. Brazier is suspect to you because of where he was 3 years ago and where he is now. Meanwhile Cooper was 13 years old 3 years ago and ran within a 1/4sec of Brazier but he’s clean as can be.
Im not saying either is doped up. But you gotta be more consistent in your thoughts and words if you’re going to undermine a world beater like Donny.
Sometimes I think people forget what a phenom Donavan Brazier really is. His senior year of high-school he was 6th in the 2014 Michigan XC state meet in 15:25.4. That race was won by Grant Fisher in 14:42.5. One of them famously eschews mileage... I always wonder how things would have been different for him if he had stayed with Johnny Gray a little longer...