His coach - Salazar - did the same thing when he ran the Olympic marathon in LA in 1984. At the time the U.S. uniform was a rather heavy sythetic Kappa uniform and Salazar cut as many holes as possible into the uniform - but he was not able to follow Lopes, Treacy and Spedding that day....and Seko also had a relatively poor run.
In that race, Lopes just got faster and faster in the last 5km, speeding up, just as Baldini did in Athens (2004). Lopes, just like Baldini, maintained superb form right to the end of the race.
A few months later, in Chicago, Steve Jones raced to a surprise victory over Lopes and others. Jones had run the 10.000 in LA finishing some way down.
Ghost in Korea
coach:
christophe_moulton@yahoo.ca