I've read apparently conflicting sources for Robison's performance in athens. Wikipedia lists him as failing to qualify out of the prelims running a 3:53. Yahoo corroborates that time and place, but then lists him in the semis as well, failing to qualify for the final with a 3:47. is one wrong? did he get through on an appeal of some sort? it seems like a stretch that he would have qualified.
Just going off memory, I think he did appeal and get placed into the semis.
I do not know the story really, but yes he qualified for semi-finals via technicality after getting tripped up/cut off in the prelims, then failed to make the finals.
That was an unbelievable set of circumstances for Robison that year: He ran 3:35.75 in the 1500 during the Summer of 2003, which was under the Olympic A standard. He ran badly during 2004, but his qualifier from 2003 was still good, so he ran at the Olympic Trials with pretty poor fitness and got bounced in the semis. However, Webb and Charlie Gruber (who finished 1st and 2nd at the trials) were the only other Americans with the A standard - as a result, Robison went to the Olympics as the 3rd American. Webb and Gruber didn't make it out of the heats in Athens, but Robison made it into the semis after falling and finishing 12th in his prelim, when his protest was upheld. He finished 11th in his semi and was never competitive. Also, his fastest time during all of 2004 was 3:41.43; that might be some kind of record for an Olympic semi-finalist.
On the topic of "good results by guys with weak times," Arturo Casado has to stand out. He was 5th at the World Championship 1500m in Helsinki in 2005 when his PR was 3:35.64, which he had run earlier that year. There were 44 other guys who ran faster times that year.
Ol Grumpus wrote:
On the topic of "good results by guys with weak times," Arturo Casado has to stand out. He was 5th at the World Championship 1500m in Helsinki in 2005 when his PR was 3:35.64, which he had run earlier that year. There were 44 other guys who ran faster times that year.
Impressive! (Also impressive that 44 other guys ran faster -- didn't realize how deep the lists were.) Kevin Sullivan also finished 5th at Worlds, in 1995, with a 3:35 PR that he'd run earlier that year. I wonder what kind of ranking 3:35 would have got you in 1995?
It's amazing how far America has some since then, we only had 2 A qualifiers then, now we have 5k guys running 3:34. We have guys in college running 3:35, and we have 3:33 guys not making the team. America was either very weak then or very strong now.