What Happened to Kaki at the Olympics?

He's too young. Everybody likes to say "they wish they were 18" but you don't actually have the endurance reserves at that age to do more than perhaps beat off multiple times per day. He ran out of steam towards the end of the year.

He ran badly is all. So did Borzakovskiy and a lot of others in the two lapper. Lets see how he does over the next few years. I don't know if he's really 18 or not, but he is a real talent. He's almost funny with his running form, he looks like a non-track guy trying to run fast. But he IS fast.

I think I remember the weather having something to do it, it might have been raining heavily? Other then that I'm not sure, peaking/experience might have had something to do with it.

it's difficult to run nearly 100% for a few rounds. experience is a big part of it-when to kick, move, etc.

He stuck to his original season goal of medaling at World Juniors, in which he won gold. Unfortunately, he couldn't re-peak in time for Beijing.

At the time all the talk was of food poisoning. At the least, many athletes were not comfortable or used to the food they were served in the Olympic Village, is what I read at the time, and I think Kaki was mentioned especially.

here's the race report:

1 1007 MADI Nabil Algeria Jun 09 1981 2 1:45.63 Q

2 1295 REED Gary Canada Oct 25 1981 4 1:45.85 Q

3 2276 LALANG Boaz-Kiplagat Kenya Feb 08 1989 5 1:45.87

4 1580 OLMEDO Manuel Spain May 17 1983 9 1:45.91

5 1251 ALI Belal Mansoor Bahrain Oct 17 1988 3 1:46.37

6 1827 RIMMER Michael Great Britain Feb 03 1986 8 1:48.07

7 3055 CHEPKIRWOK Abraham Uganda Nov 18 1988 7 1:49.16

8 2912 KAKI Abubaker Sudan Jun 21 1989 6 1:49.19

Qualification: First 2 in each heat(Q) and the next 2 fastest(q) advance to the Final.

Intermediate Times

Distance Bib Split Time Name NOC

400m 1007 52.24 MADI Nabil Algeria

600m 1007 1:19.43 MADI Nabil Algeria

Weather Conditions

Temperature: 22°C Humidity: 83% Conditions: Light Rain

I think he started his season in the winter and he continued throughout the summer. He ran all over Europe, tiny B meets, golden league, as well as other top notch meets. He had to be tired. Whoever said his lack of aerobic base is probably on point.

Lalang was Rend Lake College, not Reed College, unless he's done some strange transfer (to a Div 3 school post-Olympics???).

Boo Kaki!

Kaki going from winning his heat to not even being in contention seems to be much more than peaking at the wrong time.

The food poisoning seems like a better explanation to me.

wejo wrote:

Kaki going from winning his heat to not even being in contention seems to be much more than peaking at the wrong time.

The food poisoning seems like a better explanation to me.

Wejo - why are we always looking for excuses for runners? How many times has the food poisoning, jet lag, overtrained, undertrained, too fat, injured excuse been thrown around when it comes to Webb?

Could it be that Kaki just had a bit of Webbitis?

I'm pretty sure the main reason for the bad race was that he and another runner went out in 23 seconds for the first 200 or something crazy like that .

And it was a very dissapointing lineup in the final . I wasn't interested at all .

Hallster wrote:

wejo wrote:

Kaki going from winning his heat to not even being in contention seems to be much more than peaking at the wrong time.

The food poisoning seems like a better explanation to me.

Wejo - why are we always looking for excuses for runners? How many times has the food poisoning, jet lag, overtrained, undertrained, too fat, injured excuse been thrown around when it comes to Webb?

Could it be that Kaki just had a bit of Webbitis?

It is highly likely that Kaki had a case of Webbitis seeing as he was the World Indoor Champion.

he is still very young and has many years to come,and im actually wondering how fast will this guy run in the future, his times are already scare.

1:44 indoors

2:15 indoors

1:42 outdoors

2:13 outdoors

he just had a bad race at the games, Webb will never ever be as good as Kaki.

He got his ass beat is what happened.

Why are you asking this six months after the Olympics concluded?

It was in the T&F News world rankings issue... he drank the tap water after the first round and got really sick. Its in the little description in the 800m section.

i'd like to point something out about the 800...the last couple of years guys like kaki run really well during the season, but come olympics/wc's they get killed and guys like alfred yego and gary reed and wilfred bungei win medals...do guys like kaki sacrifice championship success for faster times during the season?