hulkamania wrote:
If you believe the benchpress story, then you probably also believe the 1:45 in practice story
I thought the benchpress story went like this:
Somebody on the team hyped one of their runners as being able to bench twice their weight to some football players. So, these guys weighed 250-300 and couldn't bench 500, so they said nobody could do that. So, in walks Falcon at 117 lbs, and they say "No way could THAT guy bench double his weight." These clowns had no idea who this tiny little man was. I heard bets were taken and then Joe goes and benches 240 lbs and the football players were amazed.
I didn't hear this from Joe, not sure now where I heard it. It seems like Track and Field News printed this anecdote, but I think that I would remember it better or would have seen it again since way back when.
I thought it was true because many people had apparently witnessed it. Also, I was in HS then and weighed about 125 and I could bench ~200. I could bench my body weight 20x and 150lbs 10x. This seemed possible since he was hailed as the NEXT middle-distance or maybe distance star for 1989 and onward. The US had a big void around this time. We had lost some promising runners like Easker, and many others seemed to be past their peak or winding down by 1990 (Spivey, Bickford, Scott, Porter, Nenow, Virgin, Malley had all been International-class since '80 or '81). I think it was mostly Plasencia, Eyestone, Coogan and Brantly who were carrying things at the National level. I think Spivey was still running well at 5k in 1992 and running through 96. It was too early for T-Will and BK as they were both Class of '87. I think Davis was also.
About the 1:45, I remembered Moorcroft running 1:45 in 1982 in the midst of the season that he ran 3:49, 13:00 and 7:33. So since this guy who was now considered a 5k specialist had run 3:49 at the Dream Mile and run 1:45 in a meet. I thought it was POSSIBLE that Falcon could run a 1:45.9 in practice. You have to remember that this was a time when a vehicle to spread rumors existed, but the vehicle to debunk them DID NOT. Also, at this time there were stories for years about Seb Coe running 8 x 880 in 1:54 down to 1:49 or something like that (turns out they were on a road that was slightly downhill and they were short). Also, it was rumored Aouita did 800 reps with the last one in 1:46. Since Aouita generally did everything he said he was going to do and had run 1:44, 3:29, 3:46, 7:33 and 13:00 within just 3 seasons I guess the gullible among us believed it to be possible.