2011 Penn: USA vs The World Distance Medley, Lagat Shines and Brown Loses It

I was actually wondering how we only got a 46.13 out of our 400 leg. Don't we have about 40 sub-46 guys in this country? Especially with a running start, you'd think it would have been faster.

Who was in charge of assigning the legs for the USA men's distance medley? Who is Russell Brown anyway and what have he done to deserve to anchor over Lagat? Not having Lagat anchor and on the longest leg was an amateur idiotic move.

Maybe Lagat didn't want to run anchor.

ETH put together a strong team.

VIPAM wrote:

I don't know why the would put Bernard Lagat on the opening leg when he is training for the 5000m and still the best 1500m runner in the country.

this is not true

everything else in your post is

Lagat handed off with a .24 second lead. Maybe if he hadn't been Mr. Tactical the USA would have had a larger gap.

The 400m leg certainly could have been faster; however, that's not what lost USA the race. Here are the leaders and difference between the top 3 after the first three legs:

USA vs World Distance Medley

1200m

1. USA

2. Morocco -.24

3. Australia -.36

400m

1. USA

2. Australia -.19

3. Morocco -.37

800m

1. USA

2. Australia -.17

3. Morocco -2.57

so Bernard Lagat 1st leg and Duane Solomon 3rd leg actually ran spectular legs for USA and Russell Brown while he should have been capable of easily running a 3:56 flat to 3:56.5 for the win, could only manage a 3:57.3 to be run down by Australia and Morocco.

No way Bernard would have lost a two and half second lead, to Morocco's Laalou, if he was in the same position as Russell Brown on the anchor.

Brown should have won it, but its not like he totally tanked. You say he should have been able to run 3:56-3:56.5, and he ran 3:57.3. That's .8-1.3 seconds slower than you thought he should have run, but to read the posts, I would have guessed he ran 4:10.

Did USA Blue get DQ'd? Penn results show them in 4th place.

Results

PL School/Affiliation Mark Athletes ID

1 Morocco 9:17.48 Mohammed Moustaoui (2:48.54), Marouan Maadadi (46.36), Mohammed Laalou (1:49.51), Amine Laalou (3:53.09) MAR

2 Australia 9:17.56 Ryan Gregson (2:48.66), Sean Wroe (45.96), Lachlan Renshaw (1:46.29), Jeff Riseley (3:56.66) AUS

3 USA Red 9:18.09 Bernard Lagat (2:48.30), Michael Tinsley (46.13), Duane Solomon (1:46.31), Russell Brown (3:57.36) USAr

4 USA Blue 9:20.24 David Torrence (2:48.65), Kenneth Ferguson (47.30), Nick Symmonds (1:49.01), Leo Manzano (3:55.29) USAw

5 Kenya 9:31.00 Glibert Kipchoge (2:55.25), Mark Mutai (46.68), Jackson Kivuva (1:48.92), Josephat Kithii (4:00.17) KEN

6 Canada 9:35.46 Jaden Ostapowich (2:55.42), Nathan Vadeboncoeur (46.50), Geoff Harris (1:49.60), Cameron Levins (4:03.96) CAN

7 Ethiopia 9:44.96 Kumsa Adunga (2:59.20), Mohammed Aman (48.83), Demma Daba (1:54.62), Abiyot Abinet (4:02.32) ETH

I continue to be impressed with Ryan Gregson - 2:48, just behind Lagat

I was being generous by saying he should be able to run a 3:56-3:56.5 from the lead and that would have been good enough for the win. Actually Russell Brown's recent 3:35.70 equates to a 3:52.5-3:53 mile, so I was giving him almost four seconds. So you're exactly right for what he was capable of Russell Brown ran a awful leg.

Symmonds split was very slow, did he drop the stick or get tangled resulting in the DQ?

Russell Brown wasn' the only one who choked. Look at the other USA team Kenneth Ferguson running a 400m 47 spilt and two time world rank Nick Symmonds running a 1:49 800m spilt. The coaches should had Russell Brown, Kenneth Ferguson, and Nick Symmonds the 3 Chokeateers all on the same team. If Leo Manazo 3:55 was anchoring Bernard Lagat's team they would have won easily! Bernard and Leo are better at everything from 1200m thru 5000m then Russell so why wasn't they on the same team?

USA vs World Distance Medley

THUMBS UP

Bernard Lagat (USA) 1200m

Ryan Gregson (Aus) 1200m

Amine Laalou (Mor) 1600

Duane Solomon (USA) 800m

1600m Australia leg

1200m Morocco leg

Leo Manazo (USA) 1600m

THUMBS DOWN

Nick Symmonds (USA) 800m

Kenneth Ferguson (USA) 400m

other 400m runner (USA) 400m

Russell Brown (USA) 1600m

Kenya's entire men distance medley team

Thumbs medium for David Torrence?

And that was his first race in awhile, coming back off a stress fracture.

anonymous lurker wrote:

Thumbs medium for David Torrence?

If Gregson gets a thumbs up, so should Torrence.

If they really wanted to win the race, why didn't the USA have Torrence lead off and Lagat anchor, and put Brown and Manzano on the 1,200 and 1,600 legs for the other squad? The "B" team still would have had a good chance of being in it on paper, so it's not like they would have been completely undermining that team's chances. Maybe they wanted a more balanced and "competitive" race to thrill the fans, but if you want to maximize your chances of winning, you put the best team that you can out there.

Having Torrence lead off for the "A" team is what I would have gone with even before I saw he ran for the other USA team. It's the logical thing to do. And lo and behold, he was right in it after the opening leg.

This is such an important event.

Really it is.

No. It is.