Why would you give them the benefit of the doubt that they could could run 1609 meters faster than they had just 1600 meters? If 40% of Americans can't find Mexico on a map I doubt a majority can tell you how many laps there are in a mile.
Why would you give them the benefit of the doubt that they could could run 1609 meters faster than they had just 1600 meters? If 40% of Americans can't find Mexico on a map I doubt a majority can tell you how many laps there are in a mile.
I don't get the problem with conversions, just pick one that underestimates the pace a little bit and call it good enough. That way you'd need to run a slightly faster mile in order to qualify for the 1500. It can't be that hard.
den bosch wrote:
The 1500 is a stupid distance. It really is if you think about it. It's not really an even number in metric (1.5?), it's an awkward number of laps ("three and three quarters"), it doesn't follow the previous progression of doubling (1, 2, 4, 8, ...15?).
Just because the Olympics run the 1500 doesn't mean the US has to be equally stupid. Bring back the mile, an event that people actually know about. Everyone in the country has had to run a mile in PE or something so they know what it is.
Are you insane? 1500M is totally even. If you want to talk about something totally stupid, its this:
A mile is a unit of length, most commonly 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards WTF?
What this boils down to the American mentality of "Our way is better, no matter what." Did you know only 2 other countries in the ENTIRE WORLD still use the imperial system? It's old and archaic. The argument that the mile is best best because it's a even round "1.00 miles" is the same as saying a gargamel is even better because 1 gargamel is exactly 8721m in length. We should make the world run one gargamel because you can run the distance of 1 gargamel irrespective of the fact that one gargamel is a totally random distance.
For competition, the mile ceased to be relevant that day in '54 when Bannister did his thing.
Now, for talented folks there's nothing wrong with using the 4 min mile as bragging rights, but for international competition, forget it already.