I'm loving what can only be the trolling in this thread.
Here's the reality: Mo was slower even than his 12.98 timing. Unless anyone can definitively prove otherwise, I assume that photocell timing was used, which likely means you can add around .2 for RT, and another .1 or so for the arm or hand crossing the line rather than the torso.
I admit that I could be wrong about the timing. Anyone with good info?
The other reality is that Mo's block start, for a distance guy, looked to me to be pretty damn good! No distance runner, even a guy like Geb or Bekele or Lagat, is ever going to "drive" out of the blocks. They will take a couple of hard strides at the start, assume a vertical running posture, and try to accelerate. All things considered, he did much better than I expected him to do. He obviously had the blocks in a very forgiving alignment, had practiced a bit, or both.
So I don't think that either a standing or 3-point start would have made any difference to his time.
Regarding the guys who ran in the 14-second range, that is also totally unsurprising.
Regarding the lack of 100m ability, and the lack of top-speed envelope ability, among elite distance runners, that is again a question of optimization. In a very real sense, you could say that they optimized to NOT be able to run a sub-12 FAT block-start 100m.
It's interesting that some here believe that Mo and other distance elites could NOT go slightly sub-50 in a 400 m.
Let's say that today, Mo goes 13.30 for a FAT block-start 100m. IMHO he was going full-out in this 100m, from start to finish, and even leaned, I think successfully, to shave off a couple of hundredths. Assuming that Mo could run the same 100m around a curve (which I think is a good assumption), the interesting thing about sprinters running the 400m is that they do not run the first 100m all-out.
But, could Mo run an all-out first 100m leg of a 400m without producing a worse time than if he were to hold back a bit? I think that possibly the answer is yes.
It would be interesting to know his speed profile in this race, and if he, like 100m sprinters, was slowing down in the last 20m, or in the last 30-40m like untrained 100m participants. My intuitive sense is that he didn't slow down--instead, I think it possible that he just hit his max speed and held it all the way through the finish.
Further, I fantasize that he could have held that same top speed for another 300m! Even more than that, I think that if he realized that he had another 300m to run, he wouldn't have been as tense in the first 100m, and therefore used less energy, and might actually have sped up in the second or third 100m of a 400m race!
So let's say for round numbers he goes 13.4 in his first 100m, that means that he would only need to go 36.6 for his last 300m, or 12.2 for each of the last three 100m segments, in order to break 50 seconds.
How plausible is it for him to be able to run a 12.2-second 100m, if he can FAT block-start a 13.3-second 100m? Very plausible, IMO, knowing about such differences in sprinters, and knowing how relatively weak Mo's start is.
Without even considering Saladbar's bogus hand-timed flying 100m times, I would give Mo an 11.5 flying 100m, at least for a single 100m, which IMO puts three consecutive 12.2's within his reach, even after an all-out, or nearly all-out, 13.3 first 100m.
Now take a guy like Jeilan in his 10,000m victory. There were 3 times, IIRC that he nearly kicked it into top gear on the last lap, and on the fourth opportunity, he actually DID kick it into top gear. That gear, at that time, in that race, was far better than Mo's equivalent gear. Check out the slow-mo from around :20 in this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KKBPn4mDlo
I won't go into details, but everything about Jeilan is better, as evidenced by how he absolutely blows Farah away. For the record, I do NOT believe that Farah could easily adopt Jeilan's form, and thus relatively easily produce a faster 100m time. Farah produces zero power--look at all the limb swinging in that vid. Very little power is being applied to the ground.
What do you guys think about Jeilan's ability in a 400m race? He has a top-speed governor, just like all other distance runners, but IMHO it is set slightly higher than Mo's.
Vent?