Peter Andersson wrote:
The really interresting question to speculate about is this: If someone had talked Lagat into start doing the 10000 ten to twelve years ago... how many of Kenenisas world and olympic titles since then would have been silvers instead?
Very interesting.
Lagat was less than 0.4 from gold in Sydney 2000. In Athens 2004 he was 0.11 from gold. He has said many times that as a lifetime miler, he wanted that bad.
I suspect if he had achieved the Olympic 1500 gold in 2000 or even 2004, he would have moved up in distance sooner and could have certainly gone well sub-12:50/26:45. His speed would have made him pretty fearsome in championship races during Bekele's era, although I'm not convinced he could have hung with him in fast races.
Kind of too bad that proving himself in the 1500 (gold in 2007, injured in 2008, bronze in 2009) kept him from racing the 5000 and possibly 10,000 as soon as he could have.