"In the future, Gebrselassie will concentrate on road racing and marathon running. His ultimate goals in his running career are to break the World record at the Half Marathon and Marathon distances and to win the 2008 Olympic Marathon in Beijing."
Geb plans to be there. And Tergat hinted that he would be there too. What is your opinion of these goals of Geb - to run the marathon under 2:04:55, and to win the Olympic marathon 4 years from now?
Sure hope it happens. It sure will provide some exciting racing. Especially if the weather is more temperate and the course is not as rough as Athens.
Neither Haile or Tergat can produce the sustained wattage output of Khannouchi; on average he's 5% more productive over 2 hours of output. The likelihood of either of then defeating a healthy khalid at 42.2km is slim to none. Even with Rosa pumping him full of drugs(as was the case in berlin), tergat has not and cannot beat khalid in the marathon, neither can haile
Haile's only had one serious test at the marathon distance -- I forsee him breaking both the HM and marathon WRs andgoing to Beijing as a heavy favorite for gold.
You're talking about a guy who can, right now, get up out of bed and break 13, and run 26:30 ten days later -- apply that ability to the marathon...
trackhead wrote:
You're talking about a guy who can, right now, get up out of bed and break 13, and run 26:30 ten days later -- apply that ability to the marathon...
I dunno... Haile will run some very fast marathons on flat courses... Berlin, Chicago, London, etc. But as we have seen recently, I don't think the "fastest" marathoner wins in the Olympics - especially if the course is not flat.
DougC wrote:
I dunno... Haile will run some very fast marathons on flat courses... Berlin, Chicago, London, etc. But as we have seen recently, I don't think the "fastest" marathoner wins in the Olympics - especially if the course is not flat.
Beijing is UBERFLAT; the course records are very low and have never had a strong field. Unless they tinker with it, I think we'll see a near-WR winning time there.
If he can stay healthy, I think he will do it. He is just too f***ing good not to. But, he has barely been healthy since before 1999. Hurt in 2000, hurt in 2001 (lost in Edmonton), I don't really remember 2002, healthy in 2003, hurt in 2004. If he can get his achilles taken care of, no one can stop him, but if he can't, I'm afraid his best years are behind him.