Mo Farah and Andy Vernon go at it in Twitter

In the LAND OF THE FREE, Mo is allowed to buy his victorie$. Everything has a price, even Mo's "competitors."

Way to completely disrespect Lagat. I wonder if Vernon would be using the terms 'watered down' if Gebremeskel was in the field?

OverTheHillAndBack wrote:

In the LAND OF THE FREE you're allowed to show up or not show up to a race, game, meet as you please unless otherwise contracted. In all honesty, this feud would be more interesting if Vernon could actually PUT UP. But he can't so it just comes off as whining and complaining because someone showed up to TEA TIME late.

Is there ANY reason why you chose TO should THE words tea TIME? DO you have TOURRetes?

LAND OF THE FREE wrote:

In the LAND OF THE FREE, Mo is allowed to buy his victorie$. Everything has a price, even Mo's "competitors."

Mo was forced to remove all of the offending posts from Twitter. He will be grounded for the foreseeable future.

Vernon aint' wrong, he's just an a**hole.

Mo is a p**sy though, for real...sometimes I wonder why he bothered signing up for all those races he ended up bailing out of last year in the first place.

MassiveFail wrote:

This will not even be Farah tweeting it will be the vile wife , sad but true.

Vile wife? back to the basement troll

Pretty surprised by Mo here. Between those two, Mo has WAY more to lose than Vernon. Sure, Vernon looks bitter by calling him out, but Mo was just a dickhead by calling him an embarrassment and #ComeBackWhenYouWinSomethingDecent.

No one outside of Track will remember Vernon in a few months, but Mo is the second biggest name in the sport, and him calling a fellow countryman and someone who will likely represent the UK in the WCs an embarrassment makes him look bad to the public regardless of who started i.

2nd biggy name? Who is your #1? Rupp?

Do the Brits consider Mo one of their own?

The guy is not native-born, trains in Kenya during the winter, lives and trains in Oregon for rest of the time....what is British about him anymore besides his fading accent? He is practically an American now.

I can't blame him for wanting to be American though - 36 sub 4s this past weekend in the states. Deepest talent pool outside of East Africa.

Biggus Namus wrote:

2nd biggy name? Who is your #1? Rupp?

Some sprinter, I think his name is Bolt?...

Someone needed to call it like it is. Having a pacer through the whole Great North run who could have won and was encouraging Mo, but let him win, was embarrassing. Mo has been great in championships since 2011 with title after title. And he had that great battle with Geb and Bekele at a previous Great North Run, which was great for the sport. Plus, Lagat has the wheels to provide a good challenge at this race if he's in it. But it is bad for the sport for Mo to be always running these made for him races with no top African competition.

heyyo wrote:

Thank you. Everyone needs to stop acting like Farah being in the field is exogenous to the quality of the field (holding Mo's alleged manipulation of the field constant). Prior to any alleged manipulation the quality of the remaining field is already going to be decreased simply because his appearance fee eats a decent chunk of the budget. Outside of the Olympics and World Championship, this is expected to happen at every invitational meet. Therefore it should not be a surprise to see a A list athlete with a large appearance fee in a meet with other C and D List athletes who demand little to no appearance fees. Lastly, the meets may very well organize their budgets event by event, which means that having Farah in an event effectively wipes the budget for the entire event.

There's some truth to this, and its definitely insightful (and thanks for introducing me to the word exogenous) but its definitely not the full picture.

First, appearance fees are not dolled out in some scientific fashion based on your world ranking or personal record, they are more of a popularity contest. With that being the case, it is fairly inexpensive to build a field full of very fast but mostly unfamiliar African distance runners. In fact, some of the other British athletes in this 2 mile might actually be getting appearance fees that could get a 13 flat or better 5k runner to show up.

Second, budgets are definitely not organized by event. It is not uncommon for events to ebb and flow because other events got top billing based on athlete availability. If Mo was not doing this meet ... the 2 mile would not suddenly be filled with the best distance runners on the planet because the meet had extra money to spend on the event ... what would more likely happen is that the meet would use the money to get another global track star in any event they could.

That isn't to say that Mo's appearance fee doesn't dilute the meet or event ... the huge appearance fees certainly take their hit in the budget, which effects everything from the other appearance fees to travel stipends and prize money.

But there is definitely also a very real appeal as an athlete to go after low hanging fruit, and pressure on both the agent and on the races to produce that low hanging fruit.

So the easy money is good for the agent and the athlete, it is good for the meet (in the short term at least) because they got their guy, but its definitely bad for the sport.

The Dingo wrote:

Biggus Namus wrote:

2nd biggy name? Who is your #1? Rupp?

Some sprinter, I think his name is Bolt?...

Oh, someone who once was a sprinter. The limelight has taken him over.

I estoppel. wrote:

Also have that Japanese guy, Osako, in there.

Who beat Rupp a few weeks ago, then Levins last week. One more scalp til he's top dog at NOP.

Centro and clay Mayes going at it as well on Twitter.

Not a fan of either wrote:

Centro and clay Mayes going at it as well on Twitter.

This is great stuff. Keep it going

It is now apparent that some of the more petty trolls on this site are actually elites.