WASTED TALENT?

anybody ever heard of Sam Vasquez...last i heard he was running under his old high school coach in Daytona...this kid ran a 4:03 back in 2001 in his senior year....now i think he's running around 4:30....dropped out of arkansas i think...heard he still has a wharthog tattoo on his thigh....but nice kid though..

I knew a grade 10 runner who broke Simon Bairu's high 3k record all by himself. He ran 4:21 and 9:20 with very minimal training. He is now going to jail for stabbing someone.

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male nymph wrote:

Miller def had one of the best frosh season in teh NCAA, suer he didnt win a NCAA title like Bob K. but he is a miler and he proved it this year.

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People say that Lukezic is an amazing runner, but he only managed one state crown. Jesse Fayant owned Lukezic in high school only losing to him one time in the mile. Fayant had a better kick and if the two were next to each other with 200 to go Fayant would win everytime. He did all of this off running 25-30 miles a week and only running 5 out of 7 days a week. He went to UW and never ran competitively again after his freshman year. NOt sure exactly why? You see how good Lukezic is now, and wonder what he could have done?

Ran with a guy in college who messed around and didn't always have the drive. Sometimes he didn't put in the work. High school All-American. He still ran solid times sometimes (got down to 1:48 in the 800 if that gives you an idea), but never ran as fast as he could have. I honestly think he would be one of the U.S.'s top milers now if he had had his head screwed on straight.

According to a friend who ran with the current 2 mile AR holder in high school, their old coach told him about a kid who was extremely talented (which means something) but chose to quit track and play soccer. I used to ask about him every once in a while hoping that he would have started running again, but apparently he ended up playing soccer for some small college. Makes me wonder if some Tegenkamp type is sitting around playing Nintendo somewhere.

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what could have been wrote:

Not "wasted talent", but John Woodruff definitely falls into the category of "could have done so much more". Wins the Olympic 800 meters at age 19 in Berlin and then Hitler decided to take over Europe and Woodruff went off to fight the war. By the time the Olympics resumed in 1948, it had been a dozen years and his career was over. Could he have won three straight gold medals in '36, '40, and '44? We will never know.

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as a teenager and a member of a successful local running club we trained hard up until the age of 16, winning local and area xc championships. Slowly thay all started to leave and give up on running as the time and effort needed to maintain high standards was too much as well as the peer pressures of females, alcohol and cigarettes!
Only 2 of us continued at the club and I now coach senior mens xc team as well as run 50 miles average per week to keep in shape.

David Sharpe, 1.43 800 metre runner. Ran about 20-30 miles per week, usually in shorts in freezing North East England weather. Barely trained except when he was knocked out of bed to go to the track, when Steve Cram (his training partner) retired he just didn't seem to have the motivation to train anymore, retired when he was about 27, double World Junior Champ at 800 and 1500, World Cup winner and second at European Champs, trained like a jogger.

Think he could have run 1.41.

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blast from the past wrote:

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what could have been wrote:

Not "wasted talent", but John Woodruff definitely falls into the category of "could have done so much more". Wins the Olympic 800 meters at age 19 in Berlin and then Hitler decided to take over Europe and Woodruff went off to fight the war. By the time the Olympics resumed in 1948, it had been a dozen years and his career was over. Could he have won three straight gold medals in '36, '40, and '44? We will never know.

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John Woodruff is a good shout but he would have definitely had his hands full with Rudolf Harbig. Harbig is the forgotten man of middle distance running. Coached by Gerschler he ran 1:46.6 for 800m in 1939, a record which lasted until 1955. He also set a WR of 46.0 for 400m a few weeks later. At his peak he was unbeaten at 800m for 48 races, but unfortunately his career was curtailed by the war. Among the athletes Gerschler helped were Josey Barthel, Olympic 1500m champion in 1952 and Gordon Pirie, 4-time distance world record holder. Harbig set a 1000m WR of 2:21.5 in May 1941 and but for the war under Gerschler's coaching he would have set about rewriting the world records for the longer distances. With such incredible basic speed (he was faster than Coe over 400m) Harbig could have been the first man under 4 minutes for the mile. Woodruff v Harbig should have been one of the greatest athletics rivalries of all.

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Jan Ullrich.

Runner up in the Tour de France at age 22 (he could have won, if he hadn't been ordered to help his teammate). Won the tour in '97 at age 23. Widely tipped to win 7, 8, even 9 Tour titles. Instead he dedicated himself to cream pies and a dysfunctional team.

As one former DS said, if all the riders in the peloton had been clean, Jan Ullrich would now be a 9 or 10 time TdF champion.

I ran an 800 against this guy in high school. was not pretty.

SPORTS PEOPLE;
Sprinter Hurt in Crash
NYT

Published: March 12, 1985
Clinton Davis , the nation's premier schoolboy sprinter two years ago, suffered two broken legs in an automobile accident in Pittsburgh early yesterday, authorities said. Davis, 19, was listed in serious condition at Allegheny General Hospital and a hospital official said the former national indoor 400-meter champion will have to wear casts on his legs for six to eight months.

According to a city police report, Davis's car struck a telephone pole at about 1 A.M. Davis was pulled from the car by a man who feared the vehicle was about to catch fire. Davis, a surprise winner of the 400-meter run in the Millrose Games in 1983, dropped out of the University of Pittsburgh last fall but recently re- enrolled and planned to try out for the Pitt football team as a wide receiver.

mohamed didn't train much, this thread is about most talented not most achieved.

Not even close (although I believe you meant Footlocker Champion.) He ran in a very weak era. He beat a bunch of nobodies and a junior year Torres. Ritz buried Alan Webb and Ryan Hall (not to mention beat a senior Donald Sage as a junior, who probably also would have beaten Abdizirak Mohamed.) Big difference.[/quote]

chris nelloms also got shot like 4 times while in college and almost died, then came back and rolled at big tens the next year. Maybe some karma came around and finally got him.

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north wrote:

mohamed didn't train much, this thread is about most talented not most achieved.

Not even close (although I believe you meant Footlocker Champion.) He ran in a very weak era. He beat a bunch of nobodies and a junior year Torres. Ritz buried Alan Webb and Ryan Hall (not to mention beat a senior Donald Sage as a junior, who probably also would have beaten Abdizirak Mohamed.) Big difference.

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I don't know if you can really say a kid that ran 142 miles in a week in high school was wasted talent. Sounds like he performed pretty much to the best of his ability in HS then got burned out (injured in this case)

20 16:11.8 Andy Powell 11 NE Oliver Ames North Easton, MA


He's another one I would have expected more out of, particularly with the HS credentials he had.


26 16:29.7 Isaac Hawkins 12 W Joel E. Feris Spokane WA

Same thing for this one--he ran some great races, and never really did much after high school.

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blast from the past wrote:
At his peak [Rudolf Harbig] was unbeaten at 800m for 48 races, but unfortunately his career was curtailed by the war.

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how about these guys wrote:
He (Mark Dailey) kicked down Brian Diemer like it was nothing in a mile race, when Dailey wasn't a miler yet.

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