Ajee Wilson is the USA's big distance hope - 1:57.87!!!!

I was wrong about Ajee Wilson, she is that good. She will maybe run 1:56.x this year at 20-21. Her relaxed demeanor makes it look like she is never all out, but she clearly is, and may go 1:55 in two years.

Wilson is actually 21 (born May 8, 1994), but she's not the "hope," she's the present of American 800 running. Last year ran 1:57 and won a Diamond League race. This year a World Championships medal is a strong possibility.

I agree. Cain and Alexa E. get so much more love on letsrun and media in general. Given Wilson's accomplishments and consistency we should be singing her praises and we barely do that even on a thread about her! Also, I feel weird about these boards if we are going to refer an African woman as that dude.

Why the aversion to the term middle distance

800m is hardly a distance race its the bottom range of middle distance and putting the marathon and 800m all together as distance is ridiculous

The main reason in answer to my own question is you just love all these phrases like 'distance' and other catch phrases used among the nerds to impress themselves

Gold Bug wrote:

you do realize that the medals only go 3 deep? here's the 5000 list from last year:

14:28.88 Genzebe Dibaba (Ethiopia) Monaco DL 07/18

14:29.19 Almaz Ayana (Ethiopia) Monaco DL 07/18

14:33.73 Viola Kibiwot (Kenya) Monaco DL 07/18

14:37.18 Sally Kipyego (Kenya) Monaco DL 07/18

14:39.49 Betsy Saina (Kenya) Monaco DL 07/18

14:42.64 *Molly Huddle (US) Monaco DL 07/18

i have a hard time calling her a medal contender when, in the best race of her life, she was 6th and 14 seconds from the winner. if you are going to call her a medal contender, then you might as well toss in hasay, conley, moser, roesler, solomon, true and mead.

you lose all credibility when you state that you are on the fence over whether manzano is a medal contender. he's the reigning olympic silver medalist for christ's sake.

Huddle was planning on focussing on the 10k this year. If Goucher and Flanagan can medal in the 10k, I'd say Huddle has a good chance too.

Yes, finally someone pointed out that she's 21! Took a while...

Les wrote:

Wilson is actually 21 (born May 8, 1994), but she's not the "hope," she's the present of American 800 running. Last year ran 1:57 and won a Diamond League race. This year a World Championships medal is a strong possibility.

Also, I think she might be able to run 1:53 Les/Wes so better crank out a PR soon.

On a latter note... are we still calling the 800 a distance race? If so, I would consider the 200 and 400 middle distance because I get really tired at the end of those too.

i agree that ajee wilson deserves more attention for sure and is on par with cain and efraimson, but i dont really think race is the reason for that. this is not a discriminatory sport with respect to african americans (and certainly not people of color in general #kenya #jamaica #ethiopia). i think it has more to do with the fact that cain was so absurdly talented at such a young age, and even more so, the popularity and attention that the mile+ distances get with comparison to the 800. a 4:24 is much easier for most people to go "WOW" at than a 1:59. but yeah, a 1:57 is nuts and ajee deserves mad attention for that.

al sharptonizar. wrote:

"True. Imaging the hype if someone like Cain was running sub-1:58. She gets ignored a bit because of her skin color."

-I hope you're joking. If not, you need a punch in the face. Stop with the racist bs.

I usually prefer not to go there, but I wouldn't call it BS. After beating Cain soundly in a H.S. race, Ajee was asked about all of the Cain hype and she casually said she thought it was good. Albeit, Ajee is nearly 2 year older than Cain, but leading up to that race, pretty much all of the talk was about Cain. Btw, Cain was running some amazing times as a 16yo and earned the hype.

Case in point, the announcers for the H.S. girl's mile was talking about U.S. H.S. middle distance progress over years and mentioned Jordan Hasay, Mary Decker, Mary Cain, Elise Cranny and Alexa Efraimson. The fact is, the H.S. 1500m record Hasay broke belonged Kim Gallagher and the H.S. 800m record Cain broke belonged to Kim Gallagher; how is it possible that Gallagher's is not mentioned? In high school, Kim Gallagher ran faster than Mary Decker at every distance and no matter how fast she ran, all she ever heard about was Mary Decker. Kim Gallagher was Black btw.

With all that said, Ajee Wilson is shy and not very talkative, while Mary Cain is gregarious, which make her more noticeable. As a high school athlete, Ajee didn't like the attention she was getting and probably doesn't want to be in Cain's shoes. Ajee does get a fair amount of attention, certainly no where near the Cain or Efraimson level, but simply saying it's because of race is a too easy conclusion, but you can't say it is BS to mention race.

My opinions on this are clear. She's been overlooked for too long. I think race is a big factor. Even in interviews, I don't see anyone really relating to her thus the impression that she's not engaging. most people here don't even know who her coach is, who she trains with. There's a lack of curiosity. Why is that?

I'll give lrc credit for finally starting to ask those questions but how long did it take to connect the dots? She's got medal chances in '16 and '20. Who else in the US can you say that about?