One more thing I want to bring up is just how big of loss this is to the elite side of the sport. What is our sport desperately needs at elite level is athletes that can draw out the common runner and actually get them to care about the professional side of things. I just don't see a lot of guys like that coming up. Like him or not Hall was a draw and many in the masses at races had heard of him and cared about his performance. I'm trying to think of how many of top runners right now are actually known outside of the small upper level of the competitive running community and its depressing. From a marathon level I would think its just Meb, Shalane, and Kara, and Kastor. On the track its probably just Symmonds and Rupp?
People like Ritz, Centro, Derrick, Simpson, Huddle to name a few are all fantastic runners but the general public or even just the common runner enthusiast don't know who they are. The generation of runners the public heard about is starting to retire or already has and no one's taken their place in drawing interest to the sport. This is a huge problem in the sport and there a lot of issues that create this problem that I don't think we are doing anything to address.
Unfortunately one of the biggest problems is the African dominance. We like sports best when we are the best at it. And Americans aren't able to compete for the most part so we don't care. And in recent history no African runner has been able to become popular enough to be considered a "draw", with Geb perhaps being the lone exception. In fact I think the only non American who if brought to a US race would create any buzz would be Farah.
We desperately need elites people care about and follow and Hall met that criteria. Our sport will miss him.