Why did Steve Ovett decline so quickly?

[quote]wintruth wrote:

I came across a rare YT video of one of Steve Ovett's late career races from 1988 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxE8iXShv8o

He lived in his mom's basement and didn't do team sports because he didn't want to connect with or rely on others.

Jamin ancestor?

Bad teeth did him in.

Peaked from 1978 to '83 (age 22-27), that's a pretty good duration and what you'd think would be typical for a middle distance runner of the 1970s and 80s. And on either side of that he PRd at 400 (47.5) in 1977 and 5000 m (13:20) in 1986.

And it was bronchitis, not lung cancer, that took him out of the competition in the 1984 Olympics.

Don't listen to that garbage. Lung cancer? Anti-social basement dweller?

The truth is Ovett was older than he claimed. When he was 20 he discovered his gift for running but feared he was too late, that he would not get development training funds if he was too old. So, with the help of his mom he and his younger brother switched identities. It worked out both ways as his younger brother left school, which he hated, and joined the Royal Air Force. So when "Steve" was declining, he was actually in his late 30s. And his real name is Reg.

He had Webbitis. Teen prodigy, good progression through peak years, rapid decline.

Guys like Webb, Ovett, Cram and Ryun get old faster.

Ellliott was smart to retire young.

Discuss has two Ss. wrote:

It was totally lung cancer.

There is noting to discus.

He was going bald. Bald-goers burn their endocrine candle at both ends, hitting a high but brief early peak. They set WR's and then quickly fade away a la Webb.

Also by 1988 wearing 1-inch shorts was already starting to be considered unmanly. Some elites were subconsciously affected by this. Note how Ovett prances around like a sissy la la when he is introduced. He raced the same way.

Seriously!

1) Ovett had a long career. He competed in 3 Olympics, running in 5 finals. He won his first senior medal in 1974 and his last in 1986. Not bad , really!

2) He was seriously ill in 1984 at LA with heart problems. His father suffered from cardiac problems so genetics might have had something to do with this. He took virtually the whole of the 1985 season off and came back - at 5K - in 1986/7. This move was not as successful as he would have liked, hence his attempt to make the 1500 team in 1988. All the evidence suggests that he was physically not the same after the problems he encountered in 1984. I suspect that most of us would have walked away from serious competition after LA so full marks to him for attempting to carry on.

3) By 1988 it looks like their is a problem with motivation. That Cork mile does not show a man in prime physical shape nor does it show a fully committed, motivated athlete determined to screw the last ounce out of his performance. Ovett was a high volume trainer; it must be difficult to maintain that level of commitment for over a decade.

Thanks for the serious reply :)

I understand all those points and as a huge fan of Ovett I recognize it was incredible the way he even continued to compete at a high level after LA 84 (not to mention having his leg impaled previously), and in a different event.

Still, it's surely rare for an elite runner to decline so rapidly in the space of a year or two without a serious injury or health problem. If you watch the commonwealth 86 5000m final on YT and then the world championship 87 5000m final (in which Ovett finished nowhere) back to back then you can see that Ovett's performance in 86 looked actually more impressive in destroying Jack Buckner over the last 200m than Aouitas (Aouita the cheater), and Aouita's time slower than Ovett's in 86. Ovett had only been training for the 5000m, as you said, for one year at that point.

In 87 (with another years training and experience in the 5000m) he was way inferior to his Commonwealth form from just a year before, and in 88 he looked like he wasn't even in the top 100.

If it was simply lack of motivation I wonder why he was still even competing? (and he competed for another 3 or 4 years after 88).

His rampant doping caught up with him.

He hit some railings when out running in 1981 damaged some muscles and never had quite the same kick after that

He still manage a WR in 83 which meant he wat at the top from 1977 - 1983.

From 1977-1979 he was No 1 over 1500m then No 1/2 to 1981

After 1984 when he had lung problems in LA he stuggled with the heat - he was a different athlete in the Commonwealths compared to the hotter Europeans in 1985

I think he made a mistake switching from his normal xc winter backgorund to going to Australia to train and race track in Winter over later years

I also reckon getting married took the edge of him as it did for Cram - just a theory though

ukathleticscoach wrote:

He hit some railings when out running in 1981 damaged some muscles and never had quite the same kick after that

He still manage a WR in 83 which meant he wat at the top from 1977 - 1983.

From 1977-1979 he was No 1 over 1500m then No 1/2 to 1981

After 1984 when he had lung problems in LA he stuggled with the heat - he was a different athlete in the Commonwealths compared to the hotter Europeans in 1985

I think he made a mistake switching from his normal xc winter backgorund to going to Australia to train and race track in Winter over later years

I also reckon getting married took the edge of him as it did for Cram - just a theory though

This thread only has a couple of truthful replies. THIS is one of them.

Character defamation should be taken seriously by the moderators and owners of this web site. Too bad it isn't.

frolic loop wrote:

Character defamation should be taken seriously by the moderators and owners of this web site. Too bad it isn't.

I agree 'froot loop', as I took every post on this thread "seriously".

Sure. And most people reading these have a sense of running history (yeah, right).

Won Olympic gold, WR holder, and competed at the highest levels for over a decade. Even the best athletes will lose their form if they get injured or have a decline in motivation due to many years of competing at a high level. Ovett was a great champion.

I think you're overvaluing that 1986 performance tremendously. They went through 3k at 8:08 and the bell at 12:26. Ovett's last lap was only 58, as he easily beat three runners who had already given all they had. There must have been a dozen runners at least in 1986 who could have beaten Ovett in that race had they been there.

[quote]wintruth wrote:

Still, it's surely rare for an elite runner to decline so rapidly in the space of a year or two without a serious injury or health problem. If you watch the commonwealth 86 5000m final on YT and then the world championship 87 5000m final (in which Ovett finished nowhere) back to back then you can see that Ovett's performance in 86 looked actually more impressive in destroying Jack Buckner over the last 200m than Aouitas (Aouita the cheater), and Aouita's time slower than Ovett's in 86. quote]

Er... wrote:

I think you're overvaluing that 1986 performance tremendously. They went through 3k at 8:08 and the bell at 12:26. Ovett's last lap was only 58, as he easily beat three runners who had already given all they had. There must have been a dozen runners at least in 1986 who could have beaten Ovett in that race had they been there.

He looked like he was jogging down the home straight as he waved to the crowd, knowing that Buckner and Hutchins were left in the dust. Aouita the PED user went much earlier than Ovett (whose last lap in 86 was 57.5) , off a 7 seconds slower pace (as you point out) and was straining until the line. The point is his margin of victory of Buckner (who was just pipped for second) was around the same as Ovetts, with a lot more apparent effort. Accepting that Buckner likely improved since the Commonwealths, Ovett had clearly degraded massively in the space of one year. If 12 people could have beaten him in 1986 (not saying that isn't true) I don't know where they were in 87 if Buckner was about as close to Aouita as anyone.

He was one of the first to realize that Black Lives Matter, and slowed down to allow Africans a place on the podium.

wintruth wrote:

Did he suffer a serious injury or illness in 86, perhaps that the Euro performance was the first sign of?

Also, what about the idea that Steve Ovett's sharp decline from 86 onwards cost Seb Coe his chance of defending his Olympic title in 88?

Lung Cancer