US M4x400 got the order wrong

Sometimes, more often indoor than outdoor, you go fast to slow. It's easier to keep the inside position and lead than fight to go around an opponent.

We did break the old record.

I agree. I like Vernon, but he really has 1 gear. You need a strong #1 in indoor to beat to the break, so Kerley still makes sense there. But Norwood is not a solid anchor because he doesn't have a kick.

It's indoor, though. Sad to see the WR go down for personal reasons, but it's indoor. A lot of the best US 400m runners have just started their competition season recently. Indoor is just a good way to get hurt with the tight banked curved and the race strategies.

Tables will get righted in outdoor. Next few years are going to see a huge boom in US 400m runners, both young and veterans. The times are going to be dropping a lot very spoon, I think. It won't surprise me if we have another 1-3 US runners into the 43s before the next Olympics.

Jverb wrote:

I agree. I like Vernon, but he really has 1 gear. You need a strong #1 in indoor to beat to the break, so Kerley still makes sense there. But Norwood is not a solid anchor because he doesn't have a kick.

It's indoor, though. Sad to see the WR go down for personal reasons, but it's indoor. A lot of the best US 400m runners have just started their competition season recently. Indoor is just a good way to get hurt with the tight banked curved and the race strategies.

Tables will get righted in outdoor. Next few years are going to see a huge boom in US 400m runners, both young and veterans. The times are going to be dropping a lot very spoon, I think. It won't surprise me if we have another 1-3 US runners into the 43s before the next Olympics.

I love the indoor 400. It's like an 800 on a crack/steroid highball.

My favorite race so far this year is Sydney v. Lynna. Some serious young Star Power there!

Coch got it spot on you want the inside lane on a 200m banked indoor track to make them g around you. They did, congrats Poland. They won!

There is no reason to think that a different order would have resulted in a faster team time. It looked bad in real time but the splits probably would have been the same, just in a different order. Looks like Kerley may be one of the best in the world right now.

We don't win with a plus 46 second leg. We just need someone faster in there. Just a little faster.

Your third leg caused the most problems. Terrible run, he looked as if he was unwell or something.

You may be on to something

400m Final

POS1 BIB173 athlete Pavel Maslák COUNTRY CZE CZE MARK45.47 SB Reaction Time0.171

POS2 BIB407 athlete Michael Cherry COUNTRY USA USA MARK45.84 Reaction Time0.173

POS3 BIB386 athlete Deon Lendore COUNTRY TTO TTO MARK46.37 Reaction Time0.237

POS4 BIB401 athlete Aldrich Bailey Jr COUNTRY USA USA MARK46.44 Reaction Time0.198 !!!

POS BIB202 athlete Óscar Husillos COUNTRY ESP ESP MARKDQ Reaction Time0.164

POS BIB188 athlete Luguelín Santos COUNTRY DOM DOM MARKDQ Reaction Time0.217

Virtually the only job a 4X400 coach has (or should have) is to make sure his best runner on the day is the anchor.

Don't tell me about positioning and I don't care if it's indoor; that is the worst kind of over-coaching and it backfires time and again.

The Polish anchor didn't have to run any extra (hardly). He just let his momentum off the turn take him past Norwood's corpse.

There is, however, one more thing a 4x4 coach should tell his indoor anchor, no matter who it is: Save something for the final straight! Then that little swing to the outside the trailing runner has to make may be the difference.

USA got both things wrong. 1) Wrong guy on the anchor, and (2) he went out like a bat out of hell, throwing away any strategic advantage when it counted.

And one more pertinent consideration: putting your best runner first to get a lead can very well leave your inferior runners without the competition they need to bring out their best efforts. Second and third runners think they're doing the jobs just keeping the lead, when they are really setting up the anchor to fail.

As I noted in another thread, 3 of the 4 Polish runners ran the finals in Rio in 2016. Were any of the runners in the indoor 4x400 even on the relay team in Rio?

Did the US have its best 400m runners there?

Also these fellows broke the old WR as well.

The Poles take indoors more seriously that we Americans do.

If the US won, it would have been the right order.

Or they anchored Kerley and the first leg handed off behind, leading to the second and third leg not being able to get to the front and Kerley wasn't able to come from behind, someone else would say they got the order wrong.

If the last three legs couldn't maintain their leads, who's to say they would have been able to make up ground running from behind?

I agree that it seems like a different order would have worked, but you never know.

You do like to anchor with a winner.

Thought the 1991 US outdoor 4X400 anchored with World Champion Pettigrew, gave him a lead and they still lost.

Jverb wrote:

Sad to see the WR go down for personal reasons, but it's indoor.

Are your personal reasons that you are in fact John Verburg, father to former world record holder David Verburg?

Last year at Texas A&M, Fred ran the lead off leg indoors, due primarily to establish the lead like others have pointed out. His younger brother Mylik would run anchor.

Aldrich Bailey ran a 46.1 split on 3rd leg. I saw Brian Herron, a US High Schooler Junior, run a 45.6 split this year on Anchor at Texas A&M High School Class.

Aldrich Bailey ran a 46.1 split on 3rd leg. Don't know what happened. He ran 45.6 in the open. You would think that with a running start he would have gone faster and run a 44 split but he actually ran slower than his open 400 time. I saw Brian Herron, a US High School Junior, run a 45.6 split this year on anchor at Texas A&M High School Classic on Milesplit, and he was running by himself. If Michael Norman was on Anchor, US wins and gets the world record.

ex-runner wrote:

Your third leg caused the most problems.

No doubts there. Having a "third leg" isn't what it's cracked up to be. I'm always tripping over mine.

bloviating wrote:

I get it, Norwood is the elder statesman of the group but he should not have been the anchor. He ran within his abilities but was set up to get hunted down. Kerley is the fastest and the freshest. It took a WR to beat them but the US wasted that opportunity. What good does the early lead do you if you don’t know how to run with it?

The order wasn't the problem. The 3rd leg was slow (Bailey). Also that wasn't our best team. We have never had our best 4 run in the indoor championships.

Regardless, Poland ran great!! Hats of to them.

Realist1 wrote:

Aldrich Bailey ran a 46.1 split on 3rd leg. Don't know what happened. He ran 45.6 in the open. You would think that with a running start he would have gone faster and run a 44 split but he actually ran slower than his open 400 time. I saw Brian Herron, a US High School Junior, run a 45.6 split this year on anchor at Texas A&M High School Classic on Milesplit, and he was running by himself. If Michael Norman was on Anchor, US wins and gets the world record.

Bailey completely threw away the lead that Kerley gave you. Must have been one of the slowest legs in the race.

Then when Norwood got the baton he decided he needed to re-establish the lost distance advantage and went off like a madman, whilst the Polish guy just waited.