jewbacca wrote:
rojo wrote:
While, I have said she has a zero percent shot of winning Olympic marathon gold, I 100% disagree with the OP. I love talking about her. It's interesting to talk about as we don't know how it's going to workout. For the rest of running, nowadays in the year 2018 with there being so much info out there, we kind of know how it's going to play out. With Gwen, we don't really know.
+1
Crossovers are rare, and she is entertaining to follow.
I agree she has no shot at any Olympic medal, but she's running well enough that you have to consider her a contender for the team. Jared Ward wasn't spectacular before or after the Trials and Olympics, but still has an Olympic 6th place on his resume.
It depends on what you mean by "contender". America is seeing its greatest depth ever at the Marathon.
The top 13 all-time U.S. women's marathon performers are listed below with their PRs:
2:19:36 Deena Kastor
2:20:57 Jordan Hasay
2:21:14 Shalane Flanagan
2:21:21 Joan Samuelson
2:21:42 Amy Cragg
2:22:38 Desiree Linden
2:24:29 Kellyn Taylor
2:24:52 Kara Goucher
2:25:38 Laura Thweatt
2:26:20 Sara Hall
2:26:22 Magdalena Lewy Boulet
2:26:26 Julie Brown
2:26:53 Serena Burla
The PRs for six of the women (Hasay, Cragg, Taylor, Thweatt, Hall and Burla) were set in the last eighteen months. Two of the women with older PRs (Flanagan, Linden) won World Marathon Majors in the last twelve months.
The list does not include Molly Huddle or others like Stephanie Bruce and Aliphine Tuliamuk who are most likely running the marathon Trials and have beaten Jorgensen handily recently. There are probably others that people could think of that are as much of a "contender" as Jorgensen.
I think the OP's point is that there is too much hype about Jorgensen when women like Rochelle Kanuho (who has beaten Jorgensen twice this year) are not even sponsored.