Borzakovskiy out again

Are you serious? Where does it say this? This is getting ridiculous.

He always said he wouldn't be running the WC's, he is still very young and his coach/he believes that he is only at the beginning of a large curve of improvement. He is very young, just out of the junior ranks, give him a chance. Potentially he is the best 800m runner ever. I'm sure if he was American you wouldn't be coming out with all this crap, I think he will win the Olympics, if not 2004, then 2008 and maybe even 2012, hes young enough.

its true, its true

Although Wilson Kipketer's return this year has been somewhat bumpy, the Dane demonstrated his old savvy of preserving a victory with a 1:44.96 in his final tune-up race in Karlsruhe at the end of February. He leads the list of those competing in Birmingham, as notable absentees include iconoclastic Russian Yuriy Borzakovskiy (voluntary).....

from iaaf.org

detector raises a good point. Whats the point in being an athlete and training if you arent going to compete?

and the amount of times he has pulled out of major meets over 800m makes you wonder

very young? - yeah good one waz.

Obviously is not too young to run in meetings like the Golden League, or IAAF Grand Prix, or the European champs (where he ducked running the 800, entering an event he knew he could NEVER win) hes 21, nearly 22 years old! If he cant handle the "pressure" (my ass) now then he will NEVER be a champion of any sort. How come guys like Antonio Manuel Reina (21 years old, 1min43.87 winner at the world cup)Cornelius Chirchir, Mark Lewis-Francis, can handle it but he cant.

Hahahah, it makes me laugh how truly ignorant some people are

now that true

Waz - the average age of a 800m world record holder is 22.

Drugs or not, I can't understand why some athletes don't want to compete in major championships.

Sorry - the average age is 25. But the point is that Borzakovskiy is not young. He is not simply a promising junior. He should up there right now. Coe won an Olympic title at 23. Why wait any longer?

Running 400s makes sense for an 800m runner but doing it at the European champs instead of the 800m was a stange decision.

That was one of few major champs he has run and presumably didn't get tested there as he went out in the semis.

I think you should judge him at the end of his career not the beginning. I hope he rams the words down your throat, I bet he is a better runner at 25 than at 21, thats the case with almost everyone. As for the average age of WR being 22, so what? We live ina different world, until the 1960's most athletes retired at about 23, and as Coe held the record for the best part of 20 years I think your average argument is totally flawed. He has loads of time, loads of ability and most importantly he is still improving, not on the downward side of the curve, who give s atoss about the indoors anyway, they mean nothing, they are 2nd rate, theer are as many people missing as there are running.

Waz - as you're always quick to insinuate drugs accusations towards Paula I thought you might agree with the original post who made some valid points. For myself, I'm always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt - innocent until proven guilty.

As for ramming the words down my throat - well I'm sure that Borzakovskiy couldn't give a toss what I think either way. I'm just a simple athletics fan and I like to see top perfomers performing. I also love to see peope fulfilling their potential (in any walk of life). There seems to a pattern emerging with Borzakovskiy which I hope he doesn't regret later in his career - I'm a great believer in taking opportunities as and when they present themselves. Furthermore, I think that the World Indoor Champs are certainly an event worth targetting and I'm really looking forward to watching them this weekend.