True, True, True... the distance matters. And if I might add this follows my Rule 2 of racing the Mile/1500
Rule 2 - Don't jockey unless you're riding a horse
After watching dozens of old mile racing videos on YouTube I started to notice a trend of runners that jockeyed back and forth through the field never won or even made it to the podium. To test this observation up I took the last five Olympic 1500m men's finals (1984-2000) and tracked the top seven finishers for each race. I counted how many times each runner passed another runner. Not counting if they were passed. The Olympic races were chosen with the thinking that these top level runners would use the best possible racing strategy. The results are quite revealing.
On average the runners that finished in 5th, 6th and 7th places passed twice as many runners as runners in the top three places. The winners passed on average only 4.6 runners during the race. The 6th place runners passed average of 9.5 runners. Watching and logging the passing metrics on these races you start to notice very quickly that the winners would quickly settle into mid pack by the first 200m and then, just sit there till their final kick. Runners that would start up front then slide back and then surge back to the front were always doomed. Runners that started in the back then mid race sprinted to the front finished with the same poor results. The top three finishers were steady mid pack runners that sat on the inside lane and made only one move to the front.
This rule is not my option, just data and metrics. Try it on a past race video.
Study Results (sorry I can't add the chart)
Place - Runners Passed
1 - 4.7
2 - 5.6
3 - 5.9
4 - 4.9
5 - 7.2
6 - 9.7
7 - 7.0
This 2019 1500m National - Engels (1) passed 2 runners, Centrowitz (2) passed 4 runners
BTW
Rule 1 - Use the gears, it's not an automatic
Rule 3 - Don't play the lotto unless you hold the winning ticket