Donavan MF Brazier ends America's 47 yr gold medal drought, Wins with 1:42.34 AR!!

Remember when Johnny Gray (sp?) basically said DB would never be great unless he could run 70 mile weeks? Those comments have not aged well.

blargh wrote:

Interesting thoughts. I like the idea of shortening XC, there needs to be more races anyways, and more competitive ones for that matter. There's a reason high school XC is more fun to follow than NCAA. But I think inherently the 800m is a bit of a unicorn event in terms of real talent. Those 14 year olds that run sub 55 so rarely have the capability to ever run an actually elite mile. It's such a specific mix of disparate abilities to be a world class sub 1:45 800m runner. You have to be able to go sub 45 and sub 4. Brazier is obviously a once in 20-30 years talent, even more rare than a 3:55 high school miler. And to your point, I think the US is already a 800m country. Symmonds, Murphy, Berian, Brazier have all taken global medals in the last 6 years.

The US has had three sub 1:43 runners in the last 7 years. Only two 3:55-or-faster HS milers in the last 54 years.

And zero 1:42.34 runners until yesterday.

Just another bump for the incredible run from Brazier. He's taken a lot of flak for past performances, though he is only 22, and had one of the most impressive championship runs by any American in recent memory. Very happy for him!

Excellent idea to provide a shorter xc race, along with the 5k, to encourage more 400-800 types to get that base in and be ready for track. The same should apply to college.

Hoppel should have gone for it earlier--he might have gotten bronze. Tuka had that incredible progression to 2015, and then he had a few not great years. He was quoted earlier this year to the effect that he'd changed coaches and training methods, that hadn't worked out, and he went back to the coach who got him to 1:42.5. It worked for him.

Brazier had an incredible race and he has really figured it out tactically--a great strategy there because he attacked at the very moment that Vazquez was tiring, and hence, his lead over the others would otherwise have vanished and he would still be more rubber-legged than them in the last 100m because of that 24/49 start he had. As it was, he built the lead up further by striking then and it was the biggest victory margin in a champs race.

Are we not counting indoor worlds? What about Boris barian?

The mid distance guys on my college team train with the xc guys they just don't really race. If you want to be good at running you shouldn't be babied into it just go out and run. Good runners will work in the offseason.

Denial wrote:

If he was Kenyan there would be pages of doping accusations but because it's American and got gold he should surely be the only clean NOP athlete. What a joke letsrun.

It’s just the reality of the sport. American athletes are assumed innocent unless proven guilty, while athletes from countries like Kenya, Jamaica and Russia are not expected to be able to compete with “gifted” and morally superior western athletes without the help of peds. Is brazier clean? Like most athletes, unless he fails a doping test, nothing can be said.

WI wrote:

No one cares

Which is why you took the time out to post?

Seeing Emmanuel Korir make the 400m finals with a pr but not even make the 800m final after being dominant for a good deal of his last college year last year made me think that what he was missing was the same thing that Andrew Wheating was missing after his one great year (1:44/3:30 in his first two races in Europe after finishing at Oregon), a cross country campaign. Korir and Saruni both ran xc at UTEP, finishing their last race last, I believe, at regionals maybe in around 35 minutes, if I remember correctly (they may have run some faster races earlier). They didn't run fast in xc but they ran it and it built their strength for dominating outdoor campaigns. When collegiate 400/800 and 800/1500 runners graduate or leave, they usually abandon the xc base that allowed them to hold their speed outdoors. They should get back to that to become great again. This also happened to Brazier in my view. In high school he ran low mileage but ran some very good xc times, in the 15s, and then ran 1:47 outdoors with a 2 second negative split (54.x/52.x, I think) with no competition, showing he had a much greater capacity at the time. The next year he ran the 1:43.55 on speed training but he still had some of that xc strength. He began to lose that and didn't perform to his potential. Then he goes to NOP and his mileage may not have been 70 mpw but it was a lot higher and look at him now.

College XC is a bit intimidating for some F.A.T. 46.xx 400m athletes. We know Brazier negotiated a XC exemption for his freshman year at Texas A&M. My college XC coach wanted every 400m man to race XC. Some quit the entire T&F program due to college XC. It took a 46.xx 400m teammate to negotiate a modified XC training program for 400m runners. We have to take care of our sub-47 400m guys in U.S.