Let's face it: Doha sucked.

NBC gold was worth the money. Full coverage of every event. British announcers laid it on a little too thick at times but much better than the American coverage. Used Dan O'Brien effectively also. I don’t know who dopes, and who doesn’t but there was great athletic competition. Got my tickets to the Olympic trials and waiting for the marathon here in Atlanta. For all it’s issues and problems, it’s still the sport at all levels that I love.

WORSE IDEA EVER

I contribute the awarding of the World Championships to Qatar to bribes and lefty thinking (we need to be inclusive). IAAF is corrupt and dumb.

The races were phenomenal, collectively speaking. Putting the meet in Doha was questionable from the start though. 40,000 capacity stadium, 10 day meet, basically 1/4 of the population of Qatar would have to attend the meet at some point and the. You sprinkle in the dedicated T/F fans that travel for this (family of athletes and barely anyone else). But on the screen they made it appear as though a decent amount of people showed up most days I thought.

I'll agree that watching runners go out hard was a welcome change from the jog and then kick tactics of the last 8 years or so. Much more fun to watch. But Hassan is doped to the gills, and Mackdaddy?? How do they not test him out of competition. They make a joke of this sport. And, yes, I am a white American. Not a whiner.

Typical T/F fan:

Slow tactical race: boring

Fast honest paced race: they’re doping.

For Mackdaddy, it's that you never hear of him in a non-championship/non-Olympic year; you don't really see him on the Diamond League scene, and then he busts out another medal-winning performance?? Kind of remonds me of Lasse Viren.

Re: Hassan, it's her link to Nike/Salazar that has to raise flags, plus her last 1500 split in her 10K race? C'mon dude, some performances are too good to be true.

That said, I'd rather watch runners take it out hard. "Tactical" races??? Yo, just run a straight up 400 and save us all a lot of wasted time.

The CBC coverage in Canada sucked worse. No coverage of women's 1500m nor men's 1500m. Very limited coverage of other events esp women's pole vault, triple jump and other choice events. Booo CBC

Actually I'm a pretty "glass is half full" kind of guy.

Except when it comes to obviously PED-enhanced performances, oh, and listening to Ato Bolden on NBC. Then yeah, I'm kind of negative.

Coach J wrote:

NBC gold was worth the money. Full coverage of every event. British announcers laid it on a little too thick at times but much better than the American coverage. Used Dan O'Brien effectively also.

This. If you're complaining about the coverage in the US, you must be watching the main NBC feed. I don't know how anyone who considers themselves a track fan can put up with that nonsense.

The Gold feeds were the best I've seen for track. They did a terrific job showing the field events between races on the main feed, plus you could watch them in their entirety on individual feeds if you wanted.

Also, the crowds were crazy for the distance races because they bused in foreign workers to fill the stands, and the foreign workers were predominantly east Africans. That was in the news before the meet started, it's no big secret.

trollism wrote:

It's tough to watch given we now know that Coleman, Salazar, Ethiopia and Kenya are completely to the eyeballs doped.

You can pretend all you want, but if you're of even close to average IQ, you have to be able to see this is the case.

Hmm. I didn't see an athlete named Salazar competing.

So I looked it up and a fellow named Jose Salazar from El Savador competed in the 200 and ran 21.64 in the heats. He failed to qualify. Another guy name Julio Salazar placed 20th in the 20km racewalk.

I'm not sure these two are doping, and if they are then they are wasting their money on a placebo.

Point is, if you think an athlete named Salazar is doping at the World Champs then it's obvious your IQ is in the down syndrome spectrum.

Mr. Reasonable speaks up wrote:

Absolutely no one in the stands; stadium more than half empty; crazy (dangerous) weather conditions for a marathon that was held on the most boring course ever; and some very suspect (PED) performances. Nice job, IAAF!

Oh yeah, the NBC coverage sucked too, but that's old news.

How to ruin the sport of T&F . . . . .

Earlier on I thought it seemed on pretty shaky ground and was probably a bad mistake, but by the final day I was gushing to my girlfriend about how awesome it was. Absolutely loved the light show and the introductions. Would love to see more growth in that direction.

What time were most of the races run local time in Doha? Pretty late and the crowds came on the weekend.

LM wrote:

agreed 100% wrote:

Yes, very boring to see fast times. Please bring Mo Farah back so I can watch more 27:40 10k races!

Faulting Mo for being too good? His competition didn't bring it him. Admittedly because they weren't capable of it, but still. When you know you can't break someone, then there is no incentive to go fast. You'll blow yourself up and lose your chance at a minor place.

Thus, everyone did sit and kick. No more Mo, everyone feels they can win and thus tries some different tactics to deal with 'lesser' kickers.

Exactly. Notice the guy who won the race said he aspired to be the next Mo Farah. He didn't say he aspired to run X time in this race and Y time in the next race.

The dismissive attitude toward Mo Farah is more revealing toward the people who attempt it, than of Mo Farah.

He was so dominant the top runners from the top running nations were scared of him and devoted year after year and 3-4 men in a race to try to deal with him.

Nothing serious

Anyway, I appreciated Doha even though some of the results annoyed me. I have no idea what Shelby Houlihan is doing in the 1500 instead of the 5000. Her comparative times don't matter in the slightest. Just have a fleck of common sense toward how each of those races will be run and who you will be dealing with down the stretch. At least Klosterhalfen made a sensible choice.

I knew for 6 months than Muhammad would win that race narrowly over Sydney. That result annoyed me more than anything. I would have an entirely different perspective of the event is McLaughlin had won. You could see it in Sydney's face that she knew it so easily could have been the other way. She is faster than Muhammad but not as technically sound and more than anything Muhammad simply runs more angry right now. She understood the value of the early lead in that race.

The jumping was phenomenal including a new potential women's star. I was very happy that Lasitskene and Barshim both prevailed.

Michael Norman was the joke of the event and nobody should be willing to define it any other way, or allow him to dodge it.

The stands may have been empty but the design and color scheme were very well done and obviously intended to conceal the number of empty seats.

You’re obviously not a thrower. The throwing portion of Doha was epic.

Ditto all of the above. I was going to make the point about the main NBC feed but Coach J beat me to it.

And Jennie Meadows was charming. People should ante up the $10/month for NBC Sports Gold and start enjoying the sport. They do such a great job with the meets. It is especially nice to be able to watch the separate field event feeds if you are craving more video.

Barshim's win in the HJ was probably the high point of the season for me. Totally unexpected. Just gave me chills to see the love for him before his hometown. This will get votes in the annual TFN Performance of the Year.

And the people in Doha along with the IAAF simply did an outstanding job in putting on the meet. OK, midnight marathons in 100 degree plus heat index suck. But hey, everyone knew about that going in. Their special victory stand and the use of lighting before each event was amazing.

Many of us feared that the athletes would be too ragged out (some were) to compete this late in the year but most of them outdid themselves. It is amazing how many PBs and NRs were set.

Overall I thought it was a spectacular meet. So many great events. The mens HJ and mens shot were spectacular, womens HJ and LJ. Of the races 800 and up I think the womens 8 was the only one that felt eh. Womens 400h lived up to the hype, mens 400h sort of did.

NBC gold was definitely worth it, although it bothered me endlessly that the announcer kept calling his partner "Jenny Meadows" the entire time. Just call her Jenny, no need for the full name every time man

Super Ditto to all the above

NBC American coverage is HORRIBLE! I only watch NBC Sports Gold for all the Diamond League Meets as well. The British announcers have so much knowledge of the sport and the athletes and they pull you in by going from track events to field events and back to track events. They made the Doha meet great for me especially Thursday and Friday.

Whiner and complainer wrote:

Jambo Cabao wrote:

You must have. I find the OP's characterization spot on. Its the last one I'll watch, having not missed one since 1997.

What do you disagree with?

100- villain Coleman wins...drama

200- entertaining Lyles

400- drama of Norman losing his muster and the Bahamian brings gold to storm destroyed country

800- brilliant run by the American with CR

1500- multiple characters at play with the last two Olympic champions present.

5- tactical yet fast

10- wow. Just wow. Multiple moves and lead changes

TJ- incredible battle

HJ- are you kidding me?!

And that's just the men. If you overlook the above and judge a meeting quality on the venue location and temp, then you're nothing even close to an athletics fan.

Spot on. And let's not forget a WORLD RECORD in the girls 400mH by Mohammed along with a spectacular performance from younger McLaughlin.

Also, the mens 4x100 where the USA broke a curse of bad handoffs to get an AMERICAN RECORD

Have no idea why some IDIOT moderator removed my earlier post, but I wondered in it (still do) how many slaves it took to build that stadium in Doha? How many died in its construction?

That's how these dirty little Emirates do their business. They bring in virtual slaves for their building projects.

Apparently someone didn't like that point being made.