another perspective wrote:
What?
"whereas many of those ahead of her on the list were running in the wake provided by Hassan in Doha." The clear takeaway from that sentence is that there are women who are only ahead of her because their times benefited from "running in the wake provided by Hassan in Doha."
I showed how every single woman in the Doha final had a faster SB than Osika even discounting that race. So on the (more) level playing field of non-Doha-final races, Osika was still slower in 2019. Besides, I missed a qualifying time in a race once by under a second but had competed in windy, snowy conditions. I started complaining to my coach who laughed at me and said "kid, you don't get an asterisk next to your name on the time sheet saying *would have made it to nationals if it wasn't snowy. You either run fast enough or you don't."
And yeah, you're right, not getting dinged =/= clean. But I've had dogs in this fight before - whining about how you'd be ranked higher if not for dopers brings nothing but misery. You can reflect on it later on, but ultimately if you're clean and want to win in track then you're gonna have to hurt that much more and try beat the dopers anyway.
ANYWAY, I'm going to shut up now. Like I said, I'm a fan of Shannon and hope she has a good year, I just don't see the point in going through mental contorsions to try big up an athlete whose achievements and times stand alone in 2019 as being a fantastic success. 4:01 solo, a big win in a big meet, 20th in the world. Not friggin bad.
Apologies for derailing this thread. That's the last I'll say about the times of the Doha Finals/athletes - everything else will be positive commentary on Shannon's season as it progresses.
You don't seem to understand the concept of rabbiting. In Doha, the top women all had a rabbit in the form of a riled-up Sifan Hassan. FIVE of the six women directly behind her had PBs. Shannon, OTOH, had to lead solo for the final two laps of her race. If you don't understand the difference, then you are seriously impaired in your concept of how competition works. Shannon would have been sub-4:00 easily in the Doha race.