I'm on vacation until tomorrow evening so I don't watch every event and I have limited time to discuss it.

I recorded the men marathon and looking forward to watch it. Was a great run by Hawkins indeed.

I'm a bit gutted that Muir did not get a medal in the 1500. I am no Brit but think she always races with true guts and lots of passion. But this and the fact that she might have been a bit overmotivated in front of the home crowd at world champs made her to exert too much energy too early in the final.


I am really looking forward to tonight. The steeple is one of my favourite events.

But first I myself have to do some activity. I think running up to Gornergrad with the Matterhorn as a backdrop will suffice.

---

10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Worth bearing in mind that Laura Muir lost a chunk of training this year due to a stress fracture in her foot. She didn't race at all between the Birmingham indoor grand prix on 18th Feb and the Lausanne diamond league on 6th July.

The BBC commentators (main commentator Steve Cram who knows a thing or two about the 1500m, and is also the coach of Laura Weightman who finished 6th) were a bit puzzled why she took it out at a decent pace for the first lap then slowed it down for the second. Then in the last lap she went for Gold and hammered round the last bend to try to catch the lead pair; if she'd gone for Bronze and paced it more like Jenny Simpson she probably would have got a medal.

Yeah she was quite on dire during indoor season. Sadly she suffered a stressfracture afterwards. But I think she bounced back quite quickly.

Her all out approach might be the reason why I cheer for her.

So, will Jager destroy the Kenyan Steeple party tonight?

---

10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Anyway please lets not talk about LA, the guy bores me.

Ok, I agree.

Re Bolt and doping, there was no motivation for him to dope.

You see people all the time cheating to improve their personal best times in local races. With someone like Bolt, who stands to be one of the most famous athletes in the world, the fastest man in the world and to make millions of dollars, he has lots of motivation.

He was running 20.5 when he was 15, quicker than Gatlin's college times and won the Junior WC 200m when he was that age, 3 years younger than 2nd and 3rd place. I suppose you could then imply that he was doping from the age of 13 or whatever, but that's just getting ridiculous.

They argued the same about Lance. He was a top triathlete at age 16, he was identified as a top cyclist at a young age etc., so he didn't need to dope. That was another one of the arguments "proving" Lance didn't need drugs. The problem is that these guys who are used to winning, want to be the best and keep winning, and that is where the drugs come in. When Lance was racing, he said he needed the drugs to keep up with everyone else, despite the fact that he was a top athlete when he was young.

Now imagine Bolt, who always won when he was growing up, always had articles in the paper written about him, getting lots of attention from girls and constantly told he was going to be a superstar etc. He didn't go to school so the only way to make money was through sports. Now he gets to the senior level, where everyone else was also a star athlete when they were young. He wins but knows that they are taking drugs and working just as hard and the only way to stay on top is to do what they do.

That scenario has played out in a lot of sports for decades. Is it really that impossible to believe?

Gaitlin actually ran 19.86 for 200m in 2002. And I don't think that athletes "need motivation" to dope. Ben Johnson was running 10.1x as a 16 year old, Marion Jones made the Oly 4x1 team as a 16 year old.

And In a sport where .10 can be the difference between make a good six-figure salary and just have a shoe contract w/incentives, it's probably easy to find motivation there. Particularly if the culture is that "everyone is doing it".

Also, going back to the 5000m topic, and why people aren't running as fast. I think it's funny that during a time that cycling was embroiled in doping scandals and baseball players where smashing HR's at an insane rate, that people didn't "know" that is was probably happening in distance running... since 3k/5k/10k records were just anihilated (by a ton of people).

---

John Hartpence, Athlete & Coach
tripence@gmail.com, @coachpence

That entire part in italics is the only reason why I would not be surprised if Bolt were to test positive. I hope he is 1 in 7 billion humans (and he just may be), but if he is 7 in 7 billion and took the boost to be the extra special one out of those 7 or so guys, then I won't actually hate him or be dissappointed. It is clear to me what drives these guys....but I hope he is indeed on in 7 billion.

Back to the racing. I am really looking forward to the replay of Vanniekirk's 400m. What happened to Maklawa though? He is listed as DNS. Being out of network coverage while on family vacation is killing me!!!

9th in the medal table, having a shocker us Brits!

I just read the mess around Maklawa:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...eswayde-van-niekerk/

Too bad for both of them. OK bring on the 200m to see if Van Niekerk can pull of that double! And the 400m W finals where the American women have the season best times, (sub 50) but the Jamaicans have the best seed times from the heats. Women's 4x400m relay could be interesting too.

He had lots of motivation to dope, I think his highest TDF finish before being diagnosed with cancer was 40th in 1995, the year before it was 96th or something. Bolt was in the top 10 for the 200m when he was 15. Not top ten junior, top ten in the world. LA wasn't going anyway fast on the tour racing clean, he figured that out pretty quick. Busting his balls for years and not getting anywhere close to the top 30. Maybe Bolt has doped, but his position in the world of athletics was very different to LA's when they both started out. He was winning from the very outset, easily and making lots of money. It would be illogical for him to dope. Whereas for LA, that was a logical choice. He wasn't winning, he had no chance of ever winning the TDF.

Keep in mind that Lance was beating athletes like Mike Pigg and Mark Allen as a 16 year old in triathlon, from where he get recruited into cycling. He did win Oslo worlds in 93 and was being developed in the role of 1 day racer, (like the classics guys) not a TdF GC guy. No one will know when Lance went on the full dope program with EPO but it is widely regarded that at the end of the 94 season when he got smacked all over the place by the full doped Italian squads that he decided that he had to get on the same juice as them. His emergence as GC guy was only post cancer and losing enough weight (while being fully doped). Until he transformed his body into a lightweight runner body he had not GC hope. Pre cancer, lance was too fat.

Now can we talk about the VanNiekerk 400m/200m double attempt. Is he the only guy to do sub 10, sub 20, sub 44? We do have a track meet that Lance is not even a part of!

Yeah I'm not disputing his talent as a cyclist, just saying his choice to dope was logical, he was getting smashed by the dopers and had no hope of beating them. Bolt was right up there with the best in the world when he was 15, he got gold at the juniors competing against 18 year olds, if he did choose to dope, it would have been nonsensical and illogical. Not worth the risk. LA had little choice.

You don't think it's potentially logical to dope in 100m track and field as well with the number of dopers caught in that sport as well?

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

OK back to the racing. <clears throat> Our Oregon project hero Mo Farah is back on deck for the 5000m semifinals heats. I would love to be in the Stadium in London today with the 200m and 5000m semifinals for the men and the 400m finals for the women!

Not when you're beating everyone in the world clean. If you were a good, but not great, sprinter that had plateaued with little chance of competing with the best then it would be more logical to dope.

Looks like the big medals are NOT coming for Canada.

After the high of 8 Medals in Beijing at the last IAAF World Championships and 6 Medals at last summer's Rio Olympics, this has been frustrating.

DeGrasse out as well as Derek Drouin to injury. Some bad luck and sub-par performances deep-sixed some other medal chances - Aron Brown in the 200m, Shawn Barber in the Pole Vault (Defending World Champion), Cristobel Netty (World #3 this year) in the women's Long Jump

So for Canada it's the little "victories" and "wins"** - unfortunately the general public does not understand how deep, and competitive many of the track & field events are. They only think medals matter.

**Mo Ahmed's 8th place in the 10000m final was significant, and not just because he broke the Canadian Record. Matt Hughes made his 4th Straight World Final in the 3000m S/C and equaled his best ever finish with a gutsy 6th place after some significant seasonal set backs. Today for the first time ever we qualified two men for the final in the 5000m - Ahmed and young Justyn Knight. Genvieve Lalonde, banged a hurdle badly bruised her leg, fell, still ran a seasonal best time and made it to the final of the women's 3000m s/c - her seconf world final in a row. Brittney Crew's 6th in the women's Shot Put was the best ever for a Canadian woman in that event. And even though Brandon McBride finished 8th in the 800m final, he was the guy brave enough to make it a real race.

We still have a few shots for medals, but it's getting slim.

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Bit of a bummer for Canada, but Barber, Drouin, deGrasse effectively account for 4-5 medals and they were strong bets at medals. We have Bishop in the 800m in the heats today. Lets see what she can do. I wonder how cooked Semenya will be after her 1500m as they have to race three rounds in the 1500m. Women's 5000m today and 200m finals.

Let's see what Makwala does after racing solo in the qual round. He has a season's best 19.77 this year, fastest out of all qualifiers.

A fascinating read on the Castor Semanya situation here - http://www.cbc.ca/...bishop-800-1.4235124

No easy answers or solutions with this one. And everyone tip-toeing around. Even the women, most impacted, Bishop et al . . seem to steer clear of it all, and just say the nice things like "I can only do my best and I can't worry about it all".

I take some issue with the content of the story. At this level of sport, and this is on clear display at the IAAF World Championships, body shape, weight, an conformity start to close in on a pretty close norm and average for that particular race/event - with very little variation.

With few exceptions men and women distance runners are all pretty close to the same weight/build - extremely lean, and not very tall. The shot-putters are the same - much heavier, muscular, and tall . . and so on.

When the women lined up for the 1500m final, all the women with the exception of Semanya were 5'6 - 5'8 and about 100 - 110 lbs. Semanya stood dramatically - much taller, much more heavy and solidly built.

Not saying she does not belong - that's not for me to decide, but in terms of her body and build, she is an extreme outlier in women's middle distance running. I cannot think of another woman who has been built like that, in the history of 800/1500m running!

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I imagine it to be mentally hard for Superstar athletes to come through the heats.

I mean everyone considers it a no brainer for you and it shouldn't be difficult. But at one point it will hurt a bit even in the semis. You need to be prepared mentally to suffer for something that should be granted.

When you come into a round thinking that it is easy and you have to save energy but at one point it gets tough, then the question is how you deal with it. It could be that your body shuts down. Your telling yourself it shouldn't hurt but it doe's. Imagine how it will feel in the final etc.

Last night in the 5000 heats it was so fricking nervous. Look at what happened to Chelimo. On the world stage you have so many athletes that are close together.

Anyway, they are pros after all and its their job to deal with it. But when I think about prelims, I think they are tougher for the top tier guys than expected by us.

---

10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Last night in the 5000 heats it was so fricking nervous. Look at what happened to Chelimo. On the world stage you have so many athletes that are close together.

Anyway, they are pros after all and its their job to deal with it. But when I think about prelims, I think they are tougher for the top tier guys than expected by us.


Certain races are crazy deep at the world level - the 5000m is one of them. Think about it - you have savvy verterans and favorites like Moh Farah and then this 17 year old kid from Ethiopia Selemon Barega who is just 17 years old. (he's already run sub 13 minutes this year!!)

Just making it to the final, is an achievement in and of itself. Throw in rain, and a slippery track, and you have the rugby match that was Heat #2 last night.

With apologies for the Canadian patriotism, I'm so happy to see both Moh Ahmed and Justyn Knight make it through to the final. Moh's been running at this level for a few years now. Justyn, just graduated from Syracuse, after a stellar NCAA career, and this is his first time running, really at this level. He ran like a pro in Heat #1 - stayed calm and relaxed running on the rail and on the inside, in a close pack for most of the race, and then waited, and waited, and made a strong move to secure one of the auto-qualifying spots in a frantic finale!

---

---

Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

We are old enough to remember Jarmilla from Moscow Olympics 400-800 double!

I remember watching the 1983 worlds and wondering WTF was a man doing in the women's 400 and 800 meter races in which she won both races.

That's what all Czechlovakian farm girls look like

---

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

**Mo Ahmed's 8th place in the 10000m final was significant, and not just because he broke the Canadian Record.

Yes, it was impressive and exciting to watch.

As I noted earlier, it is incredible to think that a time of 27:02 only gets you 8th place.

Of course this is a very difficult topic.

Semenya also stands out in the 800m, but in the 1500 her build seemed even more out of place.

Dev wrote in a post above about people with different body shapes even in the same event. I mean there are a lot of very jacked but also some very lean sprinters. In distance events, you have rail thin athletes vs. some a little bulkier. Overall east africans are thiny, but even with them you can see some differneces.

Of course we all know why Semenia is looking so muscular and that she has a higher testosterone count.

But I wonder something that has nothing to do with the gender topic. Are some women, mostly the westerners, giving away some performance by trying to hit certain numbers on the scale?
I mean you see it with Semenya that in middle distance a little bit of muscules can't be too bad. Oviously they don't need (and can't) to bulk up like Semenya.

Yeah, they belong to the best in the world but I notice a big difference between 800 and 1500m runners and in (sit and kick) championship races a bit more strength could be decisive.

(I noticed it myself. As a 19 year old I wanted to be as light as possible. I lost all my strength and started to perform poorly. Only when I got stronger could I improve again).

Who am I to give advice to pros? They know what they are doing. But sometimes I wonder how it's possible. Everyone is different I guess and they are genetic freaks anyway.

---

10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

Watching the 400m finals for the women, you see how much "endurance" kicks in even at this distance. Felix makes up the stagger in <100m but Francis sticks on her shoulder the rest of the race and actually out runs Felix on the 200-300m bend and emerges just a few steps behind. At this point Francis pretty well knows she has the race in the bag because she's running way faster than Felix and has paced better. Felix basically blew her race in the first 100m:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rccAJKnxNR4