i dont think you understand how thin the air gets at a certain level, there is a differnce to be a weak runner a pretty good runner like her self and an absolute world class runner
have a look at her run progression.
well bellow showes you she is working on her run … and obvioulsy had some issues likely trying to much to improve her run …
so i guess you should say why was she trying so hard to improve her run only to get injured …
she has some solid 800 m times but her 5 k times are just not top notch from junior level
How do you know she was trying too hard? Athletes get injured all the time. Alistair was injured every season. Was he trying too hard to improve his run?
The goal is to win medals, not to give participation awards to folks that have no chance in the individual. So as we have seen the past couple cycles, our best chance is a medal in the MTR, so barring someone like McQueen learning how to run a 29 10k, it will be the relay once again. So setting up a system that doesn’t allow you to pick your best MTR athletes, well just shooting yourself in the foot…
Brooks has written books on how this should not be, but it just is and you play the hand you are dealt. I agree with him by the way, but roster size is likely to never change on this…
Im backing out of this one chaps, I don’t want to come across as bashing an athlete (especially a British one)
Again Coldwell was in a similar place and then turned up (was it pre Olympic year?) Was suddenly able to run herself onto podiums, then she actually won a race.
Problem is we currently don’t have a system that does that. We have a system that qualifies entirely through the individual pathway and then only when that is concluded they can fix/pick the team based on the MTR (or pick it based on individuals). Now granted they could go all team UK and make the qualification so severe that no one will ever AQ and thus they can “pick” who they want. But we’ve already seen in the last 2 olympics how the AQ has affected the MTR team. Summer Rapp taking a spot in Tokyo with everyone knowing full well she was never going to be the MTR team (along with she never was going to individual medal either). Paris worked out that the 2 best athletes in the individual (Pearson/Knibb) also are 2 of your best MTR athletes.
But again it’s kinda hard to do a mtr pathway because so much is dependent on other people’s races, etc that then affect yours. So the “easiest” pathway is simply do the whole qualification by way of individuals and then correct any misses with discretion (if MTR is your medal shot).
So in the current process you can have scenarios that screw over your MTR even if that’s the pathway you want/see as the best medal chance because you are doing qualification through individual racing. IE- McElroy qualifies last year instead of discretion w/ Rider, most people assume/think the MTR would have been weaker.
Again it makes no sense, other then “thems the rules”. The 2 races are so far apart from a demand of competition that they deserve their own true platform of putting the best in each. But again the IOC doesn’t give a shit about that, WT had to take that arrangement in order to get the MTR, so here we are.
And we’ll always have this issue, especially as the MTR becomes a more specific pathway for some athletes. Focus on the high intensity and add just enough endurance intensity to make sure you can have a ranking in the individual that makes you eligible.
Was it Germany (may have been Rio?) decided they didn’t have anyone worth sending to the Olympics for the men?
May have made this whole scenario up in my head, it defo rings a bell though, Germany at some point didn’t think it was worth funding athletes to do something at some point.
Yes it was GER and Rio. I disagreed with the sentiment being that it’s the Olympics, and we werent talking about lower level athletes just going for shits and giggles…They were top 50 ranked athletes in the world I believe. If you are only funding athletes if they truly are medal worthy, we’d literally not have a sport. It’d be 12 people racing. Like I get it, high performance is high performance, and that’s the standard, but if that’s the standard and nothing else, then you’ll never grow as a sport. Again I’m not suggesting participation level athletes, but if your busting your ass for your federation and you “qualify”, fucking go.
I think where I’ve been too much of a believer in Knibb has been in her ability to overcome her bike handling weaknesses. I have probably overestimated the ability to just get (world class) sharp at riding, because it’s come more naturally to me, perhaps like others presume to tell Sam Long he just needs to swim more to get better at swimming. Maybe he just doesn’t have it. And maybe she just doesn’t have “it” to be able to flow on the bike. (easily said from my computer, I assume she’d drop me like a rock in a race)
But still, Knibb needs things to line up in just the right away in the olympic distance for her to use her power to a medal.
Whereas in the relay, the field is limited and she’s almost certainly going to be able to be the strongest contributor on a US team in LA.
Let me add, I said in all of that (go read the ST thread on that when the decision was announced in june of '16), that as long as they cleaned house within the PTB’s as well, cool…if you want to deny the athletes, then you better clean house cus that’s who got the athletes to where they were. I don’t know what they did or didn’t do in terms of internal coaching/program directing hirings/firings.
And yes they’ve rebounded greatly from it.
AUS…owwww, they seem to be struggling with coaching/managarial direction.
Doubt it. Both Bogen and Noodt are 24 so 15yo in 2016.
Neischlag is 33 (so assume impacted by the Rio no show decision) but he cracked on in SC.
Funk is 27.
AUS - They hired a head coach a few years ago who basically got a salary meanwhile coaching his private international squad and jumps from federation to federation doing the same.
Does that seem like a huge conflict of interest? Not sure if that affected the whole program?
If a country takes on a coach the prime focus should be that countries athletes?
I think they then sidelined home grown coaches and probably now paying for it.
AUS does have some good coaches and one insanely good coach Dan Atkins or Atkinson I think his name is. He coaches Matt Hauser a bunch of para athletes and has coached a lot of the AUS team over the years from what I understand.
The Aus programme was stuffed way before that. The problem was the powers up had no idea about coaching and what was required to be a top athlete therefore weren’t supporting what was required. Continually making ridiculous choices and the athletes lives much harder than needed to be. I would hope thst things are getting better as those in the top power jobs have now moved on.
I thought Germany did that in response to law suits.
It was if you meet very strict qualifying criteria, I think Annie Haig did, then you go. Other than that nobody goes and no law suits
Strong start lists for Hamburg in a month’s time.
I notice: Yee, Waugh!, Vannerson, Vilaca, Hidalgo, all the three French, Månsson, GTB! even some Aussie women! Lombardi (back), Spivey
