The Athletics Thread

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Never been so happy to be busy with different commitments so I don't have much time to follow the athletics. Seems like he already tried to clown on his 100m rival , only to lose to him.


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He has done a lot of the kamehameha hand movements from Dragon Ball. Big points for that pointer to the finest of Japanese culture.

He did the Genki Dama before the 200m today, lol :joycat:

It proved to be more effective (which is in line with the series) as he won the gold. A bit stupid that his opponents didn't interrupt him, they must be illiterate.

Perhaps his hair is supposed to give Super Saiyan vibes?
 
Ferdinand Omanyala was going for the longest and most complex pre-race hand gesture plan I've ever seen in the 100s, so a few Dragonball references from Lyles doesn't seem too wild.

At least he doesn't have the hair in the Heidi pigtails anymore like he did earlier in the season.
 
WTF was that American 4x4 doing? Only 6th, they are straight up out. Usually it's the men's 4x1 that does the failing, usually unleashing an insanely OP lineup before dropping the baton, screwing up the changes or putting people on the wrong legs. The 4x4 allows a lot more scope for the changeovers and usually those kind of factors can be overcome; losing half a second in a botched change means a lot less over three minutes than over forty seconds.
 
Cole Hocker lmfao. The Simon Gerrans of distance athletics.

The others deserve that for bunching everything up so much. He is the punishment that other athletes get for cowardice. Major championship races are often slower paced because people are used to pacemakers on the commercial calendar and don't want to take up the pace, but he won the Olympic 1500 because Kerr and Ingebrigtsen were too busy trying to make each other do the work, and here too many people were unwilling to make pace - and possibly offered Ingebrigtsen too much respect given the lack of form he's shown, as when he was pacing the group got all bunched up, that meant he still had enough in the tank to unleash a monster last lap.
 
Women's 4x4 goes pretty much exactly to form. Very good last leg by Price in the company, looks very much like SML had more to give had she needed it, and Bol decided discretion was the better part of valour and that gap was too much to make up.
 
(originally posted this in the Clinic thread by accident, wasn't meant to be)

Finally, finally, the American 4x100 men manage to get the on-paper result. They have such a history of dropping the baton, getting disqualified, fluffing exchanges and so on - and they tried their hardest to mess it up again - but they're such a ludicrously deep team in this event that they really oughtn't have the lack of results that they do.

The Canadians were a lot like the German women's 4x100 team - they all know their roles, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but they're just so consistently good in the format despite lacking in superstars. The German women are on paper streets behind the British women, but their exchanges were super slick and the British ones were ragged - especially the last one from Asher-Smith to Neita - and it does seem that somewhat like the Dutch 4x400 girls, their entire tactic is about not screwing up and keeping the powder dry until the final leg and then seeing what Lückenkemper can manage to get for them... and today it was a medal.
 
(originally posted this in the Clinic thread by accident, wasn't meant to be)

Finally, finally, the American 4x100 men manage to get the on-paper result. They have such a history of dropping the baton, getting disqualified, fluffing exchanges and so on - and they tried their hardest to mess it up again - but they're such a ludicrously deep team in this event that they really oughtn't have the lack of results that they do.

The Canadians were a lot like the German women's 4x100 team - they all know their roles, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but they're just so consistently good in the format despite lacking in superstars. The German women are on paper streets behind the British women, but their exchanges were super slick and the British ones were ragged - especially the last one from Asher-Smith to Neita - and it does seem that somewhat like the Dutch 4x400 girls, their entire tactic is about not screwing up and keeping the powder dry until the final leg and then seeing what Lückenkemper can manage to get for them... and today it was a medal.
I mean, Lückenkemper ran a 9.85 final leg, 0.95 sec faster than Richardson. Jamaica was one faster baton pass (or one slower American one) away from getting gold)
 
I was aware of the emergence of Botswana's Tebogo over the last few years. I was not aware that Botswana had become a 400m power. Win the 4x400, 3 of the 8 finalists in the individual event, without Tebogo there. When did this all happen? What's going on?
 
I was aware of the emergence of Botswana's Tebogo over the last few years. I was not aware that Botswana had become a 400m power. Win the 4x400, 3 of the 8 finalists in the individual event, without Tebogo there. When did this all happen? What's going on?

The 400m relay team went under 3 minutes for the first time at the 2015 world championships. Since then they've finished 5th, 3rd and 2nd in the Olympics . So they're no overnight success.