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Mens Olympic Marathon
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Comments
what a shame - Lima may not have won as he was slowing - but we will never know
Think the protester should be made to run a marathon in the same heat as Paula's run - with a cattle prod behind him to make sure he doesn't pull out to see how it feels!
Wonder if he gets a voucher for his category?
http://www.athens2004.com/en/AthleticsMen/results?rsc=ATM099101&frag=ATM099101_C73K
no point the drugs testers bothering there, unless Sanatogen is on the banned list
20th fastest at the Olympics, impressive stuff.
A lot of people talk of M Phelps. I didn't watch much of the swimming (not really my sport) so can't really approve of disapprove of that.
I haven't watched everything else either but I think I'll go for Deena KASTOR for coming 3rd in the womens marathon. I never heard of her before as nobody mentioned her beforehand as a possible medallist. Moreover, she achieved a season's best in THOSE conditions.
A bit like the feat that T Morris achieved at the FLM.
I think Kelly Holmes and Hicham El Gerrouj have been outstanding.
(wonder if we could get him to try and interrupt the rifle shooting next time ? Or yachting. I'm guessing he doesn't walk on water.)
Agree with honourable mentions for Wiggins, Holmes and Phelps. Baldini's performance should be given a heck of a lot of credit as well, in an era when Europeans win few top marathons of any description, never mind the Olympic marathon.
Bradley Wiggins also because he beat a top rider for his gold - and of course Holmes' double was fantastic - and when I saw that about 9 of the first 10 in the 1500 ran a pb (pretty sure it was a pb - maybe a sb if not) that shows what a win it was.
Deena Kastor for her brave run from the back of the marathon-however I rated her before this marathon as she finished 4th I think in FLM and I read an article on her about how hard she was training for this.
For Team GB, I thought Amir Khan the 17 year old finalist is worth mentioning. He had to fight the double Olympic champion and 3x world champion and actually didn't looked too bad!
Back to the marathon. Both races were very interesting to watch. There seems to be two camps of runners. There are the championship type runners, like Baldini, Jon Brown, Ndereba and Noguchi. On the other end there are the flat course fast runners like Tergat, Khannouchi, Radcliffe, though they all seem to struggle in big events.
I think you've confused them with the walkers.
Holmes: I am not surprised that she did well, given that she had an injury-free season (unlike her main rivals). This is not to say that that hers is not a big achievement.
El Guerrouj: obviously not surprised at all that he won the 1500. Quite surprised that he beat Kebele in the 5000. Speaking of which, I was a little disappointed with that race. Based on what happened in Paris last year, I thought there'd be real fireworks in this one. I didn't quite understand Kebele's strategy, as I thought he should have gone earlier. Unless the 10000 really took a lot out of him and he just couldn't do it.
Talking of disappointments, I thought Asafa Powell could have made the 100m race even better than it was. Not quite sure what happened in the final (Too nervous? Too much pressure?). Felt even more disappointed that he dropped out of the 200 final (unless he was injured, which I don't think he was). For 2 reasons: (1) you don't suddenly lose form in the space of a few days (he was flying in the early rounds of the 100). (2) he should have had a go anyway - he just deprived someone from being in the final, who would have given their all to win it.