Women's 10k and Men's Preview?

By Bryan Green (Twitter: @bryangreen1)

I don't think we could have scripted a better ending to that women's 10,000 meter final.  Tactical race, broken open by five Africans with 3000 meters to go.  All five runners still together with one lap to go.  The Ethiopians looking for a sweep.  The Kenyans looking for their first victory in 10 years.  Three runners still in it with 100 meters to go.  The young Kenyan gets dropped.  The #1 contender is stumbling and struggling.  The favorite looks to have the race wrapped up.

And then...the kind of finish we'd scoff at if it was put at the end of a movie.  "Oh, come on," we'd say.  "Too unrealistic."

It was certainly a Hollywood finish, though I'm not sure the audiences in Addis Ababa are going to be thrilled with the surprise twist.  While Linet Masai gets to play the part of the fairy tale princess, Melkamu is stuck playing the role of girl who let the guy get away.  As for Defar, she ended up one of the victims in a bad horror movie.  That's the thing about track, it's all improv, and some endings are happier than others.

For the two of you who might be reading this without having seen it or read any other reviews, at thirty meters out Meseret Defar's body goes into rigor mortis and she basically stops moving.  Meselech Melkamu storms past her for the sure win and eases in the last few meters, throwing her arms up in apparent victory.  All the while Linet Masai, the 19 year-old Kenyan who was dropped with 100 meters to go, never gives up and storms back to get the win at the very last possible moment.  It was awesome.  As far as 10,000 meter races go, the only race that I vividly remember being this exciting was the Gebrselassie-Tergat battle in Sydney. 

Aside from an odd incident at the start where all of the women in the outer lanes cut in too early, the race played out pretty much as one might have expected.  Sure, we Americans and a few Kiwis and Japanese were no doubt hoping to see one of their contingent in the mix at the end, but that was always going to be a low probability event.  If you took out the first and last 30 meters of the race, it went pretty much to plan.  But boy did that last 30 meters matter!

As I watched the race I started to wonder, could this be but a preview of the men's race?  Look at the cast of characters and you see it stacks up pretty similarly:

Meseret Defar = Kenenisa Bekele
Meselech Melkamu = Gebre Gebremariam
Wude Ayalew = Abebe Dinkessa
Tirunesh Dibaba = Sileshi Sihine
Linet Masai = Moses Masai (hey, they're siblings)
Grace Momanyi = Micah Kogo
Lornah Kiplagat = Bernard Kipyego
Amy Yoder Begley = Dathan Ritzenhein
Shalane Flanagan = Galen Rupp
Katie McGregor = Tim Nelson
Kim Smith = Collis Birmingham
Yurika Nakamura = Yuki Sato
Ines Monteiro = Juan Luis Barrios
Elvan Abeylegesse = Zersenay Tadesse

Did I say "pretty similarly"?  I meant, "uncannily".  So maybe the race goes out tactically, with random runners leading a slow pace through 7,000 meters.  And then Moses Masai and Micah Kogo get impatient and make a big break, with all three Ethiopians following.  Everyone expects Rupp, Ritz, Birmingham, Sato or Barrios to at least make the effort to go with them, but for some reason they don't.  They settle for racing themselves in the second pack.  The Africans run tight until the big sprint, where Bekele pulls ahead and looks to have it won.

And then...Bekele rigs, Gebremariam thinks he's won his first title until Moses Masai catches him at the last second!  Rupp fades after a long NCAA season.  Ritz, Sato and Birmingham battle it out for the title of "best of the rest".  Zersenay Tadesse drops out a la Abeylegesse, Sihine sits at home thinking that HE would have retained the title for Ethiopia, and everyone's fantasy picks get blown out of the water with Bekele's loss.  Seriously, with Bekele involved, the sequel could be even more dramatic.

Yeah...it's completely unrealistic.  Then again, if Bekele's going to lose, would it be any other way?  If anyone's going to make a big move, wouldn't it be the Kenyans?  Would it really be a big surprise if Ritz outran Rupp, given the nature of their years up to this point?  Yeah, it's completely unrealistic.

So here's what I actually think will happen.  I think the pace will be pedal to the metal pretty early on.  I think the field will string out and everyone's going to ride the train for as long as they can.  I don't think there's going to be one big break like there was in the women's race, but rather a lot of little surges and a gradual increase in intensity.  I think Rupp is going to run the race we all hoped Flanagan would run--and he'll keep his nose in it for as long as he can--but I don't think it'll be enough for a medal, more like 5th to 7th.  I think Bekele will judge his kick correctly, and that the biggest battle will be for silver, given Sihine won't be running.  I think that battle will be fought by Tadesse, Kogo and Dinkessa, with them finishing in that order.  And nobody will ever remember that the men's race could have been so similar to the women's...alas.

My final thought about the women's race: the only thing I would have liked to see that didn't happen was an American go with the Africans when they made their move.  But looking back on it, Flanagan wasn't ready and even if Begley had gone, I doubt she would have been competitive.  I think she made the right choice to hang back and focus on winning her "race within the race".  She remained positive and competitive, she beat a number of world class runners head-to-head, and she got a nice PR (31:13.78) that moved her to #4 all-time in the US, too.  Not too shabby.

And in case you're wondering what it will take for Ritz or Rupp to match Begley's performance, they'll have to run faster than the current US #4--27:25.61--set by none other than their coach, Alberto Salazar.