>Not being a distance runner I have a question - just how difficult would
that be given that there are 3 hours of rest >involved and the 5000 would be
the first round ?? What type of times could be expected if someone did
attempt to do >that ?? And would Sief be capable of pulling something like
that off ??
There should be very little performance dropoff from the 1500m semis to the
5000 first round 3 hours later. The problem is that this combination would
detract from performance in the 1500m final and 5000 semis and finals on
later days. Some runners could handle it better than others, but running a
1500 and 5000 in the same day tends to make a runner a bit flat for a couple
days.
High school distance runners do this type of thing all the time, and I
believe Paavo Nurmi had some success at the Olympics many years ago, but
most of the top competitors would likely not want to risk not being at 100%
for the 1500m final.
Consider that MJ complained in 1996 about having the first round of the 200
one day and the finals of the 400 the next day (I believe that was one of
the proposals along the way). This situation would be more difficult.
- Ed Parrot
