[Todd Lane]

Todd Lane on August 25, 2004 at 6:48 am #9697

It’s still early in, but I’ll throw this out there…

The success of the college athletes at the Oly’s has been nice so far this year…
Williams in the 100
Wariner in the 400
Women’s 400 with Trotter and Richards
400h with Johnson, Demus was not bad either
Women’s 200 so far, Campbell, Lee

there are others I am missing

Seems the best in several Olympics. The last great college performance I remember was Watts in 92 400.

So my thoughts are this…… the college kids and coaches (who bitch about having NCAA trying to screw them getting kids to Olympics) have a better concept of peaking for Olys than some post collegiates.

Why? College kids ran trials, then trained for next 4 weeks instead of racing off to Europe competing often and coming into Olys slightly fried or injured. College kids competed later in summer, shortly before Olys and are set up better to perform at Olys.

Sure its full of holes, but just a general feeling.

Fire away!

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on August 25, 2004 at 11:33 am #32025

I agree. I really don’t think the “collegiate curse” carries much weight. I think it’s more of a psychological issue than anything else.

ELITETRACK Founder

[CoachKW]

CoachKW on August 25, 2004 at 7:38 pm #32026

I think it all depends on your event.

In the sprints and jumps, it’s probably an advantage to have competed quite a bit. Then as was written, you don’t have to chase marks or $$ all over Europe and the extra training time is valuable.

But, it’s clearly a disadvantage when you get to races longer than 800 meters. You will rarely see a US collegiate distance runner make the team from 1500 on up unless they have redshirted one or two of the three seasons (cc, indoor, outdoor) in that year. Ritzenheim’s season and approach to the games was certainly a disaster and he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete in Athens.

on an unrelated note: I read the disclaimer in Mike’s messages and am wondering if you only get 22 hours while the rest of us get 24. Hope the 2 comes from work and not sleep! :bounce:

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on August 25, 2004 at 9:05 pm #32027

Good points on the distance runners. Going NCAA XC, indoor NCAA track, outdoor NCAA track and then attempting to run summer track is certainly doomed to fail. There are no international endurance that I know of who compete all year round at a very high level.

[i]Originally posted by KW[/i]I read the disclaimer in Mike’s messages and am wondering if you only get 22 hours while the rest of us get 24. Hope the 2 comes from work and not sleep! :bounce:

Keith-
I think you might be the only person to have read that based on the number of people who fail to respect it 😡 You may also be the only person to pick up on my tongue-in-cheek attempt at humor on what seems to be the limited number of hours in my day.

ELITETRACK Founder

[Todd Lane]

Todd Lane on August 26, 2004 at 5:51 am #32028

I’ll throw the throwers in there also….
case study.. Candice Scott and Erin Gilreath, same coach, collegiate athlete makes finals of the hammer, post collegiate with better pr does not. I haven’t checked how the SMU boys did yet.

add jonathon johnson in the 800 now also, he qualified for next round, post- collegiates didn’t

Keith-

I would agree with you on distance, except for fact that… Alistair Cragg made finals in 5k today. and other than Ritz and Nick Willis (who I think redshirted), no one in NCAA is good enough to qualify for the Games anyway. The fact that we can’t even get full teams with post collegiates is discouraging.

[CoachKW]

CoachKW on August 26, 2004 at 9:49 am #32029

Todd,
true that on AC, but as I was watching his times outdoors, my comment was that surely he was training through the collegiate portion of the outdoor season.