Sex, Drugs, and the Inside Lane: Recapping the 2017 World Championships of Track

March 20, 2019 Off By HotelSalesCareers

Nicholas Thompson: Malcolm, hello! Welcome back from vacation. And also welcome to WIRED.com! We’ve been chatting about Olympic and World Championship track for five years now, but this is the first time we’re doing it here.

Let’s start with the moment when one of your favorite runners got defeated. Sir Mo Farah is perhaps the greatest distance racer in history, and he opened the meet by winning the 10,000 in a blazing 26:49. But he closed the meet on the track, in agony, and in second place after losing the 5,000 meters to Muktar Edris. What happened?

Malcolm Gladwell: I feel like Farah has been so good for so long that we’ve lost some perspective. What happened? What happened is that he ran a brutally fast 10,000, then a 5,000 heat, and then a 5,000 final in the space of a week. He ran out of gas. Do you have any doubt that he would have won the 5,000 if he had not run the 10K earlier in the week? My friend Henry Abbott, who writes about basketball, has got me thinking more and more about fatigue as the underrated variable in elite performance. Did you know (Henry told me this) that NBA players “peak” in November? In other words, optimal performance in a typical NBA season comes shortly after it begins—months before the season ends. In every game after that, the players are fighting off growing fatigue. And a basketball game—even a season of 82 basketball games—is not a sub-27-minute 10,000 meters! I think it’s a measure of Farah’s greatness that he came as close as he did to beating Edris.

NT: That raises a question that I think every serious runner has to think about: At what level of effort does a race, or workout, actually break you down? You want to run intervals to the point of exhaustion, and even races, generally, make you stronger for the next one. But at some point you cross into the red, and at some other point, like after a hard marathon, you just have to shut down for a while. I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer to when, exactly, this happens, and why, exactly, it happens physiologically. (Damnit, Ed Caesar, will you please help me out here?)

But before we bore all our readers to death with links to tedious scientific papers, let’s try to bore them by discussing tactics. Because something else strange happened at the end of the 5,000 race. If you watch the final 100, Yomif Kejelcha is right on the curve, in lane one. Yet, somehow, he ends up in lane two, meaning he ran an extra meter or two and opened a lane for Farah to zip by and win the silver. Why?

MG: This is where you put even my unhealthy level of track obsession to shame. Why? I dunno. Was Kejelcha tired? Again to my point about fatigue. A runner, in the final stages of a championship long distance race, is no longer necessarily a rational decision maker. (A good parenthetical point here: If you read memoirs of the people involved in salvaging the US economy in the wake of the financial crisis, they all boast about staying up all night and hammering out deals after being awake for 36 hours. Why do people boast about this? No good decisions are EVER made after being awake for 36 hours. Had I been running things in 2008, I’d have told Bear Stearns, Lehmann, and the New York Fed to go home at 6 pm and get some rest.)

NT: We could have prevented the economic collapse. And then, who knows, maybe Sarah Palin would be president now? But, anyway, back to the track. I was also confused by the strategy. We’ve done a number of these chats and, in each one, we’ve suggested that the way to beat Farah is to run a hard, sustained pace. If you run slow and then let the race come down to a kick, he’ll always win. And yet that’s exactly the strategy that beat him!

MG: Yeah, but Farah still finished second, didn’t he? I’m increasingly of the opinion that the differences between first and second (or third) are, in most elite performances, illusory. It’s just noise. Jack Nicklaus had 20 wins on golf’s majors over the course of his career. (Including amateur championships.) That’s the statistic’s he always known for. But surely it matters just as much that he had 19 second-place finishes in majors, nine third-place finishes, 56 top-five finishes, and an astonishing 73 top-10 finishes. I find the last of those numbers—the 73 top-10 finishes—to be more impressive than the 20 wins. Nicklaus’s real genius is how consistently good he was—not how occasionally great he was. Same with Farah. This championship merely confirms what is extraordinary about Farah’s career: that he has been a contender in virtually every race he has EVER entered in his prime. Without exception! Nothing about what happened this week affects appreciation of his genius. Edris out-kicked him. So what. Replay that race 10 times, and I’d wager Farah wins eight times.

NT: Wait, I totally disagree! What makes Mo Farah special is that he never lost. He had won 10 global championships in a row. He’s more like Bill Russell (who was 10–0 in game sevens) or Michael Jordan (6–0 in NBA finals) than like Jack Nicklaus. His championship race record, ultimately, is why I’d rate his career better than, say, that of Kenenisa Bekele, who has faster times. And I think, as with Jordan and Russell, there was a special psychological edge that Farah had on his competition.

MG: Never lost? Never lost in championship 5K and 10K races. But he’s lost plenty of times outside those distances, and on the roads. Geoffrey Kamworor beat him last year in the half-marathon in Wales, and both Matt Centrowitz and Asbel Kiprop have beaten him over 1,500 meters. But in all three of those losses, he was second. And that’s my point: Even in races well outside his comfort zone, he’s still in the money.

NT: I can’t believe I’m having an argument with you in which I’m the one being more complimentary to Farah. There’s a first time for everything, though, as we learned at this meet. And speaking of great champions, the end of that race brings me back to the greatest photograph I’ve ever seen of you. Tell me what was happening in this race. You’re in lane one, and your rival is way out on the edge of lane two. I suspect he would have beaten you if he’d just been a little tighter in.

MG: That photo is my finest hour: me beating the greatest Canadian miler of my generation, Dave Reid. (Granted: we were both 14 at the time). You are quite correct that if he had closer to the rail he’d have beaten me. But then again, I think if that race was run again under any circumstances he’d have beaten me.

NT: Give me one final thought on Farah. Why was he so damn good? His physiology? His training? His strategic sense? Or perhaps his devious ability to psyche everyone else out? (I’ll never forget him running to the side of the track in the 2015 5,000 meters to get a cup of water, a ridiculous move that surely muddled the head of his competitors.)

MG: I follow Farah on Twitter. (I’ll admit it: I’m that much of a track geek). And I always get the sense, reading his tweets, that he really enjoys himself, particularly that he enjoys training. Now, is it possible I’m being mislead by Farah’s clever social media strategy? Sure. But maybe not. He reminds me a little of Roger Federer, whose longevity appears to be largely a function of the fact that, long past the point where his peers have grown tired of all the hours of preparation necessary to continue to be an elite tennis player, Federer is still really into it. Isn’t Farah the same way? And isn’t that explanation enough? I mean, every week he posts a photo of himself grinning while racing around a track with one of his training partners. Grinning! I don’t know about you, Nick, but I do not grin while doing intervals.

NT: This is why Noah Droddy is the great hope for US Track and Field. More seriously, I entirely agree. We do decline physiologically as we age, but runners decline very slowly. As long as they continue to run intervals, and don’t get injured, distance runners can sustain elite performance until about age 40. And people who actually enjoy the sport are more likely to do that.

But let’s move to one of your other heroes, Usain Bolt. I admit that I was rooting for him to lose, both because I’m hopelessly biased toward Americans and because I’m hopelessly biased toward underdogs. (I read a really good book once about how they can be defeated.) But there was nothing enjoyable about watching him to pull up in pain in the relays.

The winning times in the 100 meters were much slower than in previous years. Naturally, conspiracy theorists suggest that this is due to enhanced doping protocols. You agree?

MG: Sigh. And now for the inevitable discussion of doping. There’s no way to avoid it, is there?

NT: Alas, we can’t. It’s one of the worst things about being a track fan. (Surpassed only by the fact that I had to pay $69 to watch the meet live!) And it was particularly present this year. Justin Gatlin, who won the race at age 35, was suspended four years early in his career for doping. In fact, this makes me wonder: Do you think that his longevity is partly due to the fact that he missed all that time because of his doping ban? It’s kind of like the theory that Bernard Hopkins—perhaps the most remarkable 50-plus athlete in any sport—has lasted so long because he spent a good part of his 20s in prison, instead of getting his body battered.

MG: Or, to my earlier point about Federer and Farah, that losing four years made Gatlin so hungry and angry that he’s not lost his motivation. I mean, do you really think that Bolt is retiring because, at the tender age of 30, he can no longer run as fast as he once did? Please. He’s retiring because he no longer wants to get up at 6 am to train. (OK. 7 am.) I can’t say I blame him, but the track fan in me would have loved to see him do a reboot and try the 400 meters. Can you imagine? I think he could have given Wayde van Niekerk a run for his money. (Having said that, I was in Europe this summer and went to the Diamond League track meet in Lausanne. Van Niekerk visibly relaxed with about 60 meters to go, eased up with 20 meters to go, and jogged in with 10 meters to go—and still broke 44 seconds. For those of you who are not track fans, let me just say that that is basically impossible.)

NT: Strangely, I agree on all points. I would much rather watch Bolt keep going at this sport than have to suffer through videos of his not exactly inspiring effort to join Manchester United.

And back to the doping, you’ve been critical—but not as critical as the average poster on letsrun.com!—toward Almaz Ayana, who won the women’s 10K, nearly lapping the entire competition in the process.

MG: Here’s the thing about that race, and the women’s 5,000 and, for that matter, the women’s 800 meters. Something profoundly weird is going on with women’s distance running right now. For example: Here are the results from the 10,000 meters.

Almaz AYANA, ETH, 30:16.32.
Tirunesh DIBABA, ETH, 31:02.69.
Agnes Jebet TIROP, KEN, 31:03.50.
Alice Aprot NAWOWUNA, KEN, 31:11.86.
Susan KRUMINS, NED, 31:20.24.
Emily INFELD, USA, 31:20.45.

We have our winner, Ayana, running 46 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher, and a well over a minute ahead of the fifth-place finisher. To restate the obvious, this is not normal. It would never happen in a men’s race: there simply aren’t those kinds of gaps in the performance curve of male elite runners. And then there’s the 800, where Caster Semenya blew the doors off everyone in the homestretch, and looked as if she could have kept running for another lap. Not even David Rudisha, in his prime, won as effortlessly as Semenya did. I don’t think we need to rehash the Semenya controversy one more time, or to speculate about whether the Ethiopians are or are not the chief dopers of the moment. But the underlying principle here is crucial. Women’s sports are far more vulnerable to any kind of anomalous assistance or intervention than men’s sport. A man who dopes gets a meaningful advantage over his peers. A woman who dopes gets a huge advantage over her peers. If your body makes more testosterone than me (as I’m sure it does, Nick) that gives you an edge over me on the track. But if we were women, that difference would make you unbeatable. I dunno. Look at these kinds of lopsided results and I wonder if women’s distance running isn’t in peril.

NT: To summarize the hypothetical for our readers: Malcolm is arguing that, if I were a woman who doped, and if he were a woman who was clean, I’d beat her by a significant margin on the track. Sounds plausible! And I agree with the larger point. Modern doping science is much better able to enhance women than men. And there are two concurrent risks. The first is that you get a situation where a few dopers dominate women’s distance running, and the other is that every woman begins to believe that she has to dope to compete, and then the sport becomes something like cycling a decade ago, where EPO is more common than Gatorade. Still, for the moment, women’s running is still unpredictable. The steeplechase, for example, ended with two unheralded Americans winning silver and gold—after the favorite in the race forgot to jump through one of the water pits.

But speaking of upsets, why do you think there were so many in this championship? In a meet with Farah, Bolt, Wayde van Niekerk, and Caster Semenya, it’s interesting that the first double gold medalist was Torie Bowie, the American sprinter.

MG: Two stunning loses for the US relay team! The British take down Justin Gatlin on the final leg, and then Trinidad and Tobago make mincemeat of the Americans in the men’s 4 x 400. Given that my Jamaicans had such a difficult meet, I officially adopted Trinidad as my team halfway through that race. (It’s all one Caribbean, right?) I got the sense that this championships was about the end of a dominant generation: Farah, Bolt, Dibaba, Felix, Kiprop, Rudisha. Track and field is wide open again. Time to suit up, Nick! This is your window.

NT: Now that I work at WIRED, I’m much more interested in the possibility of hacking gene sequencing machines and turning my children into athletes who combine the speed of Bolt, the strength of Farah, and the looks of van Niekerk.

But what other moments caught your eye during the meet?

MG: How could you not love the women’s 1,500? The only truly competitive women’s middle and long distance event? That frantic, crazy homestretch. The brilliant Jenny Simpson sneaking up the rail. And my new favorite runner, Britain’s Laura Muir, who seems like the most competitive, tough-as-nails badass to come along in a long while.

What about you? Did you have a favorite race?

NT: Oh, I loved that finish, particularly Simpson, who didn’t look like she had a chance, cutting past on the inside. My favorite race though was the one we started with: the men’s 5,000. That race had everything: tactics, surprise, heartbreak—and a bronze medal to the American Paul Chelimo, who almost caught Farah last year in the Olympics and then won me over even more in the US Trials by taking the race out at just-over-four-minute pace and then running the whole thing out front, by himself.

OK! Thank you, Malcolm, for joining in on this. I’m going to start my doping regime soon, and I look forward to seeing you out there for a 1500M on the Red Hook track.

Sex, Drugs, and the Inside Lane: Recapping the 2017 World Championships of Track

Related Video

Why It's Almost Impossible to Run a Two-Hour Marathon