Calderwood in China: Track and Field, Day 8

by Stuart Calderwood

Women's 5000 meters

Track aficionados like to explain the frequently slow winning times in distance races at major championships by pointing out that winning these races is all that matters, and that no one wants to lead them in the early stages because an early leader becomes a target for the rest of the field. This may be true in general, but I saw an exception today in the women’s 5000-meter final, in which the phrase “tactical race” was taken to an absurd extreme.

 

The United States had three women in the final, and that’s no easy achievement. Getting one athlete into an Olympic distance final that’s preceded by qualifying rounds is difficult or impossible for most countries outside Africa, and to get the whole team in—Jen Rhines, Shalane Flanagan, and Kara Goucher, in this case—is almost unprecedented. That two of these three had also run the 10,000 meters and then had to qualify in a 5000-meter heat four days later makes it even more impressive, and Flanagan’s bronze medal made hopes unusually high for this race, which contained the other two 10,000-meter medalists, Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia and Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey, and Meseret Defar, another Ethiopian, whose 14:12.88 this year brought her within a few yards of breaking Dibaba's world record of 14:11.15. The race between Dibaba and Defar has been eagerly awaited, and the unexpectedly good conditions had the crowd excited about possible records—Olympic, if not world.

 

Flanagan’s American record of 14:44 was close to the Olympic record of 14:40; who knew how fast the Americans might be pulled by a pack like this?

 

The gun went off, and the race instantly became “tactical,” which in this case meant that no one wanted to run at all. They finished the first lap in 82 seconds—a pace that would yield a time of about 17 minutes, which would be sub-par for the women's winner at the Coogan’s Salsa, Blues, and Shamrocks 5K, let alone in an Olympic final. And then they slowed down.

 

The second lap was run in 93 seconds. They came by 800 meters at about 2:56. The Chinese are polite spectators, but if this race had been run in Barcelona, the stadium would have been filled with derisive whistling. The runners were trying not to step on one another’s feet. They became so uncomfortable that they accelerated all the way up to 2:44 for the next 800. They reached the mile mark in around 5:40.

 

Just before even the Chinese would have started booing, Abeylegesse, who had been a very close second in the fastest two-woman 10,000 in history a few days earlier, had had enough. She ran a lap in 64 seconds and the field strung out. Rhines, who looked like she was having the worst race of her life and may just have been too restrained and anxious in that awkwardly jogging bunch, was thrown off by the acceleration and lost contact with the pack, never to recover. She has now run in three Olympics at three different distances—10,000 meters in Sydney, the marathon in Athens—and the odds are good that this was by far her least favorite.

 

Just when the huge crowd had begun to become interested in the race, the pace slowed down again. Flanagan and Goucher backed off again to clipped, tentative strides in mid-pack. Gulnara Galkina of Russia, who had set a world 3000-meter steeplechase record in winning that event here five days earlier, ran at the front at a speed that she’d exceeded by many seconds per lap while clearing hurdles and water jumps. Goucher came up beside her at the head of the double-file procession, but she didn’t dare make a break; there were too many big kickers within a couple of yards behind her. And so, ironically, all the runners played into those kickers’ hands—and gave them more and more of an advantage as the race dawdled on. 

 

It finally happened, of course: Dibaba, the favorite, who had run at the tail end of the pack for the entire race, moved up into contention for the hitherto unwanted lead. All the major players perked up, and the pace began to drop. The last 800 meters may have broken some unofficial record for fastest mass sprint in a women’s distance race. Dibaba ran her usual sub-60-second last 400 meters, and the only mild surprise was Abeylegesse’s passing of Defar in the final 200 meters to take her second silver of the meet, both behind Dibaba. Goucher and Flanagan, who are not 800-meter runners, fell well back and far out of the medals. The winning time was 15:41; in their 10,000-meter race here, Dibaba and Abeylegesse had averaged 14:57 and 14:59 for two consecutive 5000s.

 

Yes, “tactics” will always play a part in Olympic distance races, which don’t have paid rabbits guaranteeing a fast pace. And it’s even probably true that the same three women would have medaled today if the time had been a minute faster. But it isn’t just events like gymnastics, in which points are awarded for style, that have aesthetic value. An Olympic gold medal may be undeniably an Olympic gold medal, but this was an ugly race.

 

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(posted on nyrr.org since Feb 2008)