Flashes of Panic

I noted a few days ago that the fatigue factor has a pretty big impact on the start lists here for the World Athletics Final, but I hadn’t really appreciated the real degree that reached. For example, there were six starters in the women’s 5,000m yesterday. Six. This means that someone at the IAAF spent a good chunk of last week calling down the 5,000m standings list and still only found seven women (Meseret Defar switched to today’s 3,000m at the last minute) willing to be brought to Stuttgart at the meet’s expense, put up here, and to race with a guaranteed $1,000 payday (and, in a race as small as the 5,000m ended up being, even Russia’s Kseniya Agafonova, who was off the back at halfway and finished sixth, won $4,000.)

Note that six Americans ranked higher than Agafonova in the standings, though some of them didn’t qualify for this meet because scoring in three series meets is required. There are all kinds of reasons why not; some of them are training for fall marathons, some are training for spring marathons (!), some are just tired. So, skip down to the men’s 100m. No fall marathons there; these guys aren’t planning on doing anything until December, when they may start training for the indoor season (or they may start training for Beijing then, but it is an article of faith among distance runners that sprinters don’t really train.)

There wasn’t a single American in the men’s 100m.

This is a little like having no Kenyans in the steeplechase. Or no Fords in a NASCAR race. No Stanford grads at Google.

Not all events are so gutted. The women’s steeplechase featured a decent field, and the new American Record holder, Lisa Galaviz, showed up to race. Galaviz turned out not to be a factor, but it’s easy to picture American steeplechasers getting the call inviting them to Stuttgart and saying, “Sure, I’ll come! I haven’t raced since July, but I don’t get that many chances; bring it on!” (Steve Slattery in the men’s steeple is, with Galaviz and Alan Webb, the third American distance runner here.) Wallace Spearmon is here, the shot putters showed up, the pole vaulters are here. We had two discus throwers here, though the discus guys are probably like the steeplechasers, happy for whatever payday they can get.

It’s also fair to note that for someone like Deena Kastor, a $1,000 payday isn’t worth the disruption of a trip from California to Stuttgart if it wasn’t part of a larger plan; there’s a narrow line between “taking a good opportunity” and “compromising long-term goals chasing small paydays.”

And the Americans aren’t the only ones going missing. Only one Ethiopian in the women’s 5,000m? No Jamaicans in the women’s 200m?

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