These Astounding Performances Made Track’s Top Event a Hit

This is the third conversation between WIRED editor Nicholas Thompson and Knox Robinson, an elite runner and former editor of The Fader, about the IAAF World Championships of track and field. In their previous post, they discussed the medals and controversies rocking the running world.

NT: Damn, damn, damn. That was a riveting track meet. It had everything I like: close finishes, dramatic reversals, twists in the storylines, and American dominance. On the last two days, was there a single event that didn’t feature either a world record or a photo finish? What was your favorite event?

KR: Almost too many events to choose one, actually. I’m a bit surprised I was fixated on Dalilah Muhammad’s world record in the 400 meter hurdles. For all the talk of a rivalry with Syd “The Kid” McLaughlin, the race seemed to be Muhammad’s all along—no matter how close the finish and the string of personal bests and national records she left with others as consolation prizes.

Other than that, performance-wise, I replayed Salwa Eid Naser’s stunning win in the 400m more than once: a thing of beauty, obviously. Much was made of the fact that her 48.14 was the third fastest time in history—behind clockings from Marita Koch (East Germany) and Jarmila Kratochvilova (Czechoslovakia) notched in 1985 and 1983, respectively. A quick look shows that Koch alone has 22 of the top 100 times ever run for the distance, with Kratochvílová holding another 12 slots herself. (With her latest win Naser makes three appearances in the top 100.)

The records from that era are widely understood to be holdovers from state-sponsored Eastern European programs known internally—euphemistically—as “Special Care” for their use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. But come to think of it … to these ears the phrase “Special Care” has a certain ring to it in this wellness boom we’re currently enjoying. I might start using that instead of “marginal gains” actually.

NT: Let’s stick with Dalilah Muhammad for a second. A reader, Sarah Barker, wrote to us, arguing that Muhammad has been nearly erased from coverage of the event, despite her world record and two gold medals. Why? In no small part because of the world’s fascination with her vanquished rival, Syd the Kid. The best evidence is this bonkers photo the IAAF used on their Twitter feed, showing the bodies of three of the four runners on the US 4X400 team, with a flag blocking out most of Muhammad. Or as our correspondent wrote, “There is some kind of weird media-deflecting, blackballing, McCarthy-istic bubble of ignore-ance around this athlete. I’ve been following this woman who is quiet, thoughtful, articulate, humble, easy on the eyes, and supremely talented for four years. There is something strange going on.” What say you?

KR: Wow! WIRED readers stay woke, huh? Well, to be succinct—the systematic erasure of black excellence isn’t particularly “weird” or “strange.” This is something people of color—especially black women—experience all the time, whether they’re world champions or not. Combine that with some latent Islamophobia and I’d wholeheartedly agree that the casual media blindness to a black American Muslim woman who’s a world champion and world record holder—breaking her own records at that—is something we need more writers to highlight—and correct with their own reportage.

Still, from a few interactions I’ve had with her, Dalilah Muhammad is as your correspondent describes: empirically beautiful, yes, but also reserved and focused without nonchalance or affectation. Plus she’s from Queens! That’s what I was getting at—I never saw any rivalry emerge, in Doha or all season, because I never saw Muhammad engage in or acknowledge one. Beyond unshakeable confidence it just seemed she was on a different mission. So I’d like to think she’s not fanboy fodder because she doesn’t cater to it—not to take anything away from anyone else’s approach on social media.

NT: Speaking of close finishes, I was riveted by the men’s shot put. New Zealand’s Tom Walsh goes out and throws an astonishing 22.90 and then, fatefully, goes so hard in his next four throws trying for a world record that he doesn’t land a single one in bounds. But then, on the last round, the two Americans, Joe Kovacs and Ryan Crouser, throw 22.91 and 22.90. And suddenly Walsh is left with only a bronze! And he has to settle for that in part because a thrower’s second-best throw determines it in case of a tie! So the poor guy was penalized for his crazy effort.

KR: Hold up, you’re taking pity on dudes three times your size. These dudes could throw us 75 feet. I’m not sure he was penalized so much as he fell victim to a murky calculus we as distance runners fail to comprehend. Like you, I found this competition fascinating, because there’s a strategy I don’t understand. Or rather: I watch it, but I don’t see it. Because there has to be competing variables of, I dunno, fatigue over time and then more noumenal ones like mood or motivation—in addition to the psychological factors of competing against other athletes. Do you go big on the first throw or save something for later—and indeed, is that what Kovacs and Crouser did? Or did they just pop one?

After the fact, the Kovacs backstory was all about his having a rough go of it over the past couple of years, losing a sponsor, barely making this Worlds team, etc etc. And then, before his last throw of the meet, he goes over to consult his wife/coach (coach/wife?) and then walks back to throw farther than he ever had before—farther than anyone in 29 years. He turned his back and started screaming and flexing before the distance had even been recorded. Imagine the level of self-awareness to know you did that before anyone corroborated the fact. That’s the definition of “popping one” to me.

NT: Yeah, I loved that too. It was like he knew he was one centimeter in the lead. (Compare that to your Bob Beamon who jumped 29 feet in Mexico City, as we discussed, and walked away thinking he’d gone, as he later said, 27’ 10”, as the officials tried to find a longer measuring tape to mark his jump.)

Speaking of Kovacs, do you understand the physics of the shot put? The guys are shaped like offensive tackles, not like, say, linebackers. I asked Wired’s resident physicist, Rhett Allain, about whether it’s advantageous to have a big belly, particularly given that you spin in circles before hurling the object. His theory is that it might actually help, and to understand, you have to think about a human who weighed the same as the shot put—which would mean a human even skinnier than the 10K runners. Rhett writes: “Let’s assume you have a shot putter that had the same mass as the shot put. When throwing, the two masses (the shot and the human) would have equal and opposite velocities. This means the shot would be slower than if the human was stationary. By having a massive human, the ‘recoil’ by the human is much smaller. I’m not sure how big of an effect it would be—but that’s my first idea.”

KR: Here I want to rub my chin and say, “Yes, yes, centripetal force”—another thing I don’t know anything about. Still, I relate to Rhett’s model, and not just because I weighed roughly the same as a shot put in high school. Have you ever thrown a shot? I did once. I thought it would be fun—or funny—just to try. But I swear, when the moment came to push or throw or heave or whatever it was I needed to do to get that steel ball up in the air … the shot remained a stationary object suspended in the air and I felt myself pushing off the shot in midair … like, the shot was throwing me. A very zen moment in some ways—but the sudden application of force without the proper physics (or the proper muscles) led to a tweaked elbow and shoulder that was painful for weeks afterward.

NT: Let’s talk about the men’s 1500m for a minute. Matt Centrowitz is one of my favorite runners because he’s so tactically smart. His PRs aren’t that good, but he always seems to step ahead of everyone else in championship races. Tell him to run across a field on a Wednesday and he’ll come in 12th; put him in a race with medals on a track, and he’ll come in first. And in this race, he started perfectly, grabbing the inside rail early on. But then he did something that seemed dumb: he tried to stick with the kamikaze pace of Timothy Cheruiyot, instead of realizing that the real race was going to be for silver. He came in 8th.

KR: Oh, you mean Centro fils. I thought you meant Matt Centrowitz: two-time Olympian, former American record holder, coach, dad. (And a New Yorker!). Just giving you a hard time—and just underscoring the fact that by all accounts the Centro we know and love seems to have come by his instincts (and 2016 Olympic gold medal) honestly, albeit through an enviable combination of nature AND nurture. That’s an unfair advantage if there ever was one, but we can’t choose our parents; just ask my kids. Anyways, Centro loves a race. (Did you see him run that 13-minute 5k in a time trial on a track in the woods last month?) If it’s not a race—to him—you’re likely to find him OTB.

NT: And in the women’s 1500m, there were four national records set! Sifan Hassan was obviously mesmerizing. It says something that Faith Kipyegon ran the fastest a Kenyan has ever run, but lost by two and a half seconds. Shelby Houlihan set an American record and came in 4th. Jenny Simpson, one of my favorite American racers ever, ran her best time of the year and came in 8th. What was it about that race? Was there a circular wind blowing at everyone’s back the entire time?

KR: More physics—we need Rhett on speed dial. There was definitely some sort of slipstream effect going on behind Hassan in that airless aircon stadium in Doha. In addition to Kipyegon and Houlihan, another four women in that race set personal bests. I checked and half of the women trailing Hassan in the 10k notched PRs as well! I then created a simple computer model based on the aerodynamics of Hassan’s height and weight and—oh wait—did we gloss over the fact that Hassan won both the 1500m and the 10,000m? That’s literally unprecedented. And leaving records aside, to grab two gold medals over such range when the competition on either end showed up to run at their best, it’s just astonishing.

NT: Would you have put Allyson Felix in the women’s 4X400?

KR: Well, Allyson ran on the team that advanced from the semifinal round, so she shared in the gold medal won by the squad in the finals. It was that gold, the thirteenth of her career, that broke her tie with Usain Bolt for the most in championship history. So, in the past she’s been clutch for the relay teams of Team USA. And in Doha, the USA’s 4x400m women’s relay would’ve won with Allyson on the team. But opting for Muhammad and McLaughlin without hurdles in their way was irrestible. The squad was so dominant by the end the cameras were literally filming two separate races.

NT: And the American men in the 4X100! They didn’t drop the baton. They have been a national absurdity for two decades: every relay ends with the equivalent of the buttfumble. And they almost blew it again in the semifinals, muddling a handoff. What is it about this event that so flummoxes the United States? And do you think in this new era, with Christian Coleman and Noah Lyles, they’ll learn both how to run fast and how to pass the baton?

KR: Sometimes it seems the relays come down to luck—who drops the baton and who doesn’t. Buuuuuut Allyson Felix can drop a baton and still end up with (another) gold medal! But while there’s a raw speed component to it, there’s a requisite amount of technique and, well, practice. We’re talking about practice … it’s not a game!

So while Coleman and Lyles are hot right now, if they’re expected to usher in a new era of US dominance in the sprints—and the relays—they’re going to need more than speed. They’ll need longevity … and practice. Justin Gatlin has ten medals from his championships career, including three from the 4x100m. He was on the winning team in Doha. I wonder what he said to Coleman and Lyles in the locker room before the race?

NT: Speaking of US failures, the good scribes at letsrun.com point out that the 5k is the one event where American women traditionally flop. They’ve won medals in every race from the 100m to the marathon in recent world champs, except this one—where their best finish is 9th. What’s going on?

KR: And the US women’s medal count keeps improving! But I don’t think it’s accurate to call the US women flops in the 5k—not when they’re up against deep benches from Kenya and Ethiopia. Not when a single family from a tiny town in Ethiopia has been rocking the record books! That’s something not even the Ingebrigtsen brothers can claim!

For me, these kinds of blind spots are interesting—think of Jamaica’s struggle to crack the men’s 400m, for instance, even as their Caribbean neighbors like Bahamas or Grenada figure it out. Or cases in which a country with established dominance in one discipline throws up an outlier in a seemingly unrelated event—like Kenya’s javelin star Julius Yego (who scratched all of his attempts in Doha).

NT: What was your biggest disappointment? For me, it had to be Michael Norman. He runs the fourth fastest time in history in the spring. Then gets a mysterious injury and comes in last in his heat. Injuries happen! But if you’re hurt, don’t run. Give someone else the spot. Still, it was good to see someone from the Bahamas win the race. The country deserves a gold right now.

KR: I found the runnings thoroughly satisfying. Mind blown! So kudos to the athletes and coaches, families, and supporters behind them. I was a bit bummed their time to shine was somewhat clouded by drama off the track.

Other than that, I expected a bit more storytelling and local culture from Doha—energy about the place itself. I saw a few folks out for late-night camel rides but I didn’t get much more than that. Whether that was due to high heat or limitations on freedom of movement, I can’t say.

NT: I was telling my kids about Alberto Salazar, and the idea that, I think, he pioneered of running workouts after races. You finish your race and you do your best. You recover briefly, and then you get back on the track and hammer a workout just as you would on a regular weekday. It always struck me as both totally brilliant (your body hasn’t processed the punishment of the race yet, so it’s kind of a way to sneak more training in for free) and totally insane (surely there must be some physiological risk).

KR: Ah, man. Remember that dreamtime? Galen Rupp would run hard, maybe set an American record, sign autographs, then Salazar would have him back on the track for a 5×1 mile session or similar. (With a last mile of 4:01—he was probably tired and just wanted to get to bed!).
Savage as it was, I loved the logic of these sessions—the idea that the body was already beat up and broken down by the race performance, so might as well add some extra workload (i.e. damage) since some recovery would already be necessary as a matter of course. It’s Ferris Bueller’s logic: if you’re already going to get in trouble for skipping school, might as well see what else you can get away with…you know, like crashing a float at the Von Steuben Day Parade in Chicago.

NT: And, yes, that’s part of why I’m going to be rooting for Rupp in Chicago. He deserves it, after spending the past year running on an underwater treadmill. What are your final thoughts about Doha as a venue. They set up a stadium with an open roof and air conditioning—and it worked. This is the world we’re going to live in with the climate crisis.

KR: Deserves it? Like the rest of us, Galen deserves nothing! Nothing! I’m just hating, of course—if only an underwater treadmill would fit in a Brooklyn apartment! But don’t you agree that running owes us nothing, and that’s probably why we’re in love (or obsessed) with it?

For me the Doha dichotomy between the records set inside on the track and the carnage in the marathons and racewalks out on the roads was a key takeaway. As it is the Tokyo 2020 Olympic committee scrapped construction for an air-conditioned stadium designed by the late Zaha Hadid, mainly due to budget restrictions but with the belief the A/C wouldn’t cool them all that much. Try telling that to the marathoners in Doha—or to the folks running a 5k race in the park when it’s summertime in Brooklyn.