Is Tirunesh the most boring runner of all time?

thirtyfoot

http://www.globerunner.org/blog/?p=57
http://www.globerunner.org/blog/?p=61

Pat Butcher (not the Eastender ex-hooker but the athletics journalist) is stirring it up calling Dibaba a parasite and boring for the way she runs. What do people think. She isn't as exciting as Bekele who can run and win anyway but when she lets rip on the last 400 she is impressive. Below is a story about Aoutia who unlike Dibaba he says had class. Should a champion do more than just sit in and jump when needed or is it all about winning no matter how?

..........For a brief period, beginning in the late 1980s, there was a late season, low-key Grand Prix meeting in India, initially in Delhi, then in Pune. The idea was the introduce world-class athletics to Indians, so a coterie of western stars was invited, on the promise of a guided tour and a good payday for a relatively ‘easy’ competition. In 1989, the supposed star of the show was Carl Lewis, who filled the pages of a range of journals for days beforehand, then contrived to lose the 100 metres to a little known Austrian, Andreas Berger, whose later claim to fame was getting himself banned for drugs.


But the real star of the Jawarhalal Nehru Stadium that evening was Saïd Aouita. The Moroccan was nearing the end of his illustrious career, and could have contented himself with loping around the 1500 metres in something adjacent to 3min 40sec, and the unsophisticated audience would have been none the wiser. But Aouita had other ideas. He got a colleague to pace him for a couple of laps, before striking out on his own, racing the final 700 metres alone, and winning by the length of the finishing straight in just under 3min 35sec, on a humid evening with temperatures in the mid-thirties celsius.

The crowd instinctively recognised they were seeing something special, and rose to cheer him to the echo. At the meeting hotel later, I asked him why he had bothered to put in so much effort, when a sprint in front of the grandstand would have produced the same result. Serious for once in a social situation, he replied, “When the crowd pays to see Aouita, they deserve to see the real Aouita”.

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is class.

Pherekydes

Tingle wrote: »

Pat Butcher...

It sucks, but at the end of the day all that matters is "first across the line".

Didn't Butcher write a book chronicling the rivalry between two of Britain's greats, Seb Coe and the ultimate (in cycling parlance) wheel-sucker Steve Ovett?

The irony is lost on Butcher, I'm sure. Boring, maybe. Parasite? That's downright disgusting.

shels4ever

Now thats jsut a joke. She is pure class. What would England not give to have someone like her. She can run fast and she can race. She ran perfect in the olympics... What more do they want