This.
He really did look like he was trying to get the race more on his terms, which is precisely what he should be doing. Gave it a hell of a go and came 4th, stunning effort and hope he goes on and wins some races.
But he should be immensely proud of what he just did. 4th in the olympics, wow, great result.
DS
"I knew no-one was going to lead that race, the worst-case scenario was I was going to have to lead it," Bol said.
Shows he is a realist. Knew what he was in for, based on studying the competition who had made the final.
The Olympic Games is full of people that come and go. They get one shot at it, but Peter Bol is not one of those. He belongs in this league, writes Tracey Holmes.
www.abc.net.au
I think, based on the unique dynamics created by the make up of the field - who was in it, what type of runners they were, their various strengths, what everyone's PBs were relative to each other etc - in hindsight, Peter squeezed the absolute best out of himself. There is probably no scenario he gets on the podium in those unique dynamics (every race is unique, depending on the matchups).
He either runs as they wanted to - slow, with a late blistering charge and gets bunt off by people with superior change of pace. Almost certainly finishes 5th to 9th in that scenario. Or he does what he did, runs from the front and just tries to hang on. And actually, hang on he did. Most often you see someone going drastically backwards down the home straight as they get swamped by the field, after running in that fashion. He didn't actually drop dramatically, just a couple a bit too strong.
Like I said earlier, a slight change in personnel in that field (which watching the semis and heats, it is such a knife edge thing, you could so easily have a sliding door moment where different blokes get through) and it changes the race dynamic entirely and you get a race playing out more similarly to Peter's heat and semi, which plays into his hands. The margins are so small between these guys actual PBs that these other tiny variables are decisive in deciding the result. It's just not comparable to laned events in the sprints or sports like swimming.
The only time you get an unbackable favourite and predictable outcome is if you have an overwhelmingly dominant force like Rudisha or Kipketer at the peak of their powers that are several seconds better than the rest and can actually run from the front and no one can get anywhere near them. The analogy you could use. Titmus and Ledecki are less than a second between each other and not that much further than that from the next few. Imagine if they didn't swim in lanes and had to start from a pontoon and swim around buoys on a triangular circuit like open water swimmers, with no lanes. So many more variables come into play then and the fastest swimmer on paper doesn't always win.