Monday, November 08, 2010

UNBELIEVABLE

Wow! The New York Road Runners took marathon coverage to a new level over the weekend. They had incredible coverage leading up to the New York City Marathon; live streaming, on-demand video of press conferences, documentaries, and a fun segment called the Daily Cool Down, which was hosted by Carrie Tollefson who did a terrific job! You can still find many of these videos HERE.

After the race they even had a video of Haile Gebrselassie’s press conference where the greatest runner ever shocked the press corp. by announcing his retirement. I find it hard to believe that we won’t see him in another race. If you watch his pre-race press conference with Paul Tergat, he talks about coming back to NYC until he wins the event. Hopefully, he was just caught up in the heat of the moment after DNF’ing.

I know there’s a lot of debate as to whether he is the greatest ever or not. To me, it’s no contest. This guy was setting world records when I was in college in the mid-90s. Then he set the marathon world record a couple of years ago. There’s like 18 year between his first and last world record. Unbelievable!

Here's a video of the last 2 laps of the 10,000m in Sydney. When Tergat makes his move at about 1:30 into the video, watch Gebrselassie's teammate. I think he says something to Geb about Tergat making his move because Geb starts picking it up before he ever sees Tergat.



Quote of the Day;

“Without me, there’s no Paul Tergat. Without Paul Tergat, there’s no Haile Gebrselassie.” - Haile Gebrselassie

1 comment:

Pretend this is real said...

Very impressive this year! Maybe more people will get hooked on this great sport.