gh wrote:I still haven't voted, but I'm leaning towards Eaton for the simplest of reasons: during the 2012 season (which is at issue here) he was unbeatable. The other two WR setters were not. Nor was Bolt.
You can argue that he only competed twice, but his level of superiority over the rest of the planet (which was merely led by the reigning 2-time world champ) was such that you can posit how ever many more decathlons you want for him, and he simply would not be beaten. His comfort margin was absolutely stupendous.
So that's my story, at least for today.
If David had chosen to only run 800m twice this year wouldn't he have TOTALLY dominated the field and had an 'absolutely stupendous" comfort margin ?
Also you get extra credit from me for putting yourself on the line week after week against the best. If you lose a couple of times while competing a lot, it is preferable to keeping a clean sheet by competing sparingly.
mump boy wrote:.... If David had chosen to only run 800m twice this year wouldn't he have TOTALLY dominated the field and had an 'absolutely stupendous" comfort margin ?...
mump boy wrote:.... If David had chosen to only run 800m twice this year wouldn't he have TOTALLY dominated the field and had an 'absolutely stupendous" comfort margin ?...
Not if one of the two races was Zürich!
maybe he should have just done his national champs and the OG then
Last edited by mump boy on Sun Dec 02, 2012 1:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
but put more seriously: we discovered that within about a dozen races, all the other major contenders turned out to be beatable. I posit that no matter how many decathlons you had Eaton contest this year, he could not be beaten, plain and simple. His margin for error is that huge at this point.
mump boy wrote:Also you get extra credit from me for putting yourself on the line week after week against the best. If you lose a couple of times while competing a lot, it is preferable to keeping a clean sheet by competing sparingly.
So because Eaton doesn't have that luxury he basically losses out?
gh wrote:but put more seriously: we discovered that within about a dozen races, all the other major contenders turned out to be beatable. I posit that no matter how many decathlons you had Eaton contest this year, he could not be beaten, plain and simple. His margin for error is that huge at this point.
Since he is a multi guy, I think his other real competition was an Indoor Hept WR where he destroyed the field by about 10%, and that is pretty damn hard to do in the multis, modest competition or not.
I would be hard-pressed to think of another voter to add that would be better than the one you selected. His explanations give a quick demonstration of why that is the case.
3. Ashton Eaton (USA/decathlon) It’s a tough year when an Olympic champion goes undefeated, breaks a world record, and only ranks third. Had Eaton not shut it down after the Olympics and done one more meet, I would have considered him for #1. But as it is, the two above him put together seasons that were just too strong to beat.
26mi235 wrote:The Olympics are about winning. The 10,000 is about competing and in case you did not notice there were not a heck of a lot of fast races this year, and he showed last year that he could win a fast race was well as kick hard. What he had to show this year was that he could complete the double that he did not quite pull off last year. He did absolutely everything that was on the agenda. Sprinters get to run a gazillion races, not those doing 5/10 doubles. When, by the way did you become a marks snob for distance races?
[That is too much; I understand your position, but I think you make far too much of minor non-faults. Too bad none of those others went undefeated in their double attempts.]
I want a full competitive season, running fast against the best, not set up, poor quality, slow, non events which constituted his season outside of OG
By this definition, Eaton has a somewhat stronger case. Limited, though very strong competition left him undefeated, Olympic champion, with a WR. Too bad we can't count indoors.
I'm thrilled by the way (personally, not from an "official" T&FN stance) to see superfan put Pars into his top 5. Nice to see somebody who understands how field events work.
Having said that, Harting (who was my AOY last year, as he was for 5 other insightful voters) remains as best in that category for me. Undefeated says tons to me.
gh wrote:I'm thrilled by the way (personally, not from an "official" T&FN stance) to see superfan put Pars into his top 5. Nice to see somebody who understands how field events work.
Having said that, Harting (who was my AOY last year, as he was for 5 other insightful voters) remains as best in that category for me. Undefeated says tons to me.
Harting will be my 5 (possibly 4) my major struggle is whether to knock out a gold medallist to include Yohan
Yohan would certainly be somewhere in my top 10, and since there were more than 10 gold medalists, yes, I'd knock out more than one of them. (Actually, there are 22 individual events, so any top 10 must knock out a majority of the gold medalists.)
As for #1, I'm inclined to agree with gh. I don't see how you can fault Eaton. I might, under some circumstances, hold it against an uninjured athlete if he/she shut down his season after the Games, with plenty of Diamond League and other meets left. But in Eaton's case, there's no reason in the world why anyone would expect him to have competed again. He had a perfect season and, as gh pointed out, the other leading candidates did not.
tandfman wrote:Yohan would certainly be somewhere in my top 10, and since there were more than 10 gold medalists, yes, I'd knock out more than one of them. (Actually, there are 22 individual events, so any top 10 must knock out a majority of the gold medalists.)
As for #1, I'm inclined to agree with gh. I don't see how you can fault Eaton. I might, under some circumstances, hold it against an uninjured athlete if he/she shut down his season after the Games, with plenty of Diamond League and other meets left. But in Eaton's case, there's no reason in the world why anyone would expect him to have competed again. He had a perfect season and, as gh pointed out, the other leading candidates did not.
To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
If we are awarding top marks for people who are unbeaten, why is no one even mentioning Cakir and her flawless 3 race season ?
mump boy wrote:To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
It would have made no sense at all for him to leave his training base and do any of the pre-Trials events in the CE Challenge. And do you really think he had any motivation to stay in training another month+ to compete in compete in Talence in September? $30,000 would have been plenty of motivation for you and me, but fortunately for him, that's now almost pocket change.
mump boy wrote:To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
It would have made no sense at all for him to leave his training base and do any of the pre-Trials events in the CE Challenge. And do you really think he had any motivation to stay in training another month+ to compete in compete in Talence in September? $30,000 would have been plenty of motivation for you and me, but fortunately for him, that's now almost pocket change.
Obviously AOY doesn't mean anything to him either
I thought US athletes were penniless because they couldn't tweet about sponsors for 3 weeks around the OG
mump boy wrote:To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
It would have made no sense at all for him to leave his training base and do any of the pre-Trials events in the CE Challenge. And do you really think he had any motivation to stay in training another month+ to compete in compete in Talence in September? $30,000 would have been plenty of motivation for you and me, but fortunately for him, that's now almost pocket change.
I agree that "having" to compete one more time is ridiculous, to be sure. Having said that, he could have not trained a day post-London, wandered over to Talence and still won handily. Of this I'm 100% certain. Just another reason he gets my AOY vote. I think (I'm not pushed to the wire yet, and voting for these things is a decision of biblical proportions!).
mump boy wrote:To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
It would have made no sense at all for him to leave his training base and do any of the pre-Trials events in the CE Challenge. And do you really think he had any motivation to stay in training another month+ to compete in compete in Talence in September? $30,000 would have been plenty of motivation for you and me, but fortunately for him, that's now almost pocket change.
I agree that "having" to compete one more time is ridiculous, to be sure. Having said that, he could have not trained a day post-London, wandered over to Talence and still won handily. Of this I'm 100% certain. Just another reason he gets my AOY vote. I think (I'm not pushed to the wire yet, and voting for these things is a decision of biblical proportions!).
He gets your vote because he 'could' have done something ??
He 'could' have gone to Talence, no heighted in the PV or got injured and not finished
yes, Eaton could have gone to Talence and no-heighted in the PV, but he's in the position as a decathlete (I realize an "unfair" advantage) that if simply finishing the season undefeaated and winning another meet was the object, that simply wouldn't happen. He's that much better than everybody else, plain and simple.
I've never been one to punish people for "injury defeats."
(bottom line being that this is all very subjective, of course, and you can see which way my tendencies lean)
tandfman wrote:Yohan would certainly be somewhere in my top 10, and since there were more than 10 gold medalists, yes, I'd knock out more than one of them. (Actually, there are 22 individual events, so any top 10 must knock out a majority of the gold medalists.)
As for #1, I'm inclined to agree with gh. I don't see how you can fault Eaton. I might, under some circumstances, hold it against an uninjured athlete if he/she shut down his season after the Games, with plenty of Diamond League and other meets left. But in Eaton's case, there's no reason in the world why anyone would expect him to have competed again. He had a perfect season and, as gh pointed out, the other leading candidates did not.
To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
If we are awarding top marks for people who are unbeaten, why is no one even mentioning Cakir and her flawless 3 race season ?
He did three multis, two were WRs (I know that indoors 'does not count' but in the context of a multi-athlete it is not irrelevant to use to fill in what is otherwise a slightly short season), the other Olympic Gold, which would also have been an OR except that he got a bit injured at the end. Thus, the 'ending season a bit early because of injury' situation applies (and it certainly applies most to decathletes as they have to do ten events, not just one). Add to that that his three multis were complete blowouts and the two decas were, in one case, against the best in the world at the peak meet, and the other was against the reigning World Champ and eventual second placer.
As for Blake, he has to be behind Rudisha, Eaton, Merritt, Bolt, Pars, Harting, Farah [not necessarily in that exact order], and other possibles include PV, TJ, 400, SC, so he is good but might not even Top 10.
tandfman wrote:Yohan would certainly be somewhere in my top 10, and since there were more than 10 gold medalists, yes, I'd knock out more than one of them. (Actually, there are 22 individual events, so any top 10 must knock out a majority of the gold medalists.)
As for #1, I'm inclined to agree with gh. I don't see how you can fault Eaton. I might, under some circumstances, hold it against an uninjured athlete if he/she shut down his season after the Games, with plenty of Diamond League and other meets left. But in Eaton's case, there's no reason in the world why anyone would expect him to have competed again. He had a perfect season and, as gh pointed out, the other leading candidates did not.
To win the IAAF Combined Events Challenge you have to have compete in 3 events. I see no problem with that being the base line for a complete season (and $30,000)
If we are awarding top marks for people who are unbeaten, why is no one even mentioning Cakir and her flawless 3 race season ?
He did three multis, two were WRs (I know that indoors 'does not count' but in the context of a multi-athlete it is not irrelevant to use to fill in what is otherwise a slightly short season), the other Olympic Gold, which would also have been an OR except that he got a bit injured at the end. Thus, the 'ending season a bit early because of injury' situation applies (and it certainly applies most to decathletes as they have to do ten events, not just one). Add to that that his three multis were complete blowouts and the two decas were, in one case, against the best in the world at the peak meet, and the other was against the reigning World Champ and eventual second placer.
As for Blake, he has to be behind Rudisha, Eaton, Merritt, Bolt, Pars, Harting, Farah [not necessarily in that exact order], and other possibles include PV, TJ, 400, SC, so he is good but might not even Top 10.
Indoors is TOTALLY irrelevant to the discussion in hand and must not be considered when choosing AOY. As is what he 'could' have done at the OG
People have to be judged on what they DID do, not shoulda, coulda, woulda
Aries 'could' have gone the whole season undefeated if he hadn't lost !! as could David if he's chosen not to run in the rain. I think we all agree that he 'could' also have gone a whole lot faster in a DL race with good pacemaking instead of in in OG final in his 3rd day of racing and all by himself
THESE THINGS ARE TOTALLY IRRELEVANT
Ashton was amazing this year but at the end of the day he only has to competitions two show for it. While he was totally dominant his WR was only by 13 points (i know the weather as awful etc etc) and the least impressive of those set this year
how many elite decathletes compete more than twice? Not a lot so what's the big deal?
To me, the heptathlon may not officially count (I sure as heck dont know why) but it's like the statement that was struck in court. It's out there and you know it. Some jurors/voters may be able to overlook it but not all.
If Eaton doesnt win this just go ahead and say a decathlete will never ever win AOY again!
Flumpy wrote:But that would be ridiculous. Of course a decathlete can win it again, just not against such strong opposition.
Had Rudisha and Merit not had such sterling seasons then Eaton would have it in the bag, but they did, so he doesn't.
Exactly. Eaton might just have the luck on Jonathan Edwards back in '95. Look up Edwards' resume for that season (3 x WR, undefeated, WC gold) and you'd probably be surprised to learn he didn't win AOY.
Here's my one and only clue on how the voting is going (aka cloooose): from the first 23 ballots through the door Eaton has 7 No. 1s, Merritt has 6 and Rudisha & Bolt have 5s.
dbirds wrote:well, Edwards got screwed them. At worse, he should have shared the award.
As one who voted for Edwards I agree he got screwed (even though Geb had a stunning WR-full season of his own).
Having said that, the farther you go back, to an era when WRs were "common," you can find all kinds of people with seasons that looked at alone would seem to be of AOY caliber, but in the end there can be only one.
I agree that Edwards deserved AOY in 1995, and certainly with hindsight his marks seem more remarkable then Geb's. That said, 1995 was an unusually deep year. I doubt there's been a year in the last several decades with so many strong contenders. The top five in the voting were as follows:
1. Haile Gebrselassie 3000 - 1st GP Final Two Miles - 8:07.46 5000 - 12:44.39 WR (previous WR was 12:55.30, lowering of record by 10.91 seconds was the most since Lauri Lehtinen's 14:17.0 in 1932), also 12:53.19 10K - 26:43.53 WR (previous WR 26:52.23, lowering of record by 8.70 seconds was the largest margin since Ron Clarke's 27:39.4 in 1965), also WC gold medal
2. Jonathan Edwards undefeated in 14 meets, including WC WR entering the season was 17.98 jumped 18.43w (+2.4) on 6/25, 18.03w (+2.9) on 7/2, 17.98 WR on 7.18, 18.08w (+2.5) on 7/23, 18.16 and 18.29 on 8/7 (1st two jumps of WC Final), 18.00 on 8/27
3. Michael Johnson 1st ever to win 200/400 double at WC undefeated in 15 races (8 200s, 7 400s) 200 - 19.79 (WR was 19.72A), WC gold 400 - 43.39 (#2 all-time, WR was 43.29), 43.66, 43.86, 43.88, WC gold
