In this interview with LetsRun (still can't include hyperlinks???) about the Olympic Trials, Conner COMPLAINS about Robert Brandt not sharing the lead.
:
"I was hopeful that the race was going to be fast enough that we can run the Olympic standard (27:28). I had talked to a few of the athletes, the WCAP guys, beforehand. And a little bit with Robert Brandt, who ended up actually saying he wasn’t going to help lead. At first he was interested, but then as we talked, he’s like no, I don’t really want to put myself out there for somebody else. But he ended up leading probably five or six laps, if not more. Sorry, I’m going long on this. Kind of a big experience.
The race didn’t go as planned. The guys who were supposed to take the lead from me did not when they were supposed to. And so I stopped running on pace for the Olympic standard because I didn’t want to be a pacesetter for the whole 10k and just hope somebody would pass me, which eventually happened when Robert passed me at the end of lap 5. Which was frustrating, because I had been waiting for somebody else to do the job that we had planned out — a different person every other lap to take the lead."
Also, if you look at the Strava account of his race, Conner COMPLAINS about Rupp cutting him off or whatever on the last lap. Why such a victim all the time?