Dear doggpound:
LRC has just made my point in their "the week that was".
See below or read it on the homepage.
Runner A Or Runner B? (World Juniors Talk)
Imagine for a minute that you are a college coach or an agent for a shoe company. Please tell us which athlete you'd want to sign - Athlete A or Athlete B.
Athlete A is 18 years old and has had the following progression:
2008 PR - 4:14.50 (plus 2:09.92)
2009 PR - 4:16.80 (plus 2:09.64)
2010 PR - 4:13.85
Athlete B is 18 years old and has had the following progression:
2008 PR - 4:21.2 (plus 2:07.48)
2009 PR - 4:15.46 (plus 2:03.07)
2010 PR - 4:09.51
In choosing between the two athletes, we feel that 100% of coaches/agents would much prefer to have athlete B. Athlete B's rate of improvement is much greater than Athlete A and Athlete B is much faster at 800 than athlete A. Well, athlete A is in actuality Jordan Hasay and Athlete B is Ciara Mageean.
"Who is Ciara Mageean?," you ask. She is an Irish athlete who earned a silver medal at the World Junior Championships last week in Canaday while Hasay continued to run well but finished fourth for the second straight World Juniors.
Hasay is an incredible athlete, but we've long cautioned people to not expect stardom for her at the senior level. Two years ago when Hasay was the darling of the Olympic Trials and finishing 4th at World Juniors as a 16-year-old, Mageean was running with no notoriety and finishing 10th at World Juniors, more than 7 seconds back of Hasay. Now she is significantly better than Hasay.
The fact of the matter is stardom at an early age doesn't necessarily mean much.