British middle distance prospects - male

Just thought I'd kick off a discussion about the young middle distance runners that are emerging at the moment. I've deliberately restricted this to the men as I think most athletics fans are well aware of how strong we are on the women's side already (feel free to talk up them up in another thread if you wish). Maybe I'm being over-optimistic, but I think the signs are there of a particularly good crop of middle distance runners coming into the sport. The three main guys on my radar are Niall Brooks, Charlie Grice and Tom Farrell.

As mentioned already on the board, Tom Farrell broke the longstanding 3000m U20 indoor record last year in Seattle. This also put him at No. 4 on the list of combined indoor and outdoor U20 times. Looking at this list on PoT, it's noticeable that in common with many of the middle and long distance all time lists there are precious few performances by current athletes - this case only seven out of the 53 times have been set since the turn of the millennium. Before Farrell ran 7:58.68 last year the next fastest time was 8.04 by Chris Thompson in the year 2000. I don't want to infer too much by Farrell's mark, but surely the potential is there for him to develop into a competitive 3000 and 5000m runner.

Charlie Grice had a breakthrough year last year, he went to No. 5 in the all time list for U17 800m list with 1:50.61 at Eltham. Aside from the time, what made this run particularly impressive is that he won this BMC race by three seconds, so I presume it became a solo effort. It will be interesting to see how he reacts when he moves into the U20 age group and faces more competition, let's hope he gets pushed to a few new PBs in the summer. The other highlight of his year was winning the bronze medal in the 1000m at the Olympic Youth Games in Singapore in August, clocking 2:21 in the final. I've never bothered leaving the airport in Singapore but I imagine it's oppressively humid there in Summer, so it's really encouraging to see him handle a championships in alien conditions so well. Again, one should always be cautious about predicting the future of a 16-year-old, but Grice is in some very good company on U17 list, close to times by Michael Rimmer and James Brewer, and ahead of Ovett and Elliott at the same age.

Like Grice, Niall Brooks peppered the age-group all time lists last summer too. Looking at his performance records, Brooks is chiefly a 800m runner, but reserved his best work for the 1500m, clocking 3:38.62 at Gateshead to go to No. 2 in the all time U20 1500m list, behind Graham Williamson. He has until July to find the 1.6 seconds to best Williamson at take the all time U20 crown. U20 lists are slightly more indicative of future performance and Brooks finds himself ahead of some pretty major athletes - Cram, Coe, Lancashire, Reitz, Stewart, and Brown to name but a few. Brooks also set a new PB at 800m, finishing 4th with 1:47.02 at the World Junior Champs in Moncton. Although he missed out on a medal he improved with every round and gave himself a good chance of a medal by staying at the head of the field. It will be interesting to see how much he progresses in the next 18 months and must be an outside bet to be wearing a GB vest in London next year.

Thoughts on these three and any other promising British middle distance runner are more than welcome . . .

I will be glad to take this up, East End Bodybuilder, yet in stages since I've got very limited time right now. For starters, I totally fall in with you that there is a very exciting new crop(s) of middle distance runners coming through, which could gradually push standards all the way back to where they were some over 20 years ago or thereabouts.

I'd like to get things going with Tom Farrell whose superb run of 7:58.68 over 3000m was on an oversized track in Seattle and therefore cannot count as a UK U20 indoor record but can only be referred to as a best-ever indoor U20 performance. I reckon with the guy a great deal and feel he could become a sheer force on the world scene, equipped with excellent speed over 1500m as his PB of 3:42.92 from last summer recommends - and could have been faster still had he not had his track season pared down due to injuries.

I've got no doubt Tom could also make a top miler if he turned his hand to it but I reckon that his best prospects lie with the longer distance, where he seems to concentrate back on this season much to my delight. It's a shame that he didn't attempt to run over 5000m because I felt that he had a genuine chance to draw under 13:40 last summer, which would have been the fastest by a British U20 since Paul Davies-Hale I think. But I could definitely see him surge inside 13:30 in his first U23 season and couple that with something in the 3:36-37 region over 1500m as well. I'm really looking forward to what he's going to do this season!

Back with more later on....

Further to the three prospects I opened up with, there's been a major breakthrough by Chris O'Hare in the last week, clocking 3:56.48 for the mile in Fayetteville last friday. A 20-year-old from Edinburgh, O'Hare's performance compares very favourably with other domestic middle-distance runners this century. He currently stands at No. 4 in the IAAF rankings for this year behind Russell Brown, Garrett Heath and Nick Willis. Here's a look from the IAAF archive at other British sub-4 indoor mile performances since 2000:

2010

3:55.64 Andrew Baddeley GBR New York (Armory), NY 23/01/2010

3:56.31 Ricky Stevenson GBR New York (Armory), NY 23/01/2010

3:56.80 Mark Draper GBR New York (Armory), NY 23/01/2010

3:57.62 Lee Emanuel GBR Bloomington, IN 29/01/2010

3:58.61 Scott Overall GBR Bloomington, IN 29/01/2010

3:59.75 Tim Bayley GBR Boston (Roxbury), MA 06/02/2010


2009

None

2008

3:59.29 Andrew Baddeley GBR New York (Armory), NY 19/01/2008

2007

3:59.14 David Proctor GBR Boston (BU), MA 27/01/2007

2006

3:58.23 Andrew Baddeley GBR New York (Arm), NY 21/01/2006

3:58.49 Neil Speaight GBR Boston (Rox), MA 28/01/2006

3:58.52 Thomas Lancashire GBR Gainesville, FL 02/03/2006

2005

3:59.20 James Thie GBR New York (Arm), NY 05/02/2005

2004

3:59.65 James Thie GBR New York (Arm), NY 14/02/2004

3:59.72 Chris Mulvaney GBR Fayetteville, AR 14/02/2004

3:59.05* Gavin Thompson GBR South Bend, IN 07/02/2004


2003

3:57.71 James Thie GBR New York (Arm), NY 15/02/2003

3:58.94 Chris Mulvaney GBR Fayetteville, AR 15/02/2003

2002

3:57.48 Andrew Graffin GBR New York (Armory), NY 08/02/2002

2001

3:55.07 John Mayock GBR Stockholm 15/02/2001

2000

3:56.68 John Mayock GBR Liévin 13/02/2000


*Oversized track


Fastest in the world since 2000:

3:49.89 Bernard Lagat KEN Fayetteville, AR 11/02/2005

Fastest European since 2000:

3:52.18 Rui Silva POR Stockholm 15/02/2001

British indoor mile record:

3:52.02 Peter Elliott GBR East Rutherford, NJ 09/02/1990



So far this season three British athletes have broken 4 minutes for the mile indoors. Apart from O'Hare, Rich Peters, whom I think is one of two brothers from Bristol, is 20-years-old and clocked 3:58.26 in Boston on Saturday. Ross Millington, a 21-year-old from Stockport also posted a time of 3:59.86 in Bloomington last month. Hopefully we'll see one or two more Brits break this iconic barrier before the season is out. If one considers that most years this century we've only seen one or two athletes break the 4 minute mile indoors, hopefully last year and this signals a revival of interest and standards in the event, and I really hope that event organisers in the UK start to fill the echoey void between 800m and 3000m that exists in their programme - I'd love to tell you the last time a Brit ran a sub-4 mile indoors in the UK but easily-accessible records don't stretch back that far! Apologies about the ragged presentation of the stats - the tab stops didn't convert too well from Word.

I was really pleased to see Chris O'Hare and Rich Peters stage such breakthroughs this past weekend and I'm looking forward to more from them. May I suggest two more names, at least, that should draw under 4 mins soon? Kris Gauson and, of course, Tom Farrell.

By the way, Charlie Grice was down to run in the 1500m heats on Saturday in Sheffield but didn't finally show up. A very exciting prospect, I agree with you, who looks equally competent over both middle distances although the balance may slightly tip towards the 1500m.

Just a quick update on young prospects as the outdoor season unfolds:

A new name emerging on the middle-distance scene is Jonny Van Deventer, who clocked 3:43.34 at Swarthmore in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Jonny is another Brit embedded in the US collegiate scene, representing Yale. He originates from that distance-running hotbed of Aldershot, Farnham and District, however. This is the first year he's run 1500m competitively, having run a lot of 3000m and 5000m races before.

Club mate Jonathan Hay's performance this week has garnered a lot of attention already - Hay ran 3:42.83 at the Watford BMC meeting last night. As noted elsewhere on the forum this is an improvement of 4 secs on his previous PB, despite it being his first run of the season.

There were several County Championships over the weekend, conditions often mitigated against fast times due to strong winds, but a stand out was James McMurray, who ran 1:52.52 for 800m at the Hertfordshire champs. This took out a 27-year-old champs record. Just 16 years old, this compares well with former prodigies like Ovett and Rimmer who ran around 1:50 at this stage in their careers.

The BMC Watford meet produced two outstanding performances by juniors yesterday. Charlie Grice and Adam Cotton moved further up the U20 1500m all-time list. Cotton now lies 7th, courtesy of his 3:41.33 run (he is coached by John Nuttall who is at 30th on the list himself, thanks to his junior best from 1986). This is Cotton's last year in the U20 age group, so he has a few more months to chip away at the guys ahead of him. Realistically he could attack Steve Cram's time of 3:40.09 at No. 3, set in 1978. I doubt he'll get close to the No. 1, run by boy wonder Graham Williamson - 3:36.6, a year later than Cram.

Charlie Grice, on the other hand, has two more years in this age group to improve on his current position of equal 17th, thanks to his 3:42.86 run yesterday. Grice is still taking massive chunks out of his PB in the manner you'd expect from a talented teenager. Despite it being early season he's already taken 6 seconds off his 1500m best from 2010 (3:48.70). Last year he improved his PB by 10 seconds. Barring accident or injury, one can be reasonably confident he'll be running inside 3:40 by the time he steps up into the senior ranks.

Looking further down this particular all-time list you see Ovett and Coe ranked at 45 and 56, respectively. In both cases they improved on their junior PBs by a whopping 14 seconds or more when they became seniors. This just shows you what is possible when talent, hunger and belief combine.

The dust has settled on the World Youth Champs and there were a few outstanding performances there. Although they didn't yield any medals, a few of our middle distance runners ran PBs and are now high up in the age group rankings. The most outstanding performance was by James McMurray who finished 6th in the 1500m final, in a time of 3:46.51. This smashed the UK U17 reccord by more than a second, and erased Steve Cram's longstanding mark from the record books. Cram ran 3:47.7 in Gateshead in 1977. McMurray has taken 10 seconds off of his 1500m PB this season. World class in the age group he inhabits is around 3:39/40, it's not inconceivable he'll be running that next year with his rate of improvement. Studying the all-time U17 list, recent entries here include Charlie Grice, Harvey Dixon and Luke Carroll from last year, all in the top 10. Further down the list, other big names from the past include Michael Rimmer and Rob Denmark, who've both gone on to distinguish themselves at different distances of course.

Robbie Farnham-Rose also ran a PB to finish 8th in the 1500m final - 3:47.60, though he is now counted as an U20 athlete. I hope Cram serves as an inspiration for these young athletes - they're breaking records and setting PBs and yet they're well behind the Kenyans and Ethiopians in the medal mix. One must bear in mind however, that at senior level, Cram's best times are not being surpassed by a large group of African runners. He and Said Aouita set the benchmark in the mid-80s and it's only really been bettered significantly by Morceli, Lagat and El Guerrouj in the last 20 years.

Earlier in the champs Zak Seddon ran the fastest 2000m Steeplechase by a junior British athlete since 1989, clocking 5:40.62. Looking at this particular all-time list is a little depressing as there are very few performances from the 90s and post-millennium period on it. Seddon now sits 11th on the list, which is topped by one of my favourite athletes growing up - Colin Reitz, who went on to win a medal at the inaugural World Championships in 1983.

Currently on the IAAF rankings Seddon is the top non-african in this event and the same is true of McMurray in the 1500m. I know the significance of this is hotly debated, and being the top non-african can mean diddly squat in the steeplechase as it puts you 20th in world terms, however McMurray, Seddon and Farnham-Rose are the three leading Europeans at 1500m, which is hopefully a good portent for the senior Euro champs further down the line.

One has to be very cautious as to how this will all play out. At the moment there is a promising crop of middle-distance runners in the young age groups. Some will disappoint, some will perform to expectations and some will exceed them. I think the key is that we're not talking about one or two talented athletes, we're talking about a group of them. This should mean that there will be good domestic competition in the future and that even with some obsolescence a small number will become top athletes, and it's great to look forward to that.

Thanks EEB - very helpful over view