Arrogance Personified

Arrogance Personified: 5000m race at Crystal Palace, London, England - 1980. John "The Mudlark" Treacy (IRL) personifies the "Never Give Up" attitude. Steve Ovett (GB) with an overbearing display of superiority and self-importance, loses because of sheer arrogance. Ovett was a marvelous athelete in his time. He had just won the 1500m Olympic Gold in Moscow and had numerous other titles to his name including many World Records. This is one race he would like to forget. Treacy was no mug either. He had two Wold Cross Country Championship to his hame and won Silver in the 1984 Olympic Marathon at Los Angelus. (c) BBC

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[George Sorrell]

The race was a 5000 meter, or about 3.1 miles, and the winner finished in 13:27, so if doing a few 4:19 miles consecutively is slow, then I want to be slow.

[Darren Ó Máille]

I'm pretty sure the Irishman (John Treacy) enjoyed it even more ;-)

[Arciniegas24]

it's your chest

[Logan Smith]

You fool. It is when your chest crosses the line

[76guessagain]

look at the guy in prples foot at 2:08 he actualy did win the race...there is no rule saying your body has to cross the line...any part of your body crosses the line it counts....so yes the guy in purple did win the race

[KAF128]

. . . yes, I thought the uploader had that wrong ! I remember those Olympics because Coe & Ovett kind of won each others' events (and I started learning Russian that summer !)

[scratchyrock]

youtube.com/watch?v=MfgjuK5b_B­w haha yup!

[J. London]

I wonder in the history of competition I wonder if anyone has ever had a big enough lead to run the final straight backwards ?

[LightSnowOvernight]

Ha ! ha! I never liked Ovett. Always nice to see him lose, even 33 years later

[ZhangyXD]

so that's basically arrogance

[bellythekid1234]

There's really nothing arrogant about what ovett did it was just what he would do and it's not like treacy was unknown to running he was a world cross country champ and represented Ireland in a few Olympic Games