Seb Coe-Yorkshire Championships 5000m.May,1980

Every great season for an athlete probably starts with something quite humble,and Coe's Olympic gold winning 1980 was no different. Here in an early season 5000m at the Yorkshire Championships held in Cudworth he wins in a time of 14.06.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Seb Coe
• Sebastian Coe
• 1980
• 5000 metres
• Yorkshire Championships
• Cudworth
• Olympics

[deano27671]

It always amazes me that Coe's detractors latch onto this "training run" when trying to make the argument that his endurance was weak and he couldn't run anything over a Mile! He would regularly train at 13:20 pace, and was certainly capable of much faster than this. One of the reasons I followed Coe's career avidly, is that he always used low key events early in his career to "experiment" with pace and tactics rather than just going through the motions.

[ARRISIPPY]

@deano27671 What i found interesting about this is I presume it's the only footage of him over the 5K (?) I remember after the '84 Olympics there was a lot of conjecture about him stepping up in distance. Considering he then went on finally to win his 800 gold in '86 it was probably a good thing. Guess we'll never know!

[martynhanson]

Not sure of I am classed as a Coe 'detractor', but what I do know is when Ovett was doing 5000m all sorts of people got on the band wagon against his prowess at the distance. Now I can see that Coe has been given huge swathes of the benefit of the doubt on the basis of this one very, very low key race.

I recall in June of 86 Ovett beat Nenow of the USA in 13-20 and Ovett slowed down many times in the race in order to test his kick. It's obvious Ovett could have done 13-10 on that day alone!

[deano27671]

His finishing time was 14:06.2. Basically a training jog for him.

[RipCruncher1]

@yortzandat ~ I did indeed. A wonderful club. Malcolm Steggles is STILL there too. The Peter Driver Sports Centre alas doesn't exist anymore, and it broke my heart to see that Fleet & Crookham don't have a home base anymore. Great, great days.

[bear1568]

Does anyone know what Coe's finishing time was in this race?

[yortzandat]

@RipCruncher1 You must have known Dr David Fearn when you were running with Fleet...

[RipCruncher1]

When I qualified to run for England in 1981 at the English Schools Cross Country Championships at Wigan, it had been after the quickest times I'd run at both 800 and 1500's meters the track season before. My 3000 & 5000 meter times had been nothing spectacular at all. I ran for Fleet & Crookham and A.F.D. What a fantastic era for British athletics. Coe was my hero in a lot of ways.

[yellcarreon]

thanks for this video...keep it coming bro!

[deano27671]

Trained for 5k again in winter 86, but foot injury in May 87 meant he was out for the season. So he played safe and decided, ironically, to focus on winning a 3rd 1500 title in 88.

[deano27671]

@ARRISIPPY Thanks for this video btw.

Yeah, he trained for 5000m throughout the winter of 84/85, then got a back injury early season 85 which didn't go all season and prevented him doing a lot of the endurance stuff he wanted to do in order to tackle a big 5000 later in season. So he stuck to the shorter events and ended season earlyish. As he didn't get to run one he decided to stick with 8 & 15 for Championships in 86.