Lasse Virén

Yeah, I mean, when I was young, uh, I lived only a few hundred meters a- away from a, a coach called Per Halle, and he was in the final with Fr- with the Steve Prefontaine in '72.

He was seventh when Prefontaine was number four, and Lasse Viren won in '72 in the 5K.

So I, I just lived, like, very close to him, and he would coach me when I was a young athlete.

I was a middle distance runner.

He was up all night, sick, mostly in the bathroom.

And that food poisoning really had an effect on the race because Quacks, finished second, just four-tenths of a second behind Lasse Viren, and Rod himself was fourth, just twelve-one-hundredths of a second outside of the bronze medal.

So the food poisoning could certainly have had an effect on the podium placements in that classic and famous 5,000-meter race.

George, what did you find most interesting about Rod's comments?

so he has been running 13:25 and 13:27 before.

So I think this was a serious attempt on running the faster than 3:16, uh, which is the, the legendary record of Lasse Virén.

And of course, uh, with the pacer for three kilometer and then, uh, alone for the last two, he was not able to, to keep up this pace yet.

Uh, which I think is also quite logical.