German Fernandez : he'll be back...

German Fernandez : he'll be back...

May 3, 2011 by FloTrack Staff
German Fernandez : he'll be back...


by Ryan Craven

Another weekend … another race … another puzzling performance from everyone’s favorite wunderkind, German Fernandez.

Hoping for an opportunity to simply finish a race incident-free, Fernandez entered into the second heat of this weekend’s Payton Jordan 1500.

The race went out at a respectable pace with German waiting patiently for
his opening. With 200m to go, the Oklahoma State junior looked poised to shift gears and take down the field with one confident move. Instead, the race saw Fernandez stall as Anthony Berkis powered ahead for a decisive victory, with Mack McLain sneaking in for second.

America’s most promising young miler had lost…again…and to a Canadian no
less. However, while internet critics and letsrun gurus alike point to German’s performance as yet another sign of the coming apocalypse, I’m not so quick to abandon the bandwagon...

Running is a sport of slumps and streaks, highs and lows, years in the
spotlight and years on the shelf. After all, who was German Fernandez as a 17 year old but another kid sitting in the training room filling yet another bag of ice? Merely a year later, though, German was the second coming.



In fact, this weekend's Stanford results are littered with runners of similar
circumstances.

Despite aspirations of flirting with 13:20, fellow ’08 standout Chris
Derrick ran 13:29 to finish 7th in the 5000m. While certainly a competitive performance for someone who spent most of the winter sidelined by nagging injuries, there’s no doubt that this young man is looking to do much bigger things in the coming months and years.

Meanwhile, Florida State’s Michael Fout continues his comeback with a breakthrough 28:34.5 for 12th place in the 2nd heat of the 10k. Fout got the best of both Fernandez and Derrick when he won the Footlocker National Title back in ’08, and after a few seasons of injury, he’s been making solid strides back towards the top of the pack.

While it might be easy to look at these athletes and assume that they’re falling short of their potential, realistically they’re just trying to make their way back to the front of the race. The only catch is that while they’ve been away more and more runners have stepped up to fill their place.

Many are saying that no matter the circumstance, there is no way an athlete of
Fernandez’s caliber should ever lose to unknown talents such as Berkis and McLain. Yet, upsets are just the natural order of the sport. In the 10,000m run, for example, Matt Tegenkamp finished a spot behind OTC teammate Tim Nelson.

Nelly is often the shadow of the group, turning in years of solid performances while his teammates challenge up front for the win. I can’t recall a time that Nelson has beaten one of them in a race since Solinsky’s infamous 73rd place NCAA XC finish.

Similarly, I’d be surprised if Lopez Lomong had any clue who Ben Blankenship or Andy Bayer were before this weekend. That didn’t
stop the two redshirts from lighting the Olympian up the last 20 meters.

The point being, the supposedly unthinkable happens all the time in this sport and you can bet neither Teg or Lopez are losing any sleep over it. Most every runner out there is in some phase of a comeback. Even those on top of their game are just waiting to fall only to rise back up again.

So for those who are so quick to judge a mid-season performance as the end of the Fernandez era, I beg you don’t write the kid off yet. He’s too young and too damn good not to be back … and when he is, you can bet he’ll be better than ever.