#5 | Heartbreak of 2015

No. 5 | No. 4 | No. 3 | No. 2 | No. 1

Welcome to the most entertaining category of our end-of-year series.

While we here at Flo love to celebrate the great performances— the feats of athletic achievement that exemplify sport at its best— those aren’t always the moments that make you scream “WTF!!!!!” and immediately shoot over to Twitter to check out everyone else’s reactions. I’m talking about those moments where the expected outcome backfires in the most dramatic way possible, leaving us viewers scrambling to comprehend what it was exactly that just happened.

These are moments in the human experience where we are so struck by the magnitude of said moment that our location is immediately jotted down as a mental note, a way to remember where we were when this stunning instance so tragically unraveled before our eyes. They are truly unforgettable, not just the moments themselves, but the way we translate them through our brains.

I’m talking about the best fails of 2015, of course— a series of unfortunate events that will, for the most part, live on (thanks GIFs) much longer than the careers of the athletes who dramatically came up short by virtue of an unthinkable scenario playing out in the most inopportune time. To be clear, these athletes are not failures; in a couple cases the guilty parties still salvaged a great race in spite of their blunder. And even in the situations where the race completely fell apart for the athlete, I’m not here to cast a dark cloud over their hiccup. Let’s keep this classier than the Steve Harvey bash brigade after his Miss Universe snafu.

So, in the interest of not reopening some wounds (while inevitably doing so, SORRY), I’m not going to repeatedly shout “what were they thinking?!!!!” as if I am somehow qualified to point fingers or cast blame on these athletes. I’m not in the least, so instead I’m using this space to recall the moments for what they were— five blips throughout 2015 that were just bat shit crazy.

Here we go with #5….

Evan Jager Tumbles On Last Barrier, Takes Sub-8:00 Down With Him

Let’s just start by recognizing Jager’s 8:00.45 American record in Paris on July 4th for what it was: one of the three greatest non-championship performances in U.S. distance running history. Think about it. The 26-year-old put himself at 13th all-time in the steeple (only Matt Tegenkamp’s 2-mile and Alan Webb’s mile are higher up on their respective lists by an American from 1500-10k), cut more than four seconds off his previous AR, and in case you didn’t get on the Internet for six months— he did all this after wiping out on the flippin’ last barrier! I’d personally slot it behind only Webb’s 3:46 mile and Meb’s 2014 Boston victory in my “most bad-ass distance running performance by an American in a non-championship race” rankings. Thou shalt not surpass Webb or Meb, Evan.

Jager would’ve finished in the neighborhood of 7:56 if not for his untimely error, aka somewhere between sixth and eighth on the all-time list. This is why it is a “fail,” although the word does no justice to what came before the tumble. He was on his way to running the fastest steeple the world had seen since 2012. That made the fall so tough to swallow, as Jager not only relinquished a sure victory over steeple beast Jairus Birech, but was also robbed of a mystical sub-8:00 of which only 11 men in history have achieved. All 11 are from Africa. (Yes, World record holder Saif Saeed Shaheen represented Qatar, but he was originally from Kenya)



It was a bittersweet moment that put Jager in a different bracket despite the crash seen ‘round the world. His left leg swiping the hurdle (or did it? We’ll never know…) didn’t diminish the statement that the brand new big mzungu made that day— Evan Jager and the 7:53.63 World record may have a date with each other in Paris for 2016.

Check back for the rest of the list throughout the day...