From Pacing To Racing

At the Doha Diamond League meet Patrick Langat was hired to rabit the steeplechase but decided to stay in the race and finished 3rd in a PB 8:09.
Unusual, but not unheard of.

Joe Battaglia at Univeral Sports wrote a interesting article on the matter.

In principle, pace-setting a race seems to carry a pretty cut-and-dry job description.
Meet director hires runner to lead field through a designated point in the race at a predetermined tempo.
Runner runs agreed-upon time and distance.
Runner gets paid.
But what happens when the competitors that the pace-setter is hired to lead don't follow?
What you get are awkward situations like the one that happened at the Diamond League in Doha, where the hired rabbit for the men's 3000m steeplechase never stepped off the track.
Patrick Langat of Kenya was hired to tow along a field that included Kenyans Ezekiel Kemboi, gold medalist at last summer's World Championships, Paul Kipsiele Koech, silver medalist at the 2009 World Athletics Final, and Brimin Kiprop Kipruto, the Beijing Olympic champion. The designated pace according to Kemboi was 7:55.
When the gun went off, Langat broke to the lead and no one gave chase. He kept going at his pace, and wound up opening nearly a 60-meter lead. It wasn't until the bell lap, when Kemboi and Koech managed to close the gap on the fading Langat, eventually passing him going into the final turn. Langat never stepped off, and wound up finishing third in 8:09.12, earning one point toward the Diamond race.
To the uninitiated, it might seem like Langat did not fulfill the job he was hired for, or at the very least violated some code of pacing etiquette.
Apparently, no such code exists.
"There is no unwritten rule that says a rabbit must step off the track," American distance great Alberto Salazar said. "If he's running that pace and no one goes with him, there's nothing that says he has to stop. In fact, he probably worked harder than anyone else and deserves to finish."
Although it's rare, pace-setters have wound up winning races they were hired to help someone else win.
Perhaps the most famous incident on the track happened in 1981, when American Tom Byers was hired to rabbit a mile race in Oslo that featured Steve Ovett, Steve Cram and John Walker. Byers pulled away with no one giving chase, and by the final lap had opened a 70-meter lead. Ovett, the reigning Olympic 800m champion, tried to close the gap but wound up finishing a full second behind.
Other notable instances have occurred in the marathon.
At the 1994 L.A. Marathon, Paul Pinkington was paid $3000 by race organizers to pace. When favored Luca Barzaghi of Italy did not follow the early pace, he fell so far behind Pilkington during the final miles that he assumed Pilkington had dropped out of the race and slowed up. Pilkington had in fact crossed the finish line first in 2 hours, 12 minutes, 13 seconds. When Barzaghi crossed some 40 seconds later, he raised his arms thinking he had won.
At the Chicago Marathon in 2001, race director Carey Pinkowski hired Ben Kimondiu and Joseph Kariuki to pace the race. Kariuki dropped out at 15K, leaving Kimondiu as the only pacer. When he reached the halfway point with no one around, he actually stopped and started jogging in place. After a while, when no one came, he continued on, running alone until the late stages. It wasn't until the 40K mark that Paul Tergat caught up. Tergat, who went on to set the world record in 2003, and Kimondiu continued to duel over the final two kilometers with the rabbit pulling a six-second victory out of his hat in 2:08.52.
"You don't see it happen too often because they usually hire guys who are in shape to run the designated split for that distance," Salazar said. "If you're in shape to lead the race for the whole distance, then you should probably be in the field."
Salazar said he has never seen it happen first hand, but recently feared he might.
At the Brutus Hamilton Invitational at Cal-Berkeley last month, Salazar was coaching Galen Rupp in the 10,000m, a race that featured two rabbits through the two-mile mark. When the first rabbit did not go fast enough, second rabbit Bolota Asmerom, a 2000 Olympian at 5000m, took off unchallenged.
"I told Galen to sit back but when Bolota started to get 50, 60 meters ahead, I started to think, ‘This guy's not gonna stop,'" Salazar said. "I started to tell Galen to pick it up. By the time he caught him, Bolota did step off, but you'd hate to lose a race because you didn't go with the rabbit."
That would be a tough carrot to swallow.

Universal Sports