Greatest performance ever including era?

dmb wrote:

well I was going to come here and say either Beamon or Johnson because both happened on the ultimate stage, but sh**

I never knew that Kouris ran 188 miles in a day - that's like 7:40 pace for 24 straight hours, sick, very sick. That's amazing talent

All these posts about that ultra runner are obviously made by the same guy....

Probably even himself or some gimp that know him & thinks hes God

DontFeedTheTroll wrote:

Mary T. Meagher's 57.93 in the 100m butterfly? She took 1.3 seconds off of her own record and was 1.5 seconds ahead of anyone else (and the "anyone elses" were all East German). People referred to that record as "Beamon-esque".

The fact that any near comparable performance is referred to as 'Beamon-esque' surely means that Beamon's is the greatest performance of all time. In 40 years since then, the world record has advanced just 5 cm - look at how far all other world records have advanced in that time.

And with Beamon you also want to keep in mind what the record had been before. It's not like he added a centimetre to a record that has been stagnant since, he added about two feet.

your caaat wrote:

All these posts about that ultra runner are obviously made by the same guy....

Probably even himself or some gimp that know him & thinks hes God

Wrong. Guess again. There's only 3 people who posted about Kouris.

I was the one who posted as "amazed by the Greek." I don't know who the last poster is, but I've never described anything in my life as "sick."

Komen, Beamon and MJ. When it happened, Coe's 1:41 was stunning - the video on youtube is amazing.

One other great one: Houston McTear running 9.0 100 yards as an untrained high school junior - there is more information on houstonmctear.com

guy not from there wrote:

And with Beamon you also want to keep in mind what the record had been before. It\'s not like he added a centimetre to a record that has been stagnant since, he added about two feet.

Beamon\'s performance was obviously great...but careful analysis reveals that it wasn\'t quite as great as it may appear. He did it at 1.5 miles altitude, with a tail wind of at least 2.0mps. There is serious thought that the aiding wind was actually over the limit, and was reported incorrectly. The altitude plus (being generous) the 2.0 following wind perhaps gave him something like 8-10 inches of advantage. So, no matter how you slice-and-dice it, the jump was a WR--but how \"great\" a WR is another matter.

One other great performance by McTear: 18.4 split on an 880 relay anchor in high school to make up 30 yards after a teamate dropped the baton.

well, the wind MAY have been over the limit, but in the 40 years since then how many people have even jumped illegally over 8.90?

3 - lewis, powell, pedroso

world championships and olympics are being won today at least a foot below what beamon jumped

you can over analyse any world record, but whichever way i look at it, beamon's is at least one of the greatest

and a word for the other horizontal jump, jonathon edwards' 18.29 has lasted for over 12 years now, and doesn't look like being endangered anytime soon

8.90 wrote:

well, the wind MAY have been over the limit, but in the 40 years since then how many people have even jumped illegally over 8.90?

3 - lewis, powell, pedroso

world championships and olympics are being won today at least a foot below what beamon jumped

you can over analyse any world record, but whichever way i look at it, beamon's is at least one of the greatest

and a word for the other horizontal jump, jonathon edwards' 18.29 has lasted for over 12 years now, and doesn't look like being endangered anytime soon

Short answers: Very few have tried to make windy jumps at comparable altitude, so there's no valid set of statistics to draw from. "Corrected" for altitude and wind, Carl Lewis surpassed Beamon's mark several times in the 1980s. If you read my original post, I never denied that Beamon's mark was "great"--it's just a matter of how great it really was. In 1968, and for a long time thereafter, many folks essentially ignored the importance of the altitude and wind on that massive jump.

Lewis' best of 8.87 was achieved into a slight headwind (0.2 m/s) in Tokyo, which I'd guess is at sea level. Beamon jumped an inch farther with the strongest legal tailwind and an extra 8,000 feet of altitude. Still, a jump is a jump.

Anyone want to hazard a guess at what Lewis would have jumped in those conditions?

guy not from there wrote:

Lewis' best of 8.87 was achieved into a slight headwind (0.2 m/s) in Tokyo, which I'd guess is at sea level. Beamon jumped an inch farther with the strongest legal tailwind and an extra 8,000 feet of altitude. Still, a jump is a jump.

Anyone want to hazard a guess at what Lewis would have jumped in those conditions?

Under those (absolutely perfect) conditions? I'd guess 30'2".

Jesse Owens tying the world record 100 yard dash in the 1936 Big 10 meet where he admitted he got a bad start.

Steve Jones. 1985 Chicago Marathon. 2:07:13, one tick off the then WR. It's the Greatest because he ran 26.2 out front, alone, by himself. No pacers, nothing. Pure GUTS!

he went for it. No holding back. the Greatest performance ever!

guy not from there wrote:

Lewis' best of 8.87 was achieved into a slight headwind (0.2 m/s) in Tokyo, which I'd guess is at sea level. Beamon jumped an inch farther with the strongest legal tailwind and an extra 8,000 feet of altitude. Still, a jump is a jump.

Anyone want to hazard a guess at what Lewis would have jumped in those conditions?

During 1982, Lewis cleared 8.53 m five times outdoors, twice more indoors, going as far as 8.76 m (28 ft 9 in) at Indianapolis on July 24.[15] He also ran 10.00 s in the 100 m, the world’s fastest time, matching his low-altitude record from 1981. [ibid, p. 20]

He achieved his 10.00 s clocking the same weekend he leapt 8.61 m twice, and the day he recorded his new low-altitude record 8.76 m at Indianapolis, he had three fouls with his toe barely over the board, two of which seemed to exceed Beamon’s record, the third which several observers said reached 30 ft (about 9.15 m).[16]

what about viren's 10k in 72? broke the world record after falling at the start?

you could also throw Joan Benoit Samuelson's 1984 marathon in the olympics. she ran that all alone in the hot los angeles sun, in pollution conditions that scientists say is as bad as bejing is today. pretty impressive

I realize we could go on and on about this but 2 HS records that will never be broken, IMHO, Mike Carter's and Rudy Chapa's.

No one's been close nor will they be in the forseeable future.

You guys really got me thinking on this one. Honorable mention would have to go to this year's Human Race, the efforts of Goetzke and Paxton, those old warhorses.

But the greatest performance ever was by Max Harn. Just ask him.

I really hate to say this because he was drugged to the gills, but I agree with Komen's 3k. Easily the most impressive display in athletics all time for any generation. Will never be broken without the use of newer and more advanced drugs.

Herb Elliot knocked 2.7 seconds off the mile record and never lost at that distance. Of course he retired at age 22.