Truly mindboggling. Runners World has an excerpt from Frank Shorter's new autobiography (co-written by John Brant and coming out on July 5th). The excerpt covers the '76 Olympic marathon. In the excerpt Shorter/Brant write:"Lasse Viren, running his first marathon, [was] attempting to repeat the feat of his countryman Paavo Nurmi who at the 1948 Games won gold medals in all three endurance events, the 5,000, the 10,000, and the marathon. Viren had just won the 10 yesterday...."
It is, of course, Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia (i.e. not a countryman of Viren's) who is the only one to win gold in all three, and he did it in 1952, not 1948. Nurmi's competitive days had been decades earlier. And Viren had won the 5,000 the day before the marathon, not the 10,000 - which had been run several days earlier.
How could Shorter/Brant make such mistakes? How could neither one catch them prior to publication? Heck, how could no one at Runners World catch them prior to publishing the excerpt?