Who got more results? Alberto Salazar or Jerry Schumacher?

Can't really compare NOP to BTC as NOP was an international group. BTC is only Americans. NOP always had more baseline talent than BTC. NOP many more medals won although by just four athletes -- Farah, Rupp, Centro, Brazier. BTC only medalists are Jager, Infeld. That said, timewise Schumacher seems to have gotten more out of lesser-talented athletes although at the cost of a lot of injuries. NOP seems much better at injury prevention although that could very well have been the result of the gray zone doping they were doing.

boring, correct answer wrote:

Salazar, by cheating.

Jerry's group were all over visits to Dr. Brown and getting thyroid meds. While it was perhaps technically legal, it certainly was not ethical.

weird jaw wrote:

boring, correct answer wrote:

Salazar, by cheating.

Jerry's group were all over visits to Dr. Brown and getting thyroid meds. While it was perhaps technically legal, it certainly was not ethical.

And Salazar did much worse.

QFE. Shalane was at her best under Cook. I would argue that the Olympic Silver is better than the NYC win. The NYC win was only possible because Shalane was injured for several months before the build-up. I believe she was overtraining under Jerry and the time off allowed her to regroup, and gave her a windfall when she went back to overtraining prior to NY.

Al Sal is the GOAT Coach. Fantastic results but if you follow his coaching career he’s also improved as a coach relative to his athletes.

I think he honed his craft and became better as a coach which is an admirable quality. A lot of times coaches will just repeat the same stuff because it worked or they like the idea of how training should be.

Look at Rupps progression from high schooler to American record holder and Olympic medalist. Not that easy as we’ve seen with other US talent over the years. Some may say drugs but even with drugs you still have to produce at race time.

PS- I think they should stop testing. If people want to dope that’s their business. I’m only interested in the competition.

someone who's very ignorant wrote:

Salazar in his own running career has more results than Jerry. Off the top of my head, American record in the 5000, 10000, marathon, winning Boston and NYC, ran for the U.S. at the Olympics and won the Commrades marathon 10 years past his prime. I don't know of anything Jerry has done in his own respect in running other than coaching. So Salazar is the clear winner.

I said in the original post that I was asking about their athletes, not their personal racing results. Jerry doesn't even come close to Salazar in that respect, so it's not an interesting conversation at all.

casual observer of these boards wrote:

Shalane was never coached by Alberto

To the OP:

You can add Kara Goucher to the Alberto list - she ran her best under him.

Also Farah is British so he isn’t running American records....

I think I said AR and I meant Area Record, but I guess I could've put ER because I'm pretty sure he holds a bunch of area records. I know he has the 10k but I think he also had the 1500 before Jakob took it this season, and I feel like he had a couple others previously.

I didn't realize Kara Goucher was so good, she fell off well before I got into running, but yeah, add her to Salazar's list she's super fast.

Which one has had the most spectacular failures? I know many posters have pointed out Jerry as far as injury and fading into irrelevance. Cain got mentioned, so there's that, but to Al's credit, her PRs were with him. It just didn't last long.

So those of you who follow more closely than I, add up all the German Fernandez and Mary Cain types and who wins the body count for either outright ruining runners or just simply having the bad luck to have them decline on his watch? I phrased it that way because it's not necessarily the coaches fault. Fernandez, for example, could have been great, some say. But maybe his peak few years was his youth and that's just physically the way he was. Some burn out at 40, and that's great, but some are done at 20.

Who wins this dubious distinction?

If you want to say it was drugs that’s another conversation.

Strictly on results, NOP is miles ahead of Btc. Many golds from Farah. Silver and bronze from rupp. Gold from centro. Who’s the best bowerman guy? Jager? Who’s claim to fame is “I almost broke 8 once, and then hid in my basement for years instead of ever trying to do it again”?

I don’t buy the Schumacher-has-better-women argument either. It’s a quantity thing. Schumacher has a bunch of good-ish American women. Salazar takes great runners and makes them world beaters. You don’t see runners of Hassan or kejelchas quality running to jerry Schumacher for coaching

College guy tells all wrote:

Most people pull up record more than they pull up medal counts. Random high school kids want to know what the US record is in the mile more than they want to know who won the gold medal in the 2012 1500.

Very true. Here on letsrun people think times don’t matter for some reason. Here on letsrun is the only place that times don’t matter. Here on letsrun, being contrary to common belief is a way of looking sophisticated. Here on letsrun, most people don’t know what the hell they are talking about. Here on letsrun there is undue reverence to runners from before 1970 with no acknowledgement of the fact that running is a continuously improving sport and the record holders now are much, much better athletes than the ones who came before. Here on letsrun people will find any reason to discount a great performance.

Les wrote:

Can't really compare NOP to BTC as NOP was an international group. BTC is only Americans. NOP always had more baseline talent than BTC. NOP many more medals won although by just four athletes -- Farah, Rupp, Centro, Brazier. BTC only medalists are Jager, Infeld. That said, timewise Schumacher seems to have gotten more out of lesser-talented athletes although at the cost of a lot of injuries. NOP seems much better at injury prevention although that could very well have been the result of the gray zone doping they were doing.

Notable BTC athletes have included Bairu and Ahmed, who are Canadian runners with East African roots.

Mo Farah doesn't count. It all boils down to Rupp vs Jager. And they're right about even steven. Edge to Jager over how good in his best event, but to Rupp for range.

Men

BTC athletes Evan Jager and Dan Huling at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials

Mo Ahmed 3:34/7:40/12:47.20/26:59, silver

Andrew Bumbalough 3:37/7:40/13:12

Matthew Centrowitz Jr. 13:00

Chris Derrick 13:08

Grant Fisher

Ryan Hill 7:30

Matt Hughes

Evan Jager 3:32.97/8:00/13:02

Woody Kincaid 12:58

Lopez Lomong 12:58

Sean McGorty

Marc Scott

Josh Thompson

Former Men;

Chris Solinsky 3:34/7:35/12:55/26:59

Matt Tegenkamp 3:34/7:34/12:58/27:28/2:12

Simon Bairu 7:49/13:25/27:23/1:02:08/2:19

Tim Nelson 7:48/13:20

Women

Shalane Flanagan 2:21/NYC champ

Amy Cragg 2:21

Kate Grace

Marielle Hall

Shelby Houlihan 3:54/14:23

Colleen Quigley

Emily Infeld World Bronze

Courtney Frerichs 9:00 AR, World Silver

Gwen Jorgensen 15:15

Vanessa Fraser 14:48

Karissa Schweizer 4:00/14:26

Elise Cranny 14:48

Alberto for sure has better results. Rupp, Centro, Farah, Hassan, Kejelcha, Klosterhalfen, Brazier, Rowbury, Murphy, Ritz

Mo Ahmed is great. Evan Jager is great. Houlihan and Schweizer are great. Frerichs is great. The rest? Nothing worthy of exclamation.

The thing that matters at the pro stage is WINNING. How many wins does btc have on a global stage?

It's AlSal comfortably. How many coaches watch their athletes go 1-2 in the Olympics, and then almost repeat it later in the week? Not Jerry. And Rupp-Jaeger being even, no it's not. Jaeger was very good but he didn't do what Rupp has done. People can get all caught up in the Salazar's a cheater thing, but everybody pushes the envelope, and when it came to straight results, it's Al by a landslide.

I'm not sure Jager is too far off from Rupp. Jager and Rupp both have Olympic Silvers, but Rupp has another Olympic Bronze whereas Jager has a WC Bronze.

World Athletics also ranks Jager's 8 flat above Rupp's 26:44 for what that's worth. Jager is also only 4 seconds off Rupp's 5k PR.

I'll still give Rupp the edge because the 5k and 10k are probably more contested than the steeple and he has way more range than Jager does currently mile-marathon as opposed to Jager's mile-5k.

Jagers 8 flat steeple he fell on the barrier. So he for sure could have been a sub 8 guy, unfortunately didn’t happen.

Rupp closed his American Record 10k in something like 1:58-2:00. Definitely could have been around 26:40, but again didn’t happen.

Steeplechase is inherently not as deep as any other track events, just like the hurdle events. If you have the raw speed/strength you run the main event and don’t worry about technique.

I think it’s fair to say Rupp has had a more successful career.

Bowerman runs fast times, but a couple years ago everyone was hating on them because they could never produce on the world stage. I’d say that holds true for the most part.

Alberto has had more success coaching men.

But on the women’s side he has had rowburry, Hassan, and klosterhalfan

Rowbury is coming back into form now and had incredible results.

And if BTC’s women heavy hitters are boiling an and schweizer, NOP has klosterhalfen and Hassan, which I would say are a better duo.

Salazar is the better coach and it isn’t close. Schumacher injures most of his athletes, and the ones who stay healthy barely get to race anyway.

so it's unanimous