Sahlman has to be in the GOAT conversation now for HS Distance

Comparing times across eras is basically impossible. Times steadily drop as is the nature of things and of course there are tech boosts from time to time like super shoes and bouncy tracks. Your position seems to be one that whoever is fastest at the moment is the goat. Yes, in a narrow sense I see what you mean, but I think your missing the importance of context and the person’s stature relative to their peers. For example, Kipchoge is the goat marathoner. It won’t matter if somebody breaks his record. To be the goat over Kipchoge the next person will need to dominate his peers and wrack up marathon major victories, not simply be faster. Ryun was in HS when he defeated the reigning Olympic champion. Your missing the significance of this sort of thing and relying too much on times.

Why do you think Ryun couldn’t compete with the best runners on earth now when he could before during his own era? You are putting to much stock in absolute times. Ryun was a freak of nature, so beyond his peers as to be hard to comprehend. No HS runner had ever run sub 4 and he ran 3:55! His HS record stood for almost 40 years! Seriously you are discounting history.

Peter Snell was a fat New Zealander. People now have to beat doped up East Africans to be competitive on the world stage.

You may not have noticed, but the world is a different place than it was in the early 60s. Most notably, East Africans run internationally now.

If we were just stating that everyone is judged on their peak performances in their best event, Ryun is certainly #1, but if you include the 2-mile and XC, which I think you have to if you evaluating overall distance runners, there may be arguments to leave him off. There just isn’t much info about how he was in XC and his 13:38 5000 PR doesn’t necessarily show that he was great as the distances grew. Hard to tell.

Webb and Ryun are titans, head and shoulders above the rest. Ryun beat the Olympic gold medalist. Webb ran 3:53. Both could run a monster 2 mile. As a junior in age, Ryun ran 8:25.2 for two miles. Webb ran an easy 8:45 indoors around the time he ran 3:59.8.

Kessler ran 3:34, better than the new college record. He also ran 8:39 and clearly could have run a lot faster. So, he's got to be there. Ritz won World xc jr bronze and ran 13:44, as well as two xc titles, along with 3:42 1500m, I believe. Sahlman at 3:58/8:33 has him destroyed on time from 1M to 3200m right now, and he won a xc national title. He's not far off. If he runs 13:30s, you'd have to consider him displacing Ritz.

Ryun's tracks were a lot slower, and his shoes much heavier. In hs today on that insane training load and natural talent, he'd be running low 3:30s, if not better.

Rudy Chapa: 28:32

Of course it’s different, but I don’t see why anybody would conclude that if you provided Ryun all of the modern advantages of say Jakob, he would not be every bit as good or better. They are similar in their impact on the world scene as teens. Yes, Ryun was more of an 800/1500 guy rather than a 1500/5000 runner. I don’t think you can put a value judgment on one over the other. No doubt Ryun would have destroyed everybody else on the current HS list on this thread in the 800. Correct? Ryun set the 1/2 mile wr in 1:44 as a teen. Again, I think historical context is important. Yes, Sahlman is amazing, but he’s only a little better than his teammates. In fact, his teammates may prove to be better than him next year. They are all goats? Ryun was like nothing anybody had ever seen. He was so far beyond others in HS up to that point. Ryun ran 3:51 as a 19 year old. Honestly, if he has the advantages of Jakob how fast do you think he would have run? I’m sure he would have run 3:45. If he had epo, he’d be El G or better.

+1

People just don’t realize what was going on in the 1960s. Compared with today Ryun was running on sand with clown shoes on. Ryun transported to today would beat Kessler by 5 sec at least. In HS, 3:30-1 for sure, Career, probably 3:27. Access to Epo, 3:25.

Lol. I’m the same age as Lukas Verzbicas. I’m just intelligent, open-minded and critical enough to understand that the past does mean something. The present then was just as important as it is now.

Are you implying that his 3:55 is worth the same as a 3:28 1500? Which is what Jakob ran

What a great kid:

Here was my take on it a few years ago (right before Hunter beat Fisher). I still stand by those top 3 rankings. Fisher, Hunter, Nico, and Sahlman are certainly in the 4–11 convo with the others mentioned.

Where does Grant Fisher fit in the discussion of the greatest HS distance runners of all-time? To be eligible for consideration, athletes should be dominant in both XC and track (obviously). Here is my take:
1) Jim Ryun - there is really no question about this. He was ranked #4 in the world by T&F news while still in HS. Had the Olympics fallen during his senior season, he would have been a legitimate medal threat. While Webb surpassed Ryun's 3:55.3, he certainly didn't have the "big boys" shaking in their boots (ie El G, Ngeny, Bernie, and so on).
2) Gerry Lindgren - Similarly to Ryun, Lindgren was mixing it up with the world's best as a high schooler. He beat the Russians before starting college and placed 9th in the Olympics. It is well-documented that Billy Mills felt as though Lindgren would have won gold in '64 had he been fully healthy.
3) Lukas Verzbicas - I know, I know. He sucked at a Oregon, was not a team player, and then switched to tris. All of these things are absolutely deplorable. However, he was THE MAN in high school. Absolutely unbeatable in both cross-country and track for two years. When he toed the line in any HS race from 1600m on up, there was no question as to who the winner would be.
4) Grant Fisher - Same boat as Lukas. Seemingly invincible on the HS level. In my opinion, this is what separates the two of them from Webb and Ritz. Webb is arguably the second best HS track runner ever (behind Ryun) and Ritz is the undisputed king of XC. However, they were not strong enough in their "secondary sports" to be ranked ahead of LV or Grant. Ritz was "only" a 4:05 miler; Webb couldn't stay within 100m of Ritz at Footlocker.
5-8 (no particular order): Webb, Ritz, German, Virgin
I would be interested to hear what others think.

3:55 in 1967 is worth about 3:49 on a modern track in modern shoes.
It's about 2.5% for combination of cinder track and old shoe technology.
In other words, still one of the best in the world, changing nothing about training, recovery, and so on.

Sahlman won’t even be the GOAT from his own household by this time next year.

Did Kessler made a world team as a junior? Did Kessler beat the Olympic champion as a senior? How many American records did Kessler set in HS? Heck how many did he come with in 3s of?

Now he didn't run many 2 miles in HS. But that 825 as a junior still stands up pretty well today.

The year is still young. Drop a 352/820 outdoors and everyone will want to start carving a statue. Lose nationals in June? We might reconsider how great he is. At this point is he noticeably better than LV? Lots of personal judgement there. H

Ryun's 3:51 world record is worth 3:47-48 just on the cinder to modern track conversion. Let alone any of the other advancements.

If you don't think he'd compete with Kerr and others, you don't know much about the sport.

Comparison to the best in an era is extremely poor. The reason is that competition was horribly shallow in Ryun's era.

The factors for this include:

1) Lack of money, so all "professionals" had to either come from wealthy backgrounds, or work jobs to continue running after college.

2) Lack of money, so no Africans.

The people Ryun and Lindgren were beating were functionally disadvantaged upon graduating high school or college. They had to balance running with full time jobs to make ends meet, and absolutely did not have the ability to train like any of the professionals today. In contrast, high schoolers pretty much did back then what they do now. Go to school, run, study, perhaps work a part-time job (though high schoolers today have a distinct advantage in training theory and recovery knowledge).

You may as well say that Michael Phelps is far beyond any elite runner (Bolt, Kipchoge, El Guerrouj, Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah, etc.) purely because he dominated his peers in a way that none of them could ever replicate. Hell, he showed up at the Olympics at 15. The argument against this of course is that swimming has much shallower competition. Shallow enough that a 15-year-old could reasonably compare to professionals in the early 2000s. The same goes for running in the 1960s-70s.

Using "performance against competition" as a metric is pretty much admitting that Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete to ever live. And by a massive margin at that.

Comparison of times is outright less biased by far. The difference in times is caused by a number of known factors, including shoes, surface, and advances is training/recovery knowledge and technology. It's nothing on the scale of an entire continent not yet participating widely in the sport, or athletes being forced to balance training with 40-hour work weeks.

1) The world team was weak, because there was no true motivation to continue running after college. Amateur era and you couldn't get paid.

2) The talent pool across the world was pitifully weak. The East Africans, who have dominated the scene since they could get paid to run, were barely participating (again, because back then, they couldn't get paid).

3) American records were weak, because there was no true motivation to continue running after college. Amateur era and you couldn't get paid.

What part of crappy talent pool in the 1960s/70s is not understood?

Do you consider modern-day triathlon and swimming to be the equivalent of running in terms of depth? Obviously not. You would immediately say that the sports have a huge barrier of entry at the professional level as a consequence of the equipment needed, and as such, have much lower participation, and much shallower talent pools.

That's the same as running in the 1960s vs running in 2022. There was a VERY notable barrier to running at the professional level in the 1960s. You wouldn't be paid. As a result, the vast majority of good runners in the developed world would just run through high school and college, and then go on with their lives after that, and the vast majority of good runners in the developing world lacked the incentive to even run recreationally to begin with.

Sure Ryun beat some of the best runners in the world when he was in high school. These were guys who were either working full time jobs while training, or came from wealthy families who could afford to put their professional lives on hold for a while.