Who is a better distance runner Eliud Kipchoge or Kenenisa Bekele?

Interesting, makes Kimetto's old WR even more of an outlier.

Kenenisa Bekele

Bekele still. Remember Bekele ran 2:01:41 battling injuries. Bekele’s peak on the track and XC was miles ahead of Kipchoge.

Bekele, unfortunately, could never be healthy enough to run a great marathon by his standards. But no doubt in my mind he would be faster than Kipchoge.

Call me crazy, I always think Kimetto might still last, had it not been for the super shoes.(maybe it might have been gone a few days ago though)

That was a very special race. He dueled it out with E.Mutai until the very end of it. The splits were also almost perfect. (61:40, 61:17 or something like that IIRC) Those are exactly what Kipchoge needs if he wants to break 2 legally.

Solid article but letsrun analysts had a much more thorough and nuanced debate on this question just a few months ago:

Anyway, my take on the topic is: Kipchoge is the marathon GOAT, but Bekele is the distance GOAT.

They both better.

Yeah, if we consider distance running a combination of Track, Cross Country and the Roads.

GOAT-
Cross Country: Kenenisa Bekele (basically unbeatable from 2002 to 2008), and Paul Tergat is pretty close with dominance from 1995-1999
Track: Kenenisa Bekele has the best combo of medals and times, Mo Farah can match the medals (in a weaker era), Cheptegei can beat the times but doesn't have the same dominance in championships or on the circuit
Roads: Kipchoge very clearly stands alone here in wins and records.

Still to me being the GOAT at 2/3 trumps being more in a class of your own at 1. In terms of importance in this discussion I'd rank it Track, Roads and Cross Country as well.

The OP asked who the best distance runner is, as you say.

There is indeed an argument to be made for Haile Gebrselassie who was the first sub-2:04 and not in super shoes.

Putting gender aside, Paula Radcliffe was dominant in XC then the roads.....but Letesenbet Gidey and Sifan Hassan can now fight over that title.....makes for fun debate if people don't get all personal about.

I mean it is not like we are debating Elvis over Sinatra.....

Not sure why any of you keep bringing up bekele or think hes relevant anymore. When Josh cheptagei shattered his 5k and 10k wrs, he became automatically obsolete.

Also, I dont know of ANYONE that can pronounce bekeles name. There are 98 different ways to pronounce his name. That in itself is very annoying and is a big reason I've always hated him.

Our early leader in two categories: most racist post of the day and most idiotic! Way to bring both hate and stupidity to the board in one single post, miler!

If Kipchoge 3 peats at the Olympics I think he closes the gap in Medals enough to look better than Bekele's wide range in that category

Only way he becomes better than Bekele I think is if he somehow 4 peats the Olympic Gold at age 43/44 or he just starts doing halfs into his late 40's and becomes a WR threat there somehow.

Equal. Bekele destroyed track records and Kipchoge marathon record. I think Bekele can still beat Kipchoge in marathon duel if he can put together one good training year.

I’ve been frequenting the LRC boards for a couple of years now and this is like the 20th thread on the same topic. Every time Kipchoge does something astonishing in the marathon (so just about every race he runs) here comes a new version of the thread. Every time the consensus is overwhelmingly the same. EK is the marathon goat, but KB is the distance goat. It would not matter if EK breaks 2 in a legit marathon, or wins all six wmms or wins Olympic gold again in Paris. The only way EK is going to be considered greater than KB is if he returns to the track and does something like win the 5000/10000 in Paris and sets a wr in the process. Time to just create an auto reply to these threads….”EK will never beat out KB as the distance goat….next thread.”

I say the better overall career goes to Kipchoge. If you look at just a handful of top performances it's a tossup. Kipchoge has a couple marathons that are better than Bekele ever did, Bekele has the better 5k/10k times. They both have olympic gold in two separate olympics and they both won world championship gold on the track. Bekele won more world golds but I think Kipchoge's WMM victories are equivalent to a world gold. Kipchoge was able to win gold both on the track and on the road in the marathon where as Bekele was only the main force on the track. But I think Kipchoge now has done a better body of work. There is more total accomplishments for Kipchoge than Bekele. Kipchoge has an 8 year time span now, arguably 9 years, where he is the best in the world in his event. Bekele was dominant for 7 years. And outside of the years they were dominant, Kipchoge was still able to win a world gold in the early 2000's, Bekele doesn't have any big wins outside of those 7 years he was especially dominant. So slight edge to Kipchoge, the past year and a half pushed him to the lead with his Olympic gold and another world record this year.

Um yes he has run sub 2:01 twice, where have you been? 1:59:40.2 of course in 2019 in Vienna, and Monza he ran 2:00:25 in 2017. Not to mention his 2:01 preformances. On track though, probably Bekele. anywhere from road 10k up, I would say Kipchoge. Bekele definitely had some more speed on the track. Both great runners.

Prefontaine lol, Zatopek... Gebreselassie. Etc.

Kipchoge MIGHT be in the conversation for 2nd best distance runner ever. He ain't in the convo for the GOAT.

They are both legends. Maybe #1 and #2 ever in distance running. That would be my choice anyway.

The NOD goes to Bekele since he was the BEST at several distances at some point. 5K, 10K, Cross Country.

Kipchoge is the best Marathoner ever. He takes a complete backseat to Bekele in everything else.

Same exact argument happens here in the states - but replace Bekele with Rupp and Kipchoge with Frank Shorter.

What did Frank Shorter ever do outside of the marathon that even put's him in the same conversation as Rupp??