Track & Field's Silver Surfers: athletes who won 3+ silvers without winning gold

Wow! You’re a fount of track & field knowledge. Thanks again, Running grandpa!

I have not looked it up yet, but how many silvers has Femke got behind Syd? Or will have? Both are young and have 1 or 2 Olympics and 1 or 2 Worlds to go, and that gap in the 400H is not closing at all. I know she's 0-4 against in finals. But I think there was bronze in there and a relay. Syd didn't run Budapest, nor hardly anything else.

Side note- weird that Phelps has 28 medals in the olympics....3 are silver. In a sport where winners are hundredths.

In individual events, Femke Bol only had 1 silver (WC 2022) before she won the 400m hurdles title at the 2023 WC. She also has two Olympic bronze (2021 & 2024).

Shall I lend you my reading glasses? 🤓

As I wrote, "in individual events, Femke Bol […] won the 400m hurdles title at the 2023 WC.” I didn’t refer to her two additional gold (WC 2023 & OG 2024) in relays.

Dick Quax referred to 4th as the leather medal

Although bigmig19 needs to brush up on his Femke facts, I think his comment about Femke vis-à-vis Sydney raises an interesting follow-up question about the athletes on our list: How many of these "Silver Surfers" were repeatedly blocked from winning gold by just one GOAT-level star, and how many of them had silver medals behind more than one athlete?

You mentioned Mimoun finishing five times behind Zatopek before finally winning a gold. Similarly, all of Tergat's silver medals came behind Gebrselassie. Four of Sihine's five silvers were behind Bekele, and the other was behind Benjamin Limo. I'm curious to know about the others, but I'm not able to look them up at the moment.

No olympic gold.

Last place is the ultimate best

Indeed she has only zero olympic individual gold medals. According to world athletics. Which is what i thought. I had forgotten she didn't get silver behind syd...bronze.
Coming along at wrong time is very interesting i agree. I have to dig to see who carl lewis was beating on a regular basis for like a decade. As opposed to someone who is always great but never able to beat the top 1 or 2 or 3. How many 100/200 finals has Ta lou run? No medals, a bunch of 4ths (olympics).

Who is the Ta Lou of middle distance? Always just off podium.

Alain Mimoun. Plenty of silvers behind Zatopek before gold in the 1956 Olympic marathon.

Joe Kovacks won the last three Olympic Silver medals in the shot put. He has won a couple of WC Golds.

He’s not in the “3+ silver” list for competing in a period with fewer global championships and OG boycott, but Harald Schmid was one of the greatest 400m hurdler in the history who spent his entire career in the shadow of the GOAT Edwin Moses.

Schmid was the last athlete to beat Moses in 1977 before Moses went on his 10-years long incredible streak of 107 consecutive finals (122 races) victories. Schmid was very close to beating Moses in the epic 1987 WC final in Rome, where he finished third just 0.02s behind Moses.

Thank you for another wonderful track history lesson, Running grandpa! I'd never heard of Harald Schmid nor seen that race video before. What a photo finish!

One of my favorite things to do when studying track history is to look at the all-time lists on a certain date. Here's how the 400m hurdles top 20 list looked 40 years ago today:

1 47.02 Edwin MOSES
2 47.13 Edwin MOSES
3 47.14 Edwin MOSES
4 47.17 Edwin MOSES
5 47.27 Edwin MOSES
6 47.32 Edwin MOSES
7 47.37 Edwin MOSES
7 47.37 Edwin MOSES
9 47.43 Edwin MOSES
10 47.45 Edwin MOSES
11 47.48 Harald SCHMID
12 47.50 Edwin MOSES
13 47.53 Edwin MOSES
14 47.58 Edwin MOSES
14 47.58 Edwin MOSES
16 47.59 Edwin MOSES
17 47.64 Edwin MOSES
17 47.64 Edwin MOSES
19 47.67 Edwin MOSES
20 47.69 Edwin MOSES
20 47.69 Harald SCHMID

Schmid was the only person who kept Moses from having all of the top 20 times. If not for Moses taking up spots 1-10 and 12-20, Schmid would have had the top two times!

worldathletics.org

400 Metres Hurdles - men - senior - all

Open link

Yeah, his throw to win the silver medal in Paris was one of my favorite moments of last year's Olympics. He was in fourth place and down to his last throw, in the rain. He came up clutch, almost as if to say, "Only Crouser can beat me. That silver is MINE!"

Here's the video, with his silver-winning throw at 3:45:

This article on that competition has some good quotes from Crouser and Kovacs

teamusa.com

Ryan Crouser Becomes First Shot Putter To Win Three Consecutive Olympic Gold Medals, Clutch Final Throw By Joe Kovacs Takes Silver

SAINT-DENIS, France — Ryan Crouser may go down as the greatest shot-putter to ever heave the 16-pound implement – the burly American athlete became an Olympic champion for the third consecutive time, under the lights, on Satu...

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I'm happy for Kovacs that he has those two WC golds.

Here are the athletes who were the right person at the wrong time in that they finished second behind the same GOAT-level star three or more times:

• Paul Tergat, gold blocked by Haile Gebrselassie
• Sileshi Sihine, gold blocked by Kenenisa Bekele
• Will Claye, gold blocked by Christian Taylor
• Steve Backley, gold blocked by Jan Zelezny
• Joe Kovacs, gold blocked by Ryan Crouser except for the two world championships he won
• Alain Mimoun, gold blocked by Emil Zatopek until he finally beat him

The others who've been named spread their losses around more.

While researching this, I also took note of some agonizingly close losses:

• Sandi Morris had two instances (2016 and 2022) in which she vaulted the same height as the winner, 4.85m both years.
• As many of us know, Paul Tergat's margin of defeat to Haile Gebrselassie at the 2000 Olympics was narrower than the margin of defeat in the men's 100m at those Games. He lost 27:18.20 to 27:18.29.
• Will Claye was barely outjumped by Christian Taylor 17.68-17.63 in 2017
• Butch Reynolds lost to Michael Johnson 43.87-43.93 in 1992.
• Hasna Benhassi lost to Kelly Holmes 1:56.38-1:56.43 in 2004.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking loss for our Silver Surfers is Terrence Trammell's 110m hurdles loss at the world championships in Berlin in 2009. He turned 30 going into that year, so the clock was ticking on his career. By that point, he had already won four silver medals, losing three of those races to two of the greatest ever in his event: Allen Johnson and Liu Xiang (twice).

Finally, it looked like luck would be on Trammell's side in 2009. Liu Xiang, the reigning world champion, was out of action due to injury. David Oliver, who medaled in the Olympics the year before and had the second-fasted time in the world in 2009, had to miss the U.S. Championships with his own injury. Then, at the world championships, world-record-holder and 2008 Olympic champion Dayron Robles failed to finish his semifinal due to, you guessed it, injury.

With Robles, Xiang, and Oliver out of the picture, Trammell was tied with fellow American David Payne as the fastest men in 2009 who would be lining up for the world championship final. Payne won silver at the 2008 Olympics and barely edged out Trammell to win the 2009 U.S. championship in a photo finish with both men running 13.12. If Trammell could find a way to beat Payne, he'd probably win gold. In a race that went down to the wire, Trammell and Payne would once again finish with the same time, clocking 13.15. Except this time, Trammell beat him! The problem? Ryan Brathwaite from the Barbados ran 13.14 to win gold, which would turn out to be his only championship medal at the senior level in his career.

Trammell would never make another U.S. outdoor team.

Not a silver medal, but Ta Lou consistently finished in 4th behind 3x all time Jamaican greats.

Ha! Maybe Grant Fisher will join the Silver Surfer list this year.

1x World Indoor Silver behind Kerr.

2x Olympic Bronze behind Cheps & Jakgoat.

This year he might be able to upgrade his bronze to a silver in the 5000m.

The 10,000 is his best chance to avoid being on this list.