El Guerrouj vs Gebreselassie

is this a joke? ELG would beat HaileG by like 2sec. ElG has run 7:23 the ONE time he ran it seriously in the outdoor season. Haile took two years to stab at that 3k record and kept running 7:25's. 2M ain't too much different than 3k so I am going to go with ElG here since he has a faster PR and more speed.

El G will win anything less than the 5000 and Haile will win anything above 5000. The question is who will win the 5000.

El G is a running tragedy. He lost the 1500 gold twice and that through off his legacy as the greatest distance runner. No disputing that he is the greatest middle distance runner... but he has 7:23 and 12:50 as his PB.. since he rarely raced the 5k.

Had he won in sydney..he coulda been a 7:19 and 12:37 runner.. no Doubt.

but as it stands today. Haile has 10 seconds on El G in the 5000. Its horse shit.. but thats how the cookie crumbles.

On a side note. El G was in Ethiopia for the great run in Nov.. as a guest of Geb.. and he calls geb a "gift of god"...pretty classy fellow

Ethio Boy wrote:

Had he won in sydney..he coulda been a 7:19 and 12:37 runner.. no Doubt.

El Guerrouj had been quoted saying, afte rhis 7:23, that there was no way he could run a 7:20 and he couldn't understand how someone ever had. The pacing for that 7:23 was so precise and demanding...Komen's record stands alone, right next to MJ's 200 record (though given the results form last season, Komen's 3k seems even more anomolous).

1. Bekele

2. Geb

3. Komen

4. El G

5. PRE!! (just kidding)

Have rabbits going out at a fast pace (12:45 or so) Though I doubt anyone would let it dawdle and try to outkick El G anyways...Bekele has shown otherwise however.

Chris Hall wrote:

Ethio Boy wrote:

Had he won in sydney..he coulda been a 7:19 and 12:37 runner.. no Doubt.

El Guerrouj had been quoted saying, afte rhis 7:23, that there was no way he could run a 7:20 and he couldn't understand how someone ever had. The pacing for that 7:23 was so precise and demanding...Komen's record stands alone, right next to MJ's 200 record (though given the results form last season, Komen's 3k seems even more anomolous).

Why? No one came close to Johnson's record last season. It still stands completely by itself

Very interesting point, Ethio Boy. It is quite conceivable that had he won in 1996 and/or 2000, he would have felt satisfied enough at 1500m to move up and focus on the 5000m, in which case who knows how much he could have achieved at that distance (in my own estimation I would say sub-12:40 was certainly in the cards). As it was, after 1996 and 2000 he felt he had to continue with the 1500 to vindicate himself.

A similar case has been made about Coe. Some would say (and I agree with them) that Coe probably stuck with the 800m much longer than he should have, seeking that elusive championship gold. As a result, he may very well have been sacrificing what he could have accomplished at the longer distances had he focused on 1500m+.

Of course, all of this is just hypothetical "what if?" But it is still an intriguing exercise and is certainly exciting to consider the array "what might have beens." I for one think that had he won the 1500m in 2000, el G would have gone on to become one of the greatest, if not the greatest, 5000m runners of all time.

Not sure if someone mentioned this already...Geb broke the indoor 2mile record AND El G ran 2 seconds slower in a seperate attempt 2 days later...after failing where Geb suceeded he ended his indoor season...not saying either way...but thats the closest thing we have to a showdown in the 2mile between them.

"Take it from a 3:26 man, that 7:20 was the hardest record on the books."