Any good male runners with short legs?

Tony Simmons. (Look up your '70's UK runners - he was 4th in Montreal 10K)

6'1 32 inch. Short arms too. 31:30.

the question wasn't who is short... it was short legs in proportion to the rest of the body.

Haile G.

Speedy Gonzales?

Middle distance racers (800-3k) with long torsos and shorter legs are pretty rare on the world class stage. It seems there are some decent examples in the sprints and in the longer distances, however.

Toshihiko Seko had very short legs compared to his upper body. He was a decent marathoner to say the least. De Castella also had a long torso.

Michael Johnson of 400m fame, has a long torso and short legs. I've seen quite a few 100m sprinters with short stubby (but powerful) legs and long torsos. (can't recall who off the top of my head at the moment).

Josiah Thugwane

John Doherty (from the 80s) had some seriously short legs

Craig Mottram?

marijuologist wrote:

Shorter legs is never an advantage.

There are fast runners with short legs, but they are overcoming a mechanical disadvantage, and would be faster if they had long legs.

So, true, Kenenisa Bekele would be so much faster if he had long legs like Mottram, he would run 25.45 for 10000m

Thanks for pointing this out - I was about to bring this up. The Japanese know that they aren't built like Africans and make up for their "genetics" with hard training. In direct contrast to the Japanese are American kids who think that they have "African genetics" and don't really bother training that hard.

234908209 wrote:

a whole crapload of Japanese

OSCAR!!! POTD!

Gabe Jennings

Bekele's legs are not short by any definition.

Note to self, marry runner girl with extremely long legs...and shapely buns.

you and your stumpy legs make me sick.

midgets like you are what is wrong with the world.

plenty at certain distances wrote:

Toshihiko Seko had very short legs compared to his upper body. He was a decent marathoner to say the least.

When I saw this thread I thought of Seko. He had lots of shorter distance speed, plus the endurance. He set a course record and won Boston twice, pretty good for a guy with really short legs.

He finished 2nd to BR in 1979, but it gives a good look at his short stride:

runr over wrote:

[quote]plenty at certain distances wrote:

Toshihiko Seko had very short legs compared to his upper body. He was a decent marathoner to say the least.

When I saw this thread I thought of Seko. He had lots of shorter distance speed, plus the endurance. He set a course record and won Boston twice, pretty good for a guy with really short legs.

He finished 2nd to BR in 1979, but it gives a good look at his short stride:

[/quote

]

Thanks for the vid link. One gets a good view of Seko's mechanics.

Also that 79 Boston race was a pretty high quality race. Not only at the top but even the mid pack times were decent compared to today's midpackers....