two doubles at olympics, who else?
two doubles at olympics, who else?
1.emil zatopek
2.paavo nurmi
3.kenenisa bekele
4. hicahm el gruji
5.haile gebreslassie
Worst wrote:Anyway, El G is up there, but not top 3. Similar to Coe, not enough range to call him the greatest distance runner ever. One of the best mid-d guys for sure... but his wheelhouse ended at 5k, and he couldn't drop down to 800 like Coe could
more a case of "didn't" drop down to 800
the likely reason he didn't do so in late '90s/early '00s was that any event he ran he wanted to be number 1 & possible wr holder
obviously he didn't think that was possible with kip dominating & going 1'41-flat
there is little doubt he couda gone about 1'43-flat ( asbel has & he coudn't carry hicham's jockstrap ), but such a run from hicham woudn't have raised kip's systolic by 1mm
'but his wheelhouse ended at 5k'
Where do people get these bs expressions? I agree with your assessment of Geb and Bekele though as Geb really dropped the times down
You need to separate middle distance to long distance to begin with. The trouble is you can either do it on times or medals and its hard to compare different eras because of changing training. Without runners like Zatopek revolutionising training would runners like Geb and KB be running as fast today?
topthree wrote:
1 Bekele (pending HM and marathon world records)
We can rank all sorts of people on what they might do in the future, but it's a pretty pointless exercise until they've actually done it. Bekele might now hang up his running shoes for good for all we know.
Herb Elliott
#1 Geb - His career has been very long, his WR list is incredible, he has two olympic golds in 10k, +1 for doing it in a time where track and field was VERY competitive (unlike Emil or Nurmi, no offense but Jordan was better than George Miken...)
#2 LD only(excludes milers in my list) - Bekele - Will be number 1 at end of his career, but needs to conquer the marathon first. Best Olympic record of modern time, WRs from 2k to 10k, cross domination.
#3 Emil Zatopek - Has many WRs and Olympic golds, also a pioneer for his workout schedules. -1 because his comp was running 200m sprint intervals and he didn't face the racing machines that kenyan/ethopians were.
In my list, I include the quality of the competition at the time.