Phil Hersch ranks US marathoners on all time list

Shorter is clearly #1. You can't compare Hall's times and Shorter's times and come to any meaningful conclusion. Hell, if you want to play that game, Shorter ran 2:10 in 1976 for SECOND place in the Olympics -- that time would have won most Olympic marathons up until 2008!

Shorter competed at the highest level that existed in his time, and won many major marathons. Hall is several steps behind his best contemporaries and hasn't won a major international race.

I don't see how anyone could even consider a comparison between them, it makes no sense.

1. Shorter

2. Rodgers

3. Keflezighi

4. Khannouchi

5. Hall

6. Salazar

7. Beardsley

8. Buddy Edelen

9. Clarance Demar

10. Johnny Kelley (the younger)

stuck with match.com wrote:

Consistently doing what? Getting 5th at a major marathon, not getting a medal at the WC or OG? Its true that running has evolved but that doesn't mean it should be taken away from previous generations. Guys like Shorter and Rodgers went out there beat whoever toed the line. Hall can't say that.

I wonder if you negativity towards american distance runners has anything to do with your lack of success with the female gender.

my list wrote:

1. Shorter

2. Rodgers

3. Keflezighi

4. Khannouchi

5. Hall

6. Salazar

7. Beardsley

8. Buddy Edelen

9. Clarance Demar

10. Johnny Kelley (the younger)

Looks about right.

Selling all my stuff in 2012 wrote:

Shorter is clearly #1. You can't compare Hall's times and Shorter's times and come to any meaningful conclusion. Hell, if you want to play that game, Shorter ran 2:10 in 1976 for SECOND place in the Olympics -- that time would have won most Olympic marathons up until 2008!

Shorter competed at the highest level that existed in his time, and won many major marathons. Hall is several steps behind his best contemporaries and hasn't won a major international race.

I don't see how anyone could even consider a comparison between them, it makes no sense.

It's not necessarily the time differences between Shorter and Hall. It's the lack of African presence. How many of Hall's races was he the first non-African?

I feel like he wrote this whole thing out as an excuse to bash Hall and I find it especially interesting that he is the only guy on the top 10 list with an overwhelmingly negative description. Maybe Hersh got rejected by Sara Bei at some point?

someone had to do it wrote:

stuck with match.com wrote:

Consistently doing what? Getting 5th at a major marathon, not getting a medal at the WC or OG? Its true that running has evolved but that doesn't mean it should be taken away from previous generations. Guys like Shorter and Rodgers went out there beat whoever toed the line. Hall can't say that.

I wonder if you negativity towards american distance runners has anything to do with your lack of success with the female gender.

If you believe that then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. I like meb, ritz, solinsky, webb, cas loxom robbie andrews

Raptured wrote:

I feel like he wrote this whole thing out as an excuse to bash Hall and I find it especially interesting that he is the only guy on the top 10 list with an overwhelmingly negative description. Maybe Hersh got rejected by Sara Bei at some point?

Look, Phil Hersh may be an ass, but all in all his list seems about right. Hall is the fastest American of his era, and a solidly second tier marathoner (behind the Mutais & co.). I'm not sure Johnny Hayes merited inclusion, but whatever. Actually, I'm pleased to see a list that has older guys on it. Edelin doesn't get enough credit. And yes, Frank Shorter is clearly the best. You win the race by beating who's there, not people who don't show up.

That said, a list of US marathoners that doesn't have Joan Samuelson on it has some problems. Still the last US distance Gold at the Olympics, I believe.

Captain Spalding wrote:

That said, a list of US marathoners that doesn't have Joan Samuelson on it has some problems. Still the last US distance Gold at the Olympics, I believe.

Damnit, I missed this part:

"(I will rank the women later this week.)"

Oh well.

herschisajoke wrote:

Ryan should be at the top of that list based on times and the combined quality and consistency of all of his marathons. The world of marathoning is bigger and more competitive now than it was back in Shorter's days. Meb should be number two.

Obviously, these things depend on what you're trying to measure, and what your criteria are. I can see Khannouchi at the top based on times, world and American records, and head-to-head results against strong competition. (Even excluding his first world record before he became a U.S. citizen, his times in record-quality marathons are unmatched, and his performances in 2002 alone -- especially his world record victory over Tergat and Geb in London -- are beyond what any other American has yet shown himself to be capable of.) I can see Shorter at the top based on Olympic and Fukuoka (at the time, de facto world championship) competition, as well as his effect on American marathoning in general. I can see Rodgers at the top based on his record of victories in major marathons and his popular appeal.

I find it difficult to come up with a good set of criteria by which Hall would be on top, however. And I'm not sure how one would come up with a one-two ranking of Hall followed by Meb, although I don't doubt that someone could come up with something to jusify such an outcome.

I probably wouldn't put DeMar and Kelley so near the top. Rankings based primarily on a string of Boston performances seem rather provincial to me, especially in light of the level of competition at Boston back in those days. And sticking Johnny Hayes in there, based almost exclusively on a single victory in a slow race following the disqualification of the first-place finisher, carries the Olympic criterion too far in my view. But people should probably just chill out and not take this stuff so seriously.

If you take out East Africans (who weren't competing in Shorters era), then compare Hall to everyone else that's left, he'd have a couple of WWM wins and two or three podium finishes. It may not be fair to slight the 70's guys just because the kenyans weren't around, but it's equally unfair to slight Hall because they are.

If the Marathon were as "professional" in the 60's and 70's as it is today, and the East africans were competing in the same nunbers as they are today, would Shorter have any medals or victories at all?

My guess is no.

By the way, Hersh is a total jackhole.

The big question was how good would Hall have been in 1976 and how good would Shorter have been in 2008. Would Hall have been a 3:42 high school miler? Would Shorter have been a 27:00 10,000 runner? No way you can tell. All you can judge the best on these rankings are how they stacked up with the competition of the day.

HOW ABOUT THIS:

1) Take each candidate's top 3 marathon times and take the average.

2) Rank your "Top marathoner List" with 1st being the fastest average, 2nd having the 2nd fastest average, etc.

pretty simple to me.

The thing about running is that it's measured by an objective standard - the clock. If you run faster than someone you are better than they are. Hall has run faster than everyone on that list but Khannouchi. Therefore he is better than everyone but Khannouchi. End of discussion. It's simple math - which number is smaller?

You could come up with all sorts of other ways of ranking runners - most medals, most podium finishes, most top 10 finishes, highest margins of victory, most marathons run, longest career, did the most with least talent, hardest working, most masochistic --- the list is infinite. In Hersh's case, he's come up with a subjective mishmash of factors, but given his well publicized dislike of Hall, I'm not inclined to trust his judgment on how he is subjectively weighting those factors. But in any event, these kinds of subjective rankings are just a parlor game, when the only thing that really matters is time.

stuck with match.com wrote:

If you believe that then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. I like meb, ritz, solinsky, webb, cas loxom robbie andrews

If four or other than that I am not sure. But because of this there will always be some doubt. In the end you have to look at the way things were.

Ok, if Shorter or Rodgers ran with 4 pacesetters behind a truck with a huge clock on a flat course, the entire way,with a big pack until 18 miles, you don't think even back in the late 1970's they would have run a minute or two faster than 2:09-10? Its a different game totally. Maybe they could, maybe not.

Hall ran the 2:04 without pacers and gets shit on here for not going with the pacemakers. The guy's got a string of times faster than Shorter or anyone else from that era ever ran, and we're not talking about running on a faster surface like in track. I wouldn't put him first on a subjective "best" list, but he would most likely beat any American-born runner. He did lose to Ritz at the Olympics, but Ritz is a sub-13 minute 5k runner with a fast half marathon to his credit who never put together a fast marathon.

Any list that doesn't have Hall in the top 5 is a joke.

Hall is the greatest American Marathoner. Put Hall, then the rest of the list, and it is very valid.