mark b wrote:
"...nowhere near as good as him". This might be correct going purely off the watch BUT both Norpoth and Tummler were considered to be fearsome last lap kickers. Their strategy in this race was clearly to take it to Ryun in the last 300 - before Ryun explodes you can clearly see Tummler accelerate. Whatever the exact time for Ryun's last 300 (something we will probably never know for certain) surely anyone with an appreciation of middle distance running can accept that on that day Ryun did something pretty remarkable and instead of trying to talk down this effort we should simply accept that in this race (and his 1500WR against Keino) we saw one of the best milers ever at the very peak of his form. Ryun never came close to repeating his form of 1966/67 -but what a magnificent couple of years!!
Not at all. Where have I said in this thread that I don't think Ryun was one of the greatest milers ever? Of course he is, if simply based on the fact he held both 1500 and Mile world records.
I am simply pointing out the ridiculous claims by Ventolin and his several other handles on this thread alone, that Ryun was so much better than any of the other greats based on a 100m stretch which is almost impossible to time accurately without a clear view of the 200m line.
Ventolin can claim that no one else ran a last 300m in a 3:38 with a sub 12 100m stretch. That doesn't mean that others couldn't in the same circumstances. Give some of the other greats the exact same pace and tell them to go all out with 300 to go and hold it as long as possible, and I have no doubt they would all produce something similar.
In fact we have a reported last 300 of 36.14 by Aouita in a faster 3:34 race. Of course I would like to see this race to confirm its validity, just as I would like to see all of Ryun's race with an on screen clock and clear visibility of the 100m segments.
The other point I was making is that you can take specific splits from the greats and also claim that no one else did it.
E.g Aouita last 300 in 36.1
Cram's last 200 in 25.5 in a 3:46 mile
Ovett's 11.8 curve with 200m to go in a 3:34 race
Coe's 12.1 last 100 in an Olympic final or 12.5 in a 3:32
None of the above have been achieved by Ryun either. So by Ventolin's reasoning, if Ryun didn't do it then he wasn't capable of doing it and thus was not as good as those other athletes. But of course he will claim otherwise as he is a hypocrite. There are endless permeatations of how a 1500 race is run and practically impossible to have the exact same pace and breakdown of splits in any 2 races.