Haile G tells LetsRun.com how he'd beat Mo Farah - "I'd finish him early"

fdsafsfasdf wrote:

And the thing is - Geb in his prime COULD finish him, easily. I know you guys like to talk about Farah being the GOAT but really he does not hold a candle to Geb.

Who talks about Farah being the GOAT? He's the best in the business right now, but I don't think any significant number of people think he's better than Geb or Bekele.

I'm not saying Farah would run faster than Geb's PB in a perfect race, but if you actually watch athletics you would know that a runner's pedigree has little to do with his personal best on paper. Attributes to performance include tactical ability, change of pace, top speed, stamina, mental strength and many more that cannot be quantified.

Rudisha did not have the fastest SB coming into the 2015 world champs final, Kszczot did not have the second fastest PB. Very rarely does a runner have such an advantage in pure performance over the other runners for this to matter.

You need to realise that at the top, all of the guys have quality personal bests. Think of this as the basic requirement to be involved. From there, it is down to quality, tactics, the effect a runner has on the field mentally and other intangible factors as to who wins. This is especially true in long distance races.

Races in which a runner sets a personal best represents the combination of capability (current fitness, fatigue from training or travelling, mental readiness etc.) and opportunity (competition, weather, track surface, number of runners in the race etc.). It is not as simple as run as fast as you can. I would argue that the opportunity and capability of Farah have simply not aligned as of yet, mainly due to him focusing on getting medals. You don't have to like that fact, but it remains that Farah has not tried to break his PB. It's not important.

For the record, I believe the difference between Geb and Farah over 5000m would be 2 or 3 seconds.

Wow, no one giving Mo any credit whatsoever. He won gold at 5,000 in 2012 a month after the ridiculous Paris 5k where 6 guys went sub-12:50. Remember Gebremeskel running 12:46 with a 54 last lap? Mo beat him and all other comers.

I'm not saying Mo beats Geb, but it's much closer than anyone here is giving him credit for. Of course Bekele in his prime beats them both.

I'll concede that the discussion of Geb vs Kenny B as the GOAT is a legitimate one. I personally think Kenny has to accomplish more in the half-marathon & marathon to be equivalent to Geb's career. But they are on the same level. Mo is not there yet.

weirdness wrote:

Wow, no one giving Mo any credit whatsoever. He won gold at 5,000 in 2012 a month after the ridiculous Paris 5k where 6 guys went sub-12:50. Remember Gebremeskel running 12:46 with a 54 last lap? Mo beat him and all other comers.

I'm not saying Mo beats Geb, but it's much closer than anyone here is giving him credit for. Of course Bekele in his prime beats them both.

As others have pointed out, those 6 guys have always had very erratic fitness levels so this point is working against the point you are trying to make. Also, that was a fast race. Farah did not beat them in a fast race.

Metric Miler wrote:

For the record, I believe the difference between Geb and Farah over 5000m would be 2 or 3 seconds.

0/10 if you are serious. Could not be possible.

8/10 if you meant 2-3 seconds slower per 1k for Farah.

weirdness wrote:

Wow, no one giving Mo any credit whatsoever. He won gold at 5,000 in 2012 a month after the ridiculous Paris 5k where 6 guys went sub-12:50. Remember Gebremeskel running 12:46 with a 54 last lap? Mo beat him and all other comers.

I'm not saying Mo beats Geb, but it's much closer than anyone here is giving him credit for. Of course Bekele in his prime beats them both.

Where was Farah when that race happened? Why wasn't he in it? Farah doesn't race often enough or fast enough to be compared to Haile and Bekele. Those guys were able to win medals, break records, and win the diamond league title at the same time. Farah can't even be bothered to give an honest effort.

No, this isn't hating or not giving him any credit. He is a great runner but still lacks much of what guys like El G, Geb, and Bekele did.

Stategy wrote:

It's about strategy. Geb didn't have to finish anyone early. The Mobat is so full of himself that a runner like Geb could toy with him and teach him about paind and suffering.

Why do you say Mo is full of himself?

I think in a championship race, Mo would win over Geb.

Bekele certainly did not manage to do it when faced with El G

Maybe Geb would have but it was not his usual stategy in a non-paced record

Geb had the advantage (or disadvantage) of major competition throughout his career. He had to deal with Tergat and Komen in the late 1990s, and then with Bekele in the 2000s. Komen and Geb traded WRs, often racing against each other in the WR races.

Only Bekele was able to put those ridiculous times in the 5k and 10k on the track alone. Perhaps Canova is right about his potential, but Bekele did not have the competition that Geb had. Ironically, Mo and Bekele are about a year apart by age, and Mo did not become a winner until 2011. In fact, many have pointed out his performance in the 2009 5000m final (won by Bekele), where he tried to get to the front coming down the stretch toward the bell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=---LOIB8idE). He gets tossed around like a ragdoll, to be honest, and doesn't have the strength or stamina to get to the front nor to kick it home.

Since then, Mo has risen, and Geb has been unable to compete in these events, which is a shame. Mo is now racing against his eventual usurpers, but ultimately they come from a different generation, a new generation. Mo does not run well alone, and has not had a rival to push him to faster times. We would all LOVE to see what would happen to Mo if a rival took a sub-13 5K to him in a 10,000m race. We are likely to never know how fast he COULD have gone without that. We only know how fast he DID go, and that he was virtually undefeated for the better part of a decade. His reign will end, and there may be some doubt about whether time caught up with him or rival caught up with him.

Geb, on the other hand, had no choice. He was not undefeated, but he ran faster times, faced stronger rivals, and produced some of the most epic races we have seen on the track.

Based on total number of OG and WC golds, one could argue that Mo (2 OG and 5 WC) is a superior track runner to Geb ( 2 OG and 4 WC). Bekele is still better at 3 OG and 5 WC, but if Mo wins 1 or 2 golds next year, one could argue that Mo is equal to or has surpassed Kenny after the next Olympics.

However, before someone starts arguing that Mo is the "TRACK GOAT", it should be appreciated how much harder it is to even make the OG or WC team when you are from Ethiopia (or Kenya for that matter). Mo can basically run a 90% effort to be selected for his national team. He can focus all his energy on the championship. Runners from Ethiopia or Kenya, have to bring their A game much earlier in the season to qualify for their national team. Couple that with the fact that the criteria for team selection are often uncertain and subject to change (sometimes its a selection race, sometimes it is based on the fastest times that season, sometimes it just plain politics). Look at the work Kenny did trying to make his team in 2013. He won the "trials 10k", but then his country decided to select based on SB. Kenny tried to chase times on subsequent 10ks but did not have time to recover or have quality races to do so. It is a shame, because based on Kenny's win over Mo at the1/2 Marathon at the end of that season, I think he could have beat Mo on the track that year. Allow me to digress a little, but in that 1/2 Marathon, Kenny did what everyone is saying runners should do to beat Mo, he put down the hammer just over a mile from the finish. Mo didn't believe he (or Kenny) could sustain that pace, so it broke Mo psychologically. Even though Mo had the better closing speed, Kenny won.

Anyway, the main point is that when it comes to stacking up multiple medals, the cards are stacked against runners from Ethiopia or Kenya,. Therefore, a hugely talented East African winning a championship medal is actually a harder feat (looking at the whole season journey to get there) than it is for someone with equal talent who lives in a less competitive country. After Mo wins more medals over the next 1 or 2 years, I hope this fact is taken into consideration when the GOAT conversations resume.

Geb's 5k and 10k PR are ONE SECOND PER LAP faster than Mo's. He'd clean his clock.

Geb in that 1997 race blows away the field from 500m to 400m and then holds on, which is never Farah's tactic. Farah moves to the front and sustains his position the rest of the way but he does not try to blow them away until the last 100m. He keeps some in reserve until it is a fait accompli.

To this point...

1968 Mexico City 1500 meters.

Everyone would agree that Ryun was a superior runner, BUT...

You're comparing apples with oranges.

You can't say one is the best over the other. They both are and were doped to the gills anyhow.

rojo- Please look up the race on YouTube. Three Ethiopians ran away. Bekele out kicked Geb in the end. Those two went sub 13 in the second half.

rojo wrote:

JRinaldi wrote:

How many championship races did you ever see Geb finish someone early? He backed his kick as much a Farah does and I'm sure in his prime he would have backed it going head to head with Farah. Leopards don;t change their spots.

So the real question is, who's kick is better?

You make a good point but then again Geb had Tergat chashing him around. Remember Tergat once cloed a 10k in sub-13 for the 2nd half and lost (to Geb).

One thing about the GOAT talk. Total number of medals isn't a great comparison as when Haile ran some of the times you had to run 5 races to double.Three 5ks. Two 10ks.

jjjjjj wrote:

Geb in that 1997 race blows away the field from 500m to 400m and then holds on, which is never Farah's tactic. Farah moves to the front and sustains his position the rest of the way but he does not try to blow them away until the last 100m. He keeps some in reserve until it is a fait accompli.

I think that scenario makes for a riskier tactic because it's late in the race, speaking hypothetically if Mo were there.

To finish in sub-5 over the last 2K is to all but guarantee a victory of over a kicker. This is even less a Mo tactic. That's my point. Not saying or impling that Geb is in any way a slouch when it comes to closing.

More than ever these threads just highlight the need for someone to really take it to Mo in a race, ideally a WC/Olympic one. I'm talking sub 12 at the bell, or ideally 11:4x type of thing.

This would serve the purpose of settling what Mo really can do, because lord knows it doesn't seem like he going to try on his own and yet greatly impacts our perceptions about Farah.

The big question really is: is Farah more of a 12:50 guy, or more of a 12:40 guy. I seriously doubt he is any worse than that, he is just too consistent to be a high 12:5x runner. One slightly off day and he would be totally cooked in a race that is 12:10 at the bell, but he is fine every time.

If he went out, got pushed, and closed well to run in the lower 12:4x range I think we would look at him in a totally different light. He wouldn't automatically be GOAT track, but he would go from on the fringes of being in the picture to a serious candidate in the discussion.