Where Does Bob Kennedy's Career Rank?

AND he ran 12:58 2X that year. Wo was the next American to break 13 twice in a career, much less a year?

Chris Solinsky broke 13 three times in 2010, ending his year with his lifetime personal best of 12:55.

it ranks low and I mean LOW

You cannot prove Kennedy was clean. Everyone from that era is suspect.

100%

As much as I love Bob, if we are including middle distance, he's definitely outside of the top-10 purely from a performance perspective. If we are talking distance 5K and up to include XC and the marathon, that means we are comparing Virgin, Rogers, Shorter, Meb, Rupp, Ritz, Chelimo and Fisher, etc. Yes, Bob is in the top-10 among that group. However, if we include the likes of Ryun, Scott, Webb, Lagat, Centro, Jager and Brazier, etc., that will put Bob outside of the top-10. With all of that said, Bob Kennedy was one of the few bright spots in a dark period and although he had an amazing career, his contribution to American athletics cannot be measured by times and medals alone.

It’s a respectable career. Placing him on a greatest of list is difficult because these lists always include over a hundred candidates over a period of a century with always some forgotten great who people forget about, like Shul or Ashenfelter. I place Kennedy maybe around 30th greatest American. He had four good years in an era against some guys who are indeed still on the GOAT list like Geb and Komen. In 96 when he ran his 12:58 it was indeed the 9th fastest performance ever as someone has already pointed out. That’s even more impressive than it sounds because I guarantee without even doing research that at least four of those 9 times were from Geb and another one or two from Koech. So he really was around like the fifth or sixth fastest 5k runner ever when he ran 12:58. That’s super impressive. Yeah he didn’t have the top end wheels to ever steal any hardware but he was pretty much the only American guy who could place consistently in the top ten in any given race during the nineties. That counts for something. Me personally I think he said at some point if you can’t beat em join em and he took EPO like the rest of em, but everyone did in those days so who cares.

Including Greg LeMond.

Yeah, just like YOU cannot prove anyone running today is clean. You can throw a blanket or cherry pick or whatever. I'll go with my own biases.

Sorry, I miswrote my post at the top of this page. To clarify, Kennedy was the 9th fastest 5,000m runner all-time in 1996. He didn't have the 9th fastest mark.

If we look at marks, Kennedy was still impressive. He ended 1996 with two all-time marks in the top 20: 18th and 20th. For comparison, Fisher's top two marks in that event are currently 19th and 42nd.

I'm not saying Kennedy should rank higher than Fisher. Obviously, Fisher's two Olympic medals, American records from 3k to 10k, and world indoor records put him above Kennedy. I'm just making the comparison to give Kennedy his due respect. He was a great runner, and he gave us American distance running fans something to get excited about in the 1990s.

Kennedy was as world class as Fisher is, but lacked the kick to get medals. He was a consistent World /Olympic finalist. There were no Americans even close in the 3k/5k. Held AR for 13 years and didn't have to bother peaking for the Olympic Trials or USAs.

Thank you for correcting this. A further correction: when he ran his first 12:58, he was the 8th fastest runner of all time, not 9th. For anyone else who wants to do research, here is the WA top list for 5000m. There are two controls to pay attention to.

The first is the "Best by Athlete" or "All" buttons control whether you count athletes, putting BK 9th at the time, or performances, putting him 18th, at the end of 1996.

The second is the date picker. You can choose your beginning and ending cutoff days. And note that it's a day, not a year. McRunnin was careful to mention the end of 1996. If you choose that (31/12/1996, they use DD/MM/YYYY) then you get the rankings mentioned above.

But if you pick the day of BK's first sub-13 (it was July 8, so enter 8/7/1996) then you see he was higher ranked earlier in the year (8th fastest man of all time, 13th best performance) but a few fast races later pushed him down (including his 12:58 race, there were men ahead of him there).

worldathletics.org

5000 Metres - men - senior - all

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I'm sorry if this had already been mentioned, BUT Billy Mills had more than ONE race. He tied with Jerry Lindgren and they both set a new WORLD record in the six mile (when English distances were still important) in 1965, after his Tokyo triumph. He also reset his American record, again in 1965, in the 10k. Mills was phenomenal!

I think the fair way to do this is go back to 1896 and break the past 130 years into eras. Then, measure the American runner's performancez against the world at that time (WR, AR, world rankings, Olympic / world finishes, national championships, etc).

This will help to isolate technological and supplemental advantages so that someone who ran 4:16 in 1920 isn't overlooked (an era where year round training wasn't a priority and running on a Sunday was blasphemous) and the greats aren't trampled by super shoes or drugs they didnt have.

Again, test runners against the era first, measure their success relative to that era and then bring them out of the eras with consistent scoring methodologies that can compare to each other.

Kennedy stood no chance in that 90s era when the Kenyans and other Africans were doped to the gills.

i HOPE and I’d like to think he himself was clean but who knows.

thing about Kennedy that separates him from this era was he stuck to his guns and the 5k. Never experimented w the roads or the 10k til his last season of 2004. Also, Kennedy and American runners of his time also showed up at USATF XC every year w the intent of GOING to world xc… something this era of guys refuse to do for whatever reason.

Meb, Rupp, Ritz, Chelimo, Fisher, Webb, lagat, centro, Jager and Brazier are all post Kennedy era. Different training and technology and competitions sets. Same way hard to compare Bikila with subsequent generations of runners. Bob was top 5 all time American when he retired

For me what stands out was that at the time he was the only US distance runner doing anything noteworthy during the Runners World less is more BS of the 90's. He was the man and as others are saying his impact was felt for those that followed years later.

He would peak sometimes at around 140 miles per week during his base phase, lower his volume and sharpen as he approached competition which was I felt a somewhat Lydiard based approach.

Specifics of training have changed a bit here and there as have shoes and track surfaces but if we stray too far away from Lydiard and Cerutty from the 50's we tend to get our butts handed to us.

Kennedy actually ran the #9 all time 5k in 1994 when he ran 13:02.93 on July 22nd in Oslo.

worldathletics.org

5000 Metres - men - senior - all

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