Houston McTear and Steve Riddick sitting in Goobers (bar) in Plattsburgh NY during 1976 Olympic training camp. The clearly enjoyed being the center of attention but as a 18 year old, it was cool to be hanging out with them. Duncan McDonald had cool stories to tell.
amy rudolph at the drake relays one year. we gave her a ride to the meet from our hotel. she was really nice, chatted with us, didn't just put the headphones in and tune out a bunch of awestruck college kids (as she easily could have).
Alex Kipchirchir - I happened to sit next to him on a red-eye flight from Nairobi to Amsterdam when he was on the way to the Rome GL (his friend Daniel Komen was right behind us). A very interesting, friendly guy. After an hour or so I realized he was crammed into the middle seat, economy class, on the way to run in the Golden League, with legs about 4 inches too long to fit there. Fortunately, the steward was also a track fan and moved him to a bulkhead seat (Kipchirchir was too polite to ask for a better seat, so we asked for him).
Billy Mills - a great person, all around!
I kind of knew nick symmonds before he went pro, and i can say without a doubt that he had to have been the coolest, shenanigans abounded when he was around. I'm sure he's a bit more laid back now, but he's still the same cool guy, still sticks to his roots and is tight with all the old running buddies he used to have.
on a side note, i once tried to converse with galen rupp in his pre-college days and boy was he unresponsive. not cocky, just ridiculously shy, probably a side effect of living in an altitude tent and having a special professional coach all through high school. defnitely un-cool.
Lucky enough to meet a lot of great runners.
The two that stick out the most are:
Steve Scott - Went way out of his way to be nice to me. I'll never forget it.
Ibraham Huessin - Extrememly nice. His brother Mbarack is too.
Other good guys:
Chuck Aragon
Yobes Ondikei
Said Auoita
Deena Drossin(Kastor)
Joe Falcon
Ken Martin
Tony Sandoval
Harvey Glance
Khalid Kanouchi
Nourdine Morcelli
Doug Padilla (But he's from BYU)
Solomon Niambui
Tony Sandoval - I wish he had his shot to win the Olympics
Alan Webb
Frank Shorter
Wilma Rudolf - pretty funny
Not so great:
Graham Hood - Psycho
Eddy hellebuyck - knew he was a tool the first time I met him in the '90's
Bob Kennedy - Actually he was nice, but he always beat me!
Frank Shorter? A total dick.
Go on thru wrote:
Same with Slaney and Salazar. I've met them both several times and they are great. No snobbishness that I could detect. But then I didn't have a chip on my shoulder either. Slaney always went out of her way to be friendly with my wife at Meets in the eighties and nineties. Nice people all.
Slaney's temper is legendary in Eugene. She has exploded in public so many times it's not funny. Salazar's temper is so bad that people at the nike campus avoid him if they can.
I've met several cool elite runners, but my favorite has been Dick Beardsley.
I knew Logan Weeks, Dan Mayer, Zac Bales-Henry and Andrew Townsend while at NIACC. All very nice guys.
Coolest conversation I've sat in on: Centro Sr and Coghlan puffing up their chests(and rightly so) talking about their sons as Bill Rodgers Tom Fleming and a few other 70s road warriors listened in.
It was the same conversation you would hear at any HS track meet anywhere in the world between two guys whos sons were running in the meet.
Ditto whatever any one said about BR. I know it's safe to say that without reading the thread no one ever has any thing but the highest praise for how he handles himsel.
Fleming is a pretty cool dude, great stories funny and not one bit afraid to speak his mind. He must be a very good teacher because the stories he tells about the kids in his classes are filled with warmth and passion. My choice for USAT&F CEO bytheway or better yet the guy to break it up and become Marathon&Road Racing and XC Czar ( please note there ain't no winky here).
Lornah Kiplagat is very sweet every time out paths cross. she sat by me at Reebok@ Icahn after rushing down from Freihofer and was one of the most animated fans there.
Canadian middle distance runner Diane Cummins once sat next to me after her races and watched a meet. Later leaving she went way out of her way to come over and say she enjoyed our converstion and thanked me for supporting the meet. There was no doubt that the comment came from her heart.
As far as the legends of the sport go you have to create a whole catagory of super coolness to hold Ted Corbitt.
Nina Kuscsik is as cool as it gets as far as passion for our sport...well maybe Louise Tricard is as passionate. As we say here in New York "two stand-up broads".
Coolest and best housepests- The Dillon Clan they come with their own towels, freshbaked homemade breads and 'in the chicken that morning' fresh eggs. What's not to love.
When watching the antional cross country champs this year i was introduced to Jimmy "f**kin" Alder, he just yelled at me an my mates for 40 minutes about the state of modern runners, a brilliant man...BRILLIANT!!
Kelly Holmes, she just seemed like a very genuine person and asked and seemed interested in how my running was going.
gotta also go with Jimmy Alder. Legend.
Others I've met and were at least polite and chatty:
Steve Ovett
Steve Jones
John Gladwin (true wide boy but a good laugh)
Dave Clark - plite inspiration to younger XC runners on England Teams with him
Wilfried Kirochi - loved to dance
You jest? wrote:
Frank Shorter? A total dick.
gotta agree with that. met him at the 1996 Olympic Marathon Trials in Charlotte NC. he was like 52 at the time, and hit on my girlfriend, prolly 26 then, big time. when he tried to stand up off a sofa his hamstrings were so tight he had to stretch it out for a minute.
Tom Fleming WOULD be an outstanding USATF CEO..total knowledge, passion and integrity
So its agreed then, basically everyone who runs distances are really, really cool...and in fact everyone but MJ are really really cool.
Conclusion: most people are atually decent normal human beings.
There, can we now stop this absolutely pointless thread?
I've never met an elite runner that wasn't pretty cool, way too many to name names.
Except AlSal. Sketcky, narcissistic, generally strange cat.
College Guy wrote:
Bill Rogers - very humble and totally willing to chat even with a mid-pack guy like me
It is distortive to put Bill Rodgers in this category. Everyone who has mentioned Bill, it has always been at some race/marathon expo that the race promoter flew him in for....TO MEET & GREET. Bill does 25-30 race weekends a year for many years already. I thinks he is pretty seasoned at chatting with mid-packers like you.
So lets leave Bill Rodgers off this List. It is his JOB to play/be the cool elite who will chat with everybody.
For the same reason let's leave Billy Mills, Frank Shorter, & Dick Beardsley off this list as well.
There are MANY deserving people already mentioned; Bill Rodgers is distortive.
John Sense
I've got to stick up for Daley Thompson on this one. While I don't doubt your experience, my interactions with Thomspon were completely different. In the Spring of '84 he was training for the LA Games in Southern California. At a invitation-only decathlon on the UCLA campus that was closed to the media, I wandered out and was invited to hang out with Daley and the other athletes only because I had gone to the same high school (years apart) as his training partner. I was introduced to Thompson and he welcomed me into his group of mates. He joked around with me, and invited me to sit with him and his supporting cast through the pole vault and javelin events. So, I sat on the bench next to Thompson and hung out for a couple of hours. He's got a huge personality, and does like it to be his show, but I encountered him in his element, and found him to be very cool.
Kenny Moore wrote about Thompson's LA training camp in an article now available on the SI vault.
http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1122325/1/index.htm