Was Ritz just a vastly overrated high school cross-country runner? His "great" 14:10 was made a mockery of today

lke_4:25 wrote:

How many of those boys will go on to break 13 get a pro Nike contract make 3 Olympic teams run 60 flat and sub 2:08?

First, how many of them would even make a top ... hmmm 20(?) in the World Cross in Junior category?

I think these people don't know he got 3rd at the world junior cross country championships as a high schooler (in the early spring of his senior year). He lost to Bekele and one other guy. If that's overrated...

He was also 4th at NCAAs as a true freshman (so, the year he graduated from high school). Not strictly a high school accomplishment, true, but he didn't have all that much time between his HS career and being 4th at NCAAs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_IAAF_World_Cross_Country_Championships_%E2%80%93_Junior_men%27s_race

A certain Mo Farah was 59th in that race

GBPUSD = 1.39 wrote:

People went off on me in the CIF state finals thread for claiming Ritz's 14:10 was one of the GOAT high school xc performances -- had a ton of comments saying the Michigan speedway is super fast / it's more like a track than an XC course / etc. etc, but the numbers don't lie.

Nobody's come within 39 seconds of Ritz on that course. Just to name a few notable guys, it was run by Grant Fisher (2x FL champ, went unbeaten for 2+ years) in 14:52, Hobbs Kessler (OT qualifier in HS, 3:34 1500m in high school) in 14:51, and Riley Hough (14:10 at Runninglane) in 14:49.

It's one of the best individual performances in XC history. On par with GF's 14:24 Woodward, LV's second FL win, Baxter's 2012 NXN win, and...well, pretty much anything from Tuohy's 2018 season.

Let’s put Riley Hough’s 14:49 in context. Riley ran 14:49 in 2020 (last year, not this year!) in a tight race with Hobbs. When he ran 14:49 he wasn’t even a sub 9 3200m runner. And Hobbs had run 8:53 or so that summer.

This year, he took it easy in 14:56 and won by 25 seconds. To make it like he “only managed” to come within 39 seconds of Ritz is disingenuous.

Ritz was good. But not as good as German, and the newbury park boys are running about what Ritz would’ve run. And it makes sense, Leo Young ran 8:43 3200 as a 10th grader while Ritz ran 8:41 as an 11th grader. It would make sense to me that the relatively younger runner would be faster 6 months later.

Let’s see how many of these dudes end up running 12:56 on the track…

He didn't take it easy with the 14:56. He wasn't pushed, yes, but in talks with him after, it was definitely an all-out effort.

ringo-starr wrote:

I think these people don't know he got 3rd at the world junior cross country championships as a high schooler (in the early spring of his senior year). He lost to Bekele and one other guy. If that's overrated...

He was also 4th at NCAAs as a true freshman (so, the year he graduated from high school). Not strictly a high school accomplishment, true, but he didn't have all that much time between his HS career and being 4th at NCAAs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_IAAF_World_Cross_Country_Championships_%E2%80%93_Junior_men%27s_race

He was third. But it was muddy so a lot of Africans did bad. And he lost by over a minute to Bekele. The US senior men’s team got the TEAM SILVER just a few years ago in muddy conditions also.

Nico was 4th as Freshman.

German was in 3rd place with 3k to go before injuring himself and dropping out.

Top 5 as a freshman isn’t unheard of.

measured the course after the race it was way short of a 3 mile. If you think all these kids ran 14:00 you have no business having anything to do with this sport.

yepe21 wrote:

measured the course after the race it was way short of a 3 mile. If you think all these kids ran 14:00 you have no business having anything to do with this sport.

It’s 5k get over it. Why are people so emotional over high schoolers running fast?

Michiganian13 wrote:

No, you all are missing one very important point, Dathan ran alone, the whole way!!!!! It makes a HUGE difference!!!! I was at 2 miles when he went by in 8:58 with no one in site, pushing hard all alone. There was no pack to suck off of, it was just him. Dathan time may not be faster but his 14:10 is worth more in my opinion.

Yeah...I'm sure Ritz was clean and that Brad Prins was just giving the Rockford runners "Vitamin C"....

MIXCSR wrote:

He didn't take it easy with the 14:56. He wasn't pushed, yes, but in talks with him after, it was definitely an all-out effort.

An all-out effort does not necessarily mean that it was a time trial, or even that close to his capability. The announcers at runninglane noted that Hough is a tactician and that he much prefers someone else to lead until he makes his move.

Bro who even are you, multiple verfied coaches ( Most Notably Cheyyenne Mountain's) and people from milesplit have said its legit and measured it in various ways. There was no way it was short of 3 miles, a pretty obvious fact considering NP ran well under 14 for 3 miles without any competition 3 months ago.

OP be like: “wAs ThE fIrSt mAn tO bReAk tHe 4 MiNuTe MiLe oVerRateD”

Bro just stfu. Ritz is showing to be a great coach on top of his talent and the ignorance here isn’t worth correcting. Too many obvious reasons this is an idiotic question. OP seriously just get another hobby because you don’t have a brain.

Betting that if Ritz continues as a coach he’ll be one of the most consistent and successful. You can see his care and genuine attention to his athletes, and from speaking with him while he was still an athlete he seemed extremely intelligent. Deadly combo.

Only reason he would ever not pan out is because the sport is so toxic and because funding and marketing for the sport bleed down to poor pay overall of athletes and support staffs. I feel bad for the majority of unprofitable victims of the sport who deserve better that what they get and better than this trash posting

TrackFan79 wrote:

What's your 5K PR?

What´s the relevance of that, idiot?

The new record will not last long based on how many others were close. Cc courses are like golf courses. Each is different in difficulty. A 1410 on the course Ritz ran is just different from this one.

WordOnAWang wrote:

definitely soemthing wrong with americans the way they talk abouy kids in sport. once in america in a bar theey were showing 11 year old baseball on tv. wtf is wrong with you people

It's how we roll, bro. One thing in our favor is that we are at least somewhat familiar with capitalization and grammar in our posts.

Capy short finger wrote:

The guy was decent but I think people made him out to be much better than he was. He was pretty good for way back in the 1990s but runners today are just that much faster. How many runners today beat his 14:10? It just wasn't that fast of a record. It is time to put his 14:10 in perspective. It was a quality time for way back then but it is nothing special today. The runners have just evolved to much better runners.

How old are you? You have no clue do you?

Youngbloods wrote:

michiganrunner55 wrote:

EXACTLY!! No super shoes, running all alone, 21 years ago, not training in Big Bear in the off season. A friend of mine said it and no disrespect to the NP guys they are very good, but Ritz time was worth 13:45 on today’s course

Doesn't matter. Nico Young has already blown away Ritz' best 3000 & 5000 on the track. Wiped away Fernandez from #1 all time junior in the process running 13:24 in the 5000 and is in the top 10 all time in the 3000. . Look for one of these four guys to take that junior 5000 record even lower in the next couple of years. Likely 13:15-18.

Ritz accomplished nothing of significance on the track as a junior.

Do your research…obviously you haven’t…Ritz ran 13:27 for 5000m his freshman year at CU but was not a Junior record his birthday is late December but he ran it at age 19 and 4 months but does not count as a junior record. Ritz 13:27 and Nico 13:24 pretty comparable so don’t say Nico is way better. Not better in cross Ritz won NCAA cross as a redshirt sophomore so give Nico another year to maybe match Ritz in cross

Like someone said earlier, Ritz ran his 14:10 alone, and it was done on a different course. Cross Country records should mainly be kept from course to course, it's very difficult to compare a different course to a different one. With so many kids running crazy fast times on that course in Alabama, i'd question to course, not it's length but it's difficulty. I'd love to have seen what Ritz could have run on that course with that competition.. I watched him run is 13:44 on the track and it was amazing. These kids are good for sure, but i have a hard time comparing cross country course times. Lets see what they do on the track.