Sahlman has to be in the GOAT conversation now for HS Distance

Seyta wrote:

KitKat bar break wrote:

You can't compare times across generations.

We've got cinder tracks, super shoes, time trial race opportunities versus local invites, and more.

The best way to handle this is in comparison to the best at the time.

Ryun was one of the best in the world. Beating Snell heads up in high school. Lindgren was among the best in the world in HS.

Webb finished 5th at the Pre classic 4 seconds behind the best in history (El Guerrouj), and less than half a second behind Lagat.

Sahlman is great. But you can't compare his times to past eras. Only to his own era. For Sahlman to get on the Mt. Rushmore, he's got to be significantly faster than Kessler in the 1500 or much faster than Verzbicas.

He's got to compare to his peers.

Comparison to the best in an era is extremely poor. The reason is that competition was horribly shallow in Ryun's era.

The factors for this include:

1) Lack of money, so all "professionals" had to either come from wealthy backgrounds, or work jobs to continue running after college.

2) Lack of money, so no Africans.

The people Ryun and Lindgren were beating were functionally disadvantaged upon graduating high school or college. They had to balance running with full time jobs to make ends meet, and absolutely did not have the ability to train like any of the professionals today. In contrast, high schoolers pretty much did back then what they do now. Go to school, run, study, perhaps work a part-time job (though high schoolers today have a distinct advantage in training theory and recovery knowledge).

You may as well say that Michael Phelps is far beyond any elite runner (Bolt, Kipchoge, El Guerrouj, Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah, etc.) purely because he dominated his peers in a way that none of them could ever replicate. Hell, he showed up at the Olympics at 15. The argument against this of course is that swimming has much shallower competition. Shallow enough that a 15-year-old could reasonably compare to professionals in the early 2000s. The same goes for running in the 1960s-70s.

Using "performance against competition" as a metric is pretty much admitting that Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete to ever live. And by a massive margin at that.

Comparison of times is outright less biased by far. The difference in times is caused by a number of known factors, including shoes, surface, and advances is training/recovery knowledge and technology. It's nothing on the scale of an entire continent not yet participating widely in the sport, or athletes being forced to balance training with 40-hour work weeks.

Wise Old Man wrote:

Seyta wrote:

Comparison to the best in an era is extremely poor. The reason is that competition was horribly shallow in Ryun's era.

The factors for this include:

1) Lack of money, so all "professionals" had to either come from wealthy backgrounds, or work jobs to continue running after college.

2) Lack of money, so no Africans.

The people Ryun and Lindgren were beating were functionally disadvantaged upon graduating high school or college. They had to balance running with full time jobs to make ends meet, and absolutely did not have the ability to train like any of the professionals today. In contrast, high schoolers pretty much did back then what they do now. Go to school, run, study, perhaps work a part-time job (though high schoolers today have a distinct advantage in training theory and recovery knowledge).

You may as well say that Michael Phelps is far beyond any elite runner (Bolt, Kipchoge, El Guerrouj, Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah, etc.) purely because he dominated his peers in a way that none of them could ever replicate. Hell, he showed up at the Olympics at 15. The argument against this of course is that swimming has much shallower competition. Shallow enough that a 15-year-old could reasonably compare to professionals in the early 2000s. The same goes for running in the 1960s-70s.

Using "performance against competition" as a metric is pretty much admitting that Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete to ever live. And by a massive margin at that.

Comparison of times is outright less biased by far. The difference in times is caused by a number of known factors, including shoes, surface, and advances is training/recovery knowledge and technology. It's nothing on the scale of an entire continent not yet participating widely in the sport, or athletes being forced to balance training with 40-hour work weeks.

So just let’s stick with times.

What time would you say Ryun’s 3:55 (he closed in 26.6), 8:25 two mile and 144.9 (880) junior records would be worth today? He beat Keino the reigning 5000 m world record holder in that 2 mile race, btw.

Are we seriously comparing Colin Sahlman who is marginally best on his own team to Ryun?? Kessler??? Nobody on the list holds a candle to Ryun, including Webb.

Wise Old Man wrote:

Seyta wrote:

Comparison to the best in an era is extremely poor. The reason is that competition was horribly shallow in Ryun's era.

The factors for this include:

1) Lack of money, so all "professionals" had to either come from wealthy backgrounds, or work jobs to continue running after college.

2) Lack of money, so no Africans.

The people Ryun and Lindgren were beating were functionally disadvantaged upon graduating high school or college. They had to balance running with full time jobs to make ends meet, and absolutely did not have the ability to train like any of the professionals today. In contrast, high schoolers pretty much did back then what they do now. Go to school, run, study, perhaps work a part-time job (though high schoolers today have a distinct advantage in training theory and recovery knowledge).

You may as well say that Michael Phelps is far beyond any elite runner (Bolt, Kipchoge, El Guerrouj, Bekele, Gebrselassie, Farah, etc.) purely because he dominated his peers in a way that none of them could ever replicate. Hell, he showed up at the Olympics at 15. The argument against this of course is that swimming has much shallower competition. Shallow enough that a 15-year-old could reasonably compare to professionals in the early 2000s. The same goes for running in the 1960s-70s.

Using "performance against competition" as a metric is pretty much admitting that Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete to ever live. And by a massive margin at that.

Comparison of times is outright less biased by far. The difference in times is caused by a number of known factors, including shoes, surface, and advances is training/recovery knowledge and technology. It's nothing on the scale of an entire continent not yet participating widely in the sport, or athletes being forced to balance training with 40-hour work weeks.

So just let’s stick with times.

What time would you say Ryun’s 3:55 (he closed in 26.6), 8:25 two mile and 144.9 (880) junior records would be worth today? He beat Keino the reigning 5000 m world record holder in that 2 mile race, btw.

Are we seriously comparing Colin Sahlman who is marginally best on his own team to Ryun?? Kessler??? Nobody on the list holds a candle to Ryun, including Webb.

Seyta wrote:

Wise Old Man wrote:

So just let’s stick with times.

What time would you say Ryun’s 3:55 (he closed in 26.6), 8:25 two mile and 144.9 (880) junior records would be worth today? He beat Keino the reigning 5000 m world record holder in that 2 mile race, btw.

Are we seriously comparing Colin Sahlman who is marginally best on his own team to Ryun?? Kessler??? Nobody on the list holds a candle to Ryun, including Webb.

1) The latter two are outright not times he ran in high school. I have no idea why you brought them up to begin with.

2) Sahlman is objectively not better than Jim Ryun. I am of the opinion that he most definitely does not belong on a list of Top-5 HS runners.

3) If you can find a reasonable conversion of Ryun's 3:55 on a synthetic track (yes, that race was synthetic, not cinders), then feel free to point it out. Then Jim Ryun can be declared superior to Webb in the mile by a time-standard. I am not well-versed enough in time conversions to know this information.

KitKat bar break wrote:

Seyta wrote:

1) The latter two are outright not times he ran in high school. I have no idea why you brought them up to begin with.

2) Sahlman is objectively not better than Jim Ryun. I am of the opinion that he most definitely does not belong on a list of Top-5 HS runners.

3) If you can find a reasonable conversion of Ryun's 3:55 on a synthetic track (yes, that race was synthetic, not cinders), then feel free to point it out. Then Jim Ryun can be declared superior to Webb in the mile by a time-standard. I am not well-versed enough in time conversions to know this information.

Ryun ran 3:56 on old school cinder in high school. 3:55 on grasstex, which was an asphalt composite track in high school that was a mess . Then set the world record (3:51) on old school cinders.

If you think that's equivalent to modern synthetic, and are going to make that argument, go for it.

The conversion is roughly 1.5% for the track alone. (see: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger?language=en)

Add in modern spikes (1%) and you've got the necessary conversion.

KitKat bar break wrote:

Seyta wrote:

1) The latter two are outright not times he ran in high school. I have no idea why you brought them up to begin with.

2) Sahlman is objectively not better than Jim Ryun. I am of the opinion that he most definitely does not belong on a list of Top-5 HS runners.

3) If you can find a reasonable conversion of Ryun's 3:55 on a synthetic track (yes, that race was synthetic, not cinders), then feel free to point it out. Then Jim Ryun can be declared superior to Webb in the mile by a time-standard. I am not well-versed enough in time conversions to know this information.

Ryun ran 3:56 on old school cinder in high school. 3:55 on grasstex, which was an asphalt composite track in high school that was a mess . Then set the world record (3:51) on old school cinders.

If you think that's equivalent to modern synthetic, and are going to make that argument, go for it.

The conversion is roughly 1.5% for the track alone. (see: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger?language=en)

Add in modern spikes (1%) and you've got the necessary conversion.

Seyta wrote:

Wise Old Man wrote:

ESPN ranked Ryun the greatest American HS athlete ever. Greater than LeBron, Wilt, Kareem, Tiger, etc. Greatest HS athlete ever….all sports.

I am sorry, but the way you present this is completely nonsensical. Someone above posted that old runners are heavily biased towards performances from the past because they need the past to mean something.

In most cases, I would say that that is not true, but in your case, it most definitely is.

Your arguments on this thread have included (in quotes):

--------------------------

1) "He beat Snell head to head for heaven’s sake. That’s like Sahlman lining up and beating Jakob or Tim."

Snell is not an exceptional runner. He was an exceptional runner in an era where most people could not run beyond college. But that is not an exceptional runner. It is nothing like beating Jakob or Tim, who have outright dedicated their entire lives to perfecting their training.

The problem is that back then, high schoolers were still high schoolers, but "professionals" were not actually professionals. High school runners trained for high school level (and in some cases higher level) competitions, just like they do now. The exception is that now, training methods are vastly improved. But that's nothing compared to the difference between professionals in the modern day vs. "professionals" in the 1960s. The "professionals" of the 1960s were good runners who liked the sport enough to balance it with a career. Professionals now outright dedicate their entire lives to running. They don't risk injuries at work, they have optimized workouts, optimized diets, optimized recoveries, everything.

2) "Greatness really is defined by your position relative to your peers at that moment you are competing"

Answer this one question for me. Is Michael Phelps a greater athlete than Ryun, Kipchoge, El Guerrouj, Farah, and Bekele combined?

Because he dominated his peers in a way that none of these runners could ever even dream of. He showed up at the Olympics at 15, when Ryun couldn't even compare to top high schoolers let alone professionals.

If you answer is yes, then your logic is at least consistent.

If your answer is no, then you really need to explain. If you are going to point out the shallow competition and barriers of entry in professional swimming, that's no different from what professional running was in the 1960s and 70s compared to now.

3) "People just don’t realize what was going on in the 1960s. Compared with today Ryun was running on sand with clown shoes on. Ryun transported to today would beat Kessler by 5 sec at least. In HS, 3:30-1 for sure, Career, probably 3:27. Access to Epo, 3:25"

Really? Ryun would go from running a 3:55 mile on an early synthetic track to a 3:29 1500m? In high school? You are proposing something akin to a 9 second time drop.

4) "What time would you say Ryun’s 3:55 (he closed in 26.6), 8:25 two mile and 144.9 (880) junior records would be worth today? He beat Keino the reigning 5000 m world record holder in that 2 mile race, btw."

You have proposed two times that aren't even from high school.

5) "ESPN ranked Ryun the greatest American HS athlete ever. Greater than LeBron, Wilt, Kareem, Tiger, etc. Greatest HS athlete ever….all sports."

???????????

---------------

If you don't see the madness in this, I'm not sure what to tell you. You claim that you can't equate times (which actually have reasonable conversions), but you instead equate based on performance against peers. As if working men who ran for a hobby in the 1960s amateur era are the equivalent of East Africans loading up with EPO and getting paid outrageous sums for performance incentives in the professional era.

Seyta wrote:

KitKat bar break wrote:

Ryun ran 3:56 on old school cinder in high school. 3:55 on grasstex, which was an asphalt composite track in high school that was a mess . Then set the world record (3:51) on old school cinders.

If you think that's equivalent to modern synthetic, and are going to make that argument, go for it.

The conversion is roughly 1.5% for the track alone. (see: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger?language=en)

Add in modern spikes (1%) and you've got the necessary conversion.

1) Jim Ryun never ran 3:56 (I am not sure where you got this at all) in high school. He ran 3:59, 3:58, and 3:55. The first two were on cinders. The last was on a synthetic track.

Now that we've established the track was not cinders, why would you say the Grasstex track was a mess?

This is the race:

Video:www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=_E...

This is a picture of the race:

https://www.kansas.com/latest-news/pnvvof/picture870742/ALTERNATES/FREE_960/kansas150080711_1

This is an article outright describing the track as being new and exceptionally fast (for the time of course):

https://vault.si.com/vault/1965/07/05/fast-teenagers-in-grownup-time

Does that look like a horrible beat up track in any one of these sources?

That being said, let's say there's a 1.5% conversion for the track. Your link states that there's a 1.5% conversion from cinders to a modern synthetic track.

Jim Ryun's 3:55 record is outright not on cinders, so let's take his 3:58. A 1.5% conversion cuts off about 3.5 seconds, which brings him down to 3:54.5, on a modern synthetic track. Even if we take his 3:55, it gets him down to 3:51.5 (except it wasn't actually run on cinders, so the conversion really doesn't apply)

The guy you're defending is claiming that Ryun would run 3:29. Even with both conversions you provided, how on Earth is Ryun running 3:29? Even if we cut off an additional 1% for modern spikes, we're nowhere close to the claimed time.