Harry Wilson believed that Steve Ovett could run 1:40 800m.

This thread is pretty much a cut n paste of the first 10 years of LR.

No, it is not like saying Coe could have run 1:39. Coe ran very very close to his potential, in a time trial race made for him with great pacing, no competition and the mindset to break the world record. Steve Ovett never had a race like this - we can only speculate why. Potentially a combination of how out of reach the 1:41.73 was and his own personality as he was never into time trials. He was running world records at the 1,500 / Mile while waving at the crowd before the race was over, this is something Coe would never do. Without making any judgement call, he was just a different personality, clearly winning was more important than setting world records.

Sorry but the comparison with Juantorena doesn't make sense either, he was primarily a 400m runner that moved to the 800m. Ovett was primarily a 1,500 / Miler that had supreme speed and that's why people speculate how much faster he could have run for the 800m.
One has to look at the evidence. 2 seconds is a lot at this level for the 800m, yes, but when you look at his credentials, raw speed and how he actually ran some of his finest races, 1:42.5 is very very reasonable for him. Seriously, he ran his 1:44.09 after a 49.7-49.8 first lap, you can't possibly believe this was his optimal best for the distance.

I don't understand your argument. Of course you can infer. One can never know for sure because it is not an exact science, but it is totally possible to make a reasonable argument to speculate how much faster this or that runner could have run with better pacing / mindset / conditions.

Your argument is also flawed because you're taking the conditions of an actual 800m race forgetting that in most cases a very fast time as the one we are speculating is achieved in a time trial race, like it was the case for Coe's 1:41.73. In those races there's not such a decision like the one you refer to; 500m is about as much as your pace maker will go, and after that you are running alone "surviving" in the race. There's not much thinking that goes along with it, you basically follow the pacer and then hold on as much as you can running alone. You don't even need to worry about winning as the race is made up for you.

Peter Elliott ran 1:42.97 for the 800m. With all due respect to Elliott, a Olympic silver medalist in the 1,500m and WCH silver medalist in the 800m, but it is clear between him and Ovett who was the superior athlete.

In fact in every distance from 400m to 3,000m Steve Ovett was faster (you can include the 200m and the 5,000m as well, I don't have records for Elliott running these distances but I doubt it would be faster than 21.7 and 13:20). The only exception is the 800m -- so how come Ovett couldn't at least have run faster than 1:42.97, this doesn't make any sense.

I've read his book a long time ago and don't recall exactly the passage, but there's a chapter where he mentions he believed he was in 3:28 (or 3:27, I don't recall) shape for the 1,500m if he had actually tried a time trial race.

here are other facts about this amazing athlete:

~11.8 final 100m to win the 1977 World Cup, and this was 2 weeks ago he beat the British Marathon Champion in a half-marathon he jogged in 65:38

~ his 7:41 3,000m also in 1977 is a fine race often forgotten.

~ in 1978 he won a Mile race in Crystal Palace in 3:57 where he closed in 24.4 whilst waving at the crowd.

~ for the european champ in 78 the same champ that he ran 1:44.09 for 800m, he won the 1,500m in 3:35 with a 24.8 final 200m split

~in 78 a world's best at 2 miles beating Henry Rono in the process with a 8:13 finish and a 55.8 final lap.

~ in 1980 53.8 last lap for his 3:31.36 race in Koblenz

He was way past his prime when he ran his 3:30.77 World Record ('83)

Few remember but he also ran a 10km road race that he finished in 28:16

He is one of the most talented runners ever with a supreme range - how many runners you know can run 21.7 for the 200m and "jog" a half-marathon in 65 minutes, beating the National Marathon Champion in the process?

As a stated in my first post, claiming that Ovett couldn't have run significantly faster than 1:44.09 in the 800m can only be due to a lack of knowledge of his career and races.

Of course the suggested 1:40 is a stretch, but 1:42.5 was very realistic, in my opinion his true potential over the distance in a time trial race, with perfect pacing and at his prime, would be around 1:42 flat. Let's say 1:42.09 to make it more "beautiful" and precisely 2 seconds than his PB actually is.

with ovett's training there is no way to run 140, this isn't the point.

the point is if he trained for the 800, he would be doing 400m races and large volumes of 48 to 51 second pace specific work.

the mile is 55 to 56 second work.

BIG difference.

nice points, Ovett has a lot more jaw dropping performances in youth, and cross country "off" the radar. expecting people to remember isn't sensible unless you are a scholar in it.

Regarding Peter Elliot, I don't like to throw negatives to greats, but so and so wasn't as good as so and so.

Peter Elliot worked full time as a joiner in a steel foundry, though how true that really is, no idea.

that said

Elliot at peak was surely set to break the world record in the mile, so said Sir. John Walker, who finished 2 to 5 place normally in his second carear after montreal, when he had calf operations, and wasn't the same but good for sub 350 at old age, due to better races ....

Which means Walker had Elliot in 346 mile shape. at a time when Walker ran 349 himself with Scott, who ran 347, and should have run 346, starting late his charge....

regarding spectacular finishes

24x is wonderbar but all top 1500 guys can do that with gas in the tank

the 11x, that is special

in training, at an early age i could run 30 x 100m in 12x to 13x jog recovery

which is 13 to 14 out of the blocks

so that's not other worldly, the 24x is running start or a 25, still movin...

the 11x is 23 second pace, a different animal

ryans dusseldorf 300, 250m of it is basically 47 quarter speed. or 48 out of the blocks.

that is the gold standard.

not 24x

Everyone has their favorite runners and makes up stories about what they would have done. Ryuns running 3:45, Coe is doing a 1:40, and so on. In the end the guy competed for over a half a decade and never came close. And it wasn’t like he was fooling around when Beyer drilled him in the last 100m.

They all went out too fast for the type of training they were doing in the Euro 800, especially Ovett. He could have run much faster in his career at 800 with specific training but that isn’t what he was up to. Coe was certainly capable of 1:40 point, and Ryun an overabundance of talent but was horribly trained. People generally get caught up in the potential they see.

But it was a thin wind.

I think this is a great post, except for 28:16. Naaah!!!

good to note Ovett in 76, guys that run an OG as teenagers, you can mark them for gold next time or great things.

still, in 76 Walker was Walker, having a semi decent buildup leading to Montreal, he was far and away the best at that point. but one year later with the operations, it was a couple of steps back, though Walker did regain form in 82 commonwealth and had to try hard to mess up an ultra fast finish in the 1500 finals. and LA 1500, he choose or Arch Jelley choose the 5000, which was a mistake, and Jelley is a GOAT coach, but failed to realize that Walker was an aerobic beast but there are others with as good or better engines.

Walker was actually a real miler and neglected 800 speed, he would probably tell you. the 800 at 22years old in 144.9 was run off a lot of distance running, and fumes of speed from teen age years.

but they did all right/

in 76, Walker out sprinted 143 Van Damme in a slow race, crazy he slowed dramatically with the win in hand throwing up his hands, else the margin would be 4-5 M instead of 2.

yep Walker was a great, with some coulda shoulda,

i saw Walker in training in 1977, a 2400m trial, after a build up after surgery, with journeyman Steve McConney pacing to 800m

it was 61 seconds all the way. Walker finished and said "piece of pss".

that guy was magic, later i would meet many others, and there was no majic like Walker.

That was on the road, and the WR at the time was 28:00. He also beat Charlie Spedding in that race, who had won the AAA 10K that summer, and who would win bronze in the LA marathon 9 months later.

He also beat Alberto Cova in a 10K road race.

Harry Wilson said this in an interview with Athletics Weekly in August 1975:

"Well. we have talked about it and I think 1:40 in Montreal is not out of the question. If he concentrated on the 400 he could run under 46 sec... .. .. .. .. I don't see why he shouldn't relax and run two laps in 50 sec."

I don't think anyone could have taken this seriously at the time and history has shown that Wilson was just plain wrong - there have been plenty of 45 sec 400m runners who could also run a world class 1500, and none of them ran 1:40.

If Wilson thought it in 1975, I can't believe he still thought it post-Montreal, otherwise why move up to 1500 in 1977?

FWIW I'm sure Ovett could have run 1:42 low .. .. .but not on the training he did.

He had blazing natural speed. Over 400, he ran 51.6 at age 14, 48.4 aged 16 and 47.5 at 18. In the latter AW reported his splits as 23.6 and 23.9. I suspect Wilson felt the speed would always be there and didn't need to be developed in the way that Coe Snr developed Coe's. I think everyone would agree that Ovett's training was based on much higher volumes that Coe's with less track work and speed work.

When Ovett retired, Mel Watman in AW wrote that he once discussed Ovett's potential with Andy Norman and Brendan Foster. They agreed that had Ovett and Wilson known what the Coes did about training, Ovett would have been unbeatable.

Ovett himself said after he retired that he "always knew Seb was much more talented than me". FWIW, I think he was wrong .. .. .. but I'm biased.

Ovett didn't care only about winning. He went for world records in the 1500 and mile multiple times (and achieved them). You're only assuming that he wasn't running anywhere near his best in the 800. Sub-50 for a first lap in an 800 wasn't off the charts for someone who is claimed to be capable of 1:42 (or even 1:40). It was slower than Coe's first lap when he ran 1:41.73.

You use the argument that Ovett's speed would have enabled him to run 1:42 but you don't accept that argument when applied to Juantorena, who was far faster over 400 (44-low) - and Juantorena was one of the great 800 runners. A world record in an Olympic final (and leading all the way like Rudisha did nearly 40 years later) establishes that. It isn't based on how many times he ran the event.

There isn't any way Ovett could have run 1:42 or he would have shown something near it in his lengthy career. More likely 1:43x. He was primarily a great 1500/miler.

Ryun was "horribly trained" when he was the first teenager to beat 4 mins for the mile (at 17 in 1964) and then set world records for the half mile and mile at 19 and the 1500 (destroying the previous record) and mile at 20? You obviously weren't around in that era to see him do this and you are presuming to judge his performances by today's.

That is irrelevant.

Only to someone who has no understanding of the past. There are many of you here.

Then you can't talk about anything that happened before you were born.
You don't seem to understand technology. You don't understand much at all about anything.