"Rupp has yet to accomplish...."
"Rupp has yet to accomplish...."
not so fast my friend wrote:
Salazar, Meb, Hall, Abdi, Webb, KK, BK
have never finished 4th in an OLY running event! Hence, not better than Pre. Of course they have run faster, due to many advances in training theory, technology (tracks, shoes), nutrition, etc, but that doesn't make them better.
You are right except Meb finished 2nd.
Kennedy finished 5th--not bad.
Pre obviously didnt reach his potential so its hard to compare him to all these dudes. he prolly would have won a gold medal for all we know.
If Teg, Webb, and Hall don't beat Rupp to it.Lagat and Meb already have. Pre didn't die that young.
nc runner wrote:
dave #2 wrote:I know most people (hs kids) overrate Pre, but you cannot underrate him as well. He was dominant for his short career. Its like comparing Webb to Ryun with Rupp to Pre. Webb has run faster but is he ever 'better' than Ryun?
well said. people are so quick to underrate Pre simply because they feel they need to counterbalance all the people who elevate Pre to God-like status. Pre was one of the best American distance runners ever.
He wasn't THE best, and he struggled internationally, but for crying out loud don't act as if he was of no significance just because you're annoyed by Pre lovers.
As things stand currently, Rupp has yet accomplish was Pre did. But assuming Rupp does not also die young, he may surpass Pre's accomplishments.
He may be "faster" in terms of time, but he doesn't have the intestinal fortitude that prefontaine had. Once Rupp starts running at the front of the pack if not leading the race the whole time, and busting his ass, then he may come somewhere close to pre status, until then he's just highly trained athlete who has had access to state of the art equipment his whole life [underwater treadmill in high school?!? come on.]
I must be hard to be gouch. #2 in the camp and 15yrs older. Tough on the wife too with Shalane being #1. Her comment on running 30 sec slower for 5000 was she was training for the 10,000. Hello!!! If Shalane ran a 10,000 she could easily run 30:30. I thought the flocast interview was amusing lol, Shalane isn't making any runs to DQ...
MtnDewRocks wrote:
Pre ran a relatively solo 27:43? effort when the World Record was what, 27:30? That'd be like Galen running 26:30 last weekend.
Plus, simply based on b@d@ssness, Pre takes the cake.
Running 27:43, while impressive, is not "like" running 26:30. No matter how fast Tergat, Geb, Bekele and company run, that doesn't make it any easier for Rupp to circle the track at sub-64s per lap than it would have been for Pre. Yes, shoes and track surfaces are better these days -- but not a minute better. Not even close.
Personally, if a genie in a bottle offered to make it magically impossible for anyone to run faster than 27:30 these days, but in exchange I would have to run in crappy canvas shoes on a cinder track, I'd take the deal in a heartbeat -- and my world ranking would go way, way up.
Of course, if we're just doing the comparison based on b@d@ssness, then that's a different story. I don't really know how that converts across decades.
In a lot of ways Prefontaine helped make it possible for Galen to do what he is doing now. Just as Dellinger helped make it possible for Pre to do his thing. Each gave to the next generation and would probably blanch at the comparisons.
It's a good time to be a Duck again!
master of obvious... wrote:
Pre obviously didnt reach his potential so its hard to compare him to all these dudes. he prolly would have won a gold medal for all we know.
Let's see, Prefontaine lowered his 5,000 PR from 13:22 at the age of 21 to 13:21 at the age of 23. In that same period, he lowerd his 2 mile PR from 8:19 to 8:18 and his 3,000 PR from 7:44 to 7:42. Maybe he would have run 13:20 by the time he was 25!
after the olympics he was kind of crapped out and didn't train very hard for a couple year period. he was basically biding his time until montreal and that explains his lack of improvement. hell, according to his biography, he was one step away from quitting entirely.
math teacher wrote:
6th is worst than 4th
Not in that race. Kennedy held his own against a much much better field, regardless of time difference.
Rupp is not consistent.
at least he doesnt smoke weed from my tribe, like me.
now I know when you passed me I smell some good shit.
eritrean wrote:
eritrea won silver not you guys.
Meb was raised in America. America made him what he is.
DaveBedfordwannabe wrote:
Let's see, Prefontaine lowered his 5,000 PR from 13:22 at the age of 21 to 13:21 at the age of 23. In that same period, he lowerd his 2 mile PR from 8:19 to 8:18 and his 3,000 PR from 7:44 to 7:42. Maybe he would have run 13:20 by the time he was 25!
Improvement isn't always linear. Except for a good percentage of those using drugs.
There are two things that should be addressed here:
1). Just because Pre's PR didn't come down significantly from age 21 - 23 (which may or may not have been due to the fact that he was bummed and not training hard), doesn't mean his maturity as a competitor wouldn't have improved going in to Montreal. Even if his 5000m PR going into the Montreal Olympics was only 3-4 seconds faster than it was in Munich, surely his maturity and ability to strategize would have been better developed and he would have been a legitimate threat for gold.
2). People always talk about how times have improved due to better shoes, track surfaces, and training methods. But that's not the whole picture. If a Prefontaine clone was around today with the same shoes, training methods, and even track surfaces, I propose that he would still run faster than he did in the 70's. Why? Because he wouldn't be beating the snot out of everyone in the United States. He would step up his game and run faster out of necessity. It's a mental thing. He wasn't able to at the Olympics but that was because he wasn't used to that scene. If he was the underdog on a regular basis, he would have been a bigger threat. For example, I was the fastest hurdler in my conference in high school. I beat the crap out of everyone in almost every meet. When I went to states, I was a small fish in a big pond and never made the finals. I'm positive that if I had run in a more competitive conference on a REGULAR BASIS, I would have had much quicker PRs and would been a threat at states.
wow Nike really sold you a bill of goods
Jim Ryun ran alot faster after he turned 19 - not.
Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda,
Give props to Olympic medalists - Mills, Meb, and Lagat. And two time WR setter KK.
13:57 5k wrote:
Improvement isn't always linear. Except for a good percentage of those using drugs.[/quote]
You're right, improvement is not linear. It slows as you get older.
nc runner wrote:
Just because Pre's PR didn't come down significantly from age 21 - 23 doesn't mean his maturity as a competitor wouldn't have improved going in to Montreal. Even if his 5000m PR going into the Montreal Olympics was only 3-4 seconds faster than it was in Munich, surely his maturity and ability to strategize would have been better developed and he would have been a legitimate threat for gold.
The only problem is that maturity and strategy wouldn't have overcome the fact that the bronze medalist had a PR of 13:13. These guys were out of Prefontaine's league. The fourth place finisher, Rod Dixon, beat Prefontaine in a two mile in 1973 by four seconds, and this was in Prefontaine's best ever international performance (when he ran 8:18).
Prefontaine would have done well to finish fifth in the Montreal 5,000. (And what if Yifter's country hadn't boycotted?)
Or maybe he thought he could just take it easy between Olympic years and then kick Viren's ass.