Top 5 all time waste of talents in T&F?

sanfrany wrote:

Look, you could make the case that Ryun overtrained and may have got burned out in the end. But nobody trained like he did.

Now you're making sense.

The question was not which great athletes could have been better. The question was which great talents wasted their talents. Jim Ryun did NOT waste his talent. End of discussion.

Michael Stember, Gabe Jennings, Obea Moore and Michael Granville have to be the among the biggest wastes of talent in American track over the last 10-15 years.

fall down drunk wrote:

Jim Ryun did NOT waste his talent. End of discussion.

How about damaged his talent?

They were all great athletes. They all won multiple state titles, and most of them national titles as well. Jennings even made an Olympic team.

Why is Ryun exempt from scrutiny while these guys aren\'t?

Tim Danielson.... You know... #3, or was he #2?

Whatever happened to Mark Sylvester?

Intergalactic wrote:

They were all great athletes. They all won multiple state titles, and most of them national titles as well. Jennings even made an Olympic team.

Why is Ryun exempt from scrutiny while these guys aren't?

Because he achieved much much much much more than they did. State titles? That means nothing. Jennings decided that he needed to bike across the Andes instead of train once he'd achieved a touch of pro success (ie he ran when the going got tough). Stember ran an easy 4:04 as a HS junior and never came close to fulfilling the promise that showed and routinely said things about how he doesn't need to train a lot, etc. Obea needs no explanation and neither does Granville.

fall down drunk wrote: Michael Stember, Gabe Jennings, Obea Moore and Michael Granville have to be the among the biggest wastes of talent in American track over the last 10-15 years.

Living in the Past wrote:

fall down drunk wrote:

Jim Ryun did NOT waste his talent. End of discussion.

How about damaged his talent?

Through overtraining? Is that your point? Perhaps. But then again if he hadn't trained the way he did he might not have achieved everything he achieved. Same can be said for Lindgren.

Also, don't forget the influence Ryun had on other runners at the time and how much better he made everyone else. Liquori and Danielson broke 4 in HS right after he did - he paved the way.

Oh, and definitely add Abdi Mohamud to the list. Had he not got into drug dealing after HS he'd have been an Olympian in the very least.

Marc Davis

Marc Davis

Marc Davis

Marc Davis

Marc Davis

JohnnyBax wrote:

Stember and Jennings made an Olympic team.

And they could have done much much more if they were dedicated to doing so. That is the point. It's not about what they did, it's about whether or not they accomplished all they could have with their talent. Stember and Jennings did not, and the reason for their failing to do so is largely their own choices (Jennings: "capoiera will open my hips up, forget about actually training," etc).

The #1 answer is Liz Mueller

fall down drunk wrote:

It's not about what they did, it's about whether or not they accomplished all they could have with their talent.

Exactly. Ryun, like almost all athletes, failed to live up to his potential. I think that he could have run close to 3:45 had he not melted down psychologically. I personally think that that warrants discussion in this thread.

If Ryun's coach hadn't trained him the way he did, Ryun would not have run that fast in high school, but then he probably would have been setting world records his senior year at KU in 1969. Instead, he got beat at the NCAA outdoor champs that year by a freshman from Villanova and then dropped out of the three-mile race. He had easily won the NCAA outdoor mile championship as a sophomore but could not pull it off as a senior (he had mono as a junior).

By the time of the 1969 NCAA championships, Ryun was psychologically and physically stale, and you can trace the origins to the brutal training his coach subjected him to his first three years in high school. He had a different coach his senior year, who basically followed the same system of intervals, intervals, and more intervals. Ryun's previous coach had been hired as head coach KU. And Timmons was ready for Ryun when he arrived as a college freshman. Ryun retired immediatlely upon graduation. And when he came back in 1971, his performances were bizarrely erratic. The same pattern continued into 1972. We don't know which Ryun would have shown up at the 1500 final in Munich. My guess is that he would have gotten a silver medal, as Pekka Vasala had the best 800 time that year and had little difficulty pulling away from Keino in the homestretch.

C'mon people, we've got to make a consensus top 5 here. It's an ambiguous issue, though, with how we define "waste of talent" -- does fulfilling one's potential constitute Olympic success in their prime, or running a very, very fast time? In my opinion, any athlete with a World Record has not totally wasted their talent, so Shaheen, Komen, and Ryun too are exempt. And folks like Stember and Jennings and Ritz at least made the Olympics, so I wouldn't consider them among the very greatest "wastes of talent." But I'm going to be indignant and not give any of my own suggestions.

People who made the Olympics, set World records, or won an NCAA title cannot be waste of talents.

Webb, Sage, Ryun, Komen, are no where close to disappointments.

It is hard to believe neither Stember or Jennings ever made an Olympic or World Championship final.

Obea Moore

Steve Magness

Ryun's career was not a waste, and no one is saying that.

But Ryun was probably capable of 3:45 on a cinder track without a rabbit and without EPO or any other drug. The guy had unbelievable talent.

The difference between running 3:51 at age 19 under an insanely brutal regimen and what Ryun MIGHT have run as a college senior, or at age 24 or 25, with smarter coaching is what was wasted. And even if it's five or six seconds, we can all agree that not running 3:45 is a greater waste than someone else only running 4:10 when they had the natural talent for 3:59.