Who is the WORLD'S GREATEST T&F COACH ? Long Beach St's Bobby Kersee ? UCLA's John Smith ? Whittier's Tom Tellez ? or ?

I agree, get them dopers and those highly suspected. If the FBI was put in charge of doping control I wonder who from the list below would be caught

Mark McGwire

Dathan Ritzenhein

Nick Willis

Galen Rupp

Tony Romo

Solinsky

Ryan Hall

Pau Gasol

Lance Armstrong

Jeenny Barringer

Angela Bazzari

Jordan Hassay

Kersee coached Flojo, Gail Devers, Valery Brisco (Hooks), and Jackie Joyner Kersee to 3 OLYMPIC Gold medals....EACH. Add to that, the last TWO OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS in the high hurdles. Devers and Flojo moved away late in their careers, but everybody knows which coach was really responsible.

That's 14 OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS, not counting Allyson Felix (1) Olympic gold but SIX World Championship golds.

These athletes STILL hold 3 WORLD RECORDS.

Tellez was a great coach, and he had possibly the greatest single athlete of all time, But NOBODY can touch Kersee's total record.

Lydiard and Bowerman don't even belong in the comparison. Compared to Kersee, Lydiard is a hobby jogger you got a little bit lucky. The MAJOR LEAGUES here start at about 10 OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALS.

lol...dude--jordan hassay.?? c'mon man---lol. she ain't doping no way

I can't believe John McDonnell has only been mentioned once by the third page...and even then his name was spelled wrong.

the difference being , of course, that Lydiard never recruited anybody. He coached guys who just happened to live near him. Snell(?)-he was just a guy who lived down the block. Easy enough to to re-fine people who are already established stars. Another thing altogether to develop those stars from scratch--Also, lydiard lived in an era where there was a lot of guess work; not too much solid science. He guessed quite a lot correct.

Lydiard was a nice guy. We're talking about the greatest T&F coaches, not the nicest.

Can we check our logic here for a moment?

If Greatest Coach = Greatest # of Olympic Gold Medals, then Greatest Coach = Kersee

However, I, for one, do not agree with the logic of that equation.

Show me coaches who take NCAA walk-ons and send them to the Olympics without the use of juice, and I'll be impressed.

Many Olympic medals are won on juice. US Track elites are full of juice. Don't fool yourself.

Hasay, BTW, is not on juice.

Bobby Kersee? I mean come on. I try to be pretty trusting and optimistic but Flojo?? If youre mentioning her as an example of coaching genius to gold medals than I dont know what to say. Pharmacutical genius maybe.

Aw come on guys, the 3 Greats (JS, BK, TT) stand above all on the world stage. You have to be proud of what they have accomplished. That's who we all idolize. They have led dozens and dozens to medals at the Outdoor Wc, Summer Oh T&F, major thons, & major RRs.

Anyone allowed outside the States?

These all seem to be coaching sprinters. Some longer distance coaches:

Brother Colm O'Connell kick started the 2nd Kenyan running revolution. Right place right time, plenty others were but they made nothing of it. He has something special you can't learn from a manual or from all those training methodologies. One of his knacks is picking a young winner finishing down the field in races, untrained guys with raw talent

George Gandy. Say it quietly but at what age and when did Coe suddenly improve? It was whilst at Loughborough

Home many years on & he's still producing world class athletes (Dobriskey)

There is a saying what makes a great coach - 'A great athlete' and there a lot of coaches made off the back of one top athlete. But he belies that myth

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/leicester/hi/tv_and_radio/newsid_8393000/8393699.stm

Excuse me, but has no one realized that this is Crazy Southern California Guy writing all of this stuff? Come on guys, you can spot him a mile away - it's a very distinctive writing style. Next thing you know people aren't going to recognize Nazi-Zionist Guy. Come on letsrun. You can't argue with trolls.

Hey OP, if you had to designate one specific area of the world the "Track and Field Capitol of the World", what location would you pick?

I think Dave Sullivan is the best EVER!

I want to second Mr. Lo-Fat, as I think he is urging us to consider how we define a "great coach." Can any of us really differentiate between "great college coaches" and "great recruiters"? Seems to me that anyone who has the charisma to lure America's best athletes would have to do a LOT of harm to screw that situation up. Consequently, I would urge us to redefine a "great coach" as someone who achieves much relative to their resources; after all, Mr. Salazar has resources we don't even know exist. He better do a great job!

That said, I would invite us to consider great high school coaches. They, after all, are coaching multiple events, often with very little resources, and lots of kids to manage. So, this requires charisma, careful organizational planning, AND coaching intuition.

My vote is for Marty Holleran of Metuchen, NJ. A Gags disciple, he owns the state record for most consecutive state sectional championships: 17. Along with seven state titles, he had mile relays break 3:20 for eight straight years, along with a 3:12 team that won the national championship in 1997.

And, I will add, this was all done in a quiet, suburban school of 400 kids.

Bob Larson

I wouldn't know who the greatest coach might be. But those whose success is largely the result of drugs should not be honored in any way.

I won't throw any names around. But, the juicers have done more to ruin the sport than anything or anybody else. And now we're being asked to sing their praises? I don't think so.

I forgive them for what they have done. But I won't praise their work - their work sucked.

Alberto Salazar of the Roman Empire

The greatest legitimate coaches of all time have to include John McDonnell, Bill Bowerman, Clyde Hart...but Tellez, Smith and Kersee are questionable candidates that only a "homer" would consider.