Do you think Alberto would be competitive with the Kenyans if he was a young runner today???

Comedy Central wrote:You're on drugs...timing is everything in sports. As others have said, Ryun at full health and/or not at altitude would've hammered Keino.

i knew kip well 45y+ ago plus

( or more accurately, me, in short-pants as day job was told to take his "bonus" chicken ( courtesy of jomo ) over to him once weekly so he coud prepare for mexico

chicken, which he immediately gave to his wife to feed her & the kids

he shouda been dq'ed as an amateur, he wasn't supposed to take any payment - a chicken being huge dq offense according to ioc/iaaf rules

regardless, jomo ordered a training camp for 1st time prior to '68 & kenyans did excel - wilson kiprugut ran ridiculous solo race off a suicidal 24.0 & still held on for 1'44.5

he was in high-1'42 shape that day if at sea-level, sensible pace & wabbited from 200 - 400

after years of "figuring", i got these as best times on '70's track with wabbit to bell

- '66 ryun - 1'42-low / 3'28-flat

- '67 ryun - 1'39-high / 3'24-low

- '67 keino - 1'43-high / 3'30

- '68 ryun - 1'42-mid/high / 3'29 - 3'30

- '68 keino - 1'43-mid / 3'26 - mid

rupp-certified saladbar wrote:

Keino absolutely murdered Ryun, just days after taking silver in a near dead-heat in the 5000.

Ryun actually fell FURTHER behind in the last lap.

Comprehensive devastation. Rudisha-esque.

Critical Thinking wrote:

Wow, yeah, with chops like that he should have taken a shot at Ryun's world record.

Wow, yeah, with chops like Ryun's he should have taken a shot at racing Keino head to head in the Olympic Games.

...

Oh, he did? I barely noticed in that video. Don't think Keino did, either.

rupp-certified saladbar wrote:

US marathoners, with the exception of Meb and occasionally Hall (when he races), simply do not race to win. Salazar did. (Although he was racing far, far, far weaker competition.)

Hardloper wrote:

I see no evidence that Salazar had a different attitude than today's runners. He was simply way more fit relative to his competition. He said he was confident he would beat Dick Beardsley because he had better speed, indicating he didn't think he'd come close to blowing up in that race (although it is incredible how close Dick made it). We'll never know how he would react to a field of 2:03-2:05 runners because it never happened.

That is exactly what I'm saying. I think we totally agree.

Salazar appeared to race pretty fearlessly.

But it's a lot easier to be "fearless" against your peers than against guys five minutes fitter than you, which is what we'd be asking of Ritz if we told him to go out with Kimetto and company.

Salazar's era in the marathon was strong for America, but completely weak globally.

ventolin^3 wrote:

that is the dumbest comment posted here in years

keino, a "2nd tierer" who broke the 5k wr & smashed the 3k from 7'46 to 7'39 & off just 1500 training

I dunno. Your comment here seems dumb too. A 7:39 3k is not even a 2nd tier time. It might even be a 3rd tier time. Your using the fact that it was a record to inflate the performance. But it wasn't a good performance. I think Keino was great but this isn't the best supportive evidence of that.

ugf wrote:I dunno. Your comment here seems dumb too. A 7:39 3k is not even a 2nd tier time. It might even be a 3rd tier time. Your using the fact that it was a record to inflate the performance. But it wasn't a good performance. I think Keino was great but this isn't the best supportive evidence of that

eh ???

as far as i know it was pretty much solo on dirt

- 1s/lap for dirt -> synthetic -> 7.5s lost

- no wabbit to 2k -> 1s/lap for drafting -> 5s lost

- never seen the splits, but maybe lost coupla secs for uneven pace

7'39.6 - ( 7.5 + 5 + 2 ) ->

7'25.1

that's pretty damn good for a 1500 guy running 3k off 1500 training...

Didn't Ryun set one of his world records on a cinder track? Cinder tracks they say is one second slower than tartan.

It's factually wrong to say Alberto could not "hang with" Rono or any other Kenyan. In the Spring of 1982 at Hayward field, Salazar arranged an invitational 10,000 following a U of O dual meet and he invited not only Rono, but Rudolpho Gomez and every worlld class athlete he could find. Rono won the race in right around 27:30, no more than a step ahead of Salazar. The WR at the time was around 27:22. Kenny Moore wrote it was the greatest 10,000 ever contested, and the race was held in the rain.

Really, these questions are pointless. Could Paavlo Nurmi have competed against he Kenyans?Who knows? It was another time and place. Hicham El G pretty much said the same thing when he paid a fitting tribute to the great accomplishment of Sir Roger Bannister. I am a month away from turning 60. I greatly admire the distance runners of this era: Kenyans, Ethiopians, North Africans, and a few Americans, and Japanese as well. But don't sell the athletes of my era short. Salazar's career was brief but extraordinary.

The question is could Lasse Viren win 4 gold medals and set 3 world records.

He'd have to race a bit less, and have a strategy to deal with kickers. But he would be up there. Certainly he could have trained more to leg speed, but I think there were limits there.

In a 10,000 meter track race, it might come down to either doing Vladimir Kuts style surges, or simply wait for the 3K mark and then go balls out. Or pull a Ngugi.

Alberto was one of the few runners I can think of would would have had the guts and determination to pull a stunt like Ngugi did in the '88 Olympic 5000.

rupp-certified saladbar wrote:

Wow, yeah, with chops like Ryun's he should have taken a shot at racing Keino head to head in the Olympic Games.

...

Oh, he did? I barely noticed in that video. Don't think Keino did, either.

moron

the olympics is ONE race

what part of that does your tiny pea brain not comprehend

imbecile

bork ang blorg wrote:

Comedy Central wrote:

You're on drugs...timing is everything in sports. As others have said, Ryun at full health and/or not at altitude would've hammered Keino.

So many of you racist hateful letsrunners are so stupid. Inbreeding no doubt, or probably your mom crossbred with a simian of some type, that would explain it.

Keino held world records at 3000 m and 5000 m well be for the 68 Olympics and went on to win 4 Olympic medals, to Ryun's single silver. Ryun was a great. So was Keino. Get over Mexico City already.

Irrelevant since the race was over 1500m, where Ryun was superior to Keino.

Hardloper wrote:

Gee, I wonder how Ryun broke 5 world records and AlSal won 4 major marathons if they couldn't compete with the Kenyans?

Here are the results from the 1980 New York City Marathon:

Athlete M/F Pace

1 Alberto Salazar 2:09:41

2 RODOLFO GOMEZ 2:10:13

3 John Graham 2:11:46

4 JEFFERY WELLS 2:11:59

5 WILLIAM RODGERS 2:13:20

6 INGE SIMONSEN 2:13:28

7 TREVOR WRIGHT 2:13:30

8 RYSZARD MARCZAK 2:13:45

9 DICK BEARDSLEY 2:13:55

10 FRANK RICHARDSON 2:14:13

11 CHRISTOHE GARFORTH 2:14:28

12 RICARDO ORTEGA 2:14:44

13 OLVIND DAHL 2:15:06

14 MICHELANGELO ARENA 2:15:16

15 EMMANUEL NDIEMANDOI 2:15:46

16 JAIME WHITE 2:16:38

17 FERENC SZEKERES 2:17:18

18 KEVIN MCCAREY 2:17:20

19 ROY KULIKOWSKI 2:17:50

20 NORMAN WILSON 2:17:58

How many of those are Kenyan? or Ethiopian for that matter?

Admittedly I was 7 at the time, so I don't know exactly all about it, but given the fact running was still largely amateur at the time and that Kenya had boycotted the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, there weren't many Kenyan marathoners if any.

I'd love to know what the Kenyan national marathon record was in 1980.

Kenyans had better things to do than spend their time training for a 26.2 mile race, when they couldn't even go to the Olympics. They were trying to get by and working on that.

I remember even all the way up to the time I was in college, Kenyans were viewed as not good at the marathon but that was largely because many weren't training for it. A kenyan had never won boston until 1991 and they've lost only 4 since.

rupp-certified saladbar wrote:

Four years later, Keino took silver in the Munich 1500 and gold in the steeple. But I guess it was just the Mexico City altitude that helped ol' "second-tier Keino" win in 1968, right?

Moron.

I guess he just didn't have what it takes to hang with Pekka Vasala.

Rojo has it right.

In Salazar's days, the marathon was a long-distance race without East Africans.

aka Like the Special Olympics or a Master's or women-only race. Some were pretty damn good. But it was not the real deal.

(As I've stated on the boards before) I was at the 10,000 track race in April '82 in Eugene that John O'Donnell mentions.

Rono 27:29.9, Salazar 27:30.

If I remember correctly, Al kicked hard with 600 to go. Maybe he got a tiny gap for a bit. Rono took the lead with 200 to go.

Later that summer Al pulled Rono to a very fast 5000, and indeed beat him in a 10,000 where Alberto was second (to an Italian I think) and Rono 4th, this is where Al's PR of about 27:25 comes from. I recall reading in the Register Guard, or maybe T&FN, that Al was super pumped to finally beat Henry Rono (even if he got 2nd.)

So if he's with the best Kenyan then, he would be now, but heck isn't it really apples and oranges? Different era. Indeed I respect the best of any era.

ventolin^3 wrote:

ugf wrote:I dunno. Your comment here seems dumb too. A 7:39 3k is not even a 2nd tier time. It might even be a 3rd tier time. Your using the fact that it was a record to inflate the performance. But it wasn't a good performance. I think Keino was great but this isn't the best supportive evidence of that

eh ???

as far as i know it was pretty much solo on dirt

- 1s/lap for dirt -> synthetic -> 7.5s lost

- no wabbit to 2k -> 1s/lap for drafting -> 5s lost

- never seen the splits, but maybe lost coupla secs for uneven pace

7'39.6 - ( 7.5 + 5 + 2 ) ->

7'25.1

that's pretty damn good for a 1500 guy running 3k off 1500 training...

Keino's splits were 59.5, 62.0, 62.5, 61.0, 62.0, 63.0, 60.1, 29.4 (3:49.5, 3:50.0). He led from the first lap, and broke the old world record by 6.4 seconds.

I've been one of the more vocal supporters of Keino's legacy on this site, but I don't accept the various "conversions" I've seen (here and elsewhere) that purport to adjust his times to reflect altitude, absence of pacers, uneven pace, poor running surface, and so on. I do believe, however, that Keino's performances are largely underappreciated, especially by Americans who (like me) were big fans of Jim Ryun. Keino's performance in the Mexico City 1500 final remains one of the outstanding performances in the history of middle-distance running, and some of his relatively unknown performances in Kenya were, in my view, among the best of his era. Moreover, the length and breadth of his world-class career, beginning at a relatively advanced age (he ran his first sub-four mile in 1965 when he was already 25 years old), were rather remarkable, as was his racing frequency (he often ran multiple world-class performances in a single meet or back-to-back races at different venues with just enough time to travel from one competition to the next).

It's unfortunate that so much of the discussion about Kip Keino seems to end up about whether Jim Ryun could have done this or that if he had raced at a different altitude, or if he hadn't gotten mono a year before a race, or if someone else hadn't run so fast early in a race, or if he hadn't tripped in a heat (an incident that is often blamed on the guy that Ryun crashed into), or if he didn't have hay fever, or if he hadn't had a part-time job while he was in school, or if there hadn't been some other reason for various disappointments in Ryun's career. Kip Keino's career was so much more than a few races with Jim Ryun. Keino is one of the giants in the history of this sport, and properly recognized as such in Kenya, where it's not easy to become a running legend.

Hardloper wrote:

xenonscreams wrote:

I'm going to go ahead and say yes, he would be, because he had what I think a lot of Americans lack (the will to focus solely on running to the exclusion of literally everything else and the balls to risk totally falling apart to win a race).

Huh? Don't we have tons of guys who do that? Didn't Ritz and Teg both blow up last marathon? You've raced a marathon, you surely know you can't just "gut" your way to another 2 minutes?

Forget what Salazar would do on today's training, I want to see how much better today's guys would do in the 1980's. Aside from Hall we were better time-wise AND place-wise.

Road shoes are a lot faster than they were in the 80s. Back then all they were was a thin layer which wasn't great for shock absorption. Now, shoes are being designed to absorb the impact without sacrificing speed. This helps a lot in the marathon, which WR went down very considerably since the 80s.

As for the Track, I would have to say that the spikes of today are also helping a lot more than they were in the 80s. Combine this with faster tracks and the athletes should be a lot faster today.

RunWild wrote:

Road shoes are a lot faster than they were in the 80s. Back then all they were was a thin layer which wasn't great for shock absorption. Now, shoes are being designed to absorb the impact without sacrificing speed.

Running shoes were the best and fastest in the late 1970's just before the second annual shoe ratings came out. Then the shoes were destroyed in the name of hype and marketing.

The best road shoes are light, relatively thin, and provide good PROTECTION from the road. There is no need for shock absorption, and the more there is, the slower the speed.

Biology Degree wrote:

Id like to see some of the guys from the 70's and 80's in Rupps shoes.

Do you mean Rupps shoe's?