The list should say greatest male distance runners of all time (or be revised to include female distance runners)
The list should say greatest male distance runners of all time (or be revised to include female distance runners)
Coevett wrote:
Herb Elliott was running 7 seconds faster little more than a decade after the Swedes. That and the rapid improvement in WRs in the 30's and 50's across all events indicates that they were helped by not having to spill their guts fighting for or against nazis.
Track and Field exploded in the 30's thanks to newsreels, the increasingly well organized and promoted Olympic Games, and commercial air travel. WRs were improving rapidly in the 30s, then largely stagnated for obvious reasons in the 40s (aside from the 1500/Mile due to the lucky co-incidence of distance running being strong in Sweden and that country being one of only a handful in the entire world to remain outside of the conflict), then rapidly improved again in the 50's.
You got that far before your reasoning fallaciously collapses. First it's the newsreels and organization, but then during the war obviously that can't remain true. So you migrate to it being a mere coincidence that the two runners who started smashing the records were from the same tiny sample of the world population.
Neither is it any coincidence that amphetamines were first introduced in the late 30's, became widely popular after the war, and were successfully banned by in-comp testing in 1968. Record progressions - across the board - accelerate along this timeline before hitting a brick wall. There is no better PED than the one nature invented for the purpose (adrenaline), except the one that works the same way but lasts longer.
I don't give a barrel of monkey piss about Coe/Ovett and Moscow. You must have me confused with an England-type person like deano or calculo.
Bad Wigins wrote:
You got that far before your reasoning fallaciously collapses. First it's the newsreels and organization, but then during the war obviously that can't remain true. So you migrate to it being a mere coincidence that the two runners who started smashing the records were from the same tiny sample of the world population.
Neither is it any coincidence that amphetamines were first introduced in the late 30's, became widely popular after the war, and were successfully banned by in-comp testing in 1968. Record progressions - across the board - accelerate along this timeline before hitting a brick wall. There is no better PED than the one nature invented for the purpose (adrenaline), except the one that works the same way but lasts longer.
I don't give a barrel of monkey piss about Coe/Ovett and Moscow. You must have me confused with an England-type person like deano or calculo.
Honestly man, do you not think having NO COMPETITION for five years and NOTHING else to do but attempt to lower the world record helped them a little?
Between 1979 and 1981 Coe and Ovett effectively had no competition between 800m and the Mile. So in 79 and 81 in particular all they were aiming for was to break world records - and look how many times they did so.
Between 1940 and 1945 the Swedes literally had no competition because the rest of the world was at war. Maybe they were the best in the world at the time but they had no other way of proving their greatness than completely re-writing the record books.
I'm not denigrating them, they were all-time greats and maybe deserve to be in the top 100. I was just really making a point about Rudolf Harbig, who isn't on the list and obviously should be.
mrom wrote:
Fair points... and getting feedback was the main goal in posting the list, to see how my impressions and analysis compare to the broader consensus.
As for the method, the basic approach was to first see who had won enough big races to prove their competitive ability, then look for fast times and favorable head-to-head match-ups with other top runners. A lot of this data is readily available at sites like
http://www.alltime-athletics.com/, which provides pretty thorough coverage for at least the past 40 years. I spent a lot of time combing through the data, looking at individual races and best times for a given year/decade. There's a bit of a preference for more recent runners, but I think this is fair--I'd like to think that we collectively have gotten better at training and racing over time, and it's fine for the rankings to reflect this.
The 800m runners have been getting the most discussion, so let's use that as an example. I think it's agreed that David Rudisha has established himself as the best pure 800m of all time, so it's natural to rank him very high. After all, we have the best 10,000m runner at #1, the best 1,500m runner at #3, the best marathoner at #5. So #7 felt right--I would certainly rank him higher than a runner like Mo Farah who has been very good across multiple events but not at "greatest ever" level. Wilson Kipketer and Sebastian Coe are probably numbers 2 and 3 as pure 800m runners. In this case, Coe's versatility over other distances gives him an edge, so I placed him first. Peter Snell would be the next in line. From here--I don't know if this is running consensus or not--but it seems to me an easy argument that Joaquim Cruz is the fifth best pure 800m runner ever: he has the 13th fastest 800m time ever recorded (slower than only Rudisha, Kipketer, Coe, Amos), he has an impressive six times on the all-time top 100 list, he won Olympic gold over Coe, who's ranked higher, along with an Olympic silver. Maybe I'm a bit optimistic on Cruz, but in any case that was my line of thinking. And so on down the list.
A similar exercise can be done with the 1,500 runners on the list, the 5,000-10,000 meter runners, the marathon runners, and so forth. For example, the pure marathoners would go (Kipchoge, Kipsang, Kimetto, Wanjiru, Makau, G. Mutai, Bikila, Khannouchi, E. Mutai, Biwott, etc.)--this is based on fast times for the given year and their head-to-head record with their peers. Obviously runners that were successful over many distances would be ranked somewhat higher.
That's the intention. But I'm also very interested in seeing where my analysis might be off, which is why I appreciate the feedback. Based on the response from the forum, it looks like Steve Ovett is a bit too low, probably Rudolf Harbig should be on the list, etc.
You still don't really explain why Aouita is at number 4. He certainly wasn't the greatest in any one event and for half of his career he was a b-runner on the European circuit struggling to crack 1:50 and 3:40. Not to mention the PEDs controversy. Aouita ended with one Olympic Gold in a final in which his main threat was seen as John Walker who was over 30 and had spent the last 7 years getting whipped by Ovett, Coe, and Cram in his best even.
Why is Kipketer greater than Coe over 800m? It took him years to finally break his WR on better tracks and better competition, pacing etc Rushida with two Olympic Golds fair enough, but Kipketer and Coe is at best a toss up. The way the 1500 in Moscow played out meant it was essentially an 800m rematch against Ovett 5 days after the actual event, and to be fair Coe proved that he had choked in the first final and was the better 800m guy. He also was up against Cruz in 84 enjoying one of the best spells of 800m running ever witnessed, and after having 2 years of ill health
Uhhhhhh wrote:
1. Lower Mo, he’s a doper. 2. Raise Lagat, he’s been a top teir runner for longer than anyone. 3. I should be number one on the list. 4. Jager?
Lagat are you joking!
Well done to the op for compiling that top 100
Elliott won a Commonwealth Games title over 800m, hardly ever any pedestal for a claim to GOATness of any kind, but particularly so back in Herb's day.
The PED question is a good one. I decided not to take that into account--it would mainly just ignite a secondary debate that I don't want to get into here. One reason for this choice is that, deep down, we all know it's highly likely that many, perhaps most, the runners on the list have doped. So I have a hard time docking Aouita for that reason while implicitly deciding other runners are clean. I'll leave it to the reader to decide who they think is clean/dirty and adjust accordingly.
I ranked Coe higher than Kipketer on the list, so there's no real disagreement there. For your other question, here's some data to add some perspective to the conversation. This isn't the whole story, but it does give evidence to the claim of Aouita as the dominant runner of the 1980s. (And for me, it doesn't matter per se that Aouita was "versatile". What matters is that he was dominant in what he did.)
10 Fastest 800m before 1990:
1. Coe, 2. Cruz, 3. Koskei (2nd to Cruz), 4. Coe, 5. Cruz, 6. Cruz, 7. Cruz, 8. Cruz, 9. Gray (2nd to Cruz), 10. Gray
10 Fastest 1500m before 1990:
1. Aouita, 2. Cram, 3. Aouita (2nd to Cram), 4. Maree, 5. Coe, 6. Cram, 7. Bile, 8. Aouita, 9. Aouita, 10. Ovett
10 Fastest Miles before 1990:
1. Cram, 2. Aouita, 3. Aouita, 4. Coe, 5. Scott, 6. Gonzalez (2nd to Cram), 7. Cram, 8. Ovett, 9. Coe, 10. Scott
10 Fastest 3000m before 1990:
1. Aouita, 2. Rono, 3. Aouita, 4. Aouita, 5. Moorcroft, 6. Aouita, 7. Aouita, 8. Maree (2nd to Moorcroft) 9. Aouita, 10. Ondieki
10 Fastest 5000m before 1990:
1. Aouita, 2. Aouita, 3. Moorcroft, 4. Aouita, 5. Maree (2nd to Aouita), 6. Ondieki, 7. Aouita, 8. Aouita, 9. Aouita, 10. Rono
Fourthings
Number One: It's weird to say this, I know, but Dennis Kimetto isn't good enough to be that high on that list. YES, he has an amazing marathon time as the world record holder with 2:02:57, but his running pedigree isn't very good when you take out that one race. He's a one hit wonder in my opinion. He's especially not in shape to run another 2:0X after what I saw at Chicago this year.
Number Two: I think we can already put Conseslus Kipruto on this list. He's proven himself to be the next big thing in the steeple. It's like when Gebrselassie gave the mantle to Bekele when Kemboi gave the throne to the steeple to Kipruto.
Number Three: Galen Rupp needs to be a little higher on this list. Call me what you want to, but he's been a top tier runner for a while now and has an American record and two medals, and he's going to get more.
Number Four: Kipchoge must be in the top three
mrom wrote:
The PED question is a good one. I decided not to take that into account--it would mainly just ignite a secondary debate that I don't want to get into here. One reason for this choice is that, deep down, we all know it's highly likely that many, perhaps most, the runners on the list have doped. So I have a hard time docking Aouita for that reason while implicitly deciding other runners are clean. I'll leave it to the reader to decide who they think is clean/dirty and adjust accordingly.
I ranked Coe higher than Kipketer on the list, so there's no real disagreement there. For your other question, here's some data to add some perspective to the conversation. This isn't the whole story, but it does give evidence to the claim of Aouita as the dominant runner of the 1980s. (And for me, it doesn't matter per se that Aouita was "versatile". What matters is that he was dominant in what he did.)
10 Fastest 800m before 1990:
1. Coe, 2. Cruz, 3. Koskei (2nd to Cruz), 4. Coe, 5. Cruz, 6. Cruz, 7. Cruz, 8. Cruz, 9. Gray (2nd to Cruz), 10. Gray
10 Fastest 1500m before 1990:
1. Aouita, 2. Cram, 3. Aouita (2nd to Cram), 4. Maree, 5. Coe, 6. Cram, 7. Bile, 8. Aouita, 9. Aouita, 10. Ovett
10 Fastest Miles before 1990:
1. Cram, 2. Aouita, 3. Aouita, 4. Coe, 5. Scott, 6. Gonzalez (2nd to Cram), 7. Cram, 8. Ovett, 9. Coe, 10. Scott
10 Fastest 3000m before 1990:
1. Aouita, 2. Rono, 3. Aouita, 4. Aouita, 5. Moorcroft, 6. Aouita, 7. Aouita, 8. Maree (2nd to Moorcroft) 9. Aouita, 10. Ondieki
10 Fastest 5000m before 1990:
1. Aouita, 2. Aouita, 3. Moorcroft, 4. Aouita, 5. Maree (2nd to Aouita), 6. Ondieki, 7. Aouita, 8. Aouita, 9. Aouita, 10. Rono
We know for almost certain that Aouita not only doped but that he was a legit science experiment. We also know that most of the African athletes that came after him also doped. We just don't know that guys like Elliott, Snell, Ryun, Walker, Coe, Cram Ovett doped. We have no reason to believe they did other than some imbeciles here will accuse us of racism if we statethe obvious that Third World athletes with far greater financial incentive and from corrupt countries/cultures with little or no testing are more likely to dope.
If you listed the 10 fastest 800, 1000, 1500, Mile times before 1985, Coe would dominate each list. I'm still not getting why Aouita is ahead of Coe. Aouita has said many times that he tried to break the world record in every race he ever ran. He was also fortunate in just about being the only middle or long distance elite athlete of the 70's and 80's never to get injured (hmmm..) until his 30's. He also dodged his contemporaries, most importantly at the major championships.
The 5000 was weak in Aouita's day, that's a fact. Nearly every top 5000m guy in the 80's moved up because it was less competitive than the 1500/Mile.
Aouita was not the 'dominant athlete of the 80's'. He dominated the weak 3000 and 5000, but never dominated the 1500 and Mile. He never won ANY important 1500m or Mile race and finished with one World Championship 1500 bronze and one Olympic 800m bronze. He set a lot of top10 1500/Mile times because Coe and Ovett were earning a lot of money knocking tenths (or even equalling) each other's WRs when they were at their peak and then both got injured/ill. Coe suffered from terrible pacing and Ovett never liked chasing the clock and if he had, he probably would have gone under 3:30 before the 1980s had even begun.
Aouita was only a year younger than Cram (although it appears they were the same age early in their careers,but Aouita later changed his date of birth). When Cram was making the Olympic final, Aouita was struggling to break 1:50/3:40. When Cram was winning the Commonwealth and European Championships and running 1:44/3:32, Aouita was still struggling to break 1:50/3:40 on the European B Circuit. Hardly dominant.
Daniel Komen has the same 1500m PR as Aouita, a faster mile, still owns the WR over 3000m, at nearly 10 seconds faster than Aouita, and his 5000m PR, and former world record, is almost 20 seconds faster than Aouita.
And it's not simply his PRs .... he ran faster than Aouita's 3000m PR six times. He ran faster than Aouita's's 5000m PR ten times. It's simply insane to consider that Aouita was a better distance runner than Daniel Komen. He MIGHT have beaten Komen over 800m. Anything longer and Komen would trounce him.
El G raced Komen over 1500/mile and beat him, barely, but consistently. But he never touched Komen 3000m and didn't come close to times Komen ran multiple times over 5000m. To put El G 8 places ahead of Komen seems odd.
mrom wrote:
1. Joey DeFeo, 2. Joey DeFeo, 3. Joey DeFeo, 4. Joey DeFeo, 5. Joey DeFeo, 6. Joey DeFeo, 7. Joey DeFeo, 8. Joey DeFeo, 9. Joey DeFeo, 10.Joey DeFeo, 11. Joey DeFeo, 12. Joey DeFeo, 13. Joey DeFeo, 14. Joey DeFeo, 15. Joey DeFeo, 16. Joey DeFeo, 17. Joey DeFeo, 18. Joey DeFeo, 19. Joey DeFeo, 20. Joey DeFeo, 21. Joey DeFeo, 22. Joey DeFeo, 23. Joey DeFeo, 24. Joey DeFeo, 25. Joey DeFeo, 26. Joey DeFeo, 27.Joey DeFeo, 28. Joey DeFeo, 29. Joey DeFeo, 30.Joey DeFeo 31. Joey DeFeo, 32. Joey DeFeo, 33. Joey DeFeo, 34. Joey DeFeo, 35. Joey DeFeo, 36. Joey DeFeo, 37. Joey DeFeo 38. Joey DeFeo, 39. Joey DeFeo, 40. Joey DeFeo, 41. Joey DeFeo, 42. Joey DeFeo, 43. Joey DeFeo, 44. Joey DeFeo, 45. Joey DeFeo, 46.Joey DeFeo, 47. Joey DeFeo, 48. Joey DeFeo, 49.Joey DeFeo, 50. Joey DeFeo
Fixed that for you
yyy wrote:
Was Skah clean?
Is the Yeti real?
Kenny Berkeley, Haile Geb, Mo Farah
Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:
yyy wrote:
Was Skah clean?
Is the Yeti real?
So he was Hypothetically clean
Coevett wrote:
Aouita was not the 'dominant athlete of the 80's'. He dominated the weak 3000 and 5000, but never dominated the 1500 and Mile. He never won ANY important 1500m or Mile race and finished with one World Championship 1500 bronze and one Olympic 800m bronze. He set a lot of top10 1500/Mile times because Coe and Ovett were earning a lot of money knocking tenths (or even equalling) each other's WRs when they were at their peak and then both got injured/ill. Coe suffered from terrible pacing and Ovett never liked chasing the clock and if he had, he probably would have gone under 3:30 before the 1980s had even begun.
Aouita was only a year younger than Cram (although it appears they were the same age early in their careers,but Aouita later changed his date of birth). When Cram was making the Olympic final, Aouita was struggling to break 1:50/3:40. When Cram was winning the Commonwealth and European Championships and running 1:44/3:32, Aouita was still struggling to break 1:50/3:40 on the European B Circuit. Hardly dominant.
Look the entire list is a big pile of dog sh1t.
Bikila at 41 WTF? Tadese ahead of Snell, Keino and Viren (yes a blood doper but a lot of others are on the list are too), what utter moronic stupidity. Elliot is way too far down the list. Puttemans ahead of Walker, what a joke or Bayi, Quax was way better than Emil as was Dixon. Lagat is likeable but Yifter accomplished 2 gold medals in dominant fashion (1980). Coe did way more to the WR than Kipketer & Rudisha combined and ran 1k, 1500m/mile as well. Tergat should not be ahead of many others on the list, Morceli should be ahead of him but Morceli is only really on a similar par to Elliot and Ovett. Cram at his peak was better than Aouita over 800m/1500m (though no gold medal to be fair). The list is totally biased by recent marathon stars, but the marathon has benefited by numerous advancements over the last few years (pacing, drafting, hydration, clothing, money, maybe shoes, development of faster courses with no wind and the most obviously a lack of in-competition testing and minimal OOC testing compared with the track). Once most of these shinning stars joined the regular testing pools their 2:02-04 times suddenly became 2:07-12 times. Mutai and Makau ahead of (dirty) Cierpinski. Sihine? Kipketer ahead of Rono? Gammoudi a sea level native went to Mexico City and won (Mike Ryan also was impressive in 1968). Jim Peters revolutionised marathon training. Sir Roger Bannister is the most famous of all runners?? Sir Murray Halberg should be ahead of Jazy and he only had one arm. Young-Cho (1992) that was an epic race. Alround Choge is excellent. Jipcho???
How many on the list are from the epo era (1990-2009)?
Fair enough. I think you've gotten your points across and I'll consider them in the future.
I was curious though, so I repeated the top-10 exercise with "before 1985" as a cutoff. I counted 6 times total for Coe and 5 for Ovett (I did it quickly so I might have missed a time), which doesn't seem to change the overall picture. So even though the year 1990 is an arbitrary cutoff, I think the argument has some merit--it's not simply picking "whatever cutoff year you want to make your favorite athlete look as good as possible".
Fermin Cacho ahead of Ryun? I don't know Cacho's career outside of the Olys, which I think makes the argument against him.
up banister to top 100, say, 98th or so
(he was an ameture runner and full time med student, breaking an arbitrary barrier means nothing but his wr was quite blue collar),
lower mo, up coe,
up the swedes gundar haag and arne anderson to top ~75 at least
webb was great, albiet short-lived,
centro's gold in rio was incredible, might not have super-fast times, but tactics may earn him top 100. or not, you decide
since this is a mens list, caster semyana should be up there in the top 10, if not #1
komen is most def in top 10
it's nice that pre is in the honorable mentions but he was honestly not that good.
well, he was young.
not too sure about meb sneaking in there with the honorable mention
well, he was old.
wtfunny wrote:
Daniel Komen has the same 1500m PR as Aouita, a faster mile, still owns the WR over 3000m, at nearly 10 seconds faster than Aouita, and his 5000m PR, and former world record, is almost 20 seconds faster than Aouita.
And it's not simply his PRs .... he ran faster than Aouita's 3000m PR six times. He ran faster than Aouita's's 5000m PR ten times. It's simply insane to consider that Aouita was a better distance runner than Daniel Komen. He MIGHT have beaten Komen over 800m. Anything longer and Komen would trounce him.
El G raced Komen over 1500/mile and beat him, barely, but consistently. But he never touched Komen 3000m and didn't come close to times Komen ran multiple times over 5000m. To put El G 8 places ahead of Komen seems odd.
Regardless of whether Aouita doped or not, he certainly didn’t have access to the EPO available to the likes of Komen, El G, etc. For me those two were far more likely to have doped. They ran silly times week in week out, at a time when there was no testing for EPO.
In any case, a peak Komen would not have beaten a peak Aouita over 1500m.
But the main reason Aouita should be above Komen in any list is because Aouita won medals at international level over 800, 1500 and 5000m, including an Olympic and World Championship golds. How many gold medals did Komen win? How many number 1 world rankings did Komen accumulate during his career?
Not only did Aouita gain a #1 world ranking over 800, 1500, 5000 and 10000, but he broke world records at 1500, 2000, 3000, 2 Miles and 5000m. Komen broke WR’s at just 2 distances. So, drug accusations aside, Aouita’s overall achievements were far beyond those of Komen IMO.