Norway has Haaland, Magnus Carlsen, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, Karsten Warholm, Casper Ruud

By federal law in Norway youth sports (12 and younger) can not have competitive races or rankings...then at the age of 13 or 14 they have a very structured development program for those that show potential world-class talent.

Derek Thompson also wrote about their approach in the Atlantic"

"For example, Norway’s youth-sports policies are deliberately egalitarian. The national lottery, which is run by a government-owned company called Norsk Tipping, spends most of its profit on national sports and funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to youth athletic clubs every year. Parents don’t need to shell out thousands to make sure their kids get to play. And play is an operative word: Norwegian leagues value participation over competition so much that clubs with athletes below the age of 13 cannot even publish game scores. Remarkably, teams that release their scores online can face expulsion from the Norwegian confederation of sports.

It might seem like any country’s athletic prowess would atrophy under such socialist and anticompetitive policies. Instead, Norway is an athletic juggernaut. In the last Winter Olympics, the country won 39 medals—the most of any country in the history of the Games and nearly twice as many as the United States. It did so with a smaller population than Minnesota’s."

theatlantic.com

American Meritocracy Is Killing Youth Sports

Derek Thompson

Expensive travel leagues siphon off talented young athletes from well-off families—and leave everyone else behind.

Open link

And revisited it recently in consideration to decline in youth sports in the US in his podcast:

theringer.com

Why Youth Sports in America Are in Decline

Derek Thompson

Derek talks to Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal and Tom Farrey, the executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports and Society Program, to see what’s going on and what we should do

Open link

This thread gets to the very heart of what Arthur Lydiard said - "There are champions everywhere. Every street's got them. All we need to do is train them properly." Lydiard was able to take runners from his very own neighborhood in Auckland, NZ and train them up to become world class runners and Olympic medalists. This included the likes of Bill Baillie, John Davies, Murray Halberg, Barry Magee and Peter Snell. Another wave of Lydiard runners followed including Rod Dixon, John Walker, Dick Quax and Lorraine Moller. An excellent (and free) documentary of his training methods, including amazing footage and commentary by some of his runners listed above, can be found by googling "Golden Hour Lydiard".

You left of Johannes Klaebo.

Ummm, ever heard of Bobby Fischer?

So exactly who are the people above Jakob at this point? Who has the greater cross-section of medals & records/fastest PBs??

Both iden and blummenfelt are currently getting their butt kicked in most competitive triathlons there are -wts

yes ironman they’ve been dominant but not oly distance and down. yee and wilde would both crush them

Like the guy I replied to, I agree he's maybe not even in the top 20 in the greatest of all time discussions at this point. PBs are also necessarily a lesser factor because of better equipment that automatically result in faster times without any difference at all in fitness. He didn't even get a distance double last year. Lots of guys have had a distance double (even a triple) at Worlds or Olympics. I'm also considering World Cross Country.

Not putting them in any order here are 20+ who most on this board would probably agree are higher than him on the GOAT list. I'm likely missing more who probably belong higher than some on this list. Plus, there are a ton of others roughly about the level that Jakob is at this point in his career:

Kenenisa Bekele

Haile Gebrselassie

Hicham El Guerrouj

Mo Farah

Eliud Kipchoge

Lasse Viren

Ezekiel Kemboi

Noureddine Morceli

Emil Zatopek

Miruts Yifter

Peter Snell

Bernard Lagat

Henry Rono

Paavo Nurmi

Vladimir Kuts

Said Aouita

Moses Kiptanui

Carlos Lopes

John Ngugi

Paul Tergat

Timothy Cheruiyot (11-6 record vs Jakob)

Daniel Komen

We Norwegians? Young people more and more fat and so with people in the middle ages. Most young people are not into athletics but soccer. And then suddenly we have two great players, but we are not able to qualify to the Worlds or the European Champs. More people on sickleave than any other country. All the benefits of being a rich country.

When it comes to the outdoors? Declining. Young people coming into military service barely can walk in the woods.

Those great Norwegian athletes now, yes. Fifteen years ago, none. Coincidence? Yes.

Those things often come in waves.

Sweden has had at least 10 top 10 players in tennis in the past (not only Borg, Wilander and Edberg) and now they are non-existent.

Christian Ruud (Casper’s father) was one of the few internationally ranked Norwegian tennis players at the time and peaked at 39.

not even the best from the US

Ah, I see. As I thought just a pure anti-Jakob troll. Can you come back later with a better, more rational list and we'll talk? There's really only a couple of guys vs Jakob up for discussion.

Hahahaha. He had Cheriyout above Jakob. I certainly rank Jakob already above Cheriyout in the 1500, but I see how some haters can argue. In the 1500. What I find funny is that ok, so the mile/15000 is somewhat arguable, what about Jakob vs him in the 2 mile/3000? What about 5000? Are we not talking about the greatest distance runner, not specifically the 1500? When you take distance running as a whole (mid d, 1500-5000), Jakob is another planet vs Cheriyout.

Nope, I said up thread he might be the best in the past two years, and check in a decade or after his career to see where he ranks. Not anti-Jakob, just realistic and having a historical perspective. In 100 years, most running fans would list these guys would ahead of Jakob if his career ended now. There are plenty of guys with his number of major medals and world records. I forgot Kip Keino too. Go ahead, look up their resumes. I also shouldn't have to list 20+ guys to say he shouldn't be in the distance GOAT discussion yet. You'd think I'd only have to list three guys.

Go ahead. Tell us why Jakob ranks above Bekele. Or Gebrselassie. Or El Guerrouj. Who does he rank above that I listed? We'll pull resumes. You might have a case for a handful but he's still not going to break top 15.

Ah, now you're nicely narrowing the list. Bekele, Geb, & El G may be the only ones in the discussion w/Jakob.

So lets see PRs vs Bekele:
1500: Jakob 3:27.95 - Bekele 3:32.35
3000: Jakob 7:24.00 - Bekele 7:25.79
5000: Jakob 12:48.45 - Bekele 12:37.35

ADVANTAGE: Jakob

Medals vs Bekele:
1500: Jakob: 1 GOLD, 1 SILVER - Bekele: 0
5000: Jakob: 1 GOLD - Bekele - 2 GOLD, 2 SILVER

ADVANTAGE: Bekele (but just by one silver)

So as we can see there is an argument that Jakob is better than Bekele. I choose him over Bekele just because I respect the 1500 more.

You are delusional. You'd be outvoted in the forum everyone-other-than-you to 1 on that.

Historically, most track fans have agreed with I'll call the Track & Field News way of ranking athletes. I think it was first: Honors won - basically performances at the biggest meets like Worlds (after they started in 1983 anyway) and Olympics, World XC, etc. ahead of Marathon Majors and Diamond League Final, ahead of Diamond League, ahead of national championship, etc. Next head-to-head results not considering time (for people in the same era). Finally, the sequence of times that they put up. There's some subjectivity because sometimes an amazing WR or NR might bump someone higher in a particular ranking, or maybe the head-to-head results were so definitive, and the person who won Gold at Worlds did nothing at all year.

I used to have a subscription but haven't read T&FN since the '90s. I hear some recent complaints on this board that they sometimes make weird decisions now in their rankings. But I assume that's around the subjective parts of the rankings, not the framework of honors, then head-to-head, then sequence of times that most agree make sense.

Bekele has 9 World or Olympic golds on the track, 11 World XC titles, 2 marathon majors wins, plus a handful of silvers and bronzes. He set 5 world records and would still have the 5,000 and 10,000 WRs if superspikes hadn't been invented.

As you say, top honors Jakob has so far: 2 gold and 1 silver. He has 18 more top-level golds, a couple marathon majors, and 3 world records to catch up.

People count Paavo Nurmi among the greats and he ran 100 years ago. He won 9 Olympic golds across three Olympics. He made a strong impression at those Olympics. Comparatively, Jakob made much less an impression at the last World and Olympics. If his career ended now, 100 years from now, people would still remember Nurmi, but Jakob not so much.

Nah. Most important are medals in world level championships and PBs. That gets the attention and for good reason. XC, marathons...wth?? No one cares about XC. That's complete fringe. Marathon Doesn't belong or do you start including Killian jornet, who's win like 100 golds in ultras. No road race nonsense. Just track. Bekele has won most of his medals due to the 10000 which is not the scope of this discussion it would appear. Bekele can be a long distance great but he's not better than Jakob in mid d. Or just regular "distance"