That shows El G was a true generational athlete. He's not the only one. Look at Bolt. In 2009, when he ran 9.58, the 10th fastest guy that year ran 9.97, nearly 0.4 slower! That's a difference of 3.9%. The two guys tied for 19th ran 10.02, which is a difference of 4.4%.
The sport has a longstanding history of longstanding records set by generational athletes. Just looking at today's men's records for championship events (excluding racewalking), the 1500m record isn't even in the top 5 for longest duration. The top 5 are:
Hammer, 1986
Long jump, 1991
High Jump, 1993
Triple jump, 1995
Javelin, 1996
Before Crouser broke it, the men's shot put record stood for over 30 years.
It's not limited to field events. Here are track records that lasted a long time:
100m - Bolt's record is going on 16 years; it's easy to see this one lasting a lot longer.
200m - Ditto the 100m, although it probably won't last as long as the 100. Before Bolt, Michael Johnson's record lasted 12 years, and Pietro Mennea's record lasted nearly 17 years.
400m - Lee Evans' record lasted a couple months shy of 20 years; Michael Johnson's record lasted nearly 17 years.
800m - Coe's record lasted 16 years; Rudisha's record is pushing 13.
5,000m - Bekele's record lasted over 16 years.
10,000m - Bekele held the record for over 16 years.
Steeplechase - Shaheen's record lasted nearly 19 years. Rono's record lasted over 11 years.
Those field event WRs stood for so long because they were set either in unbelievably rare wind conditions or improved beyond belief tracks. There is no doubt that Powell's long jump was due to the doped up Tokyo track specifically made for sprint records like this one. Still a phenomenal athlete, but not exactly a good comparison to the 1500m.
So if you really look at each running WR you listed, most came from an era with zero testing for EPO for a while. It still doesn't explain how with all the "benefits" runners have now that El Guerrouj was so far ahead and for so many years (nearly 30 now).
Let's take a closer look at those field event record holders:
Randy Barnes in the shot put - He threw 23.12 in Westwood, CA, and then threw 23.10 six days later at a different meet in San Jose. Nobody beat either mark until Crouser. Speaking of Crouser, he now has the top four throws.
Yuriy Sedykh in the hammer - He currently has the top 3 throws, all from different meets.
Mike Powell in the long jump - his record-breaking jump was indeed an outlier for him based on his other performances, but he should get credit for beating Carl Lewis when he did it.
Javier Sotomayor in the high jump - He currently has the best jump (in Spain), second-best jump (in Puerto Rico), and two jumps tied at #3 (one in Spain and another Hungary) on the all-time list.
Jonathan Edwards in the triple jump - He broke the world record three different times, and at one point had 5 of the top 6 jumps in history.
Jan Zelezny in the javelin - He still has 4 of the top 6 throws in history, all from different places.
So, most of those guys backed up their performances at other meets. Like El G, they were generational athletes.
For the track events, my list included records from every decade ranging from the 1960s to the 2010s.
Cyclist Marco Pantani in the late 1990s also went minutes faster in the climbs up to the iconic mountain tops of Alpe D’Huez and Mont Ventoux than Pogacar of Vingegaard or any current cyclist. They probably don’t even try to break these records.
These injuries too are not a good sign. Running after several bunnies lead to not catch anyone of them. Last year when I saw him running that half marathon, I almost predicted at that time he will be going to hurt himself.
Given that even a sample of 10 is relatively small, I decided to check how this holds up when you look at the top performances from the top 100 athletes of all time (). It pretty much tells the same answer.
Here's how many of the top 100 athletes set their PR at each age:
18: 3
19: 5
20: 3
21: 7
22: 5
23: 10
24: 14
25: 16
26: 11
27: 6
28: 8
29: 5
30: 3
31: 1
32: 1
33: 1
34: 1
So, 23-26 is the golden spot. Based on this, I'd say Jakob still has a window of maybe ~2 years. Beyond that, it will really depend on staying perfectly healthy and an increasing amount of luck.
Interestingly, the mean age for the top 100 5,000m athletes is slightly younger at 24.1 (+- 4.1 s.d.) with a median of 23.5, and for the 10,000m it is even younger at 23.7 (+- 3.5 s.d.) with a median of 24). Not the way I would expect that trend to go. Btw, when I removed Kenyans from the 1500 list (historically known for questionable ages), the mean and median were relatively unchanged at 25.4 (+- 2.9 s.d.) and 25.
For the marathon, it's 27.9 (+- 4.6 s.d.) and a median of 27, but notably for the marathon, Kipchoge and Bekele (two of the top 3 to ever do it) ran their fastest marathons at 37 y/o. In fact, 4 of the top 6 marathoners of all time set their PRs at 32 y/o or later, and the mean age of the top 10 is 29.7 with Kiptum being the only one under 25 (who was still very much on an upward trajectory).
ya
i think the sprints follow exactly the same
maybe hurdles are slightly older, there is a technical aspect that might play. as some guys might take up hurdles late.
I think it's not impossible, but that you are correct his window is closing. This summer was probably his best chance until Achilles injury. And a lot of talent catching up to him. If I made odds I would say
Jakob breaks 1500/mile WR before anyone else (odds pre-achilles)
50%
However now that the injury happened the odds in my mind are
Jakob breaks 1500/mile WR before anyone else
20%
Jakob does break 3:26.00/3:43.13, but someone else beats him to it, and he doesn't get WR
12%
Someone else beats Jakob to WRs, but he goes under their WRs
Here is another interesting set of numbers regarding that mid to late 90's era and the 1500m WR.
Let's start for arguments sake at Jim Ryuns 3.33.1 WR set in 1967 - this feels like a point where the event was maturing, the depth of talent greater and was becoming truly global etc. Arbitrary point but we need one that isn't 1912 when the first official WR was 3.55.8
These are the increments by which the WR was broken since then.
The final two times in bold are of course the 1995 run of Morceli where he took his own record of 3.28.86 from 1992 down to 3.27.37 and El G in 1998 where he obliterated his previous lifetime best by nearly 3 full seconds (2.91) taking it down to 3.26.00 (or 3.26.0 depending on what you believe).
Either way this is also a very odd way for a WR progression to be - especially as 3.26.00 still stands as the current pinnacle performance ever achieved by a human being. Logically as we get to these sorts of performance levels the gaps or %'age by which these records are broken should be shortening - not going the other way. Put it this way, I doubt that the next time the 1500m WR is being broken, over a second is coming off it right? We can have all the aeronodes, superspikes, bicarb, headbands, wavelight, pace formations, supertracks we want - it's not happening. So why did/how could it happen in the mid to late 90's?
Even comparing to other MD Olympic distance events (sorry we can't include the 2000,3000 or 2 mile they just are not/have not been run enough to give a fair comparative number) these are the last 3 WR's over 800, 1500, 5000 and 10000m in terms of percentage improvement from the record they broke.
800m - 0.10%, 0.08%, 0.02%
1500m - 0.66%, 0.71%, 0.29%. < !!!!!
5000m - 0.26%*, 0.26%, 0.05%
10000m - 0.39%*, 0.16%, 0.15%
*Cheptegeis WR's with wavelight.
And yet still the 1500m is by far the biggest statistical outlier we have (and please, don't throw Usain Bolts performances in there because that's even worse/more comical than this 1500m situation).
Hey, I loved this era as much as anyone. I found my old running diary from 1998 at home a few months ago it had a picture of EL G running that WR cut out and pasted on the cover - but as I said earlier at some point wishful thinking needs to step aside for logical and rational thinking. This era was too good to be true.
Those numbers are another good way of demonstrating that El G was a generational athlete.
How about Sebastian Coe? He lowered the 800m WR from 1:43.4 to 1:42.33, an improvement of 1.03%. Then Coe dropped it even further to 1:41.73, a total improvement of 1.67 sec and 1.62% over Juantorena's old record.
Then there's this: Coe is still his national record holder and tied for 8th in the world on the all-time list! That's incredible when we consider he'll be turning 70 next year.
Coe is special as someone born before 1960 still appearing so high on the world all-time list today. Here are the current highest standing men born before 1960 on the all-time list in the other championship track events, along with the second-highest in the 800m after Coe:
100m: Jim Hines, 116th
200m: Pietro Mennea, 19th
400m: Lee Evans, 20th
800m: Alberto Juantorena, 93rd
1500m: Saïd Aouita, 36th
5k: Saïd Aouita, 122nd
10k: Fernando Mamede, 167th
110h: Renaldo Nehemiah, 14th
400h: Edwin Moses, 6th
steeple: Peter Koech, 38th
That's an average standing of 63rd, with a median of 37th. Coe is still 8th! Only Edwin Moses is still with him in the top 10, and we know how special Moses was in his event.
Coe and El G were both generational athletes.
This post was edited 7 minutes after it was posted.
Lagat still ran 3:27.40 in June 2004 after having had an A sample test positive and get back a negative B sample. So, it's not clear to me that EPO made that much a difference, as surely he was not doping after that doping positive, as he never tested positive again. But he ran 3:26.3 behind El G prior to testing positive. If he was any better on EPO (if he ever was on it), it wasn't much.
Those numbers are another good way of demonstrating that El G was a generational athlete.
How about Sebastian Coe? He lowered the 800m WR from 1:43.4 to 1:42.33, an improvement of 1.03%. Then Coe dropped it even further to 1:41.73, a total improvement of 1.67 sec and 1.62% over Juantorena's old record.
Then there's this: Coe is still his national record holder and tied for 8th in the world on the all-time list! That's incredible when we consider he'll be turning 70 next year.
Coe is special as someone born before 1960 still appearing so high on the world all-time list today. Here are the current highest standing men born before 1960 on the all-time list in the other championship track events, along with the second-highest in the 800m after Coe:
100m: Jim Hines, 116th
200m: Pietro Mennea, 19th
400m: Lee Evans, 20th
800m: Alberto Juantorena, 93rd
1500m: Saïd Aouita, 36th
5k: Saïd Aouita, 122nd
10k: Fernando Mamede, 167th
110h: Renaldo Nehemiah, 14th
400h: Edwin Moses, 6th
steeple: Peter Koech, 38th
That's an average standing of 63rd, with a median of 37th. Coe is still 8th! Only Edwin Moses is still with him in the top 10, and we know how special Moses was in his event.
Coe and El G were both generational athletes.
Jeezus, you clearly aren’t understanding his point. Of course he is a generational athlete but the mark he set at the height of the EPO era defies all belief and there is no rational explanation as to why it was so ahead at the time and since then nobody has approached until now. It took more than being a generational athlete, and we all know how.