A reasonable enough question, but why wouldn’t you at least grant the possibility of this kid being on par with Ryun?
And regardless, how many more top-tier performances, or what time threshold, do you need to see from CL to consider “greatest” something other than hyperbole?
Jim Ryun broke 2 world records as a teenager: the half-mile and the mile. Therefore Cooper needs to break at least one world record to say he is on par with Ryun as a teenager. I hope he does.
Your post says it: Ryun was 19. The kid is 17!!!! Who knows if he'll continue to progress or could add 1500m to his repertoire, but right now, as a 17 year old junior in HS, I'd say we've never seen his like.
I was stunned at how good he was at 16, and can't get my mind around how he's still getting better.
I think Coopers coach had a lot to do with it, as he appears not to he overtraining. I mean, when you do quality, you want the minimum effective dose, instead of breaking a record in training. This is where the old school guys wentvso wrong. ie Ryun.
There is no such a thing as he would have run faster. You want to get in good position you gotta run very fast in the very beginning which can be very detrimental if you are in a very fast paced race. You run a bit too fast and you are done and struggle big time the last 200-300m. The kid knows how to race and knows his limits. He ran a perfect race period.
Just a historical reminder of perhaps the "greatest teenager"- Bob Mathias won the Olympic decathlon gold medal at age 17, then broke the decathlon world record at age 19
Thank you. I was scrolling through for this, or was going to post it if nobody had.
Mastering 10 events sufficiently to climb the ranks of the sport, make an Olympic team, then actually win gold?
I love what Lutkenhaus is doing, but he isn't even in the neighborhood of Mathias (yet).
Nijel Amos was 18 when he won an Olympic silver medal in a world record race. Obviously an asterisk there given his later doping ban. It’s worth mentioning when we’re saying Cooper is the greatest teen phenom ever.
So technically, wehn I called him the greatest teen phenom, I should ave written 17 yr old. Ryun was setting WRs as a senior. So maybe I should have added greatest US HS teen phenom or 17 year old phenom to ignore the likes of Amos.
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
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