Who Is the GREATEST American Distance Runner of All Time? Submit your 64 nominees now for our tournament

Jim Fixx

It has to be Frank Shorter.

Olympic Gold and Silver (which he only lost to a known doper), 4 consecutive Fukuoka Marathon wins when it was the most competitive marathon in the world, and 24 US National Championships.

- Dave Wottle

- Steve Scott

-Rick Wohlhuter

- Earl Jones

and of course Alan Webb! who else could do 90+ pushups and run 3:46 and worship jesus?

sorry finally Donnovan Brazier is my last vote.

dude ran 3:37 first time in the 15 presumably while training for the 8.

immense talent.

This list is woefully incomplete without Ryan Deak.

Thank God no one said Bernard Lagat! Not an American.....just another mercenary athlete. Please keep them out of the picture, or create a separate category for them.

You all are trippin. No Jim Beatty? All he did was set a world record indoors for the mile, set a 2 mile record outdoors, narrowly miss the outdoor World record in the mile. Held every American record from 1500 to 5000.

Finally someone mentioned Steve Scott. Another female haven't seen mentioned ... M Decker Slaney.

Webb, an unsung American Hero. An Inspiration to a Generation.

Darrell General

David Morris 1999 marathon record holder

Rocket2 wrote:

Thank God no one said Bernard Lagat! Not an American.....just another mercenary athlete. Please keep them out of the picture, or create a separate category for them.

At this point he has been an American for like 15 years. So you can stop hating smh. Only true Americans are the native Americans by your standard

Shorter, Rupp, Lagat, Khannouchi, Virgin, Jager, and Jim Ryun are among the best men. Of this group, I'd put Ryun at the top. At his peak he was utterly dominant. Nobody in the world could beat him. They weren't even close. I don't think the same can be said of any of the others. I am surprised he wasn't on the initial list.

Centrowitz has done exceptionally well in championship races, but his 1500 PR is only the #151 performance ever. I wouldn't put him in the same category as Ryun.

Johnny Gray has the #49 800 meter performance of all time but never did better than a bronze medal in the Olympics.

Prefontaine never won an Olympic medal and never ran particularly fast. Meb's marathon PR is not even in the top 1,000 all-time performances.

Evan Jager

Jenny Simpson

Shelbo

Mary Decker

Centro

Brazier

Murphy

Webb

Scott

Rupp

Just a list to start, find it hard to not give it to Simpson with longevity of career and amount of global medals.

Frank Shorter and Joan Benoit.

Bill Rodgers- 4 Boston , 4 NYC , 1 Fukuoka , AR in marathon, WR in 30k

You should add Gerry Lingren.

Oops, meant Gerry Lindgren.