Who is a better distance runner Eliud Kipchoge or Kenenisa Bekele?

Hailestill ? wrote:

westsouthrunner wrote:

I love comparing athletes but I do agree sometimes it sounds like fans are downplaying or even downright hating the ability of one athlete. Like the Lebron - MJ comparison is so toxic at this point that people are literally hating on one of the athletes to make their favorite seem better.

As a runner i'd kill for a fraction of the resume of kipchoge or Bekele. My best accomplishment is probably being all-conference or 2nd fastest freshman at conference in college which can be easily replicated lol.

Largely agree. Thoughts:

1) Depending on how you weigh things, GOAT distance runner is still between Bekele and Haile....not Kipchoge.

2) Kipchoge is too far behind in track/XC accomplishments on the track to compete for a "distance runner" GOAT that gives an appropriate amount of weight to track (and XC).

3) Even if Kipchoge's not in the running for distance runner GOAT, his level of dominance in the marathon is, arguably, a greater accomplishment. I don't think that most long-term observers thought that anyone could ever be so dominant in the marathon. No one has ever come close to what he's done. As soon as someone started to look dominant, they lost. Not him.

4) As much as I love Haile and his case, not sure there has ever been anything more impressive than all of Bekele's double XC wins. Win the first race. OK, fine, someone had to. Kenya (and others) then throws another group of FRESH A-teamers at you, and you win again. Five years in a row. Unbelievable dominance.

CadyCompson wrote:

John Wesley Harding wrote:

I’m not sure how to explain this to you. I have no way of addressing those arguments but to say “I appreciate Bekele’s greatness and have long since been aware of his career achievements, and I know his career features certain strengths and highlights that Kipchoge’s does not; until last year I thought he was the clear choice for the GOAT, but here’s why I believe Kipchoge has surpassed him” and then make my case for Kipchoge vs. Bekele. That works both ways, and is all I can expect from those with another opinion. That’s how these kinds of arguments usually work. I respect the argument that Bekele is the GOAT, but I’m peeved by your assumptions that your argument is definitive, or I have been “proven wrong.”

IMO, your sense of what it means to argue is a bit blinkered. Arguments don't involve merely stating one's opinions, hearing those of others, and then stating one's opinions again -- or, as you put it above, "endlessly rehashing [one's] points." They involve justifying those opinions, which may prompt others to question the logic behind those justifications, just as you might question the logic behind their arguments. Ideally, it's a back-and-forth, a dialogue, not people talking at (or past) one another.

In that Bekele-Kipchoge thread, very specific questions were posed about the logic of your argument. These questions weren't themselves a case for Bekele's supremacy; they were challenges to particular aspects of your reasoning. And they weren't bad or silly questions; other posters even jumped in to note that they merited a serious response.

First you ignored these questions. Then, when pressed, you claimed you'd already factored them into your decision about Kipchoge's preeminence (which is basically tantamount to saying, "I hold opinion X but am not willing to explain the reasoning behind that opinion"). Then, pressed further, you more or less claimed that it was beneath you to address these questions. And then you vanished.

When I write that "the OP can't rebut these arugments," I'm not saying the arguments themselves are irrefutable or authoritative. I'm saying that, based on your extreme evasiveness when confronted with those arguments, you in particular don't seem to have a real response to them. Perhaps others do.

And I wouldn't have even bothered engaging you in that debate if I hadn't thought your contributions generally smart and well thought-out, even if I didn't agree with them. (Why even bother debating the trolls, right?) I asked my questions because I was curious to see how you'd respond, not because I thought I had some argumentative trump card that would settle the debate once and for all. That's why I found the evasiveness so odd back then. There was no need to flee the scene.

McRunnin wrote:

Hailestill ? wrote:

Not sure if he was better. But understandably, I think that more recent fans fails to know - or realize - that Bekele didn't match Haile's WR trailblazing on the track. He just took down his 2 records. Haile, on the other hand, in both the 5 and 10, ran times where you reacted, "What?! How do you take that much off a WR?" And then kept going when others challenged his WRs. Bekele simply didn't do that. And maybe that's because he didn't have enough near-equal contemporaries, like Haile, but nonetheless, he didn't do it.

The question there is whether Komen's 3K record equals/surpasses all of Haile's 5/10 WRs?

I agree that Geb is underrated and Bekele’s closest challenger for the GOAT crown. I rank Bekele over him primarily because Geb never won a world cross country championship, and of course Bekele broke Geb’s records. Even so, Geb is a formidable challenger for the GOAT crown.

As for comparing Geb and Bekele based on their world records, there are two aspects of a WR I think help with evaluating them in their historical context: how much the runner lowered the record (as you and the previous poster referenced) and how long their record lasted. Geb of course has Bekele beat on the former measure (taking the 5K WR from 12:55 to 12:44 is astonishing) but not the latter.

I think how long a record lasts is just as important as how much it was lowered because it tells us how far an athlete was ahead of his contemporaries and those who followed. As impressive as Geb’s records were, they never lasted very long. His first 5K WR was broken just a year later. His 12:41 WR didn’t even last 10 days before Komen broke it. Similarly, his first 10K WR only lasted a year, and his second 10K WR held up for less than 2 months. The longest duration for his records was 6 years. In contrast, Bekele’s records lasted 16 years before anyone else could take them down, and that was with the assistance of super shoes and pacing lights.

Hailestill ? wrote:

I'll add a third apparently prominent variable - ability to recapture WRs multiple times. I haven't done the research, but it seems fairly rare - particularly in the 5 and 10, perhaps?

Of the 3 (amount, recaptures, and duration), Haile (surprise!) gets 2 of 3 over Bekele.

And yes, of course, I'm biased, but I do think that it's possible that depth can vary somewhat across time. While I was obviously impressed that Haile took down the records by so much, I was also surprised - and yes, a bit disappointed - that he had so many near-peers (Tergat, Komen, Hissou, etc.). Some of that is to be expected when someone breaks down doors - others tend to follow - but the degree was still surprising.

So, when a Bekele (or perhaps now Cheptegei) holds a record for a certain amount of time, how much of that is a bit of luck based on the ebb and flow of legends (and perhaps 5 and 10 now being run less?), and how much on the "quality" of the WR?

Put a different way, is it possible that Haile was simply unlucky about both his peers, AND (to me the more obvious) fact that the next all-time legend (Bekele) happened to come around RIGHT after him ?

McRunnin wrote:

Hailestill ? wrote:

I'll add a third apparently prominent variable - ability to recapture WRs multiple times. I haven't done the research, but it seems fairly rare - particularly in the 5 and 10, perhaps?

Of the 3 (amount, recaptures, and duration), Haile (surprise!) gets 2 of 3 over Bekele.

And yes, of course, I'm biased, but I do think that it's possible that depth can vary somewhat across time. While I was obviously impressed that Haile took down the records by so much, I was also surprised - and yes, a bit disappointed - that he had so many near-peers (Tergat, Komen, Hissou, etc.). Some of that is to be expected when someone breaks down doors - others tend to follow - but the degree was still surprising.

So, when a Bekele (or perhaps now Cheptegei) holds a record for a certain amount of time, how much of that is a bit of luck based on the ebb and flow of legends (and perhaps 5 and 10 now being run less?), and how much on the "quality" of the WR?

Put a different way, is it possible that Haile was simply unlucky about both his peers, AND (to me the more obvious) fact that the next all-time legend (Bekele) happened to come around RIGHT after him ?

Good addition. I would tweak “recapture” to simply “record breaks” so as to not penalize runners who break their own records, as both Geb and Bekele have done. Either way, you are correct that Geb has Bekele beat in that regard.

With that said, allow me to add a fourth dimension to a WR, which can be applied to all 3 we’ve examined thus far: historical uniqueness. Meaning: how unique were they historically since the creation of the IAAF in 1912 in what they achieved in that event?

Geb is most known for the number of records he broke, but at least on the track, he’s not peerless in that category. Ron Clarke broke the 5K WR just as many times as Geb did, and Emil Zátopek broke the 10K WR more times.

Looking at the greatest amounts by which Geb broke a WR, Geb lowered the 5K from 12:55 to 12:44 and then 12:41, for a total of nearly 13.5ish seconds (pardon the sound of my jaw dropping as I recall that fact). He is #1 there, but others are close. Lauri Lehtinen took 11 seconds off the 5K WR in one race, and Ron Clarke dropped the WR by 9 seconds and then, after Kip Keino broke it, Clarke took another 7 seconds off. In the 10K, Geb lowered the WR by about 9 seconds, then 7 seconds, then 5 seconds. Paavo Nurmi lowered the 10K WR by 18 seconds and then another 17 seconds, and Zátopek lowered it by 33 seconds. Then Ron Clarke came along about a decade later and lowered it by a whopping 36 seconds (Clarke seems criminally underrated, but that’s a topic for another thread). So Geb is not #1 all-time there.

When we look at record duration, Bekele is historically in a class by himself in both the 5K and 10K (only looking at the 5K and 10K record holders) for holding those records for 16 years. In the 5K, Gunder Hägg held the WR for a little less than 12 years, and Hannes Kokehmainen had it for just over 10. Nurmi held the 10K WR for just shy of 13 years; no one else held it over a decade. So Bekele held the 5K WR 33% longer than anyone else in that event, and he held the 10K record 23% longer than anyone else.

As if that wasn’t enough, we can look historically at everyone who held the 5K and 10K records simultaneously and who is the most unique in how long they did so. This is track distance running’s super elite, as only 10 men in history have held both records at the same time:

Paavo Nurmi, 6 years
Taisto Mäki, 3 years
Emil Zátopek, 3 months
Vladimir Kuts, 3 years
Ron Clarke, 6 years
Lassie Virén, 1 week
Henry Rono, 4 years
Haile Gebrselassie, 6 years
Kenenisa Bekele, 16 years
Joshua Cheptegei, 2 years so far

Bekele is the historical outlier here by a staggering margin. His duration as dual WR holder is 167% better than anyone else!!

You might chalk that up to luck, I attribute it to GOATness. It’s not like there wasn’t an all-time great runner who came right after him. Mo Farah did, but Farah himself admitted he didn’t have the ability to break Bekele’s records. Even he knows Bekele is the GOAT.

John Wesley Harding wrote:

CadyCompson wrote:

IMO, your sense of what it means to argue is a bit blinkered. Arguments don't involve merely stating one's opinions, hearing those of others, and then stating one's opinions again -- or, as you put it above, "endlessly rehashing [one's] points." They involve justifying those opinions, which may prompt others to question the logic behind those justifications, just as you might question the logic behind their arguments. Ideally, it's a back-and-forth, a dialogue, not people talking at (or past) one another.

In that Bekele-Kipchoge thread, very specific questions were posed about the logic of your argument. These questions weren't themselves a case for Bekele's supremacy; they were challenges to particular aspects of your reasoning. And they weren't bad or silly questions; other posters even jumped in to note that they merited a serious response.

First you ignored these questions. Then, when pressed, you claimed you'd already factored them into your decision about Kipchoge's preeminence (which is basically tantamount to saying, "I hold opinion X but am not willing to explain the reasoning behind that opinion"). Then, pressed further, you more or less claimed that it was beneath you to address these questions. And then you vanished.

When I write that "the OP can't rebut these arugments," I'm not saying the arguments themselves are irrefutable or authoritative. I'm saying that, based on your extreme evasiveness when confronted with those arguments, you in particular don't seem to have a real response to them. Perhaps others do.

And I wouldn't have even bothered engaging you in that debate if I hadn't thought your contributions generally smart and well thought-out, even if I didn't agree with them. (Why even bother debating the trolls, right?) I asked my questions because I was curious to see how you'd respond, not because I thought I had some argumentative trump card that would settle the debate once and for all. That's why I found the evasiveness so odd back then. There was no need to flee the scene.

If you care to synthesize these important arguments I allegedly left unanswered here, I will answer them one by one (though for most I reckon I’ve already answered them, you just didn’t like my answer—in other words it didn’t persuade you, just as you haven’t persuaded me).