I'd say you can include Geordie Beamish in the conversation. He won an indoor title, but has no other AA's on the track and only one other Nationals qualification. He AA'd twice in XC, but only by a couple places each time.
That is mostly due to injuries not ability. To me that's what makes his win even more impressive.
That is going to be true of a lot of the people with that one burst of brilliance. They got 4 months of training in, crushed it and we're not able to repeat.
So who was the "worst" XC champion in the past 40 years? Mark Scrutton, David Kimani and , Keith Kelley are the ones that I don't think have multiple titles(including track) or other top 5 XC finishes. And I would have to Google some of them as I sure don't have all the results of past 40 years committed to memory. Those might be worst but man the worst XC champ is really good.
You can do the same thing of the 5/10k and very few are guys that you can say we're huge upsets. Make list of 5 names before the race and almost all of them would have been there
Scrutton was 6th, 4th & 1st in '80-'82.
I have Kelly as a 1st, 9th and 14th. In the same rough ballpark but a notch back. Again the whole point is there are not many flukes in XC...
You can do the same thing for every event. In general there are very few winners that don't come from the 3-4 favorites.
Josh McDougal who won 2007 XC against Rupp. Talk about the poster child for overtraining burnout. Rupp went on to records and medals. McDougal probably works at McDonalds.
Josh McDougal who won 2007 XC against Rupp. Talk about the poster child for overtraining burnout. Rupp went on to records and medals. McDougal probably works at McDonalds.
Not even close. Dude was a consistent XC guy for 4 years and was pretty good in track. And yeah then he totally flamed out.