Hardly. Mexico was obviously referring to the Olympic venue, but repeatedly calling an athlete by the wrong name while professing to be expert about them reduces the credibility of their comment.
He struggled in his earlier races, was hospitalised, and came out the next day to run far faster than he ever ran at sea level. He simply wasn't the same runner. If you think he was clean he would have run 3:31 if doped that day. In '68.
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He struggled in his earlier races, was hospitalised, and came out the next day to run far faster than he ever ran at sea level. He simply wasn't the same runner.
That's what hospitals are for. You clearly have no idea how blood doping works.
He struggled in his earlier races, was hospitalised, and came out the next day to run far faster than he ever ran at sea level. He simply wasn't the same runner.
That's what hospitals are for. You clearly have no idea how blood doping works.
It typically includes transfusions, which he could have got in hospital. It explains his Lazarus-like recovery on the track.
Jim Ryun set the NCAA 800 meter record in 1966. That's 58 years ago (2025 - 1966 = 59). He was 19 years old!
I wouldn’t say greatest ever but clearly ahead of his time. This debate is routine on here, but I’ve always thought Ryun would’ve been a second per lap faster with modern tracks and better pacing, pre-super shoes. Jim Ryun would’ve been a 3:29/3:47 guy if he were running in 2018. Then give him the super shoes, and he’s sub-3:27/sub-3:45, consistent with the best, non-doped in recent history. If Jim Ryun were running in the 2024 Olympic 1500, he would’ve medaled and been right there for gold.
Super spikes aren’t worth that much in a 1500, and it’s a huge assumption that anyone has run sub-3:27 clean.
He’s not even the best of his era. That’s Kip Keino.
I would vote for Ryun as the “best 1500/mile runner of his era” (let’s call it ‘65 through ‘74). If we change it to “greatest middle and long distance runners of all time,” then I definitely prefer Keino to Ryun, with his two OG golds + 1 silver, and his 3k & 5k WRs. He was also more consistently at the top of his game for ~8 years than Ryun was.
Are we considering the steeplechase a long distance event? Winning gold in the steeplechase and silver in the 1500 at the 1972 Olympics is an incredible accomplishment for Keino.
I would vote for Ryun as the “best 1500/mile runner of his era” (let’s call it ‘65 through ‘74). If we change it to “greatest middle and long distance runners of all time,” then I definitely prefer Keino to Ryun, with his two OG golds + 1 silver, and his 3k & 5k WRs. He was also more consistently at the top of his game for ~8 years than Ryun was.
Are we considering the steeplechase a long distance event? Winning gold in the steeplechase and silver in the 1500 at the 1972 Olympics is an incredible accomplishment for Keino.
Yes, I did.
Also…I hate playing into Armstronglivs’s troll-hands, but there is way more reason to suspect the guy who beat Keino in the Munich 1500 benefited from blood transfusions than there is to suspect Keino of any kind of doping.
Ryun definitely didn't bomb in Mexico City. Despite losing time due to mono and the IOC barring non-altitude athletes from training at altitude more than a month in 1968, he ran among the best ever 1500m times at altitude ever for a non-altitude athlete (3:37). He crushed Kip Keino at sea level multiple times before that and beat him so badly in one of those races in the last 300m that the commentator says that Keino had given up the idea of running the 1500m in 1968. No other non-altitude athletes medaled at 1500m and up in 1968.
The sea level athletes mostly didn't stand a chance of winning in anything from the 1500 up.
At the men's middle and long distance events at Mexico '68 runners from non-altitude countries have won
Totally agree, my friend. Ryun as a 16-year-old Kansas high schooler ran a sub-4:00 mile on a cinder track. Nothing the stars of today, male or female, are doing comes even remotely close.
Just imagine the fast times Ryun would be running today if he ran in today's super-shoes, and had access to wavelight technology, modern diets and training techniques, and consumed legal PEDs like the Maurten gel. Think of what the mile record would look if Ryun or Keino would have access to all those things. The record for the mile would easily be below 3:40, while the 1500 meters would be under 3:20.