I don't know whether Jakob is better than Ryun - it's pretty impossible to compare eras that far apart.
But to JWH assuming that running is 'more developed now'. Ask yourself if Cole Hocker will be able to launch a successful political career when he retires off of the back of his Paris gold. I doubt if more than 5% of Americans know who Cole Hocker is.
Track was incredibly popular back then, even in the USA, and the mile was the number one distance, almost on a par with the world heavyweight boxing championship. Ryun was the best of the baby boomer generation. You can't even say the usual 'the Kenyans weren't competing' as you like to do to belittle Snell or Elliott. You had Kenio (likely doped out of his mind) and Rudisha's father in the 68 Kenyan Olympic team for goodness sake.
Wow, you really do not know much about Kip Keino. He is still one of the most popular historic runners of all-time because of the adversities and difficulties he went through. He might be the most wonderful athlete of all time and if anyone competed without drugs it would be Kip Keino!
It is possible that I did write this post as it is here. But everything else looks fake so far as I look back at what I wrote.
Talk about a facile argument. Sandor Iharos set world records at 1500, 5k, and 10k in the 1950s and I would argue there have been greater runners since who haven’t held any major world records. To claim that Ryun having held 1500 and mile WRs makes him definitively better than Jakob is to ignore the obvious facts that a) the sport has developed and expanded, including to better reflect African talent and b) Jakob is running against an additional 55 years’ worth of middle distance talent, from a records perspective. Honestly the sport didn’t start gathering much serious international momentum until after WWII and of course wasn’t professionalized until the 70s, so Ryun’s WRs were run in fairly early, relatively uncompetitive days.
At this stage, I think it's quite reasonable to claim that Ryun is a greater 1500m runner than Jakob, and certainly a greater middle-distance runner.
Ryun was only denied an Olympic gold in 68 because of the altitude and because Keino was likely doped in a Mexican hospital hours before the final. He was also tripped by an African in 72. Ryun vs Kenio in Mexico 68 would be the equivalent of Jakob racing Wanyonyi over 1500m at altitude in a championship race.
To be fair, if it wasn't for Covid, Jakob would very likely not have won Gold in Tokyo (if held in 2020).
You have to admit that Ryun had terrible luck and Jakob has had some good luck. Of course, like his peers, he has the bad luck of having to chase El G's fully doped records.
The argument about Ryun's WRs being in an uncompetitve era is a little stupid. He ran 3:33.1/3:51 on cinders, so the equivalents on synthetic weren't bettered until Coe and Ovett well over a decade later. His WRs were also over 2 seconds faster than Herb Elliott, who would certainly be in medal contention today.
We are in a good era for miling obviously, and standards have risen a lot outside of Africa since Jakob emerged, but I find it difficult to believe that it was less competitive in the West, when Elliott and Ryun were as famous as the heavyweight boxing champions and international superstars, and every schoolkid wanted to emulate them.