Lack of 10k success in the 70's

Hey Phil,

You get paid to surf the internet? COOL! I'm sure OLN is quite pleased to have such a valued & noteworthy personage as you self surfing the internet for them.

Your postings are so informative and authoritative. I get goosebumps just thinking about how you noticed little old me.

Best of luck with that commentating gig, I hear you look great on the radio.

Sorry you young guys, but being from the late 70's to early 80's era, you have it all wrong. If we had a dream match-up with Virgin, Shorter, Pre agaisnt the current crop. Sorry, but the old timers would rip the current group a new a-hole. You have to factor how competitive a person is in relationship to his competition and these current guys suck in relationship to the rest of the world. Versus the old guys, pre 4th in the 5 at Munich, Shorter winning the marathon, 5th in the 10, Virgin winning a couple of world cross country championships/and yes he beat a slew of Kenyans and Ethiopians to do it. So, you young guys please shut your pie holes until you can compete on the world stage and not just on the local mom and pop circuit.

"So, you young guys please shut your pie holes until you can compete on the world stage and not just on the local mom and pop circuit."

If you think it's the same stage as it was 20-30 years ago, you're so high. The talent is much deeper world wide than it's ever been and I think Goucher and Kennedy are just as tough as Shorter and Pre were and would kick Pre's ass in a 5k. I'm saying this as an Oregonian too!

I dug out many old Track and Field News annual issues from 1971 to 1996, I don't know where the last few years have gotten to, and looked at the 10,000 meter lists. If I were to rate the past three decades as best to worst for US 10k runners, I'd list the 80s first, 70s second, 90s third. I'd probably rate the 00s ahead of the 90s as well. For a 25 year period I found 15 annual lists.

In the 70s, four Americans broke 27:55 for the distance (Virgin, Prefontaine, Shorter, Bjorklund). In the 90s only three did, (Todd Williams, Bob Kennedy and Chris Fox). Virgin seems to be the best 10k runner of the 70s leading the US list in 1978-79-80 with times of 27:52, 27:39, and 27:29. Williams appears to be the best US runner of the 90s, twice leading the US list with times of 27:31 and 27:40. You can pick any time and find more US runners under it from 1975-1980 than you can find under that time in the 90s. From 1975 until the late 80s, you had to run under 29:30 to make the US list (top 50 times). In every year from the 90s that I found, the 50th runner was above 29:30.

So I don't see any evidence supporting the idea that US 10k runners in the 70s were less successful than they are now. They ran faster and fared better against the rest of the world, e.g. Virgin's 27:29 was the best time in the world that year and he was never more than 35 seconds behind the world leader in the other two years where he topped the US list. Williams' US leading times are 42 and 52 seconds behind the world leader in those years.

So even if you argue that the greater competitive success of the 70s was due to less international competition, you still have the earlier runners going faster. And it's questionable to attribute the greater success to weaker competiton. Times progress. Almost all "previous generations" are slower than their descendants. If you carry the "less competiton" argument to its logical conclusion, you're forced to consider Jeff Galloway (28:30) and John Scherer(28:20) better 10,000 meter runners than Emil Zatopek(28:54). You might also consider that the current Africans are as dominant as they are because they aren't competing against international competition that is as tough as their predecessors from the 70s and 80s did. From 1972 to 1986, the US 10,000 meter record improved by 46 seconds. The world record improved by a bit over 30 seconds in those years. So US runners from 72 to 86 managed to keep up with the rest of the world then lost ground through the 90s.

Yes, it's a different world. One of the differences is that distance runners in western nations spent a decade training less than their faster predessors and also less than their African contemporaries.

Crossman,

Here are the breakdowns by decade of the US ALL-time track top 10s (source Track and Field News)

800 60s 0, 70s 1, 80s 5, 90s 4 00s 0

1000 60s 0, 70s 1, 80s 6, 90s 2, 00s 1

1500 60s 1, 70s 0, 80s 5, 90s 3, 00s 1

mile 60s 1, 70s 0, 80s 7, 90s 2, 00s 0

2000 60s 0, 70s 0, 80s 8, 90s 2, 00s 0

3000 60s 0, 70s 1, 80s 4, 90s 3, 00s 2

sc 60s 0, 70s 0, 80s 4, 90s 4, 00s 2

5k 60s 0, 70s 1, 80s 6, 90s 2, 00s 1

10k 60s 0, 70s 1, 80s 5, 90s 2, 00s 2

Oldschool New School

63.4% 36.6%

mar 60s 0, 70s 1, 80s 5, 90s 3, 00s 1

The percentage breakdowns pretty much mirrors the break-down you will find on the All-Time Road Lists. Go 20-30 deep and expect more of the same.

I was an elite athlete host at that BAA. Kemp was legit, but it WAS a freak day. Unbelieveable tail wind for the whole race. You still have to run the 26 miles, but it helped.