Old-timers, is Wesley Kiptoo like Prefontaine.... just much better? Kiptoo had unreal 28:22, 8:31 st, 13:29 TRIPLE at Big 12s.

e h wrote:

Wins every event he’s entered,

28:22 in the 10k, 13:29 in the 5k, and 8:31 in the 3k steeple across 3 days.

This is all incorrect.

Try a little harder next time.

akshually fakshually wrote:

e h wrote:

Wins every event he’s entered,

28:22 in the 10k, 13:29 in the 5k, and 8:31 in the 3k steeple across 3 days.

This is all incorrect.

Try a little harder next time.

is this like some really bad attempt at a troll he won the 10k in 28:22.98 a meet record, the steeple in 8:31.82 a facility and meet record and then the 5k in 13:29.92 again a facility and meet record

e h wrote:

Wins every event he’s entered,

28:22 in the 10k, 13:29 in the 5k, and 8:31 in the 3k steeple across 3 days.

Reminds me on Ben Jipcho at the Commonwealth Games in the mid 1970’s...or Rono in the early 80’s.

Seems like all the big boys are having impressive conference meets. Makes me excited for NCAAs!

How in the world did he not win XC?

runnER/DR wrote:

How in the world did he not win XC?

Because he ran a blow-out 5k indoors literally the day before?

out of all the indoor/xc runners he fared the best by far. BYU/NAU/Stanford guys were all rested. hills added another variable that probably made it hard to gauge just how much he could push the pace at the beginning without breaking.

5k was on Friday, which is 3 days prior. Nice try. For a young guy this fit and talented that should be a non issue.

Seeing what Mantz has done this spring makes it clear he's somewhat of a freak himself. 3:37/13:24/27:41 all in one season is ridiculous. So I get him losing to Mantz, but he also lost to some rando I'd never heard of before or since. And he got DESTROYED by Mantz. It was quite the debacle for him.

I've been busy with my son and just now had time to get on here. I've changed the title. It was initially entitled "Wesley Kiptoo with unreal Big 12 meet" but I want to know if he's like a modern day Pre.

Seriously. We always here about how Pre went for it back in the day. Can anyone tell me what his best double/triple was at a conference meet? What was the format? How many days? Kiptoo was helped here in that for some reason the meet was held over 3 days so he only had to run once each day but the dude just likes to run fast. I mean there was no need for him to do that.

Insane.

runnER/DR wrote:

5k was on Friday, which is 3 days prior. Nice try. For a young guy this fit and talented that should be a non issue.

Seeing what Mantz has done this spring makes it clear he's somewhat of a freak himself. 3:37/13:24/27:41 all in one season is ridiculous. So I get him losing to Mantz, but he also lost to some rando I'd never heard of before or since. And he got DESTROYED by Mantz. It was quite the debacle for him.

Well, if you're looking for reasons that he didn't run his best at NCAA-XC, I think it's reasonable that a hard 5k might have taken the sting out of his legs (even if it was 3 days before). He also employed a borderline absurd, balls to the wall pacing strategy (going out below world record pace) in both races and I'm sure that didn't help. But you're right in answering your own question...Mantz is defintely a freak.

Well he’s arguably not much better than Prefontaine when you factor in the shoes and even faster tracks of today. And relative to the rest of the world he is worse than Prefontaine was. And how old is he? Is he about 25 or so?

sherlocker wrote:

Well he’s arguably not much better than Prefontaine when you factor in the shoes and even faster tracks of today. And relative to the rest of the world he is worse than Prefontaine was. And how old is he? Is he about 25 or so?

This is the correct take. He's not on the same level when you factor in the eras and he's not on the level of the best in the sport which Pre was in his time. He's got a bright future though and if he races anything like this against the pros I'll be rooting for him bigtime. Didn't he run something like 2:01 for the first 800 in that indoor 5k? He is not soft.

This puts into perspective how good Pre was.

His times do not compete today. He did performances still legendary to college today with technology and competition of those days.

The 8:31 steeple wedged in between is what is so amazing. I think this was his debut. A bit of work and fresh legs and he runs 8:10.

I don't think that PRE ever tripled at a PAC 8 meet....

OXYRUNR wrote:

I don't think that PRE ever tripled at a PAC 8 meet....

Didn't always double either.

ShilohDoesntCare wrote:

This is the correct take. He's not on the same level when you factor in the eras and he's not on the level of the best in the sport which Pre was in his time. He's got a bright future though and if he races anything like this against the pros I'll be rooting for him bigtime. Didn't he run something like 2:01 for the first 800 in that indoor 5k? He is not soft.

Yes. I know relative to the world's best - he's not at Pre's level. But back in the amateur days an African couldn't afford to train.

What i wnat to know is how fast did Pre run meets like this when he was in college? Did he always go all out like we are led to believe?

Al Sleet wrote:

Didn't always double either.

Sounds like the answer was no.

"In Pac-8 Conference track competition, he won 3-mile titles in 1970 (13:27.4), '71 (13:18.0), '72 (13:32.2) and '73 (13:10.4) and also the mile title in 1971 (4:01.5). " from

https://goducks.com/sports/2003/12/18/30594.aspx

I'm assuming that means he only ran the single race (3-mile) at conference except for 1971, when he also ran the mile. So basically, Pre never attempted anything like what Kiptoo just did.

As far as Pre running at a higher level relative to the best in the world at that time: I think it makes the most sense to evaluate Pre's 3-mile races based on 5000m WRs at the time, partly because I can't find a list of 3-mile world record progression after 30 seconds of searching, and partly because it seems like the superior elite performances were generally in the 5000m by the time Pre was at U of O. So the 5000m world record was 13:16 when he started college, and 13:13 when he graduated. I know it's not very accurate, but just adding a simple 27 seconds to each of his 3-mile wins to convert to 5000m, we get:

1970: 13:54 (38 seconds slower than WR 5000 of 13:16)

1971: 13:45 (29 seconds slower than WR 5000 of 13:16)

1972: 13:59 (43 seconds slower than WR 5000 of 13:16)

1973: 13:37 (24 seconds slower than improved WR for 5000 of 13:13)

His conference win at 1-mile in 1971 was 10.4 seconds slower than the WR at that time (3:51.1).

So basically, in answer to Rojo's questions, it looks like Pre typically managed about 8-14 seconds per mile slower than WR pace in his PAC-8 track meet races.

Kiptoo's conference races from 2021 are closer to 18-20 seconds per mile slower than the current WRs for the 3 distances he ran. But obviously running a 5k/10k/3000m steeple triple is quite a bit different to what Pre did.

Dudes not even close to being on the same level as Henry Rono