Voted for Crouser and Kipyegon. Crouser's world records with a new technique almost never happens in field events. He's number one for being unprecedented. While I love Jakob, his WRs are too obscure to be counted for the award. Had he got WRs in the 1500 and 5000 and won gold in both like Kipyegon, that would have gotten him the nomination and AOY. Kipyegon is clearly the best miler of all-time and 5000 WR gold just speaks to her raw talent. Siffan deserved to be nominated simply for being the most versatile distance runner the world has ever seen.
World Athletics won't name an AOY but we will - Update: Kelvin Kiptum and Faith Kipyegon are our AOYs
Pro News/Info/Results
LRC note. This thread was started before we named our AOYs. It was initially entitled, "World Athletics won’t name an AOY but we will – Let’s here your 2023 LetsRun Award nominations." Our winnes have been announced:
Faith Kipyegon & Kelvin Kiptum Crowned 2023 LetsRun.com Athletes of the Year - LetsRun.com
-
40
-
Has to be Faith Kipyegon. Nothing else makes sense.
40 -
Why Hassan and not Bol?
20 -
Hiltz beats out Calamia and Caswell as the inaugural non binary award champion
30 -
Why isn't there a non binary category?
10 -
And our winners are......
13 -
At least Track & Field News got it right:
30 -
McRunnin wrote:
I voted for Crouser and Kipyegon. The Kipyegon pick doesn't need explanation, so here's why I think Crouser deserves the men's award over Mondo and Kiptum (no offense to Lyles, but he lost too many races and didn't break any world records, so I don't think he's in contention):
- Crouser's world record is the most impressive mark compared to Mondo and Kiptum. Crouser's WR is 1.4% better than the second-best performer all-time. Mondo's WR is 1.1% better, and Kiptum's WR is 0.5% better.
- According to the World Athletics scoring tables, Crouser's top two marks this year were better than the top two marks from Mondo and Kiptum. In point value, Crouser's top two marks were 1334 and 1331, Mondo's were 1330 and 1328, and Kiptum's were 1322 and 1307. So Crouser's second-best mark was worth more points than the best mark produced by Mondo and Kiptum.
- Improved technology is a major factor in Kiptum's times. That's not the case with Crouser. I haven't heard about any advancements in the metal used to make the shot in the last few years, and the weight of the shot hasn't changed since 1896.
- Both Crouser and Mondo lost once, but Mondo's loss was much worse. Crouser got 2nd and barely lost to another all-time great; Mondo got 4th and was beaten handily. Crouser's losing throw of 22.91 has only been matched or exceeded by four men in history. In fact, it would have won every single Olympic competition in history (only Crouser himself threw better in Tokyo). In contrast, over 200 men in history have vaulted higher than Mondo's losing vault of 5.72.
- Crouser regularly faced and beat the second-best shot putter of all time. Kiptum defeated strong competition, but he never faced the marathon GOAT, Kipchoge.
- A world championship gold is a higher achievement than a world marathon major win. It just is.
- Crouser invented a new technique. You rarely see innovation in the field events (the Fosbury Flop in the high jump is over 55 years old!), so Crouser deserves major kudos for that.
- Crouser won a world championship with two blood clots in his leg. That's insane. Blood clots can be fatal! People with blood clots are not supposed to be flying halfway around the world and engaging in world-class athletic competition.
After reading the LetsRun article in which they named Kiptum their Athlete of the Year, here are a couple more reasons Crouser is more deserving.
#9: Crouser was MUCH more dominant.
LetsRun asked us to appreciate Kiptum's dominance. I do. Winning London by 2:58 and Chicago by 3:27 is amazing. Winning any world marathon major by such a large margin is amazing. But it's not unheard of. In fact, just last year Kipchoge won Berlin by nearly 6 minutes!
More importantly, Kiptum's dominance pales in comparison to Crouser's. Kiptum's London time was 2.4% faster than the runner-up, and his Chicago time was 2.8% faster than the runner-up. On average, he was 2.6% better than the second-fastest guy. Now let's look at Crouser's victory at the world championships. Crouser's championship record throw was 23.51. Second place was way back in 22.34. That's a difference of 1.17m. Crouser was 5.2% better!! His percentage was twice as good as Kiptum's!
To help you understand how astounding being 5.2% better than the runner-up is, consider that Bolt's 19.19 WR was only 3.1% better than second-place in that race, and Kipyegon's 3:49 1500 WR when she won by almost 8 seconds was only 3.4% better than second-place!
Now, you might be wondering: is it common for a shot putter to win by over a meter like Crouser did in Budapest? The answer is NO. Since the world championships started in 1983, no shot putter has won a championship competition by over a meter. The largest margin of victory before Crouser's was 0.92m in 1991, over 30 years ago. The average margin of victory in the shot put for all world championship and Olympic competitions from 1983 to 2022 was 0.34m, and the median was 0.29m. Crouser won by 1.17! Absolutely unprecedented in the professional era. You'd have to go way back over a century ago to the 1900 Olympics to find another man who won a global shot put championship by over a meter.
If dominance is going to be the main deciding factor for crowning Athlete of the Year, then Crouser is the deserving winner, and it's not even close.
40 -
#10: Crouser was MUCH more active on the circuit than Kiptum. This is very important considering all the discussion around SML and Mu not racing and all the efforts World Athletics is putting into incentivizing athletes to show up to competitions. Obviously, people can't run marathons as frequently as people can compete in the shot put, but still, just two races all year is minuscule. It would have been nice to see Kiptum jump in a half-marathon or two.
Crouser competed 13 times and in 7 different months. He competed both indoors and outdoors. His sustained excellence all year long is much more impressive than someone who only competed twice. Yeah, Crouser lost at the Diamond League final after a long season, but I'm sure if he saved himself for just two competitions like Kiptum did, he would have won both. What's more impressive: going 2 for 2, or going 12 for 13?The Athlete of the YEAR award should go to someone who was actively competing all year. It should go to Ryan Crouser.
21 -
absolute F London Marathon 2023 results
00 -
There's an asterisk over every nominee.
23 -
After hearing the recent comments from Lance about how quickly the EPO would be undetectable post injection, and knowing that it generally has a 3-4 day max shelf life regardless. There's just no way these top distance runners aren't all on drugs. I agree that shoe technology helped shave some time off of personal bests, but at this point it's become a farce to think these top male runners are clean.
20 -
#73
This post was removed.
-
This quoted post has been removed.
It was good when you were away.
Please mods, don't let him derail yet another thread.
Thank you.
20 -
678 wrote:
This quoted post has been removed.
It was good when you were away.
Please mods, don't let him derail yet another thread.
Thank you.
Read the post I was responding to - or is that derailing the thread, too?
00
What People Are Talking About On LetsRun