The Eagle wrote:
Juha Väätainen of Finland is another one, a mind-boggling athlete starting out as a sprinter (junior) working his way up to the 10K. His 10K win in the European Championships in Helsinki 1971 must still contain one of the fastest last lap in a distance race (51.low).
Actually, Vaatainen\\\\\\\'s last lap in the 10k was 53.8. (It was 52.8 in the 5k ahead of Harald Norpoth and Jean Wadoux.) Vaatainen developed a groin injury after the 1971 season. And he\\\\\\\'s been discussed on letsrun a lot, including his later career as an artist and his earlier career as a half-miler at Adams State.
Jurgen Haase has not been talked about much on letsrun. He won the European championship 10k twice and finished just behind Vaatainen in the Helsinki race for a silver. Their full-out sprint over the final 300 meters is still the most stirring footage I\\\\\\\'ve ever seen, and that includes El G\\\\\\\'s two Olympic finishes in 2004. (The guy in third in the footage is the Russian Rashid Sharaftnikov, who blew past Frank Shorter earlier that summer in the US-Soviet dual meet with a withering kick over the last 200 meters.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6R3S0buRN4Another elite runner who is rarely mentioned on here is the East German Dieter Fromm. He was world ranked top 10 each year from 1968 to 1973 in the 800 meters (was number 2 twice), and he was the European champion in 1969 indoors and outdoors.
Yevgheniy Arzhanov was ranked number one in the world in the 800 meters twice (\\\\\\\'70 and \\\\\\\'71), was ranked top 10 in the world four times, was European champion in 1971, and won a silver medal behind Wottle. He finished 1/100th of a second by Wottle and would have gotten gold had he not been badly fouled by Fromm in the backstretch of the first lap in Munich, which threw him off balance and caused him to go from first to sixth in a split second. (Look at the footage on Youtube.) Fromm hated Arzhanov, since Arzhanov had knocked him from his perch as the top European 800 meter runner. Wottle can thank Fromm for fouling Arzhanov just enough to allow Wottle to win the race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHid-nC45kBottom line: the least discussed elite runner on here is Rashid Sharaftnikov, who was ranked number 2 in the world in 1971 in the 10k and number 8 in 1972.
The number two least-discussed is Nikolay Sviridov, who was world ranked number 1 in the 10k in 1973 (when he was European champion) and was world ranked in the top 10 three other times.
Whoever said Jim Grelle is dead wrong. Do a search and you\\\\\\\'ll find two pages under his name. Same thing with Juha Vaatainen.