leroyisgood wrote:
yeah...and the guy in 13th today was right in the thick of things with Chelanga and Rupp...just like Rupp was right in the thick of things at the Olympics when he was 13th.
People should really look at the context. Rupp was "only" 13th, but it was in the deepest Olympic 10k field in history, lead by the greatest performance ever. At the end of a brutally tactical race full of surges, Bekele ran the last 1600 in 4:02 and the last 400 in 53.42 for an Olympic record. Rupp was just 35 seconds back in 27:36.
Before that I'd say the greatest performance was Lasse Virén, when he fell in 1972, only to get up, catch the field and win in world record time of 27:38. An American college kid running a time that would have been good enough for not only gold but a world record in 1972, and top ten in any other year, looks pretty amazing to me. The fact that Rupp was in the most competitive 10,000 in Olympic history should not take away from his performance.
American Men's Olympic 10,000 performances since 1964
27:36 Galen Rupp, 13th, 2008
27:46 Abdihakem Abdirahman, 10th, 2000
27:51 Frank Shorter, 5th, 1972
27:52 Abdihakem Abdirahman, 15th, 2008
27:53 Mebrahtom Keflezighi, 12th, 2000
28:13 Jorge Torres, 25th, 2008
28:14 Daniel Browne, 12th, 2004
28:24 Billy Mills, 1st, 1964
28:26 Abdihakem Abdirahman, 15th, 2004
28:29 Todd Williams, 10th, 1992
28:34 Pat Porter, 15th, 1984
28:38 Garry Bjorklund, 13th, 1976
29:09 Bruce Bickford, 18th, 1988
29:20 Gerald Paul Lindgren, 9th, 1964
30:14 Tracy Smith, 11th, 1968
30:26 Thomas Laris, 16th, 1968
30:42 Gilbert Ronald Larrieu, 24th, 1964
31:40 Van Nelson, 28th, 1968