Who is the most successful Footlocker Winner (career wise)

Torri? wrote:

No love for the Torri?

Olympian, NCAA champ, numerous WC teams... Jorge should be mentioned before/with Solinsky, IMHO.

solinsky was a more successful ncaa athlete. jorge has only been slightly better as a pro. if you are talking about the track, he has only made 1 world championship team in 2003 plus the olympic team in 2008. he missed out in 2004, 2005, and 2008 (he did win the 10k at usatf in 2006). if you count world xc teams, which i am not sure if you do, then he has made several. solinsky has run pretty darn fast but does not have the teams or titles that jorge does. jorge is better but just by a nod. the jury is still out on solinsky.

Haile Solomon already had a pretty successful career on the roads running half marathons and various road distances all over collecting some prize money... Oh wait! He's still an 18 year old (too bad he misplaced his birth certificate...) high schooler who is eligible to compete. What was I thinking?

Men

1. Bob Kennedy

2. Marc Davis (NCAA Champ, Olympic Finalist)

3. Adam Goucher (Multiple NCAA titles; Olympian; long career)

4. Dathan Ritzenhein (will likely surpass almost all of these guys, but not yet)

5. Torres (NCAA Champion and Olympian)

5. Reuben Reina (Olympian; various NCAA titles)

Most of the rest of the guys haven't had much of a career, in my opinion. But the benchmark has to be a combo of NCAA success and making the Olympic team (the measure of all the great ones). I would think that Davis and Goucher could be interchanged on this since Goucher was much more of a dominating presence in his college days.

Goucher also won the USA 4k and 12k cross country races in the same year, so I'd put him ahead of Davis

I saw Mike Fout yesterday at my regional in indiana. Hopefully he does well career wise. I'm pulling for him.

No doubt Goucher was a monster on the XC...more accomplished than Kennedy even, one could argue.

I put Davis ahead of Gouch because he made an Olympic final, but then again, Marc made a joke out of it (doing a cannon ball into the steeple pit and barely breaking 10:00, I think).

Honorable mention might be Matt Downin. Nice kid; amazing that he has managed to make a career out of running since he's a typical 4-7 placer at USATF. But great personality and consistency pays off, I suppose.

No doubt that Chris Solinsky will earn his way on this list as well...that kid deserved to go to Beijing ahead of Dobson.

Mike Fout - who won 2007 Footlocker - went to FSU. He had injury problems his senior year in track (stress fracture) and did not run outdoors. He might be redshirting and hope he shows up on the collegiate circuit next year. Or maybe he's intimidated that he can't beat Susan Kuijken in FSU distance workouts.

Jason Rexing (9th)

In 1994, Marc Davis beat Khalid Skah in the two mile when Skah was the reigning 10K Olympic Gold medalist. Skah had also won the IAAF world cross country title in 1990 and 1991. Has any other Kinney/Foot Locker champ defeated a reigning Olympic Champion?

"Marc Davis upset Moroccan Khalid Skah and won the 2-mile run in an American-record 8 minutes, 12.74 seconds at a meet in Goteborg, Sweden. Marty Liquori's record of 8:17.12 was 19 years old."