Lack of 10k success in the 70's

Where are people getting this wacky idea that there were ?no Africans? before the 80s?? Here?s a list of Africans ranked in the World Top 10 from ?60 - ?79 from 1500 to marathon. Bear in mind that these are only the top ranked guys, not the second tier guys of the type who scoop up your local road race $ or NAIA scholarships these days.

Sure, there?s more now. But it?s not like there weren?t any before.

Keino

Bayi

Boit

Jipcho

A. Morceli

Waigwa

Nyambui

Kogo

Biwott

Tura

Munyala

Tuwei

K. Rono

Bikila

Maiyoro

Gammoudi

Abdesselem

Wolde

Temu

Zammel

Mose

Yifter

Ngeno

Kimobwa

Mabuza

Merawi

Shahanga

Bulcha

Mabuza

Musyoki

Juma

Motshwarateu

The 1979 and 1989 UK teams are impressive, but they'd still be a distant 4th to 7th in any of the recent World Cross Champs.

And neither team is superior to the 2002 U.S. squad of Abdi, Meb, Ritzehein, Wells, that finished 5th.

Not only is it hard to prove factually (despite my best efforts), we also have to contend with the arrogant and ridiculously moralizing ?we had steel balls back then, you sissies? dogma of the Old Schoolers?

malmo, you wrote: "You might want to consider all of those sub- 4:10/9:00 high-schoolers (and the 1000s below 4:25/9:30) of the 70s might possibly have formed a large enough pool of runners in the 80s to produce those road times. That's just wild speculation on my part. Maybe it's as simple as a numbers game."

The numbers you cite for high school runners in your post was also accompanied by an analysis of those numbers, which stated (in part): "If we take the U.S. birth rate graph and create an overlay graph by adding 18 years to the birth years, and then plot the number of sub-4:10 milers (using a three-year moving average to smooth year to year fluctuation), there is a near identical match between the birth rate line and the number of elite runners."

So if it's really just a numbers and birth-rate game, how does that support the contention that we need to get back to training like the runners in the 70s and 80s? Apparently, the training isn't what makes the difference.

The 84 Annual T&F News would have a good list. I will post it when I get my hands on it.

It is amazing that USATF LDR do not have this list (Deep US lists) on their website.

There are some good sites for all-time, but not all time US.

Scroll down a tad. Deep all time lists for every event.

I get tired just thinking about it.

No Kenyans in the 70's UTEP/Wash St dominated with Kenyans,and the Irish/English at East Tenn. Western Ky, and PC.

It was so heavily foreign oriented that finally in 1974

they started to give AA certicates to the top 25 Americans

In 1974 only 12 Americans were in the top 25 in the race.

A side note to Henry Rono, The greastest 10K race I've got to watch was '76 NCAA's at Penn. Rono. Kimeto, Kimumbwa and

Craig Virgin. Games, Surges, 58 sec 400 at he 5K mark,

Virgin tried everything, and Rono blasted the last 200

in 25 sec. Virgin jogged a lap with his hands up in the

air. palms up, as if to say whats the answer, I did all

I could. It was a duel.

I want to know what Hodgie-San and Malmo do for a living now.

Is it possible that there are that many jobs out there that allow one to surf Let's Run all day long?

Please dont tell me you guys are sitting at home posting. I hope someone is paying dearly for this wasted time.

I know OLN pays me well to surf the web when Im not commentating in Europe.

Where are people getting this wacky idea that there were ?no Africans? before the 80s?? Here?s a list of Africans ranked in the World

Top 10 from ?60 - ?79 from 1500 to marathon. Bear in mind that these are only the top ranked guys, not the second tier guys of the

type who scoop up your local road race $ or NAIA scholarships these days.

Sure, there?s more now. But it?s not like there weren?t any before.

Keino

Bayi

Boit

Jipcho

A. Morceli

Waigwa

Nyambui

Kogo

Biwott

Tura

Munyala

Tuwei

K. Rono

Bikila

Maiyoro

Gammoudi

Abdesselem

Wolde

Temu

Zammel

Mose

Yifter

Ngeno

Kimobwa

Mabuza

Merawi

Shahanga

Bulcha

Mabuza

Musyoki

Juma

Motshwarateu

Hey Older than the hills, you proved my point perfectly. In a span of TWENTY YEARS you came up with ONLY 32

african world rankers.

Did you know that in last years world rankings from 1500 to the Marathon, there were no less than FOURTY africans taking up the 50 availible world rankings!!!!! Yes 40 different athletes from Africa ranked in the top ten in the world LAST YEAR. So, yes, I stand by my comment that in the 60's and 70's there were virtually no africans.

Mea Culpa, I meant John Ngeno, not Rono.

BryanB2...Face it the world moved on with the job of running fast & the USA hasn't, face it. Also face the fact that back in the day, the USA was competitive with the rest of the world with the times that we were turning at the time up to 1986, AN-(after Nenow). Now we have hired guns (Meb, KK, Abdi...) doing the work for us. Face it, we are not on the same playing field anymore & may never again. It's not a old Vs. new problem but a lack of progress with the new guys. If the new guard would wipe out all of the old guard & their times we would all be happy.

How many this year will cross over the 2:10:30 line in the sand that Frank Shorter put before us 30 years ago this coming December 1972? Looks like 2, sad.

The target keeps moving.

Silly me. I thought your point was that there were a lot more Africans now than in the past. All your point seems to be is that they now appear more frequently in the Top 10. (this is news?) Couldn?t this be because other countries have slipped, allowing those out of the top 10 to creep in?

Go back to the 10000 track times. We?re not where we used to be. No amount of excuses changes that. Hell, add 2 minutes to all the old marathon times just to satisfy the short-course-revisionists. Still a problem.

At least we?re not where we were 4 years ago or so when the top US times were something like 28:30 and 2:14.

This is not about the past. It?s about the future. It?s finally starting to look hopeful again.

Bryan2B said:

"The numbers you cite for high school runners in your post was also accompanied by an analysis of those numbers, which stated (in part): "If we take the U.S. birth rate graph and create an overlay graph by adding 18 years to the birth years, and then plot the number of sub-4:10 milers (using a three-year moving average to smooth year to year fluctuation), there is a near identical match between the birth rate line and the number of elite runners."

So if it's really just a numbers and birth-rate game, how does that support the contention that we need to get back to training like the runners in the 70s and 80s? Apparently, the training isn't what makes the difference."

Bryan2B, your zeal to make a point is causing you to fabricate facts. I know they didn't teach you that in Pasadena. Those comparisons are not extrapolated birth rates, they are the average yearly numbers of ACTUAL high school aged (15-17) boys during each decade (70s 80s 90s). The participation rates are the average of the ACTUAL number of total participation by high school boys during the same decades. The only weak link in the data is that the NFHS study (the only comprehensive one that I could find) did not break out the participation numbers for each sport for each year in the study. One could make the assumption that since basketball and track have the highest participation numbers that they'd have a high correlation with the overall participation rates. The whole point is to debunk the common notion that it's the declining birth rate (and by extension the available pool) that caused the decline in performance during the 80s and 90s.

So what you have is

1) total average yearly number of high school aged (15-17) children during the 70s

2) total average yearly number of high school kids participating in sports(70s)

3) total of sub 4:10 milers in the 70s

4) total sub 9:00 2-miles in the 70s

Put the same data up for the 80s and likewise the same from the 90s. Make percentage comparisons. The performance drop-offs are statistically significant and confirm what we all know to be true anecdotally. Surely you can see if the enrollment/participation rates were 12.4-12.9 percent less than the 70s and the number of 4:10/9:00 were 21.1 and 39.3 percent fewer, respectively, then there must be something other than numbers to explain the decline? Moreover, if the enrollment/participation rates are only 7.2-9.7 percent less in the 90s than the 70s yet the numbers of 4:10/9:00 are a whopping 62.1 and 82.1 percent fewer!!!! Declining participation has no close correlation to the decline in performance. So what's the answer? Could it possibly be what we've been telling you all along? Hmmmm. In the 70s it wasn't unusual at all for the kid down the block to be putting in 80-100 a week in high school. Yet, I've talked to college XC coaches in the 90s who've said when they suggested that their kids might try to bump up the work-load over the 50mpw they were doing and kids responded like they were from Mars or something.

All of those kids from the seventies - including the hundreds and thousands in the second tier (4:10-4:25/9:00-9:30) and third tier(4:25-4:40/9:30-10:00) - formed a huge pool of runners from which to draw from and making it possible for the depth that you saw in the 80s.

malmo maybe there is one thing that we are not measuring? How about attitude towards the training & the competitive nature of racing that you slightly eluded to with "...and kids responded like they were from Mars or something"?

Maybe it's not cool anymore to throw-up after you tried your best at something like running as it once was?

Great, so a few guys run faster than Bill Rodgers in a road 10K. Now American distance running is back and those old school guys suck balls. It's a road 10K ... get over it. Those guys who ran faster than Rodgers a few weeks ago sure as hell aren't going to go out and run 2:09 at Boston. The United States still only has two clean marathon runners under 2:12 this year, that is terrible compared to the late 1970s and early 1980s. There is no road 10K in the Olympics.

I've always loved the picture of Craig Virgin running World Cross surrounded by the entire Ethiopian team. All alone in a sea of Green and Red....he went on to win that race!No African runners!... Forget the glut of Africans on today's scene, and simply focus on the times put up by a wide array of American runners of that era....they would be competitive in today's climate to say the least. We're getting there today I believe, but we're not there yet.

First of all, I'm certainly not fabricating the facts. It would be fair to say I don't interpret them in the same way that you do, but that's quite a big difference from fabrication. Maybe that's something you're used to from other people, I don't know.

"The only weak link in the data is that the NFHS study (the only comprehensive one that I could find) did not break out the participation numbers for each sport for each year in the study."

Some of the newer data does that for you (at least 2000-2002)

Here's a bit of the 2002 data on participation. Maybe all those track runners are not running the distance events, and maybe there were more distance runners relative to sprinters on the 70s teams? As the cross country numbers go up, so do the performances? Just wondering.

Rank by number of participants (2002 data)

FOOTBALL (11-PLAYER) 1,023,712

BASKETBALL 540,597

TRACK & FIELD (OUTDOOR) 494,022

BASEBALL 451,674

SOCCER 339,101

WRESTLING 244,637

CROSS COUNTRY 190,993 (was 183,000 in 1999)

Virgin won WXC twice. Also running 27:29.16 on the track in 1980, with a 2:10:27 at Boston also in 1980. Didn't he run against Rono, Yifter, Rose, JTracey, Seko & a host of other cats that were around that time? How many guys will be under 27:29.16 & 2:10:27 from 22 years ago this year, one or two? Sad, when you really look closely at this lack of progression.