Emiel Putteman and Dave Bedford Could Have Broken World 10,000m Record in 1972 Olympic Heats?

They were very foolish, pure and simple.

They did the same thing in the final, going out in 60 seconds the first lap, while Viren was in the back of the field conserving his energy.

In his book, Viren wrote, the question is not why he ran so well, but why the others ran so poorly.

Just reading through some of the online material, it seems that Bedford loved to front run. He apparently set a fast pace early on. Here are the prelim results:

http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/1972/ATH/mens-10000-metres-round-one.html

Heat 1 was won by Bedford in 27:53.28 and the WR at that time was 27:39.4 by Ron Clarke from 1965.

It is all before my time, but you might contact the guy that runs this site:

http://www.juanjosemartinez.com.mx/running.html

Unless I'm mistaken, he qualified by time from heat 3.

Beford's race in the 10,000 final made the greatest and most interesting 10,000 race of all time. Which is really hard to to for a 10,000 meter race. I can't imagine what people who saw that race live were thinking. 60 flat at the gun and kept hammering.

4:08 for the first mile in 1972 when the world record was about 4:26 pace. I wonder how many national records were set in that race, I would bet it was at least 10.

He wasn't going to medal and wouldn't win with anyone near him the last lap. Probably would have been smarter to but a move at 5k but who knows, it could have been 14:30 if he waited.

There is a picture in I believe "The Olympians" by Sebastian Coe that shows Puttemans and Bedford discussing the possibility of going for the record. They look like they are doing a cool down jog complete with hand gestures.

The record would have been Ron Clarke's.

Scrub this post Big Guy if it offends you

I didn't watch above 1500 that meet ( being young guy - 1500m attention span all I had )

But, it wouda been hard to beat Viren that day

I woud suggest his line of fit that meet was preliminary

~ 52.1 / 1'50.1 -> 3'36.5 , 4'54.8 , 7'35.1 , 13'05.7 !! , 27'25.0 !

5k shouda been his better distance on paper ( compared to Ron's then WRs of 13'16/27'39 )

The 5k in those days were woefully underachieved

Of course the Ron who went 13'16/27'39 couda been 1s/lap faster for dirt/'70s synthetic track, along with Keino's awesome 7'39 in '65, but Viren was best of the field...

Until Rono came on and then Aouita with his pacemakers, the 5k was a cruise 3000 in 8:00 and save it for the kick. Also in those days record attempts for that distance didn't exist. However Clarke and Viren were 10k runners and their 5k prs look about what you would expect. And the milers were mostly 800-1500 types at their peak. I doubt when Quax and Dixon and Bedford moved up they were as fast in the mile. Then again I guess Aouita was the only modern runner capable of simultaneously breaking world records in the 5000 and 1500/mile. Sydney Maree was right behind though once.

I can't see Viren being capable of running 13:05 in the circumstances of that era without being in a race being pulled along. Which of course would have never happened. He was a lot like Bob Kennedy, who ran 12:56 in a much different era with 3:38 and 3:56 mile prs.

Kennedy never ran 12:56

break it up wrote:I can't see Viren being capable of running 13:05 in the circumstances of that era without being in a race being pulled along. Which of course would have never happened.

think harder

that is line of fit of a 3rd tier kenyan now

so hard to believe 3rd tier NON kenyans didn't exist 40y ago ?

Your thing seems to be speculation on guess work and I can respect that. I agree that runners like Shorter, Viren, Rono were easily capable of running much faster with their talent in today's settings.

I look at all the college runners running the times they do now compared to what we ran in the 1980's. I would imagine I would have run 10 seconds faster today doing the same training running in those racing conditions versus the Penn Relays in APril with no pacesetters.

So if you could time transport Lasse Viren from August of 1976 and put him in Oslo in 2010, yeah he probably could have run 13:05. Actually he would have needed 3 races to get used to going out in 2:00 first. Muscle memory wouldn't be ready for that right from the get go.

I don't know the intermediate times from these first 10k heat from Munich 72, but I have the last 6 minutes on tape. Unbelievable stuff; I hardly ever have seen such a race. It seems both Puttemans and Bedford easily were capable of breaking the WR 27:39,4 on that day.

All three heats from Munich are fantastic stuff - the finale definitely had one of the greatest lineups in Olympic history.

And the three Kenyans? They finished their heats in 30:18 (Olympic champion Naftali Temu!), 28:18 (Paul Mose, the only qualifier to the finale) and 29:13 (Richard Juma).

And the two other Ethiopians beside Miruts Yifter? With times of 28:45 (Tadesse Wolde-Medhin) and 28:28 (Wuhib Maresha), both failed to qualify for the finale.

And this after the great success in Mexico four years earlier.

Wejo should know this history.

Shorter broke the recently set AR of Greg Fredericks (28:08) with a 27:58 in the heats. Significant also because Fredericks had run that AR in 1972 and beaten Shorter in that race (AAU Championships). Teh All-time list for the US was re-written that day with a bunch of marks under 28:30.

Shorter then re-set the AR with a 27:51.0 for fifth in the final. Pre then broke that AR with his 27:43.6 in 1974. No American BUT Frank Shorter ran under 27:50 again (Frank did it twice) until Craig Virgin broke the AR in 1979 with 27:39.X in Walnut, CA. Wait, I think Garry Bjorklund ran 27:49 in Brussels after his 1976 Olympic disappointment.

This is all off the top of my head and I am the same age as Wejo.

I never did really understand Bedford. Who remembers his National XC win (and earlier when he won the Southern Junior AND Senior XC champs ON THE SAME DAY!)It was my era - I watched him run at Portsmouth 27.4x on the dirt, then his 27:30 WR on TV. This at a time when very few were even under 28:30.

See him in those races and he was absolutely fearless. I saw that same look in the Munich heat, where I think if Puttyfeet had not been there to distract him he could easily have broken the WR.

Then.....he looked like a different guy in the finals. How someone could be so far off their best I just don't know.

wejo wrote:

It might have been different had Puttemans not expended so much energy in his heat. He and Dave Bedford ran so fast the great British hope turned to him with 2,000m to go and said: "Let's go for the world record." "We could have broken it easily," Puttemans reflected, "but I said to Dave, 'No, it's only the heat'. Maybe if we had run easier from the start in the heat it would have been different for both of us in the final."

Can some of the old timers on here talk about what the heat was like? what was the record why were they running so fast? Would love to hear your insight.

A major boost to fast running in that meet was the track itself. In fact it took a little getting used to, especially for hurdlers (whose "normal" steps were getting them a bit too close to the barriers). Then, too, the widespread use of "ergogenic recovery aids" (*ahem*) certainly was a plus.

ABC televised the final live and uninterrupted to (at least) the East Coast. I remember watching it on a little black and white TV in Ithaca, NY. Bedford's start was electrifying and you knew right away that the race was going to be something very special. It was all-out from "go." (Actually, I just realized that that was the kind of start Gerry Lindgren would have considered ideal.)

I was beside myself, really, throughout the race. I could see Shorter letting the field (in the middle laps) string out with Bedford's surges, then patiently work his way back to the lead group. The fall, with Viren instantly back on his feet and taking the lead within a lap, and Gammoudi too slow in getting back up, only added to the drama. And the split times were just ungodly.

When you watch this video (

) you can see that they were 10secs behind Clarke's record pace with a km to go. But Viren ran the last 1200 in ~3:04 and just nicked Clarke.

Throughout, just the sheer speed was thrilling. You could *feel* how fast they were going. And then that last lap--astounding. In 40 years, I have never again watched a race that gave me so much excitement.

NOTES:

I remember reading that Viren's pulse was absurdly low--like 108?--almost instantly after finishing his heat, but he was one of the few in the heats to jog in that last 100m or so, once his qualifying place was secure. He set WRs before, during, and after the Games, and was clearly the fittest man there.

As noted, Shorter ran pretty hard to set the AR in the heats and broke it three days later in the final, then won gold in the marathon seven days after that--all of this two months after the Olympic Trials, which included the marathon. (But nowadays two quality distance efforts in two months is just too much, isn't it? Try three HIGH quality efforts in eleven days.)

The first five men in the final (Viren FIN, Putteman BEL, Yifter ETH, Haro ESP, Shorter USA) certainly set national records; Bedford set his NR in his heat. Between heats and final there were probably another half-dozen or so NRs. (Sorry, I no longer have that issue of T&FN, and I'm having trouble finding the info online.)

I have seen a pic of the young Viren in an American collegiate uniform. I believe he was briefly a US student (in CO, maybe?), but obviously didn't make a splash and probably didn't last long. Y'know, given that he didn't know English...

lease that was an awesome post. I have the 1972 Olympic TnF news with Viren on the cover. I never saw the actual race until 10 years ago but the sportswriting was so good in those days I felt like I knew everything about that race. Really, sportwriters were so much better in those days. It was like great literature.

All I remember about 72 since I was 5 was talk about terrorists and watching diving get delayed because of a thunderstorm.

Munich in 1972 and the European Championships in 1978 were historic 10,000 races. There are European countries to this day whose standing National Record was set in one of those two races.

break it up wrote:

Until Rono came on and then Aouita with his pacemakers, the 5k was a cruise 3000 in 8:00 and save it for the kick. Also in those days record attempts for that distance didn't exist. However Clarke and Viren were 10k runners and their 5k prs look about what you would expect. And the milers were mostly 800-1500 types at their peak. I doubt when Quax and Dixon and Bedford moved up they were as fast in the mile. Then again I guess Aouita was the only modern runner capable of simultaneously breaking world records in the 5000 and 1500/mile. Sydney Maree was right behind though once.

.

Maybe -- Steve Ovett broke the WR for 2 miles in 1978 and beat Henry Rono to do it. His time of 8:13.5 predicts a 5000 time of 13:06-13:16, depending on choice of table. And he did run 13:20 in 1986, well past his best days.

Good call. Ovett could have stepped up in the early 1980's and gave the 5000 WR a scare.

Just watched that 72 10,000. Still has to be the most compelling 27 plus minutes of distance racing to this day. I watched Geb vs. Tergat in 96 but that was really only 6 minutes of excitement.

What a sublime race by Viren. The last three laps were a pure joy to watch.

Lasts:

200 27.7

400 56.4

600 1:26.0

800 1:56.5

1000 2:29.1

1200 3:04.0

1600 4:11.2

J.R. wrote:

They were very foolish, pure and simple.

They did the same thing in the final, going out in 60 seconds the first lap, while Viren was in the back of the field conserving his energy.

In his book, Viren wrote, the question is not why he ran so well, but why the others ran so poorly.

--Dope.

Viren attended BYU for a year; 1969 or 70, as I recall. I also recall reading that he didn't learn a word of English while he was there, but that can't be true, can it?