Salazar: Mo Farah's double gold at London 2012 was the greatest distance running achievement in history

Kudos to Farah, but he would not have beaten a healthy Bekele. Furthermore, Bekele's 2008 Olympic performance was more convincing than Farah's 2012 in my opinion. Again, Farah did an excellent job but let's not forget history.

no thoughts needed. It is a true statement.

Bekele wasn't in top form. I don't think the 10k or 5k were at the top level. Really don't see Farah beating Bekele in 04/08.

2004 and 2008 were more competitive Olympic finals in my opinion.

I am not trying to take anything away from Farah. He is amazing. But I disagree that the competition was better than it ever was before.

Japan's Toshihiko Seko's 9 major marathon wins in a row, is THE GREATEST running achievement from those who I run with.

Plus, those two aren't natve Oregonians and don't even belong in Portland. They don't act like Oregonians in the least. Farah is from the UK, and Salazar is from New England.

Honestly you guys just think the 10k was 'soft' because rupp got silver and you jealously can't understand how incredibly hard it is to drop a 53s last lap like he did in that race. Geb in his prime would have have been hard pressed to stay with rupp over the last lap of that race.

If you take off your blinders and look at the incredible array of talents in the race you'll realize it was arguably the most competitive 10,000m in history in terms of difficulty-to-medal. Guys with simply amazing pedigrees weren't even close.

Simple deductive reasoning will resolve this. Farah's 10k win was almost identical to Bekele's win in 2008. Both ran with the pack and then kicked with a lap to go, and both ran 53.4 for the final lap. But NO SANE MAN would try to argue that Farah's 5k win this summer tops Bekele's 5k win in 2008. The two aren't even in the same ballpark. Not trying to take anything away from Farah, just making sure no one takes anything away from Bekele, or anyone else for that matter.

[quote]The Oregon Trail wrote:

Japan's Toshihiko Seko's 9 major marathon wins in a row, is THE GREATEST running achievement from those who I run with.

[quote]

The Olympics counts as a major. Seko was 14th in LA. His longest winning streak was six majors.

I take back what i said about a journalist taking the extremist take on Salazar's quotes as here is the BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/20755021

where Salazar says:

"He's surpassed them by far."

The Oly Mary never has been a major and isn't a major today. Realize that people tried to beat Tosh for years and could not. Tosh was out of this world. Geb and Bekele were too.

Not to mention that AK couldn't even select a decent team.

I thought it was well established that this was an "off" year for the East Africans. Renato said as much on LRC before the Olympics, and the Kenyans have said plenty afterward.

You could say the same thing about the 1500 with Kiprop obviously not at 100%.

An "off" year? that resulted in 11 sub 2:05 performances... more than any other year, and accounts for 40% of all sub 2:05s...

An "off" year that resulted in the fastest group of 800m runners of all time, including the first sub 1:41 (An exclusive club of 1).

An "off" year that saw every major's marathon being won...

Greatest ever is always an impossible question to answer. I agree that Farah's achievement is among the best ever, but I believe that nothing will quite equal Zatopek's triple - all Olympic records. Sure the competition wasn't as good, but everyone had the same knowledge about how to train.

The 5 and 10k was definitely "soft" at the top. There were no real finishers in either race. But, props to Mo, he was the one in shape and was best on that day. He was definitely good enough to deserve the gold. He showed all year he was the one to beat.

The subject in this thread is the Olympics, stupid, more precisely 5000/10000.

Farah's time in the 10000 in London would have even been good for 12th place in Beijing. More than just a sub-par Bekele. The Kenyans most definitely don't like their results, Rudisha excepted.

coach d wrote:

The subject in this thread is the Olympics, stupid, more precisely 5000/10000.

Farah's time in the 10000 in London would have even been good for 12th place in Beijing. More than just a sub-par Bekele. The Kenyans most definitely don't like their results, Rudisha excepted.

I expect Farah could easily have kept up with a faster pace and still kicked a low 50's last lap. The overall time is not as important as the way Farah responded to his competitors on those days. Running to win > running for time.

coach d wrote:

Farah's time in the 10000 in London would have even been good for 12th place in Beijing. More than just a sub-par Bekele. The Kenyans most definitely don't like their results, Rudisha excepted.

Excellent point because the purpose of Olympic races is to run a fast time trial.

Okay, I follow the logic of running being more competitive now than in Pavo Nurmi's age, but there's still Bekele in '08 which was just as good if not better than Farah in 2012, because of how dominant he was in the races.

And best accomplishment ever? One of the annoying things about the sport of running is how little we respect our history. Emil Zatopek 1952. 5k / 10k / marathon (debut), dominated them all. Never forget

I don't think so Alberto..