Men
Hicham El Guerrouj a narrow winner over Khalid Khannouchi.
Women
Paula Radcliffe an easy #1.
Men
Hicham El Guerrouj a narrow winner over Khalid Khannouchi.
Women
Paula Radcliffe an easy #1.
Hmmm...a little track bias? El G had a solid year (with excellent pacing help) but KK redefined his event and did it against the best competition.
I respect TFN but racing should be honored over glorified time trials.
I don't remember ElG getting his butt kicked at any point last year. KK can't say that. Case closed. KK shouldn't even be that close to #1.
I'm agreed w/you PR. Gonna try and get some 'insider' info on election-thinking from a reliable source. El G was pretty untouchable but....
The dilemma is that you have one guy having the best 1500 meter season ever and the other has the best marathon season ever. For sentiment, I thought that they would give it to KK to be the first ever marathoner as AOY. Instead it looks like they rewarded El G for stepping to the line week after week, beating all comers with times faster than Coe, Cram or Aouita ever ran. I thought that KK's World Record and quality of competition should have given him a slight edge but I can forgive them for recognizing the phenominal season of El Guerrouj.
I'd have to disagree and say that Herb Elliot's 1960 season beats El Guerrouj's 2002 season. El Guerrouj's season is proabably the best non-Olympic season.
Undefeated, WR mile, Olympic Gold 1500m in WR, 20m ahead of second place.
Portland Runner wrote:
Hmmm...a little track bias?
*Smacks Portland Runner*
What's the title of the magazine again?
*Another smack*
It may be called "Track & Field News" but the marathon is part of the Olympic track and field agenda and has always been weighed as such.
Still, it's hard to get some of these voters to really think about the marathon. The Hicham/Khalid thing is a bit of a tossup ...to some extent, these guys are competing against standards only THEY have achieved previously.
Less forgivable, though, is the awarding of the USATF Jesse Owens Award for best American male athlete (Marion Jones was a deserving female winner) to Tim Montgomery over Khannouchi. Montgomery broke a WR by a mere hundredth of a second, was not undefeated, and missed international championship meets. I don't see how he rates as a more worthy candidate than Khannouchi.
Montgomery over Khannouchi is a joke, but the Owens award always is (Inger Miller won a few years ago simply because they felt Marion shouldn't get it every year). T&FN had Montgomery at #6, see the link below for the full top ten.
http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/general/features/2002_AOY.html
The article mentions that KK actually had more first place votes than El G but apparently those who didn't vote KK #1 also didn't vote him #2. That's a little suspicious.
Trackhead,
As far as Herb Elliot's season being better than El G, you may have a point comparing relative performances. That may be the subject of a whole new thread.
Khannouchi was undefeated in the marathon. I did not think T&FN considered road performances at other (non-marathon) distances. Since he can't run 7 to 10 marathons, and since he beat incredibly high quality fields in his marathons, AND set a record, I thought he would get the nod over El Guerrouj.
Hey, I know. Let's start a thread about "who would win a half-marathon, KK or ELG?" (Just joking......)