wejo wrote:
Dennis Reynolds wrote:London 2002?
I'll have to look that one up but was that Gebrselassie and Tergat and Khannouchi?
That one might win.
That was certainly one that came to my mind. Another was the 1984 Olympic marathon (both men's and women's, in fact). Of course, one can define "best marathon field ever" in a bunch of different ways.
The top end of the London field this year is obviously very fast, but I'm not very excited about the race. Another time trial that seems focused more on the continuing rivalry between Berlin and London (and perhaps a couple of others, like Rotterdam) to see which event can deliver the fastest times. This year, it's especially depressing to me to see Mo Farah acting as a half-marathon show horse for the local fans and Dennis Kimetto, after apparently throwing Berlin last fall in his marathon debut, acting as a domestique once again. (If the latest reports are accurate, Kimetto is already twenty-nine years old, and I have my doubts about whether we'll ever have the chance to see what he could do in a real race against a world-class field.)
To me, there is perhaps no athletic event as exciting as a world-class marathon race, but marathon-distance time trials, with a collection of non-competitor pacemakers in the lead for the first thirty kilometers or so, are an abomination of the sport.