Kenenisa Bekele: how soon will he totally annihilate the distance WR's?

In honor of Kenenisa's great marathon debut, we got an email to revive this thread to the front page.

It's one of the oldest and most popular threads in letsrun history.

I didn't know it but to save server space, our tech people had put threads before # 1,000,000 on cobwebs. While still existing, it was imossible to reply to them.

Not any more. Thanks to carnivore, back by popular demand!!!

a bump for his 2:05

A preemptive bump for KB running Dubai.

A preemptive bump for KB running Dubai.

mesfin wrote:

great performance

1 Kenenisa Bekele ETH 26:25.97 10

2 Ibrahim Jeilan ETH 27:13.85 8

3 Maregu Zewdie ETH 27:14.13 7

4 Mark Kosgei Kiptoo KEN 27:14.67 6

5 Tadese Tola ETH 27:15.17 5

6 Kiplimo Kimutai KEN 27:16.49 4

7 Abdihakem Abdirahman USA 27:16.99 3

8 Barnabas Kiplagat Kosgei KEN 28:15.66 2

9 Ridouane Harroufi MAR 28:20.67 1

Boaz Cheboiywo KEN DNF

Abreham Cherkos ETH DNF

Louis Luchini Jr. USA DNF

Robert Sigei Kipngetich KEN DNS

Abdellatif Meftah MAR DNS

Tilahun Regassa

Interesting to see Jeilan here in '08

Tester

I think his distance breaking days are over. #GOAT? Maybe

EPO

facts wrote:

titles-- yes; records-- no...

now that they've curbed the epo thing, it will be a long time before we see 12:39 and 26:22 again...

The second post on this old thread always cracks me up.

gebbek wrote:

I think his distance breaking days are over. #GOAT? Maybe

You thought wrong gebbek.

hahahanothing like going back into the archives to kind of prove someone wrong

Bekele Kenenisa wrote:

gebbek wrote:

I think his distance breaking days are over. #GOAT? Maybe

You thought wrong gebbek.

Suck it gebbek!

pop pop pop wrote:

EPO

I've never seen this thread. Amazing call 14 years ago, and nobody has been in striking distance since.

He's now within seconds of the marathon WR. #GOAT

Great Kenenisa Bekele! Next stop, 2:02:38!!

i never heard about kenny's 10,000 WR attempt at Pre in 2008, very interesting and disappointing it didn't come together. but if he was still that close even 3 years after his 26:17, it definitely shows 26:17 is soft and kenny could have come a lot closer to (but probably not broken) 26 minutes flat!

But according to Jack Daniel, his 10k record is actually a bit stronger than the 5k(85.1 VDOT vs 85).

bekele fan wrote:

i never heard about kenny's 10,000 WR attempt at Pre in 2008, very interesting and disappointing it didn't come together. but if he was still that close even 3 years after his 26:17, it definitely shows 26:17 is soft and kenny could have come a lot closer to (but probably not broken) 26 minutes flat!

I think he peaked for Olympics that year, so getting close at the Pre meet was still good. His olympic races that year were just so dominant

Bekele had a 5000m PR of 13:13 when this thread was started in late 2002 and his 2002 season best was just 13:26.

He hadn't run a 10,000 yet.

The prediction was mostly based off of him running 7:30.67 for 3000 at age 19 (though Vipam thought he was 17) and his XC success. He won the short and long race in March 2002.

The thread came out of the blue in December 2002.

A few months after a sub par track season and 9 months after the great XC performances.

I have no idea what compelled him to start the thread that day.

So he now has the 5000 WR, and the 10,000 WR and is just 6 seconds shy of the marathon record.