Who had the better career: Amby Burfoot or Jerome Drayton?

I'll give myself 4/10 on this one because several posters pointed out the stupidity of this question.

The whole thread was to troll Canadians by comparing their GOAT to some american guy whose only real achievement was winning the Boston Marathon in 2:22 in the late 1960s when the race wasn't really at all that competitive, relatively-speaking.

Both had o.k. runs but Seko with 10 major thon wins is the greatest marathonner in history.

Police Woman wrote:

Both had o.k. runs but Seko with 10 major thon wins is the greatest marathonner in history.

0/10

I demand answers wrote:

I'll give myself 4/10 on this one because several posters pointed out the stupidity of this question.

The whole thread was to troll Canadians by comparing their GOAT to some american guy whose only real achievement was winning the Boston Marathon in 2:22 in the late 1960s when the race wasn't really at all that competitive, relatively-speaking.

A troll should strive to not look really dumb though.

2/10

Damn. Turns out Johnny Miles was born in the UK.

Cote is the GOAT born and bred Canada.

I had forgotten about Côté. He is an interesting “what might have been” story, in that he was robbed of the ability to compete in the Olympics during his peak years due to WWII. His four Boston wins were in 1940 (course record), 1943, 1944 and 1948, and he also won three US (AAU) championships. But by the time the Olympics were recommenced in 1948, he was 35 years old. If the Olympics had been held in 40 and 44 and he had won two golds (not impossible), on top of his 4 Boston wins, he would be a legend. Similar story to the record-breaking Swedish milers of that time, Arne Andersson and Gunder Hägg.

If Canada's natural born GOAT is really some guy that won Boston in the 1940s, that is pretty sad.

me gusta bailar wrote:

Drayton is the Canadian GOAT.

But... he was born in Germany and lived there for something like 14 years. So, my question is: On the Canadian version of Letsrun.com, do posters recognize his Canadian National Records as "real"?

Is he like the Canuck version of Lagat?

Don' t believe he even ran until after moving to Canada. Lagat became a citizen AFTER he won an Olympic medal as a Kenyan, after college, WELL after he started running. You can not compare them at all. Similar to Meb maybe who moved as a child and all of his running development took place in North America.

herman rew wrote:

If Canada's natural born GOAT is really some guy that won Boston in the 1940s, that is pretty sad.

The GOAT American racehorse was born in 1917. Greatness knows no calendar.

your aren't old are you?

only Amby would be on the fence on this one

fgfg wrote:

your aren't old are you?

only Amby would be on the fence on this one

I can't say that I really know Amby, but he's never struck me as the kind of guy who would be especially delusional about his talent and ability as a runner.

The comparison between the running careers of Drayton and Burfoot is, of course, silly, but it did cause me to think about how differently Drayton has been treated when compared with others of similar ability and accomplishment. Joe Henderson remarked that, "If he'd lived a little further south -- say, just below the Canadian border -- he would be lionized now as men named Shorter and Rodgers are." Apart from their fame, Shorter and Rodgers made millions of dollars from the sport, but I'm not sure that Drayton ever even made enough to make a real living from running, and he had a longer career as a truly world-class marathoner than almost anyone else. Granted, Drayton didn't come across as the warmest personality in the sport, and his shades gave him this sort of Darth Vader look at a time when almost no one ran with shades in races, but not many top marathoners in those days came across as especially approachable. (Rodgers was a very notable exception.)

Drayton the better runner and running career

Burfoot parlayed it into a more lucrative lifetime career