What is the greatest world record of all time?

Not sure if it qualifies as a world record but Nadia Comaneci's 7 perfect 10's is pretty much without question the greatest individual athletic feat.

It would be virtually impossible for anyone to equal a feat such as that

Secretariat's run at Belmont, a world record for 1 1/2 miles. I can't imagine another horse ever coming close to what he did that day.

Side note... His jockey Ron Turcotte broke both legs in a car accident yesterday. Speedy recovery.

There is one way to objectively figure this out: Look at the numbers. The greatest percentage difference from the world record time (or distance) to the closest competitor would be the greatest performance. So the 5000 men's record will be out because the percentage difference from Bekele to Geb is minimal. My guess is Radcliffe has a shot at having the greatest performance of all time.

Rfvfvfvbggbg wrote:

There is one way to objectively figure this out: Look at the numbers. The greatest percentage difference from the world record time (or distance) to the closest competitor would be the greatest performance. So the 5000 men's record will be out because the percentage difference from Bekele to Geb is minimal. My guess is Radcliffe has a shot at having the greatest performance of all time.

I hate when people suggest solutions to questions like this then don't bother to implement them.

Rounded to the nearest 1/100th of a percent

100m: Bolt over Gay: 1.15% (but also a 0.9 wind reading faster for Bolt)

200m: Bolt over Blake: 0.36%

400m: Johnson over Reynolds: 0.25%

800m: Rudisha over Kipketer: 0.2%

1500m: El-G over Lagat: 0.17%

Mile: El-G over Ngeny: 0.12%

3000m: Komen over El-G: 0.55%

3000m SC: Shaheen over Kipruto: 0.00% (actually 0.0022% if anyone was interested)

5000m: Bekele over Geb: 0.27%

10000m: Bekele over Geb : 0.33%

Half Marathon: Tadese over Wanjiru: 0.29%

Marathon: Kimetto over Mutai: 0.22% (0.35% over the previous WR as Mutai was in the same race as Kimetto, again if anyone was interested)

110m HH: Merritt over Robles:0.55%

400m h: Young over Moses: 0.51%

HJ: Sotomayer over Barshim: 0.82%

PV: Bubka over Tarasov: 0.1.32% (1.49 using his 6.14m at altitude)

LJ : Powell over Beamon: 0.56%

TJ: Edwards over Harrison :1.11%

Shot: Barnes over Timmerman: 0.26%

Discus: Schult over Alenka: 0.27%

HT: Syedikh over Litvinov : 0.81%

Jav: Zelezny over Parviainen: 5.8%

Deca: Eaton over Sebrle: 0.14% (though also subjective to point scale)

Womens: (at this point it's much quicker to just type distance and percent, if you care to look up the next-best feel free but the numbers are right)

100m: 1.43% (0.28% if we use Flo-Jos #2 (not absurdly wind-aided) time)

200m: 1.31%

400m: 0.82%

800m: 0.13%

1500m: 0.22% (0.64% between the two fastest non-Chinese times)

Mile: 1.21%

3000m: 1.25%

3000m SC: 1.44%

5000m: 0.2%

10000m: 1.24%

Half Marathon: 0.87%

Marathon: 2.4%

110m HH: 0.33%

400m h: 0.15%

HJ: 0.48%

PV: 2.85%

LJ: 0.4%

TJ: 0.71%

Shot: 0.8%

Dicus: 3%

Jav: 0.4%

Hep: 3.68%

So what does this tell us? Probably not much. 1 is further confirmation of the distance bias on LR.

The best indication that can be taken from them is the higher the number, the longer they are to stand. It doesn't control for how often it is contested or luck or other factors (but with 3% in women's discus and a stupid 5.8% in men's Jav, we can see that situational luck can (but not always) play a big role in an earth-shattering WR)

Women's marathon was one of the strongest, but was she competing with men? (I honestly can't remember but the fact that she was sounds familiar, and besides maybe the half I know this to not be the case of any other. If she was competing with men, that no doubt affected the performance).

It does help stifle the people who try to argue how hard x distance at y pace would be vs another distance (for reference, 2 miles (Komen over Geb) is 0.52% so they are pretty comparable, and saying "conversions have him at 7:55.xx" are nullified because by using this form of comparison we negate distance-to-distance conversion, i.e. Geb's 8:01.08 is good for a 7:58.05 by Purdy)).

Great, however, is a term that pretty much by definition necessitates opinion and/or qualitative measures, such as situation (Rudisha's 800m, for example, was run in an Olympic final leading the whole way, while the women's 5000m, exact same percent difference, was a rabbited affair. Rudy's 800m seems greater taken at face value).

So essentially the best thing to take away is that this is a question that people will have differing opinions about because there isn't a right or wrong answer. So fine, debate it, but don't get worked up.

As for my 2 cents, I've always looked at Komen's as a mark that is just unreal, especially the way he ran it, but as a distance runner I'm biased. Bolt's difference is jaw-dropping. And the greatest for me will probably always be Eaton's, because I was in the stands for it.

I have actually researched this before, and I found a calculator online that compares the equivalent times between events. For example a ten second one hundred would be equal to a 2:10 marathon. I plugged in the all the male world records for running events and bolt's 200 is the best record according to the calculator, you guys should check it out for fun! Its on runnerspace in the tools section.

Team Bartowski wrote:

Bob Beamon in 68.

Thank you. I'm amazed we got to page 2 before someone got the correct answer. Far and away the greatest t and f performance ever.

Mizner 2016 wrote:

I have actually researched this before, and I found a calculator online that compares the equivalent times between events. For example a ten second one hundred would be equal to a 2:10 marathon. I plugged in the all the male world records for running events and bolt's 200 is the best record according to the calculator, you guys should check it out for fun! Its on runnerspace in the tools section.

Are you talking about the Purdy calculator? That's just one measure of comparing it and is hosted on a number of sites. Purdy uses charts and current performances to compare, and I think the standard was set back in the 70s where all WRs were given an equal point value.

The specific tool you're referencing uses 4 different calculators, such as the vDot. These are much more useful for predicting an individual's performance than across-the-board, and it offers four different formulas because performances scale differently with changes in distance for different people.

I believe people have already referenced using Purdy conversions in this thread (hell I did in my post just before yours) but again Purdy isn't the law, and that's one of the reasons this is an open discussion. It also only includes running events as Purdy is based on the predicted maximal velocity a human can run for a certain distance.

FWIW based on the Purdy, the next best running record is the 10,000m.

HaileUnlikely wrote:

Tough call, but I'd narrow it down to these three:

Paula Radcliffe's marathon

Daniel Komen's 3000m

Michael Johnson's 400m

Note: I'm ignoring all of the records by Ma Juaren's Chinese athletes in the era of Wang Junxia as well as the women's 800 meter world record which was obviously run by a dude.

Wait, you are ignoring the records by Ma's athletes yet are entertaining the idea that Komen's 3000 was actually clean? Or is it that you are more tolerant of cheating by certain people like Komen but draw the line at Chinese athletes? Which is it?

Next !

no

the definitive site says tokyo is at 10m

i assume this is a joke !!!

no

except they put an "A" next to them

here are some maths using above calculator

- ivan with 8.96m with 1.2m/s at sestriere =

~ 8.75m basic

ivan with theoretical 8.96m with 1.2m/s at sea-level =

~ 8.84m basic

sestriere altitude gave ivan a 9cm advantage

as for powell, an 8.95m with 0.3m/s at tokyo =

~ 8.92m basic

powell's jump was ~ 17cm superior jump to ivan's at sea-level & 0 wind

Hands down Ben Johnson 9.79 look how long it took for somebody to equal that???

Also kicking the arse of Carl Lewis = PRICELESS SO PRICELESS

Lewis can never get that moment in time back. He LOST that race bwahahahaha...

Farrah Fawcett?

1:40.9

Just watch the race again, those men are all great competitors, with Amos equalling Coe's old WR, Rudisha destroys them all.

Heston wrote:Among many obviously outstanding performances, Jonathan Edwards' 18.43 at Lille in '95 is the greatest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAgLGLPtOnE

not quite

1st, here is proper link

he looks ~ 15cm shy on the board, making it a toe-sand of ~ 18.58 with + 2.4

applying :

( you have to do some squaring of corrected 60m time )

using say, 6.60s basic for him ( he was fastest ever tj'er ), this was basic

~ 18.12m

in his 18.29wr he states he was 11cm shy on board

that makes 18.40 toe-sand with +1.3

this works out as basic

~ 18.13m

his actual wr maya been a fractionally better jump

of legal jumps, kenny's 18.09 into a 0.4 is other contender

now, i've watched that vid a lot & quality isn't good enough to see how much he gave away on board

if someone has a HD vid of it, please help out

he maya been 1 or 2 cm shy, but i'll be ungenerous & call it 0cm

now, i assume he wasn't anywhere as quick as edwards & use basic 6.70 for him, which also looks ungenerous

this gives a basic of

~ 18.14m

i have twice been ungenerous to him above, but his basic jump still comes out fractionally superior to edwards 2 best

of any jump, legal or foul, teddy's 11cm foul into a 0.2 was by far biggest intrinsic jump in history

i analysed a HD vid of jump & came up with basic

~ 18.26m !!!

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=5272758&thread=5263586

( this doesn't have the HD vid link which is now gone & also i didn't know at time edwards was 11cm shy on board so only a 18.01 basic for him listed which is additional coupla cm better worth from tweaking method )

Steve Prefontaines' Olympic Gold Medal and WR is the best I can recall.

The greatest stage is the Olympics.

Rudisha Going sub 1:41 which was previously unfathomable. And it was at the greatest stage. And there was no pacemaker nor a challenger in site. All this makes Rudisha's record the greatest.

Second is Bolt from 2008 with a similar feat.

Hitting the board right is part of the event. You can't state that a jump is "better" by adjusting it for doing something wrong in that part.