Mo Farah gets spanked. 6 times as many Brits say Haile G is the GOAT as compared to Farah!!!

about right wrote:

I think the results are pretty good.

I think Alberto is secretly seething.

just read it wrote:

about right wrote:

I think the results are pretty good.

I think Alberto is secretly seething.

I'm curious as to what people think Rupp would think about something like this. Would you psychologically want the guy who kept you from Olympic gold to be the GOAT or would you definitely not want him to be as you kind of don't like him and are kind of jealous, like the #2 kid often is on a HS xc team.

Thoughts?

just read it wrote:

about right wrote:

I think the results are pretty good.

I think Alberto is secretly seething.

He'll get Haile DQ'ed

I think what this shows more than anything is that they are very track literate.

I've just read Paavo's Wikipedia.

Why the hell he got only 5.5%?

Aren't we too too inclined to pick athletes from recent times in detriment to athletes from the past (that we barely heard of, let alone watched and followed their careers)?

TAA wrote:

just read it wrote:

I think Alberto is secretly seething.

He'll get Haile DQ'ed

LOL

about right wrote:

The results of an Athletics Weekly poll are in and the results are as follow:

Haile Gebrselassie – 45.6%

Emil Zátopek – 20.3%

Kenenisa Bekele -15.2%

Mo Farah – 8.6%

Paavo Nurmi -5.5%

Lasse Viren – 3%

Abebe Bikila – 1.8%

I think the results are pretty good.

http://www.athleticsweekly.com/featured/gebrselassie-is-the-greatest-35025/

Broke his little plastic heart, I'm certain.

Why do people not unanimously believe that Kenenisa is the GOAT? He holds the world record in both the 5k and 10k...

The only surprising thing is that a single person voted for MF as GOAT, presumably they were all under the age of 12.

Because MF is only half the weight of Paavo a correction of 2% was applied.

The rest was added because of the skin colour.

Mo might be inclined to agree with the result of the poll. I dunno.

.

not a registered faqqot wrote:

Why do people not unanimously believe that Kenenisa is the GOAT? He holds the world record in both the 5k and 10k...

This. Let's just set aside the whole lack of EPO testing for a moment, KB is hands down the GOAT. It is imperative that if you want to be considered the best runner you need to run well on all surfaces. KB's XC resume along with his track and then finally road accomplishments blow away anything HG did.

Now, let's consider their hay day in the same light that we view McGuire, Bonds, Sosa (and the way we will eventually view the NFL) and KB and HG start to drop down the list. How far down? I'm not sure but as someone else said, PN and others probably could make a case - assuming they hadn't invented PEDs yet.

Paaavo wrote:

I've just read Paavo's Wikipedia.

Why the hell he got only 5.5%?

Aren't we too too inclined to pick athletes from recent times in detriment to athletes from the past (that we barely heard of, let alone watched and followed their careers)?

Yes, but sometimes it is for the same reason that you went to look at his wikipedia page: people don't know who he is

Any American's on the list.

Surely one got at least .01% ?

what percentage did Gabe Jennings get?

about right wrote:

The results of an Athletics Weekly poll are in and the results are as follow:

Haile Gebrselassie – 45.6%

Emil Zátopek – 20.3%

Kenenisa Bekele -15.2%

Mo Farah – 8.6%

Paavo Nurmi -5.5%

Lasse Viren – 3%

Abebe Bikila – 1.8%

I think the results are pretty good.

http://www.athleticsweekly.com/featured/gebrselassie-is-the-greatest-35025/

actions > words wrote:

Paaavo wrote:

I've just read Paavo's Wikipedia.

Why the hell he got only 5.5%?

Aren't we too too inclined to pick athletes from recent times in detriment to athletes from the past (that we barely heard of, let alone watched and followed their careers)?

Yes, but sometimes it is for the same reason that you went to look at his wikipedia page: people don't know who he is

Guys like Paavo and Zátopek look real legends (yes, reading from Wikipedia), yet we don't credit them not nearly as much as they deserve. Not even close.

There's a huge bias toward recent times, and those kind of poll means absolutely nothing if you're going to put in the same bowl athletes that far apart in time.

Running is time obsessed, so that would obviously favor more recent runners. This is the complete opposite of, say a sport like baseball, where nostalgia really drives the conversation. You still here guys talk about Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Willie Mays....

You can prefer Bekele if you want and I won't tell you that you are wrong. I will tell you that I totally disagree that it is a slam dunk that KB is a better runner than HG was.

Haile had greater range, faster at both the 1500 and the marathon.

Haile had far more success in the marathon. (This is of course somewhat balanced against KB's unparalleled success on the dirt).

While KB's times were faster on an absolute basis, Haile slashed the existing world records by enormous amounts while Bekele shaved a little bit off of them.

There is certainly a case to be made for either one.

Stagger Lee wrote:

Running is time obsessed, so that would obviously favor more recent runners. This is the complete opposite of, say a sport like baseball, where nostalgia really drives the conversation. You still here guys talk about Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Willie Mays....

The difference is, those guys were just as good as the best guys today. Paavo Nurmi was slow as molasses compared to the best guys today. The freaking marathon world record is basically the same pace as Nurmi's 5k pr. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be in the conversation as one of the greats of our sport, but he dominated against a much, much smaller talent pool than Bekele or Geb.