Jonathan Gault caught up with Alan Webb this morning after Webb showed up at Drew Hunter's HS to surprise him with the Gatorade Athlete of the Year award for xc.
Check it out here:
Jonathan Gault caught up with Alan Webb this morning after Webb showed up at Drew Hunter's HS to surprise him with the Gatorade Athlete of the Year award for xc.
Check it out here:
Personally I loved this part of the interview.
"It really is just poetic and fun to be a part of his journey. For me personally just to know him and then see him go on and eclipse my own performances, I couldn’t have asked for a better situation to see my own personal records be eclipsed."
Seriously, how cool is it that they are interrelated?
Good interview—thanks.
I give only 10% Hunter will take Webb's outdoor record.
Good interview
They're all on a drug, sub 4 just isn't naturally possible.
good read
Why not just have the link on the homepage direct to the article instead of to the MB first? Come on now.
Props to Webb regarding who had the best career. Yes, they all had their areas of specialization and made their marks on the sport
Great interview.
Webb is class.
Gault does a great job .
I would love LRC to take this to the next level and do one on one and group interviews with these guys, in a video format.
Collect the thoughts of the greats in our sport while they are still around ...
pert wrote:
Props to Webb regarding who had the best career. Yes, they all had their areas of specialization and made their marks on the sport
Yes. That was as good an answer as possible.
Is Webb still competing? A saw a headline touting "an eye on Rio" on blotrack or something. Is he still doing the tri thing or trying to return to the track?
seer of trolls wrote:
Why not just have the link on the homepage direct to the article instead of to the MB first? Come on now.
Doing it this way gives them more page views/hits
Alan Webb is a classy, articulate guy. I don't think Hunter will get his record. 3:53 is ridiculous. American pros still struggle to hit that at times.
DLR wrote:
pert wrote:Props to Webb regarding who had the best career. Yes, they all had their areas of specialization and made their marks on the sport
Yes. That was as good an answer as possible.
Excellent answer but if he was being honest he would have said Ritzenhein.
Great interview. Alan seemed especially well spoken this time around, clearly having given the rising career of his would-be successor some thought.
"Had the better career" could mean a lot things. But here I think we mean "was the greatest." The best measure for that, in my opinion, is not what they did but the effect they had. I think Webb has had the greatest effect at least on my generation. I'm 34 and sort of came up with the Big Three.
Unlike Ritz and Hall, Webb ran with a brute passion the results of which forced us to reimagine the limits of what is possible for American distance running. Ritz and Hall accomplished a lot and gave us hope but have had far less impact on how we imagine the future.
Hall's performances at the Houston half, Olympic trials, and Boston were spectacular, and Ritz's cross country and sub-13 5K efforts helped take American distance to the next level. But with these two the dream feels somehow unrealized.
That's a classy, diplomatic answer at the end. WEBB IS BACK, BABY!
Egun wrote:
Great interview.
Webb is class.
Gault does a great job .
I would love LRC to take this to the next level and do one on one and group interviews with these guys, in a video format.
Collect the thoughts of the greats in our sport while they are still around ...
I remember Runners World (or The Runner?) did an in-depth interview with Coe, Ovett and Cram. It would be brilliant for letsrun to do that with Hall, Ritz and Webb.
And Webb is a class act. He did a great job - graciously acknowledging his place (along with Ritz and Hall) in the resurgence of American distance running. His answers were thoughtful and genuine.
What did Webb actually do? I know he ran 3:53 and 3:46 which are amazing times, but what else? He hasn't really shown that Americans can compete at global championships. NOP has done that. Ritz and Hall, aside from fast times, haven't show that Americans can compete on the global championship stage either. NOP has done that. It's no wonder then, that while Webb has inspired Hunter, Hunter's biggest running idol is actually Centro. In the end, it's winners not time trialers that matter
Agree 100%. Webb, Ritz, and Hall had fast times, but Centro and Rupp have medals and have proven to be world contenders.
cwarcarblue11 wrote:
Agree 100%. Webb, Ritz, and Hall had fast times, but Centro and Rupp have medals and have proven to be world contenders.
It doesn't take a negative to make a positive.