German Fernandez, GOAT HS?

Nope. Sorry. Try Again.

No HS athlete today would stand a chance against Ryun in the mile, period. In modern times, Ryun would drop below 3:50 IN HIGH SCHOOL.

PLEASE STFU WITH NONSENSE ABOUT FERNANDEZ BEING GOAT. ---NOT EVEN CLOSE.

He's about 30th on the list, maybe.

The very best HS athletes today arent even going out for track, especially middle distance. Sprints, yes, distance and mids, no. The best athletes aren't even on the track today except for sprints and jumps. Try lacrosse, football, hockey, basketball and a million individual sports available to kids now and there you will find the most prodigious athletes. This is why the US lags in distance, not just because the Africans. Kenyans only run. US sports offer a million options. Most of the best don't even consider running, especially distance. The only US high school athletes who can compete at an Olympic/World level are HS sprinters.

The only comparison to Ryuns accomplishments, at age, is El Guerrouj. ---Talk about the G.O.A.T!!

yoyomama wrote:

This must have been one of the most distance amazing meets ever seen and Chapa ran 30 seconds faster the next year:

http://www.runningentertainment.com/hulst/junior_nats_1975.pdf

40 seconds actually

Eras wrote:

Professionals now are better, training is better for one and so are times, generally high school kids are gonna be 18 max and there's really only a certain range of how good they can be, and even if they're as good as some of these legends times, hell even better they're still not gonna be better than the pros now, idk why people can't see that.

Thank you. Theres no way the kids can compete with the today's pros and Ryun wouldn't either honestly.

renewed marathoner wrote:

damn had no idea about bob mathias. the faxt that he never makes these lists shows the distance runner bias on these boards. has any other hs athlete gotten a gold medal while in hs?

he did it summer after hs so i dont think it counts, except for the fact that he was at that level during his senipr year. basically so you can cobsider his ability(olympic gold level) but not the actual medal.

can any other hser make that claim? olympic gold ability while in hs?

Actually, Matthias got that Gold Medal in the summer between his junior and senior years in HS.

Senior-Lazarus_Long wrote:

Didn't Lindgren run 6 mile in 27:11?

Lindgren did that the year after high school, and it was a World Record.

He also ran 12:53 for the 3-mile the following year, which was less than one second off the World Record.

Some on cinder tracks

Loud Asian Neighbor Kids wrote:

He's got my vote, 8:34 3200 3 hours after going 4:00 for the 1600, and 14:24 at Woodward, etc.

I think one and two are fairly obvious, Ryun and Lindgren. Compare Fernandez to Ritz, Webb, Lucas, etc.

Will everyone get over their crush with Ryun and Lindgren? Yes they were All-Time greats however, records are meant to be broken and time allows better athletes to be produced.

Like it or not Webb is superior to Ryun. His only loss in cross country his senior year was to Ritzenhein, the GOAT of Cross Country. As a junior he solo split a Sub-4 1600 split in April showing he had the potential to be the Greatest and proved it his senior year with a Solo 8:45i, first Sub-4 indoor HS mile, another sub-4 1600 DMR Split, 1:47 800m solo, and then his 3:53 including a 55 last lap. And to prove himself once again when he ran a 3:45 1500m PRELIM closing in 53 and then a 3:38 with a 54 closing lap in the final.

Webb was a complete monster in HS and is undoubtedly the GOAT. And before you say "Well Ryun ran 1:44 and 8:25 and 3:51", that was him in college and this is a discussion for HS GOAT. Webb ran 29:38 for 11th as a Frosh in cross. If he didn't get injured indoors his 3k would've probably equaled Ryun's. Not the 800m though.

Also, before some D1ckhead says "Ryun would've/could've ran faster"... He didn't. He ran 4 professional miles his senior year and 3:55.3 was his fastest. Didn't even break 3:40 for the 1500m either. Kinda proving that's all he had as a prep.

Costawasta wrote:

Eras wrote:

Professionals now are better, training is better for one and so are times, generally high school kids are gonna be 18 max and there's really only a certain range of how good they can be, and even if they're as good as some of these legends times, hell even better they're still not gonna be better than the pros now, idk why people can't see that.

Thank you. Theres no way the kids can compete with the today's pros and Ryun wouldn't either honestly.

Bullshit. Nobody except Webb is even close to being in the conversation when it comes to talking about greatest US HS milers.

Spare us with talk of anybody else.

TALENT > Modern Training and Years of Training.

See: El Guerrouj & Ryan (Both hit world records within 4 years of starting training and would again today) Delusional with"modern US HS Runners being better and more talented today. Back when Ryun was in HS the Mile was THE event. It attracted the best athletes back then. Today, track is a niche sport, followed by few, usually by runners, former runners, and those closely related to runners only giving attention. Ryun was WAY ahead of his time as an athlete and performed his feats on gear and surfaces that todays athletes wouldn't have a chance at matching him. His HS records and times were at regular high school meets, against "regular" HS athletes (and talented when you check the times!), and not Brooks PR, Adidas, New Balance all-star HS events or especially at Pre, with Pros for pacers. Ryun would have crushed at Pre. In fact, not only would Ryun beat all comers, HS, today I would go as far to say that Ryun would have won Gold over Centro easily in this years Oly 1500 if he were there.

Talent rules, and Jim Ryun had it.

Ryun > ALL OTHER US HS milers to date, Webb included.

Enough about GF. Definitely NOT HS G.O.A.T! (Maybe 6th or so.)

Eras wrote:

Professionals now are better, training is better for one and so are times, generally high school kids are gonna be 18 max and there's really only a certain range of how good they can be, and even if they're as good as some of these legends times, hell even better they're still not gonna be better than the pros now, idk why people can't see that.

Professionals are now faster. That doesn't necessarily mean better though it could.If all you focus on is time you're left to argue that every qualifier for the NCAA DI 5,000 and 10,000 in this century is better than Paavo Nurmi and many are better than Zatopek. You measure an athlete against the competition available from his or her era.

I don't agree that training is now better. I would agree that professionalism has made it possible for more people to concentrate completely on training without the need to hold down a job, so maybe that's better. But if we concede that professional training really is better then it's logical to conclude that high school training should be as well. And if that's true there would be no reason why some high school runner shouldn't, on very rare occasion,s be able to beat mature, world class runners as Lindgren and Ryun did or at the very least manage a win or podium placing at US Nationals or make an Olympic team as a high schooler as Ryun and Lindgren did.

That hasn't happened. Yes,high school times have improved but that doesn't make the runners better. You have to see what they do competitively. Or if you want to use times as comparisons you have to do it against other times from the respective eras. Ryun's high school record was two seconds slower than the existing world record in 1965. Webb's record is ten seconds slower than the existing world record.I would put Webb at #3 on the all time high school list but with a good bit of a gap to #2.

I think it's very unlikely that any US high school runner will ever be as good, as a high schooler, as Ryun and Lindgren. No current coach will ever have athletes training as much and as hard as Lindgren and Ryun did. Earlier in the thread someone mentioned that African kids of high school age are better than any US high school runners have ever been. I'm not sure if I'd agree but I will say that right now if any high school aged runners were to be better than Lindgren and Ryun were at that age they'd likely be East Africans who are training like mature, world class, runners do, as Lindgren and Ryun did.

I don't know everything about GF, but it seems that everyone suffers from the same thing in all generations. Craig Virgin ran 13 2-miles as a senior, 12 of them were under 9:00. 7-8 of them were doubles with a mile. That is the same as an 8:56.5 3200. 12 times. He ran 8:40.9y in 90 degree heat.

Virgin ran about 25 races on the track as a senior. These days, you have people like Grant Fisher and Matt Maton not even running with their HS team, much less running 20 races a season.

Ritz ran 8:41.1 for 3200m as a junior in the early season in Ohio (with only HSers). Nobody has ever run that fast before in those conditions until their senior year. He also ran 1:54/4:05.9/8:41 as a junior. Nobody had ever run that fast for 1600/3200 (or the imperial equivalent - or 1500/3000) as a junior in any conditions. Ever. The 4:05 was at a dual meet, within a quadruple where he ran 9:17 or so for the last race. The 8:41 was in April.

Ritz also ran 8:43.X in 50 degree cold (and wind) at his State Meet. Saw it. He was obviously trying for a mark intrinsically better than Nelson's 8:36.3y that day. He went out in 2:07, 4:17, X:XX, ... He was going for it but he had also run an all-out 800m leg before. The weather was too bad and he slowed to 8:43. He beat the FL National Champion for the next year (Time Moore) by MORE THAN 27 seconds.

Ritz was also ROUTINELY quadrupling. Not only did he run every dual meet, he would run the 3200mR, 1600m, 800m, 3200m. He would do this at indoor meets also, and even did it at Invites (usually over 2 days - and usually doing 3200mR, 6400mR, DisMed, 2mile)

Think about what Virgin and Ritz did at 2M and think about what they would have been able to do in CA State Champs type conditions?

There are stories for days about Lindgren that most of you have no idea about. Ryun is hand-down the best HS miler the US has ever seen. He is not the best distance runner, or the best Mile/2-Miler, but he is far and away the best miler.

In some kind of idealized race, as much as I hate Verzbicas, it seems like he would be the high-percentage pick to win. But as far as who had the most impressive races over 4 years, there are a bunch better than Fernandez. Ritz harmed his chances by chasing the 13:44 HSR for 5k. Had he not done that, I think he could have run 8:35y in an open race and run 3:59y.

Try to learn ... wrote:

Think about what Virgin and Ritz did at 2M and think about what they would have been able to do in CA State Champs type conditions?

Have you ever been to Clovis in the summer? It was >90º on the track the day GF ran the 4:00/8:34 double, and he led from the gun in both, running totally solo the last mile of the 32 and the almost the entirety of the 16.

GF also has 18 recorded races on athletic.net for his senior year, so likely raced closer to 25 times when considering that dual meets in that area which fail to get a timer (usually one or two meets any given year) and dual meet 4x4s usually will not end up on athletic.net (in the case of the latter, at least not on individual athlete profiles).

GF's 14:24 Woodward is on par with Virgin's 13:50 and Ritz's 14:10 as one of the greatest prep XC performances ever.

It's great that you're giving Virgin and Ritz due diligence--they were certainly two of the greatest prep distance runners ever and you're clearly very familiar with Ritz (although his 4:05.9 wasn't a jr. class record)--but I really don't think you're respecting GF's high school performances (also note that he was 17 his senior track season--he was younger when he ran his 3:55i mile than Hunter, Verzbicas, and Maton were when they broke 4).

Ryun, Lindgren, Ritz, Virgin, Chapa, Webb, Verzbicas et al are the elite of prep distance running (and I'm not about to name any one of them as GOAT), but to insinuate that GF isn't in that group is just wrong.

cali boy wrote:

Have you ever been to Clovis in the summer? It was >90º on the track the day GF ran the 4:00/8:34 double

That State Meet wasn't in Clovis when GF ran. It was in Cerritos.

Ryun did break 3:40. He ran 3:39.0 at the end of his junior year age 17. Also, he ran it on a torn-up dirt track. Look at the photos of the final straightaway.

Also, when Ryun ran his 3:55.3 HS best, you probably don't know this but he had to run a qualifying heat the night before - 4:11 mile. Do you think Webb would have run as fast as he did if he had run a qualifying round the day before?

But you are right, Webb was amazing. Just not as incredible as Ryun was. Ryun was brushed off by the current WR Holder and Olympic Gold Medalist the day he ran 3:55.3 But Ryun had the last laugh as he unexpectedly beat the greatest in the world, breaking the American Record while he was at it. Amazing.

yesstiles wrote:

cali boy wrote:

Have you ever been to Clovis in the summer? It was >90º on the track the day GF ran the 4:00/8:34 double

That State Meet wasn't in Clovis when GF ran. It was in Cerritos.

Ack my bad; coulda sworn the switch was in '08 and not '09.

Loud Asian Neighbor Kids wrote:

He's got my vote, 8:34 3200 3 hours after going 4:00 for the 1600, and 14:24 at Woodward, etc.

___________________________________________________________

Still think the 8:29 2Mile takes it. 8:34/4:00 is great but the 8:34.XX means almost 8:38 for 2Mile.

Also FL Win (over Ches) + 3:59 Negative Split Mile to back it up in an all HS race--in rain.