speaking of peds... wrote:
O. Schniederjans wrote:Aouita won medals in the major international championships from the 800m, 1500m, 3000m and 5000m.
He is the only man in history to run the 800 m under 1:44, the 1500 m under 3:30, the 3000 m under 7:30 and the 5000 m under 13:00.
Also beat Alberto Cova over 10000m and has a PB under 27:30 and even ran the 3000m steeplechase at an international level.
Does anyone even come close to his achievements post-war?
Why doesn't anyone ever mention El Guerrouj in these threads? I think it's highly likely that the Olympic 5k champ (over Bekele in 13:12, closing in 52) could have at least broken 27:00. I bet he could have also run 1:44, at least 1:45. But that's pretty much moot because in between he ran 3:26, 3:43, 4:44, 7:23, 12:50.
(To be fair, Lagat would have an almost identically-good argument. Hard for me to believe it's not one of those two.)
When we're talking about range, the big difference with Aouita was that he was a world class middle-distance runner who chose to focus on the 5000m in his prime, and has been discussed, that was largely due to dodging the Brits.
Most of the middle-distance guys at the time who had moved up to the 5000m had moved up after their prime AND a desire to escape the Coe/Cram/Ovett 1500m dominance - Moorcroft, Scott, Coghlan, Walker etc.
Aouita was also unusual in that he moved right back down to 800m again for an entire season, and still at his peak. His resulting pb there was pretty ordinary at a touch under 1:44 over two seconds outside of Coe's world record.
The steeplechase was still a bit of a mickey mouse event at the time. The world best times when Aouita dabbled in it were still all held by Swedes from the 1970's.
This isn't going to be a popular opinion but you could say the same a little about the 10000m at the time. If the 5000 and steeplechase was weak, the 10000 was even weaker. There was just no prestige to it back in those days. Somebody like Mo Farah is famous not just in Britain, but probably the second biggest star in the sport worldwide after Usain Bolt. Back in 80 and a legend like Yifter was practically unknown outside of real track fans.
Bekele's WR is over A MINUTE faster than Aouita's pb. Yes, Aouita's pb was on his debut, but remember he was trying to set fast times in every race. He was the best 5000m runner ever at the time, why should it be such a surprise he could set a fast 10000m time when that event was even weaker than the 5K?
And remember that Aouita did all of this likely on PEDs, and probably a lot more than anybody else was taking at the time.
At least El G performed his 5k feats late in his career. And yes, he surely would have ran a fast 10k as well as the steeplechase with minimal training.
Personally I believe that just about any of the middle-distance greats from Snell onwards could have achieved what Aouita did, and a 110% so if they had had the same Italian teams.