Unluckiest runner you never heard of?

i'd have to second (or third) the "americans who made the team in 1980" answer, but after seeing the tom nohilly mention, i have to add george kersh to the list with two 4th place finishes in the 800m trials, '88 and '92. in '88 he was passed with 20m to go; the '92 race was especially heartbreaking as he was passed at the line, losing by 3/100s of a second...

Since we've dropped the "never heard of" part of the OP's question - how about Lauren Fleshman? Multi-time NCAA Champ, top 10 WC, but was never healthy for an Olympic Trials build up.

Jurgen Haase, who had the best kick in the world at 10,000 meters in 1968.

Juha Vaatainen, who had a groin injury in 1972.

Mariano Haro, who finished 3rd in World Cross Country in 1963 and then 2nd in 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975.

In the race linked below, Vaatainen finishes 1st in the 1971 European 10,000 meters championship with a final lap of 53.8 seconds, Haase finishes a close 2nd, and Haro finishes 3rd. Haro leads from 4:00 to 5:00 in this clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrp2K9zxgrs

Unlucky should not be finishing out of the medals.

It should have to do with an outside influence on the performance.

How about 2004 Olympic marathon- Vanderlei de Lima.

Some nutjob comes out of the crown and attacks him as he is leading in the later stages.

I agree with your standard, which eliminates Lisa Rainsberger and Mariano Haro as being unlucky. They were not victims of external factors but simply were not good enough. Jurgen Haase was a victim of the altitude at Mexico City and is relatively unknown. Does he qualify for consideration under this thread?

FormerTree wrote:

Since we've dropped the "never heard of" part of the OP's question - how about Lauren Fleshman? Multi-time NCAA Champ, top 10 WC, but was never healthy for an Olympic Trials build up.

Peter Elliot was one of the unluckiest British athletes in history. For a start, he was following Coe, Ovett, Cram, but with his career overlapping so he had to compete against them for places - and then when he did beat Coe in the UK trials in 84 he was overlooked. Ran Billy Konchella close in the 87 800m Rome final, with Konchella in the season of his life and running the fastest final ever seen. In 88 was looking great but suffered injuries in the run up to Seoul, yet despite this finished 4th in the 800m and won silver in the 1500m (to another Kenyan running the race of his life). In 1990 was in the form of his career and ran a 1:42 800m but again suffered injuries just before the major championship (the Europeans). In 1992 and Olympic year he was again looking in top shape but again suffered an injury at the wrong time and decided to call it quits.

Stem cells wrote:

I always thought it sucks that Ritz ran 60:00.00 for the half.

Still fast as hell, but like, a hundredth of a second off of being a sub-60 half runner.

True. That must suck but at least Ritz got the 13:00 barrier when he ran 12:56. I know some guys who have run 4:00 for the mile. Less than a second from joining the sub 4 club.

Darren Clark from Australia. He was 4th in the 400m twice (1984-1988) and in the 4x400 ( 4th 1984 and 6th 1988). He did qualified to compete in 1992 but injured his Achilles.

Steve Prefontaine.

In “One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich,” one of the prisoners is described as a Russian Jewish soldier who was captured by the Nazis and sent to one of the main concentration camps. He managed to run away back to Soviet lines only to be treated with suspicion and sent to the gulags.

Those were the heady days of bad luck for many.

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

All,

The title of the thread is "Unluckiest runner you never heard of".

If you never heard of the runner, how would you:

1. Know their name

2. Know they ran

3. Know they are/were unlucky

They could in fact be lucky. We just wouldn't know!

FormerTree wrote:

Since we've dropped the "never heard of" part of the OP's question - how about Lauren Fleshman? Multi-time NCAA Champ, top 10 WC, but was never healthy for an Olympic Trials build up.

In the spirit of dropping the "never heard of part" as well, Ron Clarke. His best chance for a gold medal should have been 1968 but that chance was negated by having the Olympics at altitude. In fact, you probably could add all sorts of distance runners whose best years were in the late 60s. to that list. George Young and Jim Ryun could very well have had their medals upgraded to gold.

The three runners from Jamaica who fell in their qualifying sprint race for the Olympics must be the unluckiest. Later they formed a decent bobsled team but still fell short.

Coghlan - 4th in two Olympics

Jon Brown - 4th in '00 & '04 marathon

Uceny is a head case. She did it to herself each and every time. Running too close on the turns. She is an idiot.

Gary O'Hanlon - irish marathon champ

Inventor of the sentence 'Just my luck'

Each time he races destiny goes against him: trapped in no mans land, getting tripped, tripping over himself, torrential rain, hasnt trained in 4 months, an sti, scumbags robbing his phone and breaking his wrist day before a marathon, breaking his ankle 4 miles in a marathon, foreign guy allowed in national champ - list goes on...

Dublin24

Gary O'Hanlon probably could literally get the best marathon time in Ireland history. For a few years he done a crazy amount ofraces where he won every race so that is lucky in a way. But he's still could have trained to improve more better during them times, to get his marathon down faster. He could be a 2:10 guy like literally Galen Rupp. But Bekele is more unluckier this year then any one. Been tripped in Abu Dhabi when he could have run a world record. Then getting blisters from runner's from London, that was a disaster because he was gone for another world record attempt. He always was the best ever, and I literally think he will get the world record next year, so hopefully he will be luckier.

Paul Tergat.

His track career happened to take place during the Gebrselassie era.

Tergat came 2nd to Gebrselassie in every World Championship and Olympic games over 10,000m ranging from 1996 to 2000. He also came 3rd in the WC in 1995. That makes 4 senior global silver medals and 1 bronze in the event. This happened to take place during one of the greatest championship race win streaks in history. Haile took gold in 6 straight major championships starting with the WC in 1993 and ending with the gold medal in Sydney 2000.

Haile admitted in an interview, that it was unfortunate, because if not him, Paul Tergat would be considered the best 10,000m runner of all time (or at the very least, the greatest before Bekele or Farah came into the picture).

Tergat's 5 years on the track coincided with Haile's incredible 7 year win streak

Tergat is third on the all time list for 10,000m with a personal best of 26:27.85 which he ran on August 22, 1997 to break Haile's then standing record of 26:31.32. Only to have Geb run 26:22.75 the following June.

He was successful in XC but I don't know many people who argue against the track having higher priority over the grass.

I've always thought that Molly Beckwith-Ludlow was extremely unlucky regarding making U.S. teams in the 800. She came 4th in 2012, 4th in 2015 and 4th in 2016. That's a pretty unfortunate string of near misses.

So you really believe that Ron Clarke would have outkicked Jurgen Haase in the 10,000 1968? Dream on! Ryun would not have beaten Keino in the 1,500 or Doubell in the 800 in 1968. In 1968, Keino and Doubell

both were better than Ryun EVER was at those events.