he got chicked wrote:
A great distance runner should be able to finish without getting chicked no matter what the focus or circumstances.
It's good that you've changed your stance from "not a great runner" to "not a great distance runner", but when you say "distance runner" what you mean is "10k runner". And no, Kilian is not a great 10k runner. No one thinks he is. Just like no one thinks Eliud is a great 100m runner. And he would get chicked at that standard distance that is run by millions of people a year. So if someone came on here and used the same logic as you but chose 100m instead of 10000m as the distance that one must be elite at to be an elite runner, they would conclude that Eliud is not a great runner.