Guerrouj wasn't the best

Coevett wrote:

stateezee wrote:

He is most certainly not the only track athlete that was around after rEPO came about in the 80s until better testing came along, including plenty of Europeans, but yet no one ever came close to his number of sub 3:30s, or sub 3:28s. Not a single athlete remotely close. You're telling me he decided to dope up but no one else did? That kind of dominance is why he's the greatest.

Well the fact that after decades of dominance from Britain, the USA, New Zealand, Germany, and Australia, the 1500 suddenly became completely dominated by Africans does indicate that it should be conisdered a possibility that, by and large, it was mostly Africans jumping all in on the EPO madness.

Even if I agreed with your contention that "it was mostly Africans jumping all in on the EPO madness" (I don't), there weren't any other Africans that held a candle to the number of fast performances he produced. He's the most dominant miler of the last half century.

stateezee wrote:

Even if I agreed with your contention that "it was mostly Africans jumping all in on the EPO madness" (I don't), there weren't any other Africans that held a candle to the number of fast performances he produced. He's the most dominant miler of the last half century.

His times weren't even down to himself and how much EPO + talent he had. If his training partners doped (and several were caught), if his pacemakers doped, then that boosts his times too. This has to be considered when deciding how much of El G was sublime talent and how much the result of chemical factories.

Also the stuff about staying injury free for years and being able to churn out such fast times every week. That just wasn't possible without EPO and other stuff. So even his 'domination', impressive though it was, probably wouldn't have taken place in a context other than the EPO era.

The 90s/00s were so crazy that really we can't compare the runners from that era with any other era. We can compare Coe and Ryun, for example, even though they were often running on different tracks. We can't compare Walker and El G, because they were literally running with different bodies.

+1

I don’t think anyone doubts that ELG was the most dominant miler of his generation, and I also don’t doubt there were many others in the mid - late 90’s that were also on EPO. People like Ngeny, Komen, Lagat, Geb, all ran consistently fast times over the course of a season. We haven’t seen the same concentration of fast times in a short period of time in the 1500 and mile in those athletes that came before or in the last 10+ years.

I tend to think Moroccan athletics put everything into ELG from his junior days, as his talent and potential were that good. And it clearly worked. At the end of the day EL G had to put in the work to get to where he was, but I personally believe his dominance was assisted.

Oh Please wrote:

Banana Bread wrote:

I get bullied a lot here, so I won't insult any of these great runners. I don't want to turn into the bully. They are all great runners. I think Bekele is the greatest. he was only 6 seconds off the 1500 world record(same as his epic marathon, 2nd fastest ever, and only 6 seconds off a wr).

Consider this, as of April 2018:

Bekele 1500 (3:32.35), tied for 580th best performance

Bekele Marathon (2:03:03) is 2nd best performance

Geb 1500i (3:31.76), still 2nd fastest all time (and he has 3 total in top 10 still!)

Geb Marathon (2:03:59) former WR and 15th best all time.

Additional considerations: Geb first man under 2:04:30 and 2:04:00, both times without competition. Bekele has run exactly 2 good marathons (his first in Paris and the race in Berlin). If he hadn't had Kipsang pushing him all the way to the line, he would have run 2:03:03.

As was mentioned in another thread, someone's PR in an event they rarely ran is not always indicative of their potential at that distance. Bekele's mile PR was 4:01 even though he ran 2 miles in 8:04. I believe that Bekele was capable of sub-3:30.