If Armstrong's '99 TdF win made it that high on the list ... I was thinking the same thing about Zatopek's feat.
Additionally Lasse Viren's '72 or '76 Olympic performances should make the list, but not in the top-twenty. Ditto for Yifter's 1980 double. Two of those were "weakened" Olympic fields ... but still performances for all-time in a modern Olympiad. -----Original Message----- From: Kurt Bray [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 4:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: t-and-f: Jesse Owens #1 and #2 >Three world records in a 45 minute period of time is pretty hard to argue >with. Carl Lewis did duplicate the results (in terms of gold medals), but >he did not set three world records, nor did he win them in 45 minutes, but >rather over a series of days. Wait a minute Jeff, you are conflating your Owens' performances. The "three world records in 45 minutes" performance was in a college meet, not the Olympics. Owens' 4 gold medal Olympic performance came over several days - just like Lewis's did. Those two performances are pretty much equal. A performance that I'd nominate as perhaps better than either Owens or Lewis is Zatopek's 3 golds in 1952. With no relay teammates to help carry the load, nor any one-LJ-for-the-gold event that Lewis enjoyed, the sheer excellence and exertion required to win the 5000m, 10,000m and marathon all in one OG is perhaps beyond all others. And if we want to look beyond track and field (as we have already done in talking about basketball, baseball, and bike racing), another one that contends for greatest performance ever is Eric Heiden's sweep of all 5 speed skating gold medals in 1980. He won every event from 400m to 10,000m. Now I know that due to mechanic of skating vs running, this is not equivalent to winning the 400m through 10K in track, but the factor that it does share with such a performance in track is amazing feat of Heiden, a middle distance guy, moved up and kicked the butts of the distance guys at their specialty events, and at the same time he moved down and destroyed the sprinters in their events too. Incredible. Kurt Bray Kurt Bray _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
