rojo wrote:
OP. First of all, I just want to say this is a GREAT question. When I first saw it, before I had time to think about it and do some research, I was like, "Could that possibly be true? I know Ryan was never 2nd in a major."
But then I did some research and it's not even close. Ryans marathon career is WAY, WAY better. Yes, Ryan Hall never was 2nd in a WMM. But comparing men's and women's marathoning isn't really fair at all as the depth is TOTALLY diifferent.
I guess you could say that Sara almost won today as she was second but she was 3:03 behind the winner. Guess how many times Ryan finished closer than that to the win at a major. 7. Yes, 7 times in Ryan's career he was closer than 3:03 to the win of a major. And then there were two other marathons where he made an Olympic team. So one could argue that Hall had 9 career marathons better than Sara's today.
Now I don't think it's quite that high but look at some of Ryan's best marathons below.
2007. Ryan runs 2:08;24 in London for 7th (had lead in at 30k). 43 seconds behind win
2007 - Hall DOMINATES US Trials.
2008 - Hall runs 2:06:17 in London for 5th but only 62 seconds off win.
2008 - 10th in Olympics (6:01 off win)
2009 - 3rd in Boston in 2:09:40 (58 seconds off win).
2009 - 4th in NY in 2:10:36. 81 seconds off win.
2010- 4th in Boston in 2:08:41. 2:49 off win.
2011 - 4th in Boston in 2:04:58 - 1:56 off win.
2011 - 5th in Chicago in 2:08:04 - 2:27 off win)
2012 - 2nd in Olympic Trials - 2:09:30
Rojo, this may be a difficult concept to grasp but 3 minutes when the winner is running almost 2:19 is very different than 3 minutes when they are running 2:05ish.