Who is the greatest American runner to never make an Olympic team?

Was going to say Falcon, but didn't realize that Nehemiah didn't make a team. I pick him.

post nups wrote:

Was going to say Falcon, but didn't realize that Nehemiah didn't make a team. I pick him.

Hadn't thought of Nehemiah. Seems an obvious choice.

The obvious answer is Dean Karnazes, but the LRC hobby jogger wannabe crowd will never admit it.

vincent44 wrote:

Mark Nenow

This may be the winner for a guy that had pretty good longevity. (He ran in three Olympic trials.)

Ackley wrote:

vincent44 wrote:

Mark Nenow

This may be the winner for a guy that had pretty good longevity. (He ran in three Olympic trials.)

This an excerpt from a Running Times article of Nenow:

RT: How much of a disappointment was it to not make an Olympic team?

MN: I guess I would have thought I would have made the Olympic team, but it’s the one thing I didn’t do. I made the Olympic trials in 1980 as a senior at Kentucky. I came out to Eugene that year and it was a like a circus for me to be there at that young age. And plus, it was weird because we knew the U.S. wasn’t going to send a team to Moscow anyway.

By 1984, I was a legitimate pick to make the team. I had a little bit of trouble with injuries and training back in the spring, but all of that is a little bit of white noise. At the end of the day, I just didn’t have it. The trials were in L.A. that year in the Olympic stadium, but I just didn’t have it. I don’t even remember if I was eighth or 10th or 12th in the 10,000m, but it just wasn’t in the running. And that was what it was. I think at that point, I knew I had a lot to learn and that my better days were ahead of me.

In 1988, that was kind of my big chance or my last chance. So when it didn’t come together there, it was a big disappointment. It didn’t crush me. I never kind of lived, and I sure don’t know, as “Mark Nenow, Runner” being my defining title. I probably felt worse for my family and friends than I did for myself. In Indianapolis that year, I was fourth in the 10,000m and fifth in the 5,000m and top three make the team. I ran 75 laps on the track in six days — two rounds of the 10,000m and three rounds of the 5,000m back in those days — and I was tired and exhausted, but it was tough.

It’s funny because running was and still is a minor sport in the U.S., even though it’s bigger in Europe and some other places. But here it’s referenced with the Olympic Games. I’ll be forever asked, if anyone knows that I was once a runner, if I made an Olympic team. My answer will forever be, “No, no I wasn’t an Olympian.” If you’re a runner, you live and you die by the watch or you live and you die by place you wind up at trials. On that day, on that moment, you’ve got to be in the top three. The one thing I loved about running was the cut and dried nature of it all. You can speculate about this guy’s talent or that guy’s times, but at the end of the day the watch doesn’t lie and first, second, third doesn’t lie. I would have loved to have run in Seoul in 1988, but I think 1986 and 1987 were my prime years. By 1988, I thought I was getting near the end and hoping to run marathons after that. But it was clear to me that my track days were coming to an end. And still, I learned a lot about myself through the whole process, and that’s what’s maybe most important now.