Wise Old Man wrote:
Clerk wrote:
Discussions like this are funny. If Bekele had retired after his 2:03, he wouldn’t have left us with years of a sour taste of this “will he won’t he” level of performance. It is really tainting his legacy to be inconsistent, left off Olympic teams, etc
+1
Agree 100%. Every passing year, Bekele’s stock falls and Kipchoge’s rises. KB flashes brilliance rarely now, like his run in Berlin, but mostly we are left seeing an out of shape, unmotivated athlete, more likely to DNS/DNF than one to again demonstrate his dominance. EK just keeps rolling and impressing. KB should retire and rest on his laurels, because if he keeps at it the way he’s going now recency bias will take him out of his goat status. The luckiest thing that happened to him was that he was left off the Ethiopian marathon team. If he ran yesterday EK would have embarrassed him. KB likely would have been a DNF, further tarnishing his legacy and adding further legitimacy to EK being > KB.
By your argument, EK has already tainted his legacy from 2004 - 2012. and added legitimacy to KB being > KB.