Who are some names of least known great distance runners?

Blowing Rock Master wrote:

Hannes Kolehmainen, Gold Medalist in the 5 & 10 at the 1912 Olympics for Finland. At the time Finland was part of Russia and prior to that had belonged to Sweden. It didn't become an independent country until the Russian Revolution in 1917. As super nerd of the night I'd like to have my beer at Twiggs in Blowing Rock, NC.

Kolehmainen was credited with giving the nascent independence movement a big boost. The Russkies thought they'd placate the movement by letting the Finns compete on their own but it backfired, since the games were in Stockholm and lots of Finns were in attendance.

I used that episode as part of a final paper in grad school. I argued that the Finns in the 20s and 30s and the Ethiopians and Kenyans from the 60s forward used distance running as an expression of national or tribal identity. The first Flying Finns, the Kolehmainen brothers along with Nurmi and Ville Ritola, were said to be "running Finland onto the world map". Abebe Bikila's Rome marathon strategy was a pointedly political message (so much so that you won't see the point where he took the lead mentioned in any of Bud Greenspan's Olympic films). Keino defeated Ryun in '68 on Kenya's Independence Day.

bill adcocks

The New London Ct. Jess&John Kelley race saw some lesser known great runners just out to do waterstation duty-Patti Catalano-Dillon,Nina Kuscsik and Tom Fleming. Dan Dillon and Amby Burfoot ran the race. Fleming offering Amby Burfoot a cup of water at mile 9.3 and Amby responding-~hey us old runners remember when it (refering to the offered water) was illegal to take that~

We spoke of Ted Corbitt and how he would have loved this town run small scale event.

Jan Merrill Morin and Dan and Patti Dillon live with-in a mile of each other,Jan would normally be out on water station duty also but family matters kept her away this year.

American Woman who held the World Record in the Marathon

Merry Lepper 1963 3:37

Caroline Walker1970 3:02:53

Beth Bonner 1971 3:01:42 Philly and again in NY 2:55:22

Cheryl Bridges 1971 2:49:40

Mikki Gorman 1973 2:46;36

Jacqueline Hansen 1974 2:43:54 lowered in 1975 to 2:38:19

Do you know these WORLD RECORD HOLDERS?

Miruts Yifter, he is hardly ever mentioned. Great nickname too, Yifter the Shifter

I think lot's of people know who Yifter is? Anyone know who Tom Longboat is? in the early 20th century he was history's first great marathoner..

O'Brien and O'Reilly. Wish I'd thought of them. How about Garry Bjorklund? He was always sort of in Pre's shadow. And Jim Grelle always seemed to be behind a big star.

Patti Dillon, who was Catalano, and Amby Burfoot are hardly little-known please. Cheryl Bridges, by the way, is Shalane Flanagan's mom.

Tom Longboat was one of the great distance runners of his day. He was an Onandagan (Iroquois) Indian from Ontario, Canada who won the 1907 Boston Marathon in 2:24:24 when the course was 24 1/2 miles long.

micah kogo 26:35

Komen's rabbit when he ran the 7:20. Probably the smoothest rabbiting I have ever seen. Other great performances which did not get the top honors (although not necessarily overlooked) include Noah Ngeny's second place runs to El G, and also the second place finisher in Tergat's WR marathon.

wineturtle wrote:

Jan Merrill Morin and Dan and Patti Dillon live with-in a mile of each other,Jan would normally be out on water station duty also but family matters kept her away this year.

Does she still wear the kneesocks?

Good one HRE ; Rex was one of the few Low Altitude athletes in a top 10 at Mexico 5k. Seeing we are pushing a few Kiwis.

Mike Ryan 3rd in Mexico '68 marathon. Always ran a good one when it counted

Renaldi wrote:

Kenji Kimihara- 2:13 marathon '67

great name and pick

Another book I'd recommend (I don't think it's been mentioned above): "The Toughest Race in the World: A look at 30 Years of the IAAF World Cross Country Championships" (2002). The title pretty much tells you what it is. It's primarily a listing of all finishers in every race since it went truly international in 1973. Each race has a short description, followed by the results. This is THE single volume who's-who of distance running since the early 1970s.

runthecountry wrote:

Komen's rabbit when he ran the 7:20. Probably the smoothest rabbiting I have ever seen.

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John Koskei

Dusty Bones wrote:

Patti Dillon, who was Catalano, and Amby Burfoot are hardly little-known please.

Maybe "little-known" is a stretch, but for a woman who once held every American record from 5 miles through the marathon, you don't hear much about her.

Mark Nenow gets my vote for "least known great distance runner". He ran 11 sub-28 road 10ks, held the World record in that event for a long time, and still holds the American record. He also held the American 10000 track record from 1986-2001. Yet he isn't a name you hear mentioned very often.

How about British marathoner Jim Alder? And Kenyan 10k great Naftali Temu? He won gold medals in the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games.

Alberto Cova is also an-all-time great at 10k. He won gold medals in the Olympics and the European Championships. And I should also mention one of my all-time favorite 10k runners: Salvatore Antibo.

Some of the guys already mentioned are pretty high profile. I would imagine that the majority of readers on this website already know about Quax, Yifter, Puttemans, and Vasala.

Somebody even mentioned Marty Liquori. Geez!

Yeah, I've gotta defend myself here; I mentioned Liquori because I really don't think he receives credit that he truly deserves. Sure people mention and some of them actually know who he is; but I don't he is recognized enough for what he's really accomplished. Everybody talks about Pre (for good or for bad); but Liquori was ranked number one in the world in 5000 when the event was one of the toughest events at the time. Very talented and smart runner; knew how to peak for the big one (except for injuries); and a nice guy too!

Someone mentioned Kimihara of Japan. Of course, he's very well known in Japan--not just for his silver medal performance at Mexico City but his never-DNF'ed record and very high placing record. Three Olympics and 8th, 2nd and 5th; that's pretty impressive. Usami also is an interesting pick. He ran 2:10:48 in 1970, first Japanese to have won Fukuoka when it was regarded as the unofficial world championships. Finished second to Shorter the year after that as well as winning Munich pre-Olympic marathon. Probably the first Japanese runner to have experimented high altitude training--running up and down on the side of Mr. Fuji.

How about Morio Shigematsu? He bettered Abebe's world marathon record at Windsor marathon. Did he win Boston as well? I can't remember... Toru Terasawa also broke Abebe's record after Rome. And we had Kokichi Tsuburaya who, behind Bill Baillie, broke Zatopek's world 20,000m and 1-hour record in 63 and went on to win the bronze medal in the marathon behind Abebe and the Englishman (Heatley...spelling?). Of course, he became well-known to the rest of the world because he committed suicide...