Fair or Foul: Tirunesh Dibaba named greatest women's track athlete of all time by Athletics Weekly readers. JJK not even top 3.

Dibaba is at least in the conversation.

Shelly Ann?

Fanny from a bygone era?

Come on.

Um, ever heard of Jordan Hasay?

What about Allyson Felix?

6 Olympic Golds, 3 Olympic Silver.

13 WC Golds, 3 WC Silver, 2 WC Bronze.

Article stated that Dibaba was “baby-faced” at one point in career. Will there be equal outrage as there was when Allie O was called the same?

First , you exclude suspect American's with ties to shady coaching.

should be no outrage about calling allie o babyfaced

This is what we've allowed progress to take us. Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Peace Prize, etc. Don't seem to mean much anymore. In my book, JJK easily wins, but I don't get to decide that outcome.

Galant LYewir wrote:

First , you exclude suspect American's with ties to shady coaching.

But Dibaba is in the clear even though her sister was coached by Aden?

Birkoboy wrote:

JJK a definite drugs cheat?

None of them can be presumed clean.

And multi-events lack depth. Even LJ as a single event has top 10 all-time dominated by only 3 women. Major eventer like Marita Koch gets extra points for beating top competition.

rojo, rojo...you even force me to agree with Wiggie here.

When they say 'best track athlete' , they actually mean 'track', even if they had said 'track AND field', you know what they mean. They are talking about the depth of performances.

Come on rojo man

rojo wrote:

Kersee won 4 WC golds, Dibaba won 5 but there was a Worlds every 2 years when Dibaba was competing.

There was a worlds every 2 years when Kersee was competing also. But otherwise, I agree with you. I would put Kersee first, then Dibaba with FBK 3rd.

This is absolutely comical. JJK is still the greatest female track athlete of all time - she has claim to the greatest female athlete ever (alongside the likes of Serena) - irrespective of sport. It's actually kind of embarrassing that readers of Athletics Weekly, one would assume that would have more specific knowledge of track and field voted this way when Sports Illustrated voted her the greatest female athlete of the entire 20th century - and this is a publication with no specific sport bias (perhaps an American bias, but it's clear there is an anti-American one at play here)

.

We don't really need to get into too many details but JJK is still the owner of a WR (Dibaba isn't), is #2 AT in the long jump, has a better Olympic record (by 1 silver vs 1 bronze but its still better) and in terms of comparing their best performances, JJKs Heptathlon WR is 71 points better than Dibabas former 5000m WR and her best performance ever which is actually the 10000m (1331 vs 1260 (1264 for the 10k) - even her Long Jump performance is significantly better (1327).

There is no permutation/justification/logic you can make Dibaba ahead of Jackie and the fact she didn't even make the top 3 just voids this list immediately. Even though it's still wrong, I could see something FBK being top - but she still wasn't better or greater.

To make a long story short - this is horseh$t and the readers of AEW are idiots.

Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:

To make a long story short - this is horseh$t and the readers of AEW are idiots.

Or maybe they rate the 5,000 and 10,000 much higher than LJ and heptathlon, like most other people do

Yes Dibaba 100 %

sad day when an american (jjk) is clearly more of a drugs cheat than an ethiopean.

But Fanny BK is a multi-athlete so I don't think it's that.

I would've picked Alyson Felix as well.

Should be FloJo if the US hadn’t boycotted 1980 and she hadn’t retired in 89 for no reason. Given those facts, however, Felix is probably the most deserving athlete.

Just think. This conversation will not be happening in the very near future now that men are starting to compete as women. The NCAA has allowed several male track athletes to compete as women. It is only a matter of time before World Athletics feels the pressure. JJK wouldn't do very well against C. Jenner.

"Greatness" must *always* be assessed in terms of an athlete's performance against the best available competition of his/her day.

Tracks and shoes will always get faster. "Ergogenic recovery aids" will always improve (or at least be harder to detect). Records--yes, even JJK's and Bolt's--will always be broken eventually. The real question always is: How did you compete against the best?

JJK does indeed have a solid shot, but I go with Iolanda Balaș, who redefined her event as perhaps no other: Olympic gold at Rome and Tokyo. Between 1957 and 1966, Balaș won 154 consecutive competitions, not including qualifying competitions or exhibitions. She improved the world record 14 times, from 1.75 m to 1.91 m--that's more than *half a foot*--and equalled it once outdoors and once indoors. She was the first woman to jump over six feet. Her record of 1.91 m, set in 1961, lasted until the end of 1971, when straddlers and floppers took over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRQYVwqgxVQ&ab_channel=gabrielion