Daniel Simmons has the potential to have the greatest 7 day span in high school track history

He probably also makes Olympic trials in 5000.

Birnbaum was 3:37/winning NON mile over Leo young (3:39 guy) and a stacked field/8:34 2 mile, right?

Simmons just ran 13:25 which is nuts. If he breaks the 2 mile record by a ton (like 8:25 or something) and wins, and goes sub-4 in the mile and wins, I think he’s got the claim to it. Particularly because his 13:25 had a crazy negative split. If he doesn’t win the HS races, idk. Birnbaum was so dominant over stacked fields that he made it look easy. If Simmons loses the mile but still runs a crazy fast time, then it’ll be fun arguing who had the better week.

Sub 4+8:30.x and 5k record would beat Birnbaum.

13:25 alone is better than anything Birnbaum ever accomplished. He could end his season now and go down as an all-time great. A 2-mile record and a sub-4:00 would cement him as a GOAT contender.

where is he running his mile? brooks?

But he's not coached by the self proclaimed greatest coach of all time. Brosman. So probably won't happen.

Then again wouldn't the AF coach be much better than the batista? For a sustained period of time.

I like how nobody’s offered any alternatives outside of boys/distance/last 2 years.

Rupp's 5k time is more impresive

The fact Griffith put down those times and was still beat by Simmons and Nathan Neil, just goes to show the level Simmons is at. Can’t believe we’re getting a 2 year pause on a kid who could potentially be top 3 in the 5-10k in the US in that same time span.

Simmons' 13:25.86 equates to 8:22 for the two-mile.

Definitely need to look a bit beyond that timeframe. Here are some alternatives:

• Jim Ryun made the US Olympic team while in high school
  
• When Jerry Lindgren ran 13:44, the world record was 13:35
• When Ryun ran 3:55, the world record was 3:53.

I don’t care if Ryun and Lindgren spent the rest of those weeks sitting on the couch. Those weeks were still comparatively better than anything Simmons will do.

Granted, things are very different in the professional era compared to the amateur era. No high school distance runner in the current era will come as close to the world records as Ryun and Lindgren did, and I can’t imagine a high school distance runner making a US Olympic team these days. Rather than claim that Simmons or Birnbaum had the best week in history, can we say best week in the modern/professional era?

Making the Olympics in high school (or college) is surprisingly still relevant in the modern era. McLaughlin, Mu, Waskom, Hocker, Nuguse etc. all in 'phenom' discussions by unexpectedly making us teams very young.

The fact that steroid obsessed LetsRun ignores the fact that there are records of Rupp on Testosterone in high school maybe counterbalanced all the shoe advantage.

I specified high school for a reason. There’s a big difference between making the Olympics as a collegian and making it as a high schooler.

Any relation to the author? Hyperion is an all-time sci-fi classic.

I think there's no question that making an Olympic team or setting a world record is significantly harder in 2024 than it was in 1964, simply due to the financial incentives that exist today. It's hard to quantify how much that changes, but it definitely changes a lot. There are still athletes like Eric Holt who are reaching a very high level without a pro contract (although he still does get a fairly significant amount of prize money, but not enough to live on and not reliably). Collegiate athletes may be making money now but I don't think that's significantly changed the landscape for some athletes, so I imagine guys like Nico Young would still be running quite fast (maybe not 12:57/26:52 though, especially if the world records were over that). But on the flip side, there is little doubt in my mind in the amateur era Grant Fisher would be an engineer right now, and Yared Nuguse would be in med school.

So it's really hard to say for sure whether a guy like Kessler or Simmons might be considered world class if athletes were required to be amateurs. This is compounded by the fact that all the shoe technology, and even the fields in which they set their records, has all been influenced by the introduction of money into the sport. I agree that the best way to go about it is to simply separate the professional era from the amateur era, and in that lens I think regardless of shoe tech or track surface, 13:25 is still the best 5000 and one of the greatest accomplishments of any high school distance runner in the modern era (perhaps the greatest), and it is exciting to see what he will do next.

big difference between a hs kid making the olympic 1500m team the summer after his junior year and waskom making a WC squad. both outstanding performances, but magnitudes in difference.