20 year old New Zealander Peter Snell was an underdog going into the 1960 Rome Olympics, but it was to be the start of four years of middle-distance dominance by the soon to be legendary Kiwi.
Wikipedia article on the Men’s 800m at the 1960 Olympics.
In 1965, 18 year old high school sensation Jim Ryun famously beat the Olympic Champion Peter Snell at the AAU mile final. On 5th May 2018, 17 year old Norwegian wonderkid Jakob Ingebrigsten destroyed reigning 1500m Olympic champion Matthew Centrowitz at the 2018 Payton Jordan Invitational,as well as Kenyan born Olympic 5000m silver medallist Paul Chelimo.
And here’s the Jimy Ryun/Peter Snell race.
Fresh off the back of an impressive victory at the Commonwealth Games, Peter Elliott set his sights on breaking the indoor mile world record at the 1990 Vitalis Indoor Track Meet in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Scot Tom McKean takes on the inform Olympic Champion Paul Ereng on home turf in the 800m, and Steve Cram attempts to fight back from his recurring calf problems in the Mile. This YouTube video shows over an hour of the original television broadcast unedited. Steve Ovett is one of the commentators.
To end a remarkable track season, Steve Cram defeated the Olympic Champion Joaquim Cruz over 800m in 1:42. It meant that in addition to his world records over 1500m, the Mile, and 2000m, Cram had beaten three different Olympic Champions from Los Angeles the year before (Cruz, Coe, and Aouita). This is a high quality (720p) recent YouTube upload.
Joaquim Cruz in the 800m :
Seb Coe, Steve Scott and Abascal in the 1500m :
Said Aouita fails by a wide margin to crack Coe’s Mile WR whilst being chased home by 32 year old John Walker, breaking 3:50 for the mile again 9 years after becoming the first in history to do it :
https://www.si.com/vault/1984/09/03/620217/on-top-of-the-world-in-switzerland#
No European racing season can be complete without world-record attempts in the middle distances, of course, and the Zurich meet had three of them—all unnecessary failures. In the first, Olympic 5,000 champion Said Aouita of Morocco missed Sebastian Coe’s mile mark by more than two seconds with a 3:49.54, a time that was nonetheless the fastest of the year. Coe, Britain’s two-time Olympic 1,500 gold medalist, then fell nearly two seconds short of countryman Steve Ovett’s 1,500 record with a time of 3:32.39. Finally, Brazil’s Joaquim Cruz, the Olympic champion in the 800, turned in the third-fastest 800 in history: a 1:42.34, just .61 off another of Coe’s world marks.
While each race was exciting, each was also notably flawed. The problem with the mile was that it shouldn’t have been run. It had been hastily added to the program at the last minute to accommodate Aouita, who really wanted to run the 1,500 but was refusing to cooperate with Coe’s record attempt in that race. “It seems to me we can’t have this,” griped Coe. “There are few occasions when you can actually go out and try for a world record.” Said Aouita, “If I’d beaten Coe I would’ve gotten the world record. I go into the race with a better time this year [3:31.54] and he wants me to help him.”
Aouita (pronounced OW-ee-ta) is one of the three men’s middle-distance runners—Cruz and Britain’s Steve Cram being the others—who’ll be heard from most in the next five to 10 years. The range of his talent is astonishing. A former national junior-team soccer player from Fez, he has run the 100 in 11.1, the 800 in 1:44.38 and the 5,000 in 13:04.78. Aouita is a late bloomer at 23 while Coe, by comparison, seems to have been around forever but is merely 27.
Both suffered from inadequate performances by their rabbits in Zurich. Australia’s Mike Hillardt lagged on the third lap of the mile, while U.S. veteran James Robinson did likewise on the second lap of the 1,500.
“Sometimes it comes off, and sometimes it doesn’t,” said Coe with a shrug. But there was a sense of what had been lost. Cruz, a junior at the University of Oregon, saw his chance at a record evaporate when pacer Omar Kalifa of the Sudan tired and didn’t get out of his way on the backstretch of the last lap. “I moved out to pass, but he moved out, too,” said Cruz later. “I had to move back in to get by. It cost me at least half a second.” And so, on a slightly down note, ended the Zurich meet.
But the excitement first sparked by Ashford carried over. In Brussels two nights later, Cruz had a 1:42.41 in the 800 and pulled runner-up Johnny Gray to an American-record 1:43.28. French steeplechaser Joseph Mahmoud approached Henry Rono’s 1978 world record of 8:05.4 with an 8:07.62, and Aouita, despite being unable to keep track of his pace because of malfunctioning stadium clocks, came within 1.20 seconds of Rono’s world 3,000 mark with a 7:33.30. Building was the hunger that could lead to a fascinating 1985. “Next year I want world records,” vowed Aouita. “Next year I shall try for all of them.”
Cruz was left with the same eagerness after a 1:41.77—just .04 off Coe’s world 800 record—in Cologne. All week long he’d been unable to sleep thinking about the record attempt. On Saturday night, however, Cruz decided to make Cologne his final race of the year, and that brought relief from the tension. He cruised through 400 meters behind rabbit Thomas Giessing of West Germany in 49.5—.2 faster than Coe’s record pace—before relaxing too much on his second lap. “I was spacy out there,” Cruz said afterward. “I was too lazy.” Still, he’d carried Kenya’s Sammy Koskei to a 1:42.28 and Gray to a repeat of his U.S. record. Cruz wasn’t crushed. “I have to go under 1:41 next year,” he said. “I have something to work for and something to look forward to.”
A series of tests at Leicester Hospital in England has confirmed that Sebastian Coe , who holds the world records in the 800-meter and one-mile runs, is suffering from a rare glandular disorder. Dr. Karl Nicholson , a consultant in infectious diseases, said Coe had glandular toxoplasmosis, an infection that the doctor said affected fewer than 200 people in England each year and that can resemble glandular fever. Coe, who underwent the tests after four straight exceptionally poor outings, probably contracted the disease last April or May, Dr. Nicholson said. Coe is not likely to start training again for several months.
World Championship 1500m Final Helsinki 1983
Steve Cram on winning Gold 30 years ago (BBC 2013 article)
Seb Coe had withdrawn, but Steve Ovett – who was 800m Olympic champion at the time – was there, as was Steve Scott, who had recently missed out on the world record in the Oslo Mile, and there was this guy called Said Aouita.
The Moroccan was new to the scene, but had run the second fastest 1500m in the world that year.
None of us had ever raced against him so the final was a mix of the familiar and the new, with a bunch of others who also had the ability to be there or thereabouts. I hadn’t had a good build-up to the championships because of injury, but before going to Finland I ran an 800m at Gateshead and beat Seb so that gave me confidence. I knew I was in good nick.
Intriguing article from Sports Illustrated published on September 7th 1981 in the aftermath of Sebastian Coe reclaiming the Mile world record at the end of 10 crazy days in which he and rival Ovett juggled it between them. The article explores why the two had failed to go head to head all through their record breaking season.
Certainly, Coe would welcome a race. On July 11, after Coe had set a 1,000-meter world record of 2:12.18 and Ovett had won a 3:49.25 mile easing off, Coe went to Ovett’s friend and manager, Andy Norman, and said, “I’ve had enough. As of now I’m entered in the Golden Mile in Brussels.” Ovett had already entered, and said that night, “If Seb’s there, there will be a race.” Yet a few weeks later he withdrew, saying he felt the clash, when it came, ought to be on British soil.
These were the public remarks. But in the cloudy, quasi-professional world of top amateur runners, there are other, necessarily private elements. One is appearance money, which is none too surreptitiously given to attract and reward good fields. Ovett was ready to race Coe in Brussels until West German newspapers reported that Coe had struck a deal for $15,000 for the race. Whether that was true or not, English observers reasoned, if Ovett couldn’t match that figure, he would naturally withdraw. Money can plausibly be seen as a motive for Ovett’s overall racing pattern, because if he doesn’t risk losing to Coe, he doesn’t risk devaluing his asking price.
Several milers agree. “If they go head to head, there’s definitely a No. 1,” said Byers. “But if they trade world records back and forth, nobody knows. That’s fine by Ovett.”
Scott, the leader of the Run Hard and Let the Chips Fall Where They May school, said, “It’s ego. It’s not life and death for us to win. It is for Ovett.”
Read the entire article at : https://www.si.com/vault/1981/09/07/825908/coe-on-the-go-his-latest-mile-world-record-having-lasted-but-a-week-sebastian-coe-came-racing-back-to-regain-it-in-brussels
June 3rd
Seb Coe’s first international outing of 1981 running the 800m in an England vs USA match.
At the same meeting, Coe went on to run a 45.65 400m relay leg!
June 10th
Coe breaks the 800m WR in a time of 1:41.73 – a mark that would last sixteen years.
June 26th
Steve Ovett and the rest of the field, including Steve Scott, let the pacemaker Tom Byers get too far ahead..
A 2003 newspaper interview with Byers : http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics-how-byers-became-the-worlds-most-famous-runaway-rabbit-89746.html
Given his narrow failure, that distinction remains with Tom Byers, a 1500m runner whose moment of fame happened at the Bislett Stadium in Oslo on 26 June 1981, when he defeated a field that included Steve Ovett, Steve Cram and John Walker.
The American’s unlikely triumph occurred after he had been allowed to open up a 70m lead by the start of the final lap. Ovett, the reigning Olympic 800m champion, gave chase, but finished half a second behind the American in what was only his second defeat over the metric mile in four years.
Ovett and the others protested they had been confused by an official who had erroneously supplied them with Byers’ split times instead of their own during the early part of the race.
Nearly a decade later, I tracked Byers down – he was working as a corporate risk manager in Ohio – and asked him to recall the evening when he became the world’s most famous runaway rabbit.
“At the bell, I looked over my right shoulder and they weren’t there,” Byers said. “It was eerie. Going down the back straight I heard the fans pounding on the walls and I thought to myself: ‘You can win.’ It was a total fluke. But you would have thought someone in that pack would have been able to tell what pace they were really running at.”
The collective mental slackness exhibited on that night in Norway was sufficient to make Byers’ name. “For one day I was a celebrity,” he recalled.