1978 Performance of the Year trivia

[DrJay]

Maybe should be on Historical forum, but put it here since Annual Edition/rankings is the item of the week (well, except for geography).

Anyway, in the current TAFNEWS issue, I was surprised to learn that the 1978 Performance of the Year was by someone other than Rono. What was it?

Rono's 4 WRs took places 2-5 in the POY voting. For a bonus cookie, in what order did they rank?

Extra bonus cookie: What was the sole US men's POY vote-getter?

[kuha]

Interesting...OK, a very wild guess:

No. 1 was a HJ WR????

From this distance in time, I'd guess that the panel in '78 ranked Rono's WRs in this order of quality:
3000
5000
steeple
10,000

Now I'll go look it up...

Edit: And I give myself a gentleman's C [at best]...

[gh]

question already asked and answered in this thread earlier in the month.


http://mb.trackandfieldnews.com/discuss ... hp?t=33745

[tandfman]

I see that it was asked in that thread. However, I don't see the answer.

[DrJay]

1. Yashchenko 2.35
2. Rono 13:08.4
3. Rono 8:05.4
4. Rono tie 27:22.5= 7:32.1

Skeets 13.28 "hurdles in the wet" tied for 13th (WR was Casanas 13.21 at the time.) Someone reresh my (our) memory about the wet.

[gh]

I see that it was asked in that thread. However, I don't see the answer.

mighty favog at 04:49 on December 2nd, middle of second page.

[tandfman]

Doh! For some reason, I hadn't noticed that there was a second page. ops:

[marknhj]

I see that it was asked in that thread. However, I don't see the answer.

mighty favog at 04:49 on December 2nd, middle of second page.

The actual performance was answered at the bottom of the first page. But, I went metric which obviously caused some confusion

[kuha]

1. Yashchenko 2.35
2. Rono 13:08.4
3. Rono 8:05.4
4. Rono tie 27:22.5= 7:32.1

Skeets 13.28 "hurdles in the wet" tied for 13th (WR was Casanas 13.21 at the time.) Someone reresh my (our) memory about the wet.

It's interesting to see how Rono's marks stand on today's all-time best performances list:

steeple: 107th
3000: 107th
5000: 715th
10,000: 246th

Considering the frequency with which these events are actually contested at the Golden League level, these 4 marks might still be roughly "equal" in merit...

[gh]

given that the Rono marks are in the pre-Mondo (and EPO) era, I rate them a lot higher than that.

It might be instructive to note that our 27-member international panel handed out its No. 1 votes this way:

Yashchenko 9
HR steeple 5
HR 5000 3
HR 10,000 3
Raúl González 50W 2
HR 3000 1
Wolfgang Schmidt 71.16 DT 1
Steve Ovett 8:13.5 2M 1
Olaf Beyer's EC 800 win 1
Yashchenko's 2.34 1