Stat of the Week: The unofficial list of the best milers turned marathoners

Sep 30, 2013 by Mitch Kastoff

While most of you were sleeping on Sunday, Wilson Kipsang was out in the streets of Berlin doing something audacious. Kipsang had targeted Patrick Makau’s world record of 2:03:38 and for the sixth time since 1998, a world record was set in Berlin. In an incredibly even paced performance, Kipsang managed to chip off 15-seconds from the previous mark en route to his 2:03:23 win.

Naturally, we have to take an analytical approach to the run. After all, Kipsang just did what no man in history has ever done - covered 26.2 miles in 2:03:23. Usually after any big race, we’ll check the insight from statisticians Kip Evans and Ken Nakamura. Both had interesting points of interest, which are found on of their Twitter profiles above (our favorite stat is below).

2:04:05 by Kipchoge is the fastest losing time (fastest 2nd place time) in history for the standard course.
— K Ken Nakamura (@KKenNakamura) September 29, 2013

With that in mind, we decided to dive deeper to see if we could find anything else since the shadow of a world record masks just about everything else that happened that morning. As we scrolled down to ninth place, we saw a familiar name - Portugal’s Rui Silva.

You may remember Silva from the ’04 Olympic 1500m final, where he went from last at the bell to a bronze medal behind Hicham El Guerrouj and Bernard Lagat. It’s been brought up many times that El Guerrouj ran 1:46.7 for his last 800m, but it was actually Silva who closed the fastest. The Portuguese ran 1:46.3 for his last two laps and a staggering 51.3 for his final 400m (El Guerrouj and Lagat both ran 51.9).

With lifetime personal bests of 1:44.91 in the 800m (Portugal’s national record) and 3:30.07 (also Portugal’s national record), we wondered where he fell in the list of great milers turned marathoners?

Using the IAAF’s Scoring Table and some handy databases to do some digging, here’s what we what found:

Thanks to Kevin Liao for reminding us that Eliud Kipchoge ran a cracker of a debut. Small oversight.

Name	1500m / Mile	Points	Marathon	Points	Total
Haile Gebrselassie (ETH)	3:31.76i (’99 Stuttgart)	1220	2:03:59 (’08 Berlin)	1272	2492
Eliud Kipchoge (KEN)	3:33.20 ('04 Hengelo)	1200	2:04:05 ('13 Berlin)	1270	2470
Markos Geneti (ETH)	3:33.83 (’05 Stockholm)	1191	2:04:54 (’12 Dubai)	1255	2446
Hailu Mekonnen (ETH)	3:33.14 (’05 Stockholm)	1201	2:07:35 (’11 Tokyo)	1205	2406
John Kibowen (KEN)	3:30.18 (’98 Zurich)	1243	2:11:04 (’08 Paris)	1143	2386
Rod Dixon (NZL)	3:33.89 (’74 CHC)	1190	2:08:59 (’83 NY)	1180	2370
Rui Silva (POR)	3:30.07 (’02 Monaco)	1244	2:12:16 (’13 Berlin)	1122	2366
Antonio Pinto (POR)	3:39.25 (’98 Maia)	1117	2:06.36 (’00 London)	1223	2340
Geoff Smith (GBR)	3:55.8h (’81 Cwmbran)	1127	2:09:09 (’83 NY)	1177	2304

We also tried to think of any Americans who made the list and came up just a few names. If you know of any that have better marks than Alan Culpepper, feel free to leave a comment below.

Edit: Alex Lohr brought up that Stephen Pifer made his marathon debut last year in Chicago, where he ran 2:18:19. He has a 3:38.06 1500m PR to his name, too.

Name	1500m	Points	Marathon	Points	Total
Alan Culpepper (USA)	3:38.64 (’99 Barcelona)	1125	2:09:41 (’02 Chicago)	1168	2293

Conclusion? There's a reason why Geb is known as The Emperor. He's ranked number two all-time in the indoor 1500m (second on this list) and fourth all-time in the marathon (first on this short list). It should also be noted that Silva has the slowest marathon time of the group, but can improve on his debut.

One last thought. Though we didn't originally include Geoff Smith on this list, we rewatched the epic finish (we try and seldom use this to describe races) from the 1983 New York City Marathon between him and Dixon. It's embedded below.