Willis lays claim to stand alongside NZ’S golden greats
Nick Willis may be our greatest middle-distance runner. Whoa, sit back down! Extinguish the flaming torches and stick the pitchforks in the ground for a moment.
The 33-year-old New Zealander, who gained bronze in the mens 1500m final at the the Rio Olympics, has never been regarded in the same lofty echelon as Peter Snell, John Walker and Jack Lovelock. Until yesterday, when he added bronze to the silver he eventually collected from Beijing eight years ago.
All of the esteemed trio of Snell, Walker and Lovelock won Olympic gold, while Snell won three golden gongs and is unreservedly rated as our best.
The famed triumvirate all set world records at their peak – another thing Willis failed to match.
But the Hutt Valley product competed in a vastly different era of middle-distance running – something Lovelock never touched upon, Snell barely tasted and even Walker only occasionally flirted with.
For the past 31 years, the world record for the men’s 1500m has been held by runners from northern Africa – Said Aouita (Morocco), Noureddine Morceli (Algeria) and Hicham El-guerrouj (Morocco). Of the 25 fastest male athletes over 1500 metres in history, 21 were born in Africa, and none of the top 10 come from outside that continent. Willis sits in that list at 24.
The last winner of the world athletics champs 1500m not from Africa? Great Britain’s Steve Cram in 1983.
No Africans competed at the men’s 1500m event won by Jack Lovelock in Berlin in 1936.
When Peter Snell won the 800m gold in Rome in 1960 as a 21-yearold, there were no Africans in the semifinals, let alone finals.
Four years later in Tokyo, two of the 800m semifinalists were from Africa, while bronze medallist Wilson Kiprugut became the first Kenyan athlete to win an Olympic medal.
How utterly remarkable does the last fact seem now?
Kiprugut’s bronze kick-started the African dominance of men’s – and now women’s – middledistance running.
When Snell claimed 1500m gold at the same Games, there were no Africans in the final, but a great was looming after dipping out in the semis. Kip Keino went on to win gold in Mexico over 1500m and silver in the 5000m and the gold in Munich in 1972 in the 3000m steeplechase and silver in the 1500m.
Twelve years later, John Walker won gold in Montreal at a Games noted for its Olympic boycott by African nations – sparked by the All Blacks playing rugby against South Africa.
That meant there was no Filbert Bayi for Walker to beat – the Tanzanian who had won gold ahead of the Kiwi at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in world record time.
How times change – by the time Willis began the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the top 6-ranked runners in the Commonwealth over the distance were Kenyan.
At the Olympic Games in Beijing two years later, the full field Willis encountered on his way to a silver medal featured runners from the following countries: Algeria (3), Morocco (3), Ethiopia (3), Kenya (3), Eritrea, Swaziland, Sudan, Malawi, Djibouti, plus a Kenyan competing for Qatar, and Rashid Ramzi, a Moroccan running for Bahrain.
When ninth in the 2012 Olympic final in London, Willis was up against runners from Algeria (gold), Morocco (third), Ethiopia, Kenya (3 runners) and Kenyans representing Bahrain and Turkey – two-thirds of the field were African.
Throw forward to Saturday in Rio, when the final contained two Kenyans, an Algerian, a Moroccan and a runner from Djibouti, after the semifinals had 12 of 25 competitors from Africa.
So it’s crystal clear Willis has competed in a vastly different – and harder – era of middle distance running than his previous Kiwi luminaries; yet still prospered.
If your argument is that he doesn’t match Snell – and Walker and Lovelock – because he never set world records like the other three did, the rebuttal to that has been laid out above. How many world records would have the others broken if running in an era dominated by Africans?
I can make a case too that the two Olympic medals Willis has gained have come against stiffer competition than that faced by Snell and Walker, in terms of achievement by rivals.
The 2008 gold medallist, Asbel Kiprop – that Willis finished in front of on Saturday – has won three world championship titles. The 2012 1500m winner, Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria, won silver in both the 800m and 1500m in Rio.
When Snell won 800m gold in Rome, he beat Belgium’s Roger Moens, who was aged 30 and five years on from setting the world record.
In Tokyo over 800m, the silver behind Snell was the clear highlight of the career of Bill Crothers of Canada, while the silver medallist in the 1500m, Josef Odlozil of Czechoslovakia, was eliminated in the heats of the 1966 European champs and was eighth in the 1500m final at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
Because of the African boycott, Walker’s closest rival in Montreal was the Belgian Ivo Van Damme. He also claimed silver in the 800m but we would never find out how good he could have been as he died in a car accident later that year. Bronze medallist Paul-heinz Wellman also achieved his careerbest in that race, while a 20-yearold Steve Ovett didn’t make the final, hindered by a fall in the semi.
Walker never got the chance to defend his title when NZ effectively boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, ruling out a mouth-watering showdown Ovett and Seb Coe.
If longevity is a string for the greatness bow, Willis stands at the top of the podium after Rio.
Lovelock was seventh in the 1500m final in LA in 1932, and soon after winning gold four years later continued his medical career and stopped running.
Snell blazed his way past everyone during a magnificent four-year peak, collecting world records to match his gold medals, and then retired after a disappointing 1965 campaign.
Walker lasted longer – he was a force over 1500m from 1974 to 1982, while Willis has now had 11 years as a world-class athlete over the same distance.
Bronze in Rio has, at the very least, earned him the right to be mentioned in the same breath as our 1500m gold medallists.