Haile Gebrselassie
Kenenisa Bekele
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Kenenisa Bekele leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Haile Gebrselassie at #9 and Kenenisa Bekele at #10.
The case for Haile Gebrselassie
For a decade Gebrselassie was distance running, and then he reinvented himself on the roads. On the track he won the Olympic 10,000m in 1996 and 2000 — the second in one of the greatest races ever, edging Paul Tergat by nine hundredths of a second — and took four consecutive world 10,000m titles from 1993 to 1999. Across his career he set 27 world records at distances from 2000m to the marathon, an astonishing spread of speed and endurance. Moving up to the marathon, he ran 2:03:59 in Berlin in 2008 to become the first man under 2:04. His duels with Tergat and his beaming, arms-pumping finishing sprint made him one of the sport's most beloved figures. Few athletes have owned both the 10,000m and the full marathon at world-record level; Gebrselassie owned everything in between too.
The case for Kenenisa Bekele
Bekele has a claim as the most complete distance runner ever measured. His world records of 12:37.35 for 5000m (2004) and 26:17.53 for 10,000m (2005) stood for roughly fifteen years, only falling in the super-shoe era. He won three Olympic golds — the 10,000m in 2004 and both the 5000m and 10,000m in 2008 — and five world track titles. On the country, he was untouchable: eleven World Cross Country titles between 2002 and 2008, winning the long and short course double in five straight years, a stretch of dominance over the sport's hardest terrain that no one else approaches. Late in his career he ran 2:01:41 in Berlin, at the time the second-fastest marathon in history, two seconds off the world record. Track, cross country and roads — Bekele reached the summit of all three, which almost no distance runner has done.