Coming off this year’s spring marathon season, I recently penned an article debating who was the GOAT male distance runner in history, the greatest of all time. Afterwards, Amby Burfoot, he of 1968 Boston Marathon fame and ex-executive editor of Runner’s World Magazine, suggested I begin a debate about the women’s GOAT. Amby’s prompt is my command.

Needless to say, women’s running has not been around as long as men’s running. Therefore, we cannot go back to the 1920s and find a woman equivalent to Paavo Nurmi, the first male to achieve GOAT status. We can’t even go back to the 1950s, where Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia created his GOAT resume. 

No, you’d have to say that women’s running did not really get started in the modern era until after the running boom of the 1970s. Hell, until 1984 Los Angeles, the women had no farther than 3000m to compete in the Olympic Games.

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As we have seen in the person of Caitlin Clark at the 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four basketball tournament, women’s sports is on a roll. The women’s Final Four ratings were not only historic, but better than the men’s Final Four and better than any sport outside the NFL! Who would’ve predicted that a decade ago?

And now we have billionaire Alexis Ohanian making an unprecedented investment in women’s track that will offer a purse of at least $500,000 in a women-only event this fall. 

Women’s sports may be coming into its golden era, but it took a long, long time and years of second-class status for that roll to gain its current momentum. Women in running know exactly how difficult the road has been.

All that being said, I would say the proper place to begin a discussion of women’s distance GOAT would be with Grete Waitz, the superb Norwegian runner of the late 70s to late 80s. We should also give consideration to her countrywoman, Ingrid Kristiansen, the only person, man or woman, to hold the 5000, 10,000, and marathon world records simultaneously. 

According to my calculus, GOAT status should be predicated on success over all three running surfaces, track, cross-country, and roads, and must include a wide spread of distances from the track up to the marathon. But there must also be Olympic excellence and/or World Championship standing and record setting performances. In other words, GOAT isn’t an easy standard to achieve. 

In that sense, Grete and Ingrid are early standouts. But they were not competing against top East African talent at the same level that today’s runners are. It’s a little like debating the GOAT baseball player before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. 

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There’s a whole different level of worldwide representation in the major leagues these days than there were back in the pre-Jackie Robinson days. Not to mention today’s widespread use of relief pitchers, the introduction of the slider, all kinds of determinations that make apples-to-apples comparisons all but impossible. Does that mean Shohei Ohtani is better than Babe Ruth? Was Albert Pujols better than Stan Musial for the St. Louis Cardinals? 

But I still think we begin the women’s running GOAT discussion with Grete Waitz, just the same. 

Five time World Cross Country champion, 1983 World Champion in the marathon, silver medalist at the inaugural Women’s Olympic Marathon in LA ‘84, 10-time major marathon champion, spanned 1500m to the marathon, two-time world record holder who took the marathon into the modern era. That’s a solid GOAT C-V.

But Grete (and Ingrid) never had a full Olympic or world championships career because the opportunities didn’t exist at the time. There are many who think the 10,000m was probably Grete’s best distance. Yet she competed in the 1500 and 3000 before jumping all the way up to the marathon without ever testing her talents in what may have been her wheelhouse. In fact, she only tested the marathon in NYC in 1978 because she was going to retire from the track because there were no further opportunities that fit her particular skill set.

How about England’s Paul Radcliffe? She of the bobbing head and record setting marathons who held  the mark from her 2:17:18 in Chicago 2002 (followed by her ground-breaking 2:15:25 in London 2003) to 2019 Chicago when Brigid Kosgei ran her 2:14:04! Paula also won three world cross country titles, one as a junior, two as a senior, three more world half-marathon titles, and the marathon world championship gold medal in Helsinki 2005.

The one mark against Paula’s GOAT designation is her lack of an Olympic medal, having only finished as high as fourth in the 10,000 in Atlanta ‘96 and fifth in the 5000 in Beijing 2000. 

Ethiopia’s Derartu Tulu became her nation’s first distance queen in the 1990s and early 2000s. She won two Olympic 10,000s eight years apart (1992-2000), with a bronze in the next cycle, as well. She also tacked on two World Cross Country titles,  a World Championships gold and silver on the track and three major marathon victories. Like Grete in Oslo, there’s a good reason there’s a likeness of Derartu outside the national stadium in Addis Ababa.

Like many a young Ethiopian girl, Tirunesh Dibaba was inspired by Tulu. The runner who came to be known as “the baby-faced assassin“ produced a quintessential GOAT resume: Five time World Champion, three time Olympic champion, five time world cross country champion (four as a senior, one as a junior), three time world record setter, one time major marathon champion. 

Yet, despite those impressive credentials, Tiru was only 15-21 overall against her great Ethiopian rival, Meseret Defar: 0-5 over 3000m, 13-15 in the 5000, 2-0 at 5k on the roads, and 0-1 in the half-marathon. 

Mezzy might get a few GOAT votes, too, with her two Olympic 5000m titles, two more World Championship gold medals outdoors, four more indoors, two World Junior titles, and 9 World Athletics titles between 3000 & 5000m. But she never ran World Cross Country, and only dabbled in the marathon, running three, taking 8th in Amsterdam 2018 (2:27:25), followed by her PB in Nagoya, Japan, in March 2019 (2:23:33), and a DNF in Berlin in September 2019.

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Moving into contemporary times, we find Ethiopian-born Dutch representing Sifan Hassan. On the current World Athletics table, Hassan is ranked number seven overall female T&F athlete in the world. Faith Kipyegon of Kenya is No. 1. 

Sifan is a two time Olympic champion, winning both the 5 & 10,000 in Tokyo 2021. But she added the 1500m bronze in Tokyo, as well, an unprecedented triple spanning middle and long distance running. She also took home two World Championship gold medals from Doha in 2019, again in a manner no man or woman had previously, by doubling in the 1500 & 10,000!  

She managed a World Championship silver medal in the 5000m in Budapest last year, along with a bronze in the 1500. She has set four world records and has won her only two marathons, London (2:18:33) and a course record in Chicago (2:13:44) both in 2023!

In today’s world of increasing specialization, Hassan is a unicorn. She has gone head-to-head against the best women in the sport from 1500m through the marathon. 

Her record against mile world record holder Faith Kipyegon of Kenya (4:07.64) at 1500m is 9-11. She’s only 2-7 vs. Genzebe Dibaba at 1500m, but is 2-2 in the 10,000m against world record holder (29:01.03) Letesenbet Gidey of Ethiopia. Sifan’s two wins over Gidey came at the 2019 World Championships and the 2021 Olympic Games. 

And in her two marathons, she has whipped the likes of Ethiopia’s Megertu Alemu in London (1st to 2nd), and Alemu (3rd) & Ruth Chepngetich of Kenya, second in Chicago. 

What remains absent on her C-V, however, is a senior cross country title. She won the under-23 European Cross Country Championships in Belgrade 2013, and the senior race in Hyeres, France in 2015. She had planned on competing in the 2024 Cross Country Championships in Belgrade on 30 March, but chose to rest and recover instead. 

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Since 2018, I have pegged Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia as the men’s GOAT. He burnished that reputation with his runner-up finish at age 41 at last weekend’s London Marathon, setting a new master’s record, 2:04:15. 

The title of women’s GOAT, to my mind, is less clear. 

Hassan is still in the middle of her career, spanning 2012 to the present. 

Tirunesh Dibaba’s career spanned 16 years, 2002-2018, though she placed third in 1:09;57 at the Gifu Half Marathon in Japan In April 2023.

The boys at Letsrun.com, Wejo, Rojo, and Jonathan Gault, had a very good discussion about this topic a year ago after Hassan won the London Marathon. I urge you to listen to them and then let me know where you stand on the issue.

(A couple of caveats due to the times in which we live. All this is predicated on all things being equal, and no shenanigans have gone into creating these performances. That’s on both the men’s and women’s side.

Then there’s the issue of the super shoes. How much of the tech allows a wider spread of racing distances compared to pre-super shoes? You imagine the top 1500 men could probably rip a pretty damned fast half marathon. And remember, Steve Scott ran a 2:20 marathon, so there’s no telling how fast today’s 1500m men could go at the longer distance. But that is all conjecture. Other than that, I’ll stand by what I’ve already written.)
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