I still think the best pure performance I’ve ever seen in the sport was I believe 2012 Kitzbuhel when he came back from achilles/heel/foot issues (the 1st real injury that kept him out long term- 9 months) and he broke the entire field and won by nearly 1 min. A 10s win is a “whoopin” in itu…so to win by 1 min was just stupid good.
That was the start of the famous post race “ahhh I just started training a few days ago” after dropping stupid fast run splits…He had to have that as part of his post race genre half a dozen times in his career?
He’s the single greatest 1 day racer of all time I think. He was one of the loudest against the “series” WTCS champion vs the 1 day “world champion” back what in 2011 time frame. (I like the 1 day world championship, but I also like basically the “series champion” process as well, so I’m kinda numb…I dislike though when you can win the series by finishing in 8th etc, I think Gomez did that a few times).
The Leeds race when he went back on the bike for Jonny was absolutely wild, im unsure if it was the same Leeds were the pack had almost caught him and Jonny going into the town, but Ali never gave up?
That was Leeds I think when he rolled back and picked up Jonny who got blocked in T1 and didn’t make the break.
We were in the grandstand near the finish line for his win in London 2012, I don’t think I will ever experience noise like that ever again and to this day it was such a privilege to witness.
I don’t think there will be another like him. To win every single Gold medal available from junior to senior at World Championships, Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games is just incredible.
Last time I went on Triathlon Live looking for old races they seemed to have deleted loads and finding them was an absolute nightmare, races were not in chronological order, it was all over the place.
I’ll have a look if its improved later, sure I even done a thread moaning about it on here.
If you know a specific race or year, search button will find it pretty easily even if you don’t spell it correctly. I can never spell Kitz correctly and it finds it for me.
I think that’s basically the only way to find the way back races now, as I think only the front page has a certain number of races and that’s it.
He is definitely the best short course for me, Gomez you might be able to argue achieved more and Gomez definitely more consistent, but Ali was probably around 10 secs faster when they were both on their best days.
Id also agree with Gomez himself, when he says he was the best to ever do the sport (doesn’t mean I think he’s achieved more than Frodo or Mark Allen or maybe even Blum)
Whats going to be interesting is where Alex Yee is in this conversation after the next Olympic cycle, he’s almost catching up.
AB changed the sport. He went full Prefontaine- to beat him your going to have to go to hell and back….and he was absolutely fine racing with his hair on fire from the 1s all while internally smiling the whole time. Dude was never afraid of what a max effort 2 mins into the bike would do to his run,
Yee will never come close to that impact, and that’s not meant as disrespect. Yee imo is imo simply the strongest runner in the sport and maybe of all time, so he may match/pass AB for medals etc but in terms of actual racing legacy. There isn’t going to be another AB imo.
And mind you I’m pretty much talking itu legacy. It was always going to be evident his time in itu was going to never allow him to match any other races he did post itu. He was never going to have a Frodo 2.0 style or career in LC, He a) was too often broken b) had an almost 15 year itu career….thats long as hell for a career in of itself.
Id agree with all that, again if Yee walks away with another gold and a couple of more world titles, its prety hard to argue against him being the GOAT, Yee is becoming a more rounded athlete, but hes never going to get his swim and bike to the standard Ali’s was.
I sometimes hate the GOAT talk because then it becomes “insulting”. If you are talking just “results”, then if a guy ends up winning 3 gold medals in individual, then’d I’d agree with you. But he hasn’t even gotten 2, and so we are talking 8 more years of high level racing, so that time table almost makes it seem impossible. But I’ll still stick to the point I was more making. AB made it more than just the end result. He made every inch of the course matter. Yee I don’t think will ever get to that point of being the true “captain” of the peloton, even if he is #1 ranked athlete. And again that’s simply because he lacks the swim and bike ability. He’s more of a “passenger” in those 2 (again he’s improved his ability 10x already in his itu career, but he’s still no where close to being dominant in the swmi or bike nor will he ever get to that; he doens’t need too).
So for me sometimes it’s more than just how many races or medals did you win. It’s what did you do to the sport. To me AB took the entire race to another level, and for that he’s as much as a badass as he was for # of gold medals, etc (I mean he’s already the GOAT on his wins alone).
When the world championship went away from the 1 day title, AB was never going to win it for a number of reasons. He was very very vocal against the WTC race schedule increase in races, so even if he was healthy, he was going to skip races on his own principles of racing the events he wanted too. Add in his injury issues he started happening about the same time (2011ish) it was destined he would never be 8x world champion, etc. He was never going to race enough to chase points. So the whole “GOAT” talk I always just kinda shrug…I don’t know that there is ever really truly only 1 true GOAT. To me it’s like, of course if Yee wins 3 gold medals, he’s going ot be GOAT…Doesn’t mean he’s pushing aside AB. So this idea of the “GOAT”, I know it’s great sports talk fodder, but for me it’s more about what you did for the sport. Does it really matter if it’s MJ or Lebron James as the “greatest”? Does it really matter if it’s Yee or AB or Frodo or Mark Allen? Everyon one of them is a GOAT.
It’s almost like AB made it into an art form of brutality racing. He wasn’t satisfied with just being in a position to win. He wanted to push himself to the limit every single time; if he was at his limit, how in the hell do you think everyone else was. So that’s the part I’m talking about. It was as if he made every single swim/bike/run personal.
Agree with this. Yee is incredible and, as you say, is becoming more rounded, but he’s never going to be a “threat” on the swim and bike. That’s part of Brownlee’s magic - he was killing the field from gun to tape.
I think Yee’s opponents may find ways to manage him by LA; the only thing which ever managed Alistair was the fragility of his own body in later years.
Completely agree. I’m borrowing this from a rather well-placed source, but today I saw comparison made to Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters.
Perhaps both examples are bigger household names owing to the status of their sports already, but their impact changed their respective sports to a similar degree.
