The 5 most iconic runners of all time

Paula Radcliffe

Radcliffe at the 2015 London Marathon, her final race before retirement.

Radcliffe is an icon in the running world, and rightly so. The British legend currently holds the world record in the women’s marathon, with a time of 2 hours 15 minutes and 25 seconds. She has participated in and won the world’s most well-known marathons, each of them several times: the London Marathon three times, in 2002, 2003 and 2005, the New York Marathon three times, and the Chicago Marathon.

Although Radcliffe has participated in four consecutive Olympic games, she has not won a medal at that stage. However, she has been the world champion across running disciplines: at marathon, half marathon, and cross country.

Radcliffe’s achievements are even more significant in light of the fact that she was born with asthma, which severely limits breathing capacity, and running being one of the most taxing sports on an athlete’s lungs and overall endurance. In addition to the asthma, Radcliffe has also had anaemia since she was a little girl. Despite this, she took up running, which a person suffering from asthma would likely not even consider.

Radcliffe won the 10,000 metres silver medal at the 1999 World Championships and was the 5000m champion at the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Apart from her staggering athletics achievements, Radcliffe read French, German and Economics at University, and has a degree in Modern European Studies.

After racing in national events for 29 years, Radcliffe ended her illustrious running career at the 2015 London Marathon.

Haile Gebrselassie

Gebrselassie waves to crowds at the end of the 2014 Beirut Marathon

Gebrselassie is one of the most well-known names in running, and with good reason. The four-time World Champion in 10,000m makes seemingly easy work of winning marathon streaks – he has won the Berlin Marathon four years consecutively and the Dubai Marathon three years in a row.

The Ethiopian legend is also the holder of four indoors running titles and has won the World Half Marathon, too. Gebrselassie currently holds 27 world records, and broke his own in 2008 at the Berlin Marathon. 35-years-old when he competed, he beat the world record, also his own personal best, by 27 seconds.

One of ten siblings, Gebrselassie ran 10km to school and then back every day, holding his books.

It is from this daily journey through his childhood that he holds his distinctive running posture.

Roger Bannister

Bannister (leading)as he attempts to beat the British 2 mile record in 1954

Bannister’s name has been entered into the record books for all eternity – the now 86-year-old ran the first sub-four-minute-mile in 1953.

Prior to his record, Sir Bannister, who received his knighthood in 1975, studied to become a doctor at the University of Oxford and then at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, which has since become the iconic Imperial college.

He started running at Oxford at 17, and by 20 was selected as an Olympic possible in spite of never having run on a track prior to this. However, as he considered himself not yet ready to compete at an Olympic level, Bannister declined, choosing instead to set his sights on the 1952 Olympic games in Helsinki, Finland. While Bannister finished the 1500m in 4^th, he set a British record in the process.

6^th May, 1954. Dr. Bannister left a hospital in London, where he had spent the morning, sharpening his racing spikes before he took the train to Oxford. The event? A meet between athletes from Oxford University and the British Amateur Athletes Association. Bannister raced against 5 other athletes in rainy conditions. Closing in on the end, he ran his last lap in only 59 seconds, with a final time of 3:59:04.

When asked whether he considered the mile as his greatest achievement, Bannister responded that his subsequent 40 years as a practising neurologist had been far more significant.

In addition to his prowess on the track, Bannister is responsible for several academic contributions to the field of dissociative nervous disorders. He also instituted anabolic steroid testing in competitive sport.

Bannister carried the Olympic flame in 2012 at the London edition of the Games in the stadium named after him.

Sebastian Coe

Coe wins the men's 1500 metres in a time of 3:38.40 at the Moscow Olympic Games, 1980

Coe is most well-known nowadays for his political activism, but is one of the world’s most accomplished track-and-field athletes.

He began competing in athletics at the age of 12, and at 21 frontran the 800m event at the European Indoor Championships in San Sebastian. He missed out on a world record by seconds.

In 1979, the year before Coe first competed in the Olympics, he set three world records in as many days: the first and second at the Norwegian capital, Oslo. He set one at the 800m event and another at the mile. Later that year in Zurich, Switzerland, Coe broke the world record for 1500m as well, and in doing so became the first person to hold all three at once.

Coe won the gold medal at the 1500m event two Olympics in a row, in 1980 and 1984, also winning silver at the 800m each of those years. He also has 4 European Championships medals. He would set more world records over the next few years, most notably at Florence in ‘81, a record that remained unbeaten until 1997. While it is no longer the world record, it continues to be the UK record as of 2015. He is the fastest at 800m in the UK and third worldwide.

He is currently the chairman of the British Olympic Association, an appointment he received following the Olympics there in 2012. Appointed vice chairman of the IAAF for a second term in 2011, he is expected to be announced as its president this year.

He is also a lifetime Peer.

Mary Decker Slaney

Decker-Slaney in action at the Cologne Grand Prix of 1991

Decker, from New Jersey was unable to participate in three sets of Olympics – first, because she was too young, and later because she developed a muscle condition that left her unable to compete for a while. Following her recovery, however, she became in 1979 the second American woman to break the 4:30 mile in a record USA time.

She was due to compete in the 1980 Olympics, which were unfortuntaely boycotted by several countries, led by the U.S.A, to protest the then- Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Decker was the first woman to break the 4:20 mile record, in a time of 4:17.55. She later broke Russian Lyudmila Veselkova‘s official record with a time of 4:18.08.

She set six world records in 1982 across distances – from one mile to the 10,000m. The next year, she was given the moniker ‘Double Decker’ after winning both 1500 and 3000m in Finland.

Her career was marred by two things – the first an incident with elite British athlete Zola Budd at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The two collided, with Decker suffering a fall and retiring from the race. Decker would beat the athlete at their next meeting, however.

The other low point for Decker came when she tested positive for the anabolic steroid testosterone at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. She was being coached, at the time, by now-embattled coach Alberto Salazar, who also coaches Mo Farah and is currently the subject of investigations by the USADA following a BBC investigation that showed evidence from former coworkers that Salazar was heavily involved in doping his athletes.

Decker, who married British former discus thrower Richard Slaney in 1985, currently competes in the ElliptiGo championships, after having suffered several stress fractures over the years.