Paula Radcliffe should give Wang Junxia the benefit of the doubt

The difference between something like height, and something like running ability, is that it takes no particular effort to be however tall you are.

Nobody has the ability, without any training, to run a WR time at any distance. Your argument assumes that a statistical outlier in terms of time will also be a statistical outlier in terms of native, untrained ability--which is an unsupportable assumption, since training and motivation play such a big role in an activity that requires a decision and effort to undertake (unlike the passive attribute of height).

The idea of a WR-holder being "a natural" is most commonly held by their competitors, or by previous WR-holders, IMHO as a means of self-justification, that they did all they could but could just never be as good, because somebody else had a "natural advantage" that they lacked.

You hear this all the time with Bolt. Take MJ's comment, for instance, that there is basically nobody else out there like him. However, even MJ qualified that by saying that there might be "somebody out there in the jungle somewhere" who could match Bolt in terms of native ability.

The chances of an individual who was a statistical outlier in terms of native ability, actually having the opportunity, health, training, facilities, support, food, competition, and drive to be a statistical outlier in terms of performance, are not great IMHO. Yes, I understand the selection effect, but it doesn't mean much to me, because the selection effect would apply to many athletes. Obikwelu was a product of the selection effect just as much as Bolt, but never ran 9.58

Bolt is particularly interesting to me. If one believed my above logic, IF a natural statistical outlier was given every opportunity, one would expect performances that were absolutely off-the-charts--I mean generationally untouchable.

9.58 is that performance

I can't think of any other performances like that by any athlete that has a chance of having been clean, except for maybe Komen.

Bolt, and Komen.

Radcliffe? Not so much, but possibly. Is it really generationally out-of-reach?

Sorry for the double post, I don't know what happened.

Do the current best marathon women consider the record out of reach?

a thesaurus by any other name wrote:

"would you ever predict that someone could be 8' 11" tall? That's crazy tall and a complete outlier "

Wadlow- 8"11"

Rogan- 8" 9"

Hardly a complete outlier.

Going by the Wikipedia list, there have been 14 people since the 1700's who were taller than 8', which is out of several billion people. A handful of people out of several billion makes those heights outliers.

I agree with Sprintgeezer that the odds of combining some sort of freakish talent with the opportunity and motivation to develop that talent are tiny. All I'm saying is that there really are freaks in almost every other aspect of human physiology so when you have someone like Bolt or Radcliffe you have to consider that possibility and can't automatically reject the results because they are so much better than their competitors.

In other words, if all you have to go by are statistics, I don't think that's enough to discredit the results.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

Sorry for the double post, I don't know what happened.

Do the current best marathon women consider the record out of reach?

Since Mary Keitany split the NYCM at halfway point at 1:07:56 (a few seconds faster than Paula in her record run - on a much harder course), I would argue that thee is at least one woman who does not (or did not) consider the record to be out of reach.

But even she will understand one day.

But running is not an "aspect of human physiology".

As far as physiology alone goes, to perform like Bolt requires that an individual be an outlier in a great number of physiologic dimensions, yet further decreasing the odds.

I'm not saying it's impossible, only essentially infinitely unlikely--so unlikely, that it is almost impossible that such an outlier would appear in more than one event, let alone a single event.

Therefore, my personal view is that Radcliffe is not such an outlier, and that she doped.

And since the odds of there being more than one are very slim indeed, I have the same view of Bolt, and believe that ONLY Komen could have been such an outlier.

Or alternatively, that Komen was doped and that only Bolt is the outlier.

I'll say it again: running is not "an aspect of human physiology".

How is running not an aspect of human physiology?

What do you mean by that statement?

Running is a volitional act that depends only in part on aspects of human physiology.

It is much, much more, and cannot be so reduced.

Running isn't a single aspect of human physiology like height but the physical talent part of running ability is the combination of various aspects of human physiology.

I don't think it's possible to say exactly what all those aspects are and how they combine to produce running ability but there is certainly some inborn physical aspect. Not everyone is an equally talented blank slate who could run equally fast if they trained the same.

The freakish outlier would simply be someone where all of those physical aspects came together in a way that is optimal for running fast at a certain distance who then developed that potential through particularly good training (and avoided injury through good luck or training, etc). I don't know that any particular runner actually fits in that category - I'm just saying that human physiology is so varied that it's a possibility that has to be considered.

Sprintgeezer wrote:

There is doping, and there is DOPING.

DOPING - Sedykh, Litvinov, Beyer, Timmerman, Schult, Dumchev, Koch, Kratochvilova, Junxia, etc., etc., etc.

doping - Radcliffe, El-G, Johnson 1.0, Griffith-Joyner, Dreschler, Johnson 2.0, McKoy, Issajenko, etc., etc., etc., likely people like Bubka, Sotomayor, etc.

Why don't you just say:

DOPING BAD - Russians, Eastern Block Countries, Chinese etc etc.

doping okay - English, Americans, The Good Guys, Overseers Of The World.

tjmiler wrote:

However if he wanted to prove something he should have brought his athletes to European circui.

Often overlook is Wang Junxia won the world champs 10000 that year in hot and muggy conditions in Spain in 30:49.

Maybe the Chinese were breeding their women for distance running back in the 1970's...For comparison, Secretariat's record at Belmont Stakes still stands after 40 years...Or was he doping too?!!

gaiotjikjtrhnkjthgarehgarehgat wrote:

Often overlook is Wang Junxia won the world champs 10000 that year in hot and muggy conditions in Spain in 30:49.

No matter how bad the weather is, 30:49 is a far cry from 29:31.

tjmiler wrote:

Maybe the Chinese were breeding their women for distance running back in the 1970's...For comparison, Secretariat's record at Belmont Stakes still stands after 40 years...Or was he doping too?!!

Yes, horse trainers are notorious for doping.

i'm not 2 faced at all wrote:

Sprintgeezer wrote:

There is doping, and there is DOPING.

DOPING - Sedykh, Litvinov, Beyer, Timmerman, Schult, Dumchev, Koch, Kratochvilova, Junxia, etc., etc., etc.

doping - Radcliffe, El-G, Johnson 1.0, Griffith-Joyner, Dreschler, Johnson 2.0, McKoy, Issajenko, etc., etc., etc., likely people like Bubka, Sotomayor, etc.

Why don't you just say:

DOPING BAD - Russians, Eastern Block Countries, Chinese etc etc.

doping okay - English, Americans, The Good Guys, Overseers Of The World.

I made no moral judgment one way or the other.

IMHO they all suck equally. At least the DOPERS are good for a laugh, whereas the dopers are like undetected cancer cells.

OMG its been shown since then that "Ma's Army" was undergoing a drug system just like the east Germans were. Stop giving cheaters the benefit of the doubt, lifetime bans for cheatersis what should stand and their records wiped out.

Not just Wang and Qu, look at the Chinese results from thir top women during that time, it's ridiculous.

There has certainly been a lot of doping in horse racing although the testing is very strict now. However, I think Secretariat is a candidate for fitting into the freakish physical outlier hypothesis.

I don't know for a fact, but I bet because of the way they are bred you have a smaller pool of ancestors and less genetic variability with thoroughbreds than humans, which probably reduces the frequency of such outliers. On the other hand, since the percentage of thoroughbreds who are raced is much higher than humans who go into track, maybe the outliers are identified and developed at a higher rate.

Harrier41 wrote:

OMG its been shown since then that "Ma's Army" was undergoing a drug system just like the east Germans were. Stop giving cheaters the benefit of the doubt, lifetime bans for cheatersis what should stand and their records wiped out.

Not just Wang and Qu, look at the Chinese results from thir top women during that time, it's ridiculous.

No disrespect, but what is your reference? I have read how 6 of Ma's athletes were busted before Sydney 2000 for doping, is that what you are referring to? Not necessarily proof that the entire Chinese team was being systematically doped...but perhaps you have a more conclusive reference...Obviously its not as conclusive as Marita Koch's name being found on a list of athletes who were systematically doped in East Germany

By the way, does anyone know whether Qu and Wang were drug tested when they competed at Stuttgart 93 WC? I assume they passed if they did, and that was just one month before the world records

Ma's athletes didn't fail any tests. They just had "abnormal levels". This was before the 2000 Games. Before Beijing had even been awared the '08 Games. The powers that be in China, many of whom hated Coach Ma, decided to pull all but one of his athletes just in case they destroyed everyone like they did in '93 and '97. They didn't want any negative pub (well, any more than they already had) in the buildup to the awarding of the '08 Games. That is what I've heard from several people, anyway.

Pumanator wrote:

You bring up a very good point. There is the same amount of evidence on both of them doping and the level of suspicion should be about the same.

Radliffe won the world junior xc those lot came from nowhere and back again and half that Ma's athletes were busted in later years