I was wondering if we could have a discussion about the probability that recent US distance performances are due to something more than "harder training" without it getting deleted immediately.
I was the biggest Said Aoita fan and the subsequent rise of Moroccan middle distance running in the early nineties. I believe one year Morocco had five sub 13:00 runners. I always attributed it to the coaching wizardry of Said Aoita, a country catching running fever, group training, athletes raising the bar, etc. Now we know the Moroccan emergence, as well as that of the Spanish, was full of dopey business. It was a case of the simplest explanation was the right one, as is usually the case.
First consider the females. Previous to 2009 there had been only three sub 4:00 1500 performances. Of those three, two of those women got caught. Of course they claimed their innocense, as is customary of members of letigius societies. So that leaves one clean athlete going under 4:00 in the entire history of US women's track. In 2009, four ladies did it. Did they simply take a peak at Sergio Sanchez' running log and "train harder"?
Now consider the men. In the same year as the four sub 4:00's from the women, Ritz goes from a 27:50 death run to a 12:56 in two months!. All during a coaching change. America tripled its amount of sub 13:00 runners. Now Solinski runs a sub 27:00 and closing in 1:55. Solinski had made a career of being a 13:15ish runner on a good season, a 13:25ish runner on an off season. He struggled home in 13:32 at the 2008 trials and now runs faster at twice the distance.
Is this attributed to an upstart track program? Not likely, running has plataeud in popularity since back in the 1970's. Uganda has an upstart running program, not the US.
In fact the US has produced about the same amount of 8:40 high school studs for the past 30 years. It's just that for all that time those studs went on to become 13:20 runners and in the last two years they have turned into sub 13:00 runners.
Was it a case of one runner openning up the flood gates for everybody else? Don't think so. Kennedy ran the first sub 13:00 almost twenty years ago, Decker the first sub 4:00 a long time ago and that didn't open any floodgates. Not until last year anyway.
Was it a lot of talent running under one genius coach and the shared determination to train that has spurred recent performance jumps? Now we are getting somewhere because we have seen this pattern before. Ma took the top Chinese talent and all of a sudden they had depth like had never been seen before. I already mentioned the Aouita stable. And how about the Spanish middle distance group that had like a half dozen 3:31 and under runners? More recently the top top Italian marathoners all got under one coach and produced some pretty impressive performances. What turned out to be the secret in all these groups headed by genius coaches? Some have thus far been clean as wistles. Jamaican
sprinting anyone? But who here thinks they are clean?
Some say it cannot possibly happen in the US because we dont have a centralized sport system like other countries. But come on. Are you telling me there is no union of a nations athletes and coaches beyond a centralized sport system? Like it would be impossible for Salazar and Shumaucker to network?
Another point of interest is the improvement pattern of these rescent athletes. If you look at the African guys who are running sub 13:00's a vast majority of them burst onto the scene running 13:05's as 18 year olds. Even if they are lying about their age by three years, thats a bunch of 21 year olds who started their international careers as fast-ass runners and than got a little faster a few years later. Most of the sub 13 runners have run under 13:05 a dozen or so times. Very different from the American runners except for Bob Kennedy. Most of the others turned pro, ran in mediocraty for four five years and then boom, huge 2009-10 breakthrough. None have had the astonishing improvement curve of a Sanchez but its still very different from African runners.
Of course fans use their familiarity with US athletes careers to explain the drops in times. Oh, what's his face had a sore achellies that year, and then he had bad coaching the next two, and then he lost interest the year after the that. Guess what, all athletes get injured. But when Kenenisa is coming back from injury he struggles to a 12:59, not spend two years running 13:30.
I know some people are gonna respond by saying fvck off, but I dont care, I see runners, not skin color or nationality. I also see patterns, and this one reaks of the stinky weed.