Isaiah Koech Looks Like He's 30

So not only does he look 30, but officially he turned 18 today.

One of Kenya's more embarrassing cases of age cheating.

Whoops, the 17 year old just ran 12:53 when he was supposed to clean up in the age group champs for a couple of years in about 13:20.

I think his age is legit. Other Kenyans, probably not.

These people don't have any method of recording when they are born. It's not important in their culture. These people are born on dirt roads for crying out loud.

Eliud Kipchoge, i bet, has no idea how old he is. He just runs hard. Same as Koech.

I know when I was born.

Hijacking the thread...

Ran a smallish 5K last year...the marquee race being the half-marathon that had 3000 participants. As I made my way up to the starting line, I find myself standing next to an African/Kenyan/you get the idea. He eyes me up, and I shake his hand wishing him good luck. He looks older than me...easily 30+ with quite a receding hairline. After about 400m he has got a big lead on everybody. I don't even see him until post-race when we are all standing at the results board.

He is the overall winner.

His specified age? 16.

Age Cheating? wrote:

These people don't have any method of recording when they are born. It's not important in their culture. These people are born on dirt roads for crying out loud.

Eliud Kipchoge, i bet, has no idea how old he is. He just runs hard. Same as Koech.

They have methods to record age it's just a work in progress. Infrastructure in a lot of African countries is and has been poor and disorganized so sometimes there are even multiple conflicting records. And at times ages will be approximated or falsified by parents to help their children get proper schooling (I need to get the details on this). The point I'm trying to make is, Africans aren't just falsifying their ages to cheat their way into youth races.

You guys are morons. They are fast.. and thats it. Its just hard for you fvckers to believe that they are 17 or 18 years old because of how fast they are.. and you have to be the typical lr dbag and come and and talk about how they are 12 years older than they actually say they are. Even so we havent had anybody run 12:53 indoors, none the less outdoors, so what does it matter anyway even if he is 30.

18 year old wrote:

You guys are morons. They are fast.. and thats it. Its just hard for you fvckers to believe that they are 17 or 18 years old because of how fast they are.. and you have to be the typical lr dbag and come and and talk about how they are 12 years older than they actually say they are. Even so we havent had anybody run 12:53 indoors, none the less outdoors, so what does it matter anyway even if he is 30.

Imbecile, nobody said Koech isn't fast. He looks like he's 30. That is all. He is a great runner who is listed as having turned 18 years old on December 19th and he looks 30. That is all. You're defending his ability which isn't being questioned.

Kipchoge was born in 1975 according to Canova

Westeuropean Hope wrote:

Kipchoge was born in 1975 according to Canova

So he's Lagat's age, and he was cleaning up at the junior champs in his late 20s. Nice.

He'll be a helluva masters runner soon

The 100yr old guy in Canada didn't get his WR because he didn't have a proper birth certificate.

And yet the IAAF lets all of these Kenyans randomly show up without a BC (or if there is one it's handwritten on a leaf) that ALWAYS claims them to be "17". And they always hand them the Junior WR's without thought.

So they now let 30yr olds race high schoolers, a man race women and a cyborg race men.

Nice...

quentonkaramazov wrote:

Age Cheating? wrote:

These people don't have any method of recording when they are born. It's not important in their culture. These people are born on dirt roads for crying out loud.

Eliud Kipchoge, i bet, has no idea how old he is. He just runs hard. Same as Koech.

They have methods to record age it's just a work in progress. Infrastructure in a lot of African countries is and has been poor and disorganized so sometimes there are even multiple conflicting records. And at times ages will be approximated or falsified by parents to help their children get proper schooling (I need to get the details on this). The point I'm trying to make is, Africans aren't just falsifying their ages to cheat their way into youth races.

This is an interesting point you bring up. Above all else, I'm guessing these people still believe in the power of education above running to take you to better places.

Waah...waah...wahh..mommy..the black men are running too fast and winning all of the races! Make them stop!

You don't get many 30 year old Kenyans that look 18 though do you?

They always seem to accidently get their ages wrong in a way that benefits them.

[/quote]

Imbecile, nobody said Koech isn't fast. He looks like he's 30. That is all. He is a great runner who is listed as having turned 18 years old on December 19th and he looks 30. That is all. You're defending his ability which isn't being questioned.[/quote]

No. If he was running low 14 minutes like all our american hs kids are running you wouldnt be saying anything about him being thirty. Its the fact that he ran 12:53 so now you have to say "Oh theres no way a 17 year old could ever do that since our 17 year olds cant do that so he has to be 30"

Jesse was indeed a friend wrote:

Isaiah dominated in his recent cross country race and he is officially 18. He looks like he's 30, but either way he'll beat Lagat in 2012 at London. That much is seems certain.

http://www.iaaf.org/Mini/CROS12/News/NewsDetail.aspx?id=63192

Only 18 but looks 30. He can buy booze without getting carded!! He will be favorite guy on his XC team.

Correct. The point in noting an athlete's age (if he/she is purportedly very young) is usually to imply how much faster we can expect said athlete to run when he/she reaches full maturity. If that athlete is actually much older than purported, then we can't expect the usual rate of improvement to peak age, can we? We are typically more impressed by a non-African junior running, say, 13:20 than by an African junior running 12:53 not because we're all racist (not to say that some of us aren't), but because we can be a little more confident that this athlete is, in fact, of junior age and therefore more likely to improve at the typical rate between junior and peak-age.

I also have great sympathy for African athletes around the whole age thing. Even in cases where there is deliberate fraud, it happens in most cases for understandable reasons (helping kids get ahead in school, or giving promising athletes some profile within the mass of African running talent, thereby giving them a chance make a junior team, get an agent, and/or a lucrative foreign invite). We shouldn't be any more excited by a great African performance because of the purportedly tender age of the athlete, and we should hold these performances over the heads of our own juniors; but, neither should get on our moral high horses about age fraud among African athletes. They're not doing it to take anything away from us, or to make us look bad.

*SHOULDN'T hold those performances over the heads of our juniors.