Kimetto shows that top Africans are not dopers.

The reason is related to why the Kenyans and Ethiopians don't dominate swimming, basketball, weight lifting, skiing, baseball, hockey, football, and dozens of other sports in the same way they excel at middle and long distance running. Even in the sport of track and field, they do very little of high caliber in sprints, hurdles, jumps, and throws.

As distance runners, though, they are, as a group, the best.

If Kenyans and Ethiopians were doping, the ones being cheated the most are the other Kenyans and Ethiopians, because those are the main competitors.

I'm not saying he is doping, but you are hardly proving he isn't. 1) 29 is not past one's prime for marathon running. 2) I'm guessing he didn't just magically become a 2:03:45 guy. He could have shown some early promise, and then the dope fiends got to him.

Sam W. wrote:

I'm not saying he is doping, but you are hardly proving he isn't. 1) 29 is not past one's prime for marathon running. 2) I'm guessing he didn't just magically become a 2:03:45 guy. He could have shown some early promise, and then the dope fiends got to him.

I never said I "proved" anything. Some people will never be satisfied with reason, so the best I can do is "show" that it is not likely. If you have heard anything about Kimetto, he supposedly has only been running for 2 years. Beginning at 27 is, in my opinion, too late for someone to give him drugs because he shows "early promise." It's a poor investment. It seems that he did come out of nowhere. If you got joe shmoe 27 year old blue coller guy, supposing he was naturally suited to running and led an active lifestyle, and fed him the best doping cocktail ever, would he be able to run within the region of 2:04? I really want to emphasize the toughness of these people, I don't think we westerners can really understand how tough they are. If we quit running, we will still live the rest of our lives in relative luxury. Do you think Kimetto wanted to go back to farming cows and making, probably, under 1000 dollars a year?

Actually, the fact that he has improved so much is just as likely to indicate doping as not. This is not an argument you can win, because if the top runners are doping, he is very likely doping. Who knows?

He is an elite endurance athlete, therefore by historical example he is likely to be doping.

Not A Duck wrote:

Actually, the fact that he has improved so much is just as likely to indicate doping as not. This is not an argument you can win, because if the top runners are doping, he is very likely doping. Who knows?

Okay, suppose the top runners are doping. How did Kimetto make it to the point that he was recognized as top material, making "them" come to the realization that "they" should start him on an expensive drug regimen, including the means of covering up said regimen? If that were the case, it still seems to say that Kimetto would still be one of the better marathoners in the world, after only 2 years training. See my point? Also, what kind of runner decides they need to start doping less than two years? (remember, we are assuming for the sake of discussion that he was doping leading up to Chicago)And if he started doping less than two years ago, that means he would have had to have been recognized as a world-beater after only a little over a year of running. Who is a world-beater after only one year of running? Not any Americans lately... well, maybe Mary Cain

Well, he ran 28:30 in Nairobi (at altitude) in 2011, so presumably he'd been running for some time prior to that, and that performance in itself showed some promise, especially if it were known that he'd not been training that long.

Toughness? Give me a break! Bernard Lagat ran his best times after getting a 4-year college degree. All Kimetto's case shows is 1) he is a very good runner, and 2) some people starting as adult only need about 3 years to reach most of their potential.

Oh so suddenly its convenient for you to think hes 29? Why because hes blown away all your previous assumptions about all the yrs of training it takes to reach this level?

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

Oh so suddenly its convenient for you to think hes 29? Why because hes blown away all your previous assumptions about all the yrs of training it takes to reach this level?

It's not convenient for me to think anything. The paradigm always seemed to be that Kenyans are older than they say they are (not that I thought so). I don't say it takes any number of years to reach that level. I am saying, in fact, that Kimetto is the real deal, and that with the right training, "older" runners are just as capable of running fast as the young guys. Bernard Lagat has more or less said the same thing. Sammy Wanjiru seemed to have reached the top level without several years of training- I believe he set a HM record at 18 or 19. What is Kimetto doing for training, that is what I wonder... not what kind of drugs is he taking.

Farming is tedious work - esp at altitude and in a 3rd world. Time on feet.

Why is this not part of hte reason he is such a good runner? He didn't go 0 to 2:03 in 2 years off the couch.

I agree, but the same is true of millions of runners, most likely.

The truth is out there wrote:

Farming is tedious work - esp at altitude and in a 3rd world. Time on feet.

Why is this not part of hte reason he is such a good runner? He didn't go 0 to 2:03 in 2 years off the couch.

"Time on feet"? That is not even remotely the same thing as training for running. If Dennis Kimetto had been an overweight office drone until 3 years ago he'd still have won Chicago. Well, maybe he would have needed another year or so.

The truth is out there wrote:

Farming is tedious work - esp at altitude and in a 3rd world. Time on feet.

This +

1. what's the dude weighing in at now and how far from that was he when he "first started running 2 years ago." Big difference being an over-weight 30yo western trying to run a marathon and being a near-perfect marathon-weight farmer living at altitude that decides to run.

2. As previously mentioned, don't underestimate the mental-toughness of a sustenance farmer looking to save himself and his family.

3. I don't believe his age and, on top of that, his claim on how long he's been training. Two years of "professional training" after 7 years of causal training is the likely story here. This is a definition issue akin to "Coe miles" - are we counting the same way?

4. Dude's on something. There are no ubermensch.

He has said in interviews that he did not train at all. He said he did "literally no running." Possibly he misused "literally", but the upshot is he was not training.

My grandparent were subsistence farmers. They weren't going to run a 2:03:45 marathon.

Elijah Lagat was a fat office drone when he started running at 27; he ended up winning several big city marathons and running 2:07:41 when that was less than a minute off the WR.

You don't believe his age? So he's what, 35? They're always older than they say, right? Or is it younger when it fits your preconceived notions.

Coe ran what he said he did, just like Lagat does. You mileage freaks need to get over it.

No reason to think Kimetto is on anything. Kenyans just happen to be good at distance running.

I get tired of hearing about "its all about being tougher, the Kenyans have more adversity and incentive" but the older I get I realize it is a huge factor.

I thought as a young runner there was no way anyone in the world could push themselves harder than me. I got up in did daily morning runs at age 14 through cold Midwest winters without anybody else telling me. Even only as a 5:04 miler. Just trying to get better.

I was running 90-100 mile weeks, mostly alone, by age 16. Remember in the 1980's the popular philosophy started to shift away from high volume. I thought I was willing to be tougher than anyone else. And I ran a 13:50 5000 at age 18 as a college freshman. But American kids putting it all in running, even talented ones, have other options they put aside and even risk losing by putting in an all or nothing approach in running for several years that is different from the normal career track. There is a constant anxiety they face every day that this sport is not what they should concentrate on.

And the recent trend of top college talent getting comfortable money helped. Galen Rupp is the example. Groomed from his junior year in high school. It needed to be done in this country or we could never get an American talent to get close to the level he is.

But try to imagine the different mindset going on when you live in a country of poverty. Pretty much everyone you know is poor. Being a World Class runner is a dream. The competition is incredibly tough but the possibility there is to get rich. The ability to do that anyway else is slim.

It's not just talent. But that is huge. In a nation of our population we might have the same talent but spread out and

harder to reach and develop. But nobody is starving and desperate enough to see the only chance of not struggling in a hard life could be to win a big marathon.

The Kenyans have no such concerns that they are giving up or taking a future life-affecting risk to run 150 mile weeks and train 2-3 times a day with naps in between.

Americans would have a hard time doing that unless they had guaranteed big money to do that for a long time.

That is the reason why the Africans dominate.

But they do have the head start with genetics. And growing up at altitude. Its always been obvious.

You simply do not see people in this world anywhere that look like world class Kenyan distance runners with narrow arms and minuscule wrists and ankles and long thigh muscles and still weigh under 140 pounds.

Couple that with the life at altitude and the motivation they will always dominate.

It's quite likely that Dennis has been"running" in the American/European sense for more than two years. Kenyans talk about it differently. For some, running starts when they begin "serious training" which usually means being accepted into a camp or training group with some established athletes. Sometimes it's even later -only after competing and doing well in a recognized race or going overseas and making money. He may have only been running for two years, but even then, the time he thinks he started was likely preceded by lots of runing to/from school or w/ friends.

If Nelson Mandela became world class after 25 years in jail you guys would claim he ran a 100 miles a week in solitary.

R U kidding me? He PROVES that Africans are dopers. He will now disappear after having won a big race and the dope testers won't be able to follow him back into the bush.