Ame Tuka explains his enormous improvement over 800m in 2015. Are you convinced?

Yes.

If it just wasn't Italy or Spain...

running review wrote:

So Amel Tuka won bronze this evening in the men's 800m, Bosnia's first every World Championship medal, capping off a sensational year where he has made an outrageous improvement from 1:46.12 to 1:42.51. He answers the question many have been wondering. How has he improved by so much?

http://www.therunningreview.com/2015/08/25/coaching-change-and-an-energetic-body-the-reasons-for-tuka-surge/

Are you convinced?

I have no idea if he is doping or not, but his old PR was outside the top 7000 times on the all-time list. I don't think doping alone could account for the improvement.

Bosnian 800m runner Amel Tuka has revealed that a coaching change in 2013 is the reason for his meteoric rise to two-lap stardom this season. Speaking after claiming bronze this evening, his country’s first every World Championship medal, the 24 year old described how having access to such expertise has enabled him to make the large step up from European finalist to world medallist.

“At Tampere in 2013, at the European Under-23 Championships, where I won the bronze medal, and in the final I ran 1:46.29, I met the best coach in the world, Gianni Ghidini,” remarked Tuka after finishing third behind Kenya’s David Rudisha and Poland’s Adam Kszczot. “He saw me in that competition and he saw that I could run better, and within 2 months we started to train together.”

The Bosnian has raised a few eyebrows of late, improving his personal best this season from 1:46.12 to a blistering 1:42.51, which ranks him as the world’s fastest in 2015. “I train in Italy full time and we changed a lot of things. One was endurance. Before I had very good speed, but I didn’t have endurance, and my coach saw that and we started to work very seriously.”

“Last year I was sixth in the European Championships, which was my first European final, and this season we worked very hard and were very professional. I listen to my coach.”

Tuka, who is a latecomer to athletics, having only taken up the sport six years ago, after a background in karate, believes that being relatively new to track running, means he is still on a strong upward curve. “That’s the reason I made a big progress this season. I started to run at 18 years old and so I still have a lot of energy in my body.”

“We are very happy about the progress, and I hope next season we will make more of a big progress.”

Since he started so recently, I want to believe that he is just early on the improvement curve, but it's hard to buy.

Even if people make four-second jumps in a year, from 2:02-1:58 or 1:57-1:53, it is pretty surprising, let alone 1:49-1:45 (which I have never heard of). By the time athletes get into sub-1:45 territory you are usually looking at diminishing and marginal returns, with even a second per year being very, very good progress.

The fact that this guy got to 1:46 with 3 years of training or something like that is incredible. The fact he took off another four seconds in 1-2 more years is absurd.

If he is clean, he is hands-down the most talented 800 runner ever to race the event.

I would be interested to see his progress under and over race distance, ie 400/600/1000/1500 if he's raced them at any point. The fact he says the speed was always there (presumably 45.x ability or 46-low at worst) makes the story even more impressive. (Impressive being a nice choice of wording.) Can any coach or athlete believe that this guy just made a quantum leap in speed endurance by getting a good coach?

Coaching and training for the 800 is not rocket science. Unless he was completely neglecting any form of aerobic work for his whole life, it's hard to believe in 1:46-1:42 upside coming out over the course of a year.

as convinced that flo-jo was not drugged to the gills

He is at least as believable as any of the previously unknown 30-year-old Kenyans suddenly running sub 2:06 marathons.

Meaning, if that kind of natural talent is possible then it is certainly not limited to East Africa.

Likely a doper - similar to the top kenyan talent that routinely shows up out of nowhere and runs fast.

Interestingly - coached by famous-for-doping-kenyans Ghidini.

running review wrote:

So Amel Tuka won bronze this evening in the men's 800m, Bosnia's first every World Championship medal, capping off a sensational year where he has made an outrageous improvement from 1:46.12 to 1:42.51. He answers the question many have been wondering. How has he improved by so much?

http://www.therunningreview.com/2015/08/25/coaching-change-and-an-energetic-body-the-reasons-for-tuka-surge/

Are you convinced?

More realistic than a certain Ethiopian woman running 1:57 to finish up the 800.

You sissified PC guys never ask yourselves why you're so quick to hate whites and grovel to everyone else.

Unless you're an African, right? Like Amos dropping from 1:47 to 1:41 in the same season. Oh, wait. He SAYS he was only 18 then. He looks to be 25 or so now, but that's all that hard African living, hunting gazelle and running from lions, right? Or Aman, huge drop. But he was only 18, even though his agent told GH over at TAFNews he was 24 three years ago.

Guys who take up the sport late will be better a bit late as well. Like a certain Kenyan who gave Geb a scare in the 10k one day at a meet called the Olympics. But only Africans can run. Or at least, that's what a certain group of people want you to think.

Tuka in fact didn't do much aerobic work at all until the past few years you twit.

I think Tuka said he ran a 50 flat or something quarter off no track training. Apparently he did karate before he ran which is something you don't hear too often.

To contextualizing some (though I don't really know what this indicates) Rudisha ran a 1:49 when he was still a decathlete (I think o Connell asked him to run an 800 on a lark and he was amazed at the result)

There has been another change: he finished college in Bosnia and moved to Italy full time to train with Ghidini's group.

I'm not sure exactly when this happened. I was in Bosnia during his race in Monaco and had dinner with the rector of his university, who remembered signing forms to let him skip classes and go overseas for training/racing, and thought it was 2014. So he might still have been hopping back and forth combining college last season.

Bosnia is a poor place without a lot of depth in athletics and not a lot of people have time for a very healthy lifestyle. When based there, he would have had no decent training partners, been inhaling other people's smoke everywhere, and probably subsiding off too many Cevapcici. If 2014-15 was his first full year with a proper environment under a top coach in Italy, that would explain a lot.

Kenya is hosting World Youths in 2 years. It will be a bloodbath, with everyone being beaten by mid-20s African middle distance guys.

Kejelcha still described by the British commentators as being 17. "Amazing running for a 17yo".

Give me a break. As believable as Alfred Kipketer being 16-17 2 years ago when winning World Youths - the guy had a receding hairline. And he's worse now - how does that work?

The thing I don't get with allegations of doping against Kenyans and other Africans is this - these are 3rd world countries. Where do they get the money for the stuff?

Also - what is supposed to artificially help 800 running the most? Blood doping and EPO I would have thought helped longer events. I guess steroids etc help you recover from workouts faster.

Excuse my naivete.

Nope.hes a cheat.every athlete with suspicious improvements come up with grandiose reasons as to why theyve suddenly improved beyond belief.change in training.working harder.change in coach.change in lifestyle.relatively new to athletics.most of it is poppycock.usually the only thing that changes is the addition of PED'S into the mix.thani halkia of greece had similar excuses,when she won the 400 metre hurdles at the 2004 olympics.she was a proven doper.

Same dope as rudisha using for speed.

Extra speed and speed endurance from

souped up nervous system and fact that

tall enables this even more.

yes another igf-1 doper.

Question is he taking endurance ped ,

not nessary if well conditioned as can all

be accounted for by speed.

just like rudisha now that cant dope for endurance like Pre 2013

add a half second for monaco track also.

the polish guy is the clean champ

Karma Police wrote:

The thing I don't get with allegations of doping against Kenyans and other Africans is this - these are 3rd world countries. Where do they get the money for the stuff?

Excuse my naivete.

We're filthy rich in Kenya. Lot's of cash thrown around. We're also on the cutting edge of science, dedicated to developing new chemical agents solely aimed at humiliating the so-called 1st world. We're talking fully equipped state-of-the-art mobile transfusion units that would make Lance Armstrong's setup look like child's play. All this whilst the government clinics in these remote regions lack basic equipment like dialysis machines because it's more important for us to continue making westerners look like sissies on the track than to save actual lives of insignificant villagers.

For all of you calling him a cheat, I hope that you apply the same logic to your assessment of farah. "Mo ran all his easy days too slow and he never lifted a weight." And that's a good enough explanation for why he became a world beater at 27 when he was an also ran before that. This dudes's metetoric rise is no worse than Farah's that's for sure. He has a greater chance of being clean because of where he came from and the lack of infrastructure there for athletics and decent living in general. I do however, think that he is most likely doped and that Farah and Bolt are the kings of all dopers.

Gurgle wrote:

running review wrote:

So Amel Tuka won bronze this evening in the men's 800m, Bosnia's first every World Championship medal, capping off a sensational year where he has made an outrageous improvement from 1:46.12 to 1:42.51. He answers the question many have been wondering. How has he improved by so much?

http://www.therunningreview.com/2015/08/25/coaching-change-and-an-energetic-body-the-reasons-for-tuka-surge/

Are you convinced?

I have no idea if he is doping or not, but his old PR was outside the top 7000 times on the all-time list. I don't think doping alone could account for the improvement.

So, doping and training then. We are witnessing a typical WC/Olympics year where the dopers come out of the woodwork. They can't play it safe anymore.

Pot and kettle let's run wrote:

For all of you calling him a cheat, I hope that you apply the same logic to your assessment of farah. "Mo ran all his easy days too slow and he never lifted a weight." And that's a good enough explanation for why he became a world beater at 27 when he was an also ran before that. This dudes's metetoric rise is no worse than Farah's that's for sure. He has a greater chance of being clean because of where he came from and the lack of infrastructure there for athletics and decent living in general. I do however, think that he is most likely doped and that Farah and Bolt are the kings of all dopers.

This is exactly right.

Farah was spending extended periods living and training with Micah Kogo in Kenya as far back as the mid-2000s

At least Tuka's explanation of "I never really trained properly" is slightly credible as he was until very recently living and training in Bosnia