Sebastian Coe vs Said Aouita - 1500/mile race - Who would win?

So many questions, which have already been addressed. Regarding "as soon as", can you be more specific? I had picked 1990 as a year that I felt comfortably preceded these "through the roof" improvements from the East Africans by several years, only to be criticized that 1990 was at least three to four years after the mass production of EPO, and my pre-EPO-era metric could have been tainted by EPO. In light of this "up to an 8 or 9 year gap" between these two events, the only correct answer is that performances did not go through the roof "as soon as" EPO became widely available. The temporal connection you assume is a false one. Your exact choice of words "stagnated or even went backwards" was another source of a criticism, again directed at me, for its inaccuracy. I made the mistake of quoting you, rather than re-writing it for complete accuracy. But the jist of the question of my "thesis" is right: looking at all time best performances for nearly three decades, on one end of the spectrum, we find so many East Africans, improving on top times by so much, from a population of so few, while in the same era, we find so few non-Africans, and then by so little, from so many. I did not prove or conclude the reasons, but found it not credible, given its wide availability and general untestability for so long, despite suggestions of diminished interest and population, and improved testing, that only Africans would be able to leverage a significant advantage from EPO, even when based out of Africa. As you said, surely we should have witnessed the rest of the world getting better too.

Do you suspect performances from Russia, India, Morocco, Romania, Saudi Arabia, France, Italy and the United States too, for the same reason? In 2016, they were worse than Kenya.

Coevett wrote:

Yes, the reason I'm suspicious of Kenyan performances is because of the huge number of doping positives, ...

rekrunner wrote:

So many questions, which have already been addressed.

Regarding "as soon as", can you be more specific? I had picked 1990 as a year that I felt comfortably preceded these "through the roof" improvements from the East Africans by several years, only to be criticized that 1990 was at least three to four years after the mass production of EPO, and my pre-EPO-era metric could have been tainted by EPO.

Could have been tainted by blood doping, IMO. There's some evidence of rEPO being used at both Calgary & Seoul in 88 - so maybe as early as 87, but I don't think any earlier than that. OTOH, blood transfusions were being used as early as the 70s for those that had the resources & money.

Remember blood doping & rEPO achieve the same results with EPO being far more convenient and easier to use with less people involved. So, you may comparing two forms of 02-vector doping in the two different time periods you chose to evaluate. And in fact, since some dopers transitioned to blood doping after 2000 when the EPO test was implemented, you would in some cases be comparing blood doping from two different time periods

This only seems to strengthen that there is no "as soon as" link between "through the roof" improvements, which didn't occur until post-1990, and O2-vector doping as early as the 1970s. Given all O2-vector doping results are the same, seems like we should seek to find a better explanation for the unprecedented African performance improvements.

rekrunner wrote:

Given all O2-vector doping results are the same, seems like we should seek to find a better explanation for the unprecedented African performance improvements.

There are at least two reasons, as pointed out to you several times:

a) Blood doping was next to impossible in most parts of Africa during the 80s, and using EPO in the 90s was not.

b) The training was quite rudimentary in most parts of Africa during the 80s, which changed dramatically with the European coaches/agents/managers moving there.

a and b combined formed a cascade effect, as with the success came yugely increased popularity of "professional" running in Kenya.

(Also I doubt that they are exactly the same, but that's a minor detail.)

Moses Kiptanui

Daniel Komen

Paul Tergat

Moses Tanui

Paul Bitok

All cheats?

I don't know. I'd go with the Tucker suspicion scale, while I am less optimistic than him.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7610954

All of the above would get at least a 7 from me.

Don't feel like you need to explain anything to me. I'm asking posters like Coevett to realize he is asking questions that both assume too much, and ignore too much. I would not argue with "a)", while noting "it is not next to impossible" is not a very strong statement -- saying something is not impossible is far from showing it likely or reasonably happened -- and certainly the effect of "b)" is often ignored, dismissed, misrepresented, ridiculed or otherwise downplayed.

casual obsever wrote:

There are at least two reasons, as pointed out to you several times:

a) Blood doping was next to impossible in most parts of Africa during the 80s, and using EPO in the 90s was not.

b) The training was quite rudimentary in most parts of Africa during the 80s, which changed dramatically with the European coaches/agents/managers moving there.

a and b combined formed a cascade effect, as with the success came yugely increased popularity of "professional" running in Kenya.

(Also I doubt that they are exactly the same, but that's a minor detail.)

rekrunner wrote:

Don't feel like you need to explain anything to me.

Thank you.

rekrunner wrote:

This only seems to strengthen that there is no "as soon as" link between "through the roof" improvements, which didn't occur until post-1990, and O2-vector doping as early as the 1970s.

Given all O2-vector doping results are the same, seems like we should seek to find a better explanation for the unprecedented African performance improvements.

Let my clarify from my early post (which I thought you understood what I meant). Blood doping & rEPO achieve the same results in terms of an increase in Hgb levels. Performance improvement can differ on several factors: individual variation, dosing (EPO) and amount withdrawn & later re-infused (blood doping), working around testing/ABP thresholds, injury prevalence (if an athlete is injury prone and can't train 100%, then all the EPO/blood doping isn't going to help).

Again, EPO is far more convenient without the resources, infrastructure and logistics needed with blood doping. That's probably what made it so attractive for the athletes that wanted to experiment with it in 90s. Then after 2000 came the feared "test" and now the dopers were compelled to try and time the "washout" period as close to competition without testing positive...or instead to blood dope (given resources & money). Or in Ramzi's case take a chance with a new high-potency 3rd generation EPO (CERA) that he thought, or was told, was only detectable in plasma (this was a good situation where Big Pharma actually stepped up and offered to help WADA in detecting the markers of CERA or Ramzi would have never been caught). Now...I'm sure you already know this, so I'm probably being redundant.

As far as African improvement performances let's look at Morroco first (using your 90s line of scrimmage timeline) - since this thread is involving Aouita. I'll illustrate the 15, 5 & 10 (you probably have these numbers memorized so it may be redundant). Aouita has the fastest Morrocan pre-90s & overall fastest 5 (12:58.39). He has the fastest Morrocan pre-90s 15 & one of the fastest of that era (3:29.46). Brahim Boutayeb has the fastest Morrocan pre-90s 10 at (27:21.46) which incidentally was a gold medal performance at Seoul and 4th fastest ever at that time!.

Looking at the 90's era (1990-00) before the test, one Morrocan ran faster than Aouita's 15 time (El G, of course). 4 Morrocans ran faster than Aouita's 5 time and 4 Morrocans ran faster than Boutayeb's 10 time. And the medal count for Olympic & WC performances of the Morrocans of that era was crazy: 2 golds in 15, 6 medals in the 5 and another 4 in the 10. A total of 12 medals at the Olympics & WC during the 90s!

So, something was going on in Morroco post-90s. ? Those were some very fast times set by the two Moroccans in the pre-90s and several Morrocans in a 10 yr span beat those times, some by several seconds.

So to be clear, with all these late 1990 and 2000 Moroccan examples, you are helping me argue that there is no "as soon as" link between "through the roof" improvements, which didn't occur until post-1990, and EPO-availability as early as 1987, and O2-vector doping as early as the 1970s.

Van der Zwaan wrote:

Moses Kiptanui

Daniel Komen

Paul Tergat

Moses Tanui

Paul Bitok

All cheats?

My guess on of those runners mentioned above, if I had to bet on who was clean. I would bet on Paul Tergat. I just get a clean vibe from him and he was the only one who competed pass the early 2000s. He didn't retire till 2009? Komen retired in 2001? If I recall right. Moses Kiptanui retired in 2000?

Let's Get To The Bottom Of This wrote:

Looking at the 90's era (1990-00) before the test, one Morrocan ran faster than Aouita's 15 time (El G, of course). 4 Morrocans ran faster than Aouita's 5 time and 4 Morrocans ran faster than Boutayeb's 10 time. And the medal count for Olympic & WC performances of the Morrocans of that era was crazy: 2 golds in 15, 6 medals in the 5 and another 4 in the 10. A total of 12 medals at the Olympics & WC during the 90s!

So, something was going on in Morroco post-90s. ? Those were some very fast times set by the two Moroccans in the pre-90s and several Morrocans in a 10 yr span beat those times, some by several seconds.

They need an "I know, I know" emoji. Isn't the old code word Edgar Allan Poe?

doped to da gills wrote:

Van der Zwaan wrote:

Moses Kiptanui

Daniel Komen

Paul Tergat

Moses Tanui

Paul Bitok

All cheats?

My guess on of those runners mentioned above, if I had to bet on who was clean. I would bet on Paul Tergat. I just get a clean vibe from him and he was the only one who competed pass the early 2000s. He didn't retire till 2009? Komen retired in 2001? If I recall right. Moses Kiptanui retired in 2000?

Wow!...Komen! I remember watching him in the late 90s thinking this guy is superhuman or something. Unbelievable when you think back to this guy's hypersonic speeds. Still the only man to have ever run back-to-back sub-four-minute miles!; 3 WRs! and a 12:39 5000! Will we ever see anything like this again?

Interestingly, what happen to him after 1999? I see he ran in the 99 WCs finishing 5th in 5000, but he didn't compete at Sydney nor at the 01 WCs. And looks like his times in the 5000 started to plummet after 2000. I wonder what does the statiscian rekrunner makes of this? A once in a lifetime superhuman anomaly or some funny business going on here? ? (maybe you've addressed Komen before on some of your previous talking points).

Here's one article on Komen that's interesting (he supposedly became the equivalent of an American billionaire in Kenya - probably had rockstar status like Kiprop).

For me, Komen was just 3 data points out of many. Komen would not be the first athlete to succeed, and then lose the motivation to continue after achieving success. Given the global availability of EPO, and the general undetectability of EPO for decades, I find it highly unusual to expect EPO to cause or explain "once in a lifetime superhuman" performers, like Komen. Assuming that a clean Komen was not superhumanly talented, these top performances should have been replicated by several similarly talented athletes, assuming widespread prevalence of EPO use, not to mention suggestions of higher prevalence among medal winners. I mean, once again, let's look at Morocco, at the 90's era, at the crazy medal count in Olympic and WC performances. Something was going on in Morocco post-90s with some very fast times. Yet: - In 3000m, the best Moroccan was El G, 2.4 seconds slower. Second best was Hissou, more than 8 seconds slower. - In 2 miles, the best Moroccan, Khalid Boulami, was 12 seconds slower. - In 5000m, the best Moroccan, Brahim Lahlafi, was nearly 10 seconds slower. It is the global statistics, the dearth of quantity of quality replication, all time, from many nations known to dope, like Morocco, Spain, Russia, India, France and Italy, that suggest to me that the significant difference between outlier athletes like Komen and all these athletes from other nations, was not doping (unless of course these outlier athletes were in fact clean).

Hypersonic Kenyans wrote:

I wonder what does the statiscian rekrunner makes of this? A once in a lifetime superhuman ...

rekrunner wrote:

I mean, once again, let's look at Morocco, at the 90's era, at the crazy medal count in Olympic and WC performances. Something was going on in Morocco post-90s with some very fast times. Yet:

- In 3000m, the best Moroccan was El G, 2.4 seconds slower. Second best was Hissou, more than 8 seconds slower.

- In 2 miles, the best Moroccan, Khalid Boulami, was 12 seconds slower.

- In 5000m, the best Moroccan, Brahim Lahlafi, was nearly 10 seconds slower.

Yeah all those guys were slow. EPO obviously never worked for them.

rekrunner wrote:

So to be clear, with all these late 1990 and 2000 Moroccan examples, you are helping me argue that there is no "as soon as" link between "through the roof" improvements, which didn't occur until post-1990, and EPO-availability as early as 1987, and O2-vector doping as early as the 1970s.

Just to be complete, blood transfusions started earlier. The studies on the benefits of blood transfusion for endurance events go back to the 40s...

Here word for word from a 2004 review paper (doi: 10.1136/bjsm.2003.007195):

HISTORY

The first alleged use of blood boosting in sport was in the 1960s, when a French four times winner of the Tour de France (1961–1964) was named as one of the first cyclists to use the technique. Widespread use among endurance athletes (especially running, cycling, and cross country skiing) started after the 1968 Olympic Games...

Well, and how did the performances change?

Decade by decade for non-African born male 5000 m runners, averaged over top-5 times (feel free to check the stats):

1960s: 13:22.5 -> some steroids, very few blood "dopers"

1970s: 13:13.4 -> -9s; unlimited blood transfusions + primitive steroids

1980s: 13:04.9 -> -8s; height of cold war doping era, unlimited blood transfusions, steroids virtually undetectable

1990s: 12:59.2 -> -6s; unlimited EPO, begin serious steroid testing

2000s: 12:56.3 -> -3s; begin EPO testing, partial ABP

(2010s: 12:57.7 -> +2s; full ABP incl. steroid module - but still 2 years to go) – needs to be updated

Decade by decade for non-African born male 800 m runners, averaged over top-5 times (feel free to check the stats):

1960s: 1:44.6-> some steroids, very few blood "dopers"

1970s: 1:43.3 -> -1.3s; unlimited blood transfusions + primitive steroids

1980s: 1:42.2 -> -1.1s; height of cold war doping era, unlimited blood transfusions, steroids virtually undetectable

1990s: 1:42.8 -> +0.6s; unlimited EPO, begin serious steroid testing

2000s: 1:42.8 -> +/-0s; begin EPO testing, partial ABP

(2010s: 1:42.8 -> +/-0s; full ABP incl. steroid module - but still 2 years to go) – needs to be updated

Other observations with focus on male non-Africans as per rek's guidelines:

- times improved a lot from the 70's to the 80's (roid time)

- 5000 m times improved hugely after the 80's as well (no test for EPO)

- the fastest decade in the 5000 was the 00's (pre ABP)

- the fastest decade in the 800 was the 80's (roid time)

- the fastest 800 overall was in the 80's (roid time)

- the fastest 5000 overall was in the 90's (no test for EPO)

rekrunner wrote:

I mean, once again, let's look at Morocco, at the 90's era, at the crazy medal count in Olympic and WC performances. Something was going on in Morocco post-90s with some very fast times. Yet:

- In 3000m, the best Moroccan was El G, 2.4 seconds slower. Second best was Hissou, more than 8 seconds slower.

- In 2 miles, the best Moroccan, Khalid Boulami, was 12 seconds slower.

- In 5000m, the best Moroccan, Brahim Lahlafi, was nearly 10 seconds slower.

Are you kidding? Are you some kind of a nut?

- El G ran the second fastest ever 3000 @ 7:23.09 - 6 seconds faster than Aouita's pre-90s time!

- K. Boulami ran 8:10.98 for the 2 mile - currenty 10th fastest ever and ~3 seconds faster than Aouita's pre-90s time!

- Lahlafi ran 12:49.28 - a top 15 OA time in a highly competitive discipline and a whopping 9 seconds faster than Aouita's pre-90's 12:58!

I'm LMAO if you don't think these are very fast times.

On the Morrocan Olympic & WC medal count for the 15, 5 & 10 (3 Olympics & 5 WC), it's actually 16 total medals (4 golds). I didn't catch Boutayeb (gold medalist in the 10 from Seoul) who won bronze in the 5 at the 91 WC. And a relatively unknown Morrocan (Rachid El Basir) surprised everyone with a silver in the 1500 at Barcelona (lost to Cacho). Plus El G had a couple more WC medals that I didn't see. Total major medals from 1991-2000: 16(Kenya won 23 over the same time period).

So, don't be obstinate...Morroco exploded in fast times and winning major medals in the 90s!

rekrunner wrote:

So to be clear, with all these late 1990 and 2000 Moroccan examples, you are helping me argue that there is no "as soon as" link between "through the roof" improvements, which didn't occur until post-1990, and EPO-availability as early as 1987, and O2-vector doping as early as the 1970s.

So you're saying that Coe had too much acceleration and change of pace for Aouita so long as he tucked in behind him in a non paced championship race, but that Aouita would be favoured to win in a WR attempt time trial? Which year is this? 84? 86? What if the hypothetical match up of the OP occurred in 81?