'Ex-Runner' isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the box. If he truly is a British ex-runner I'd guess he was a sprinter with more fast twitch muscle fiber than neurons.
Not sure how it follows that being reasonably suspicious of runners from countries steeped in corruption and doping cultures, with dozens of failed tests (despite abysmal testing and corrupt testers) equates to assuming Seb Coe doped because he was white and fast and thus disproved your hardcore racist theory that African athletes are superior.
Do you (ex-runner) also find it hard to believe that guys like Herb Elliott were clean, who also knocked seconds off of world records that took years to break? Coe was among the first generation of largely full-time professional athletes (and who didn't retire by 25). It's no wonder that he (and others including Cram and Ovett) pushed close to the limits of what can be achieved clean. After that generation, you would expect only small incremental improvements in times through little changes in shoes, tracks, training knowledge etc. especially as the popularity and participation in athletics plummeted in Europe and America after them. Instead, you continued to get massive leaps in times, with El G running almost a second a lap faster little more than a decade later despite following Coe's training almost to the letter, and more recently Rudisha front running a 1:40 in an Olympic final. Coe's 1500m times, like Cram and Ovett's aren't even in the top 100 now, which are mostly filled by Africans. The only reasonable explanation for that is that Africans are far more likely to dope (as their greater opportunities, incentives, and upbringing in corrupt cultures would suggest) or Africans are genetically superior. I get denounced as a racist, of course, for thinking the former is more likely.
You're the guy who keeps bringing skin colour into it. You (and some other true racists here) believe that simply being born with dark skin gives you greater potential to run fast than white skin.
Yes I would suspect any Morrocan runner who runs under 1:45 let alone one who would appear out of nowhere and run 1:41, for exactly the reasons Deano gave. Not sure how you can have such a poor grasp of logical reasoning to think this has anything to do with Sebastian Coe being clean or not.
No, completely right. I wont bore everyone with the Aouita details again, you just have to search this forum. He went from 83 to 88, running a ridiculous variety of distances trying to break the WR everytime he ran and never got injured. Imagine the training and crazy workouts that Aouita had to do to be able to run elite times from 800 to 10000 (after running 1:50/3:45/14:00 until his mid-twenties).
Ronnie, Higgins, and Williams all are or turn 43 this year.
My point about the theoretical Moroccan is that you'd be skeptical because of where he's from rather than the individual. You see all Africans as the same. You even state that in your post, "either Africans are more likely to dope due to culture or they are genetically superior... I think the former".
Look, you are the one that ALWAYS brings race into it. You referred to Coe as a 'White' athlete rather than just an athlete. It is you that is skeptical of "any Moroccan running under 1:45" but not skeptical of an Englishman running 1:41 despite there being far less drug testing in that era.
I strongly believe there is NO DIFFERENCE between black runners and white runners. I'm sick of posters writing out my opinions for me. I'm just as skeptical of a white guy running 1:41 as a black guy running 1:41. Thats the fundamental difference between me and you. 1:41 is an insanely fast time and you have to be objective about these things, this sport is very dirty and always has been. Drugs have been used since the first Olympics. There were dopers in athletics before Africans even competed in the sport.
I'll offer a third reason as to why lots of Africans have now bettered Coe and Crams 1500m times. It's not because they are all dopers, or because they are all genetically superior. A running culture developed in certain nations and it's something that many talented people from those regions are willing to give everything to pursue. How many boys in the UK seriously pursue athletics today, give everything like Coe did? Not many.
The real question you want to ask yourself is not why are there so many fast Africans but where have the Coes/Crams/Ovetts gone? Why can Britain not produce talent like it used to? I don't know the answer fully. But if you can answer me that then you can answer your own questions about the disparity between top African and European distance times. Because it seems to me that the Africans remember something that we have forgotten; be it legal or illegal.
Absolutely, and there's nothing irrational about that. It's unfortunate for the individual if he or she is clean. It's unfortunate for clean Russian athletes that they are tarred with the same brush and been left unable to compete in many cases, but it is what it is. There is nothing unbelievable about running 1:41.7 if you're the most gifted runner of the most fortunate generation. There were a number of runners who were certainly capable of low 1:42 in the generation before Coe yet they all either retired early through choice or injury, or even (in the case of Van Damme) died.
Is it also wrong to suspect Communist era Eastern Bloc runners of doping who were never caught or subsequently proven to have doped? Where do you stand on Kratochvilovaor Marita Koch?
Your point about Coe only makes sense if it's understood as implying he was so much faster than other whites. A number of Africans have run under 1:43 and two have ran faster.
Not sure if Moroccan testing is up to the standards of even Britain in the 80s, especially Morocco in the EPO era when El G had all the opportunity to go full throttle and almost certainly did.
I'm sceptical of Moroccans because of their corrupt culture, and their numerous drug busts. If at this point you believe a British runner is just as likely to be a doper as a Moroccan runner, you're pretty much have your head up somewhere dark.
Probably nobody on this board has speculated so many reasons why British middle-distance running has declined as I have. But the question does have to be asked as to why Africa suddenly produced so many elite runners and started dominating almost overnight. The decline of British and 'white' running in general can be attributed partly to that sudden domination and the demotivating effect it obviously must have had on young talented white kids. Coe, Cram, Ovett today would turn up at the world junior championships and get crushed and psychologically scarred by doped up 25 year old cheats. That's why it's a mistake to send Jakob to the world juniors in my opinion.
I suspect that not only were you a sprinter, but you took peds yourself. You were probably directly aware most sprinters, including Brits, were doping as a norm, and you assume that our middle-distance guys probably always have too.
Hello Dwayne.
Of course there are differences between runners of different races. The height of cowardice is to deny this. The E. Africans obviously have a higher percentage of people with the physiological makeup to be middle and long distance runners. And a large portion of that population gives the sport a go. The British were seeing a decline in participation in cross country and track even while Cram and Coe were at the top of their game. Maybe this was due to football (soccer) and maybe due to other factors. The fact is that certain XC events for youngsters in GB would see thousands show up for decades, and those events saw massive drops in participation by the late 80's, first into the hundreds and then even less. Combine that with Africans erupting with massive success at the exact same time EPO becomes widely available and literally over the counter in much of the third world and it's no wonder there's little interest in going into a sport against people who are very hard to beat because they can avoid being tested much of the year and in fact may also be enjoying some interference from officials allowing them to cheat.
1:41 is likely out at there at the near limit of human performance. I think Rudisha was possibly clean when he set his first two records but fell into the drug trap to help recover from injury, and part of that is because of remarks made by his own coach (Brother C!) who alluded to Rudisha having been awol and hanging with some suspicious characters so to speak. On the other hand, there have been others who were capable but never went after it. If more 1500 types were truly doubling a lot like runners used to we'd probably see a lot more fast 800 runners in terms of 1:42 and even 1:41.
3:27/28 might be near the limit too. Certainly all sub 12:50 times are suspect, likely none of them were accomplished clean, never mind the majority of sub 13 performances, especially the ones with exceptionally fast last 400's or 800's.
If the Africans are exposed as massive cheats one has to wonder if the sport could recover. I don't think all of them cheat. But I do believe that none of their very top runners the past 30 years have been clean. Too easy for them to get away with it and too many naive people who believe silly statements like Africans wouldn't even take aspirin, never mind EPO.
Ok now I see your arguments nicely laid out there's no point in having any further discussion.
All the Africans are doping to run times that Brits ran cleanly 40 years ago. Now we have no 3:30 or 1:42 guys because they are discouraged by the Africans success.
Got it.
ex-runner wrote:
Ok now I see your arguments nicely laid out there's no point in having any further discussion.
All the Africans are doping to run times that Brits ran cleanly 40 years ago. Now we have no 3:30 or 1:42 guys because they are discouraged by the Africans success.
Got it.
Largely, yes. And now I see your argument too. Three Kenyan born Olympic champions busted in the last couple of years, the Kenyan team manager from Rio charged with running a sophisticated doping regime for his athletes, EPO openly on sale in every high street pharmacy in Kenya for a few dollars (even cheaper than the price of tea it takes to bribe the drug testers), and it's unfair to suspect that the overnight ability of dozens of Kenyans to run world class times was anything to do with peds. It also had no demotivating effect on young white kids at all.
We will just have to agree to disagree.
But if you care about the future of this sport, at some point people like you will have to take their heads out of their posteriors and recognize the magnitude of the doping problem in Africa. Will it take a dozen Kenyan Olympic champions to be busted before you admit there's a problem?
There have been 30 sub 3:30s since 2008 in the 1500m.
Here is the list of sub 3:30s NOT run in Monaco:
Berlin 2009 - Choge
Hengelo 2012 - Chepseaba
Doha 2012 - Kiplagat and Kiprop
Doha 2014 - Kiprop and Kiplagat
Birmingham 2016 - Kiprop
Now Cheruiyot in Paris
Every other performance including the 12 fastest in the last 10 years have been run at Monaco
Total sub 3:30s in last 10 years
Monaco - 23
Doha - 4
Berlin - 1
Hengelo - 1
Birmingham - 1
Paris - 1
too many points brought up to address ,
1.
but some of you are contradicting oneselves ,
steroids of little use for middle distance ,
when a massive recovery aid for training , regardless of how anerobic or aerobic event is .
and give added strength benefits too .
you mentioned having a fast 400m , what can that help , what will that translate to , at longer distances .
then just need to work on the endurance side .
where certain roids can also of be of benefit . ie raise hct .
2.
good revision on the mainstream narrative of out of competition testing timeline ,
as had to find quick sources nowadays without going to various books of that era or otherwise .
but
you mention , 1989 when first basic out of test were conducted in the uk . , anymore info , how many etc , other countries
that so happens to be coe and crams more or less exit from track .
yes again one was older but see my point , they are always many steps ahead
yes cram continued for awhile and imagine was still aided but by other means as in epo
did he not try longer events at that time , again natural to do but you see point making .
as
for cram running sub 4 at 17 , well exactly as we are seeing nowadays 3.57 or so
you are not going to turn a mule into a racehorse now .
3.
if cant see it then so be it ,
if blinded by love for grand brittania or certain athletes then so be it .
history and the times , speak for themselves .
that includes rudisha , throughout career , was dirty as sin , with cover of a brother . gw501516 .
someone as got to analyse these monaco races closer ,
And
come up with what is going on there .
1.
the surface , especially bouncy for that distance
like previous worlds for 400m or if remember
what do any athletes say on surface there .
2.
the starting line .
3.
no use of camera phones , and the time on tv off so cant compare
as is the clock on race .
far fetched but know can do so in sprints for afew hundreds if deemed important .
now afew seconds is different matter .
4.
all ideas welcome .
Coevett wrote:
RonnieFan wrote:
No, completely right. I wont bore everyone with the Aouita details again, you just have to search this forum (I have. Everything you write here is completely wrong). He went from 83 to 88, running a ridiculous variety of distances trying to break the WR everytime he ran and never got injured. Imagine the training and crazy workouts that Aouita had to do to be able to run elite times from 800 to 10000 (after running 1:50/3:45/14:00 until his mid-twenties).
Ronnie, Higgins, and Williams all are or turn 43 this year. (So not 43 or 44)
You were not completely right, but almost completely wrong. Btw, are you Phil?
Whether or not steroids might give benefits to middle-distance, back in the late 70s and early 80s even the East Germans were struggling to get it right. Knowledge of how to cycle steroids was not as advanced back then, especially in the West. Even the steroids were often different, for example Arnie's favourite was Primabolan which is not even available today. He also took that, and dbol and winstrol more or less continuously. Yes it's possible that athletes, especially in the 90s and more recently, under semi-state sponsored doping regimes such as Morocco in the EPO era or Russia (supposedly) of late, could use steroids and not develop noticeably muscular physiques, I'm not sure how Coe and his father pulled it off.
Coe was 33 when he retired and had a career in politics lined up which had been his dream for years. He only went on after 88 I believe because he wanted one season (and the Commonwealths) to prove the selectors had been wrong in leaving him out of Seoul.
Cram dabbled with the 5000m late in his career, and then switched back to the 1500m at the very end (just when the EPO era was starting). He originally intended to move up to the 5000m after LA (just as Coe did, but ironically, only Ovett did..a little later). The idea that Cram moved up to the 5000m to benefit from EPO is ridiculous.
Nothing about Coe, Cram, or Ovett's progression is dubious. Compare with the likes of Aouita or Ramzi.
I'm not blinded by 'love for Britannia'. I have no reason to believe any middle-distance runner of that period doped (or before) aside from Aouita. If new facts came to light, I would be sad, but I wouldn't hesitate to change my mind. The people who are blind are those who continue to regard African athletes as clean when the whole house of cards is clearly coming tumbling down.
Subway Surfers wrote:
quote]had to be said wrote:
1:41 in 81. Sans rabbit on a slow track. Now we think it's great if one is pulled to a 1:43, with 2018 spikes on a specialised track. Yes, nothing to see here.
But we are talking about blood doping, the reinfusion part gave a spike in performance and you could fairly claim this for his 1:41.7 in early June but the problem was he was running just as well into September over a multitude of distances. Now there were other more blatantly obvious examples of blood doping back then of runners who had three weeks of superb performances only to be rubbish later in the season and never get near those times ever again. I have very little doubt that many of our heroes from yesteryear were probably addicted to pain killers/anti-inflammatories in such away that would make the TUE scandal look 'but a triffle.' Remember though, in America and Britain, people talk and there is always alot more to be made selling people out.[/quote]
+1
Lasse Viren is the classic example, but I think the Italians such as Cova were quite famous for having so so seasons and then against expectations winning medals at the major championships.
Coe was even smashing indoor world records in February.
I don't necessarily believe that all Kenyans running sub 3:30 and the like are doping, but I do believe that it's only proper that such times and runners should be seen as suspect.
Tim coming out boasting about running a 3:25 at Monaco or Zurich is in bad taste in the light of Kiprop's bust (and all the staggering facts about Kenyan corruption that came to light surrounding it). He has only himself to blame if he does break the WR and nobody takes it serioiusly.
And yes, I believe Coe, Cram, and Ovett were about as good as it gets clean. Britain was just lucky to have the best middle-distance runners in the generation that pushed the 800 and 1500 times to the limits of what humans are capable of clean. I think all three of them could have got close to 3:27. I doubt very much the Monaco track or better shoes, or slight improvements in coaching could enable Tim to run 3:25 clean.
Can't find it in this thread, but Deano said that the reason Coe could run an outlier time such as 1:41 is because of his unique combination of 400 speed and 1500 endurance.
I'm just speculating in an amateur way here, but it seems to me that the 800m with it's unique demands of both speed and endurance is the one track event most likely to produce the occasional 'freak' who could produce something way beyond his contemporaries. Arguably it happened before with Snell's WR run on grass, and of course with Rudolf Harbig (who had WR 400m speed twinned with a very decent for the era 1500m ability).
No, random out of competition testing was being carried out by the BAAB from 1986 NOT 1989. The IAAF started world wide OOC testing in 89.
Cheers for clearification of years ,
Appreciate info and opinion ,
And any idea how many a year or
How to avoid , when 1st big bust ,etc .
Off course ,then the sceptic in me
says matters little these tests
To the big boys and find way or buy way around .like see thru out eras .
Look out for own athletes like Kenya now , and with others testing becomes
Difficult as from 89 on .
Also see with balco matters little there
Too , balco could of being supplying
From about then on too was informed
As I always thought balco was very much late 90's on .
As for lack of British talent from then on
Agree on all above but also the testing
Deterrent is also another point for roids but then again were not testing epo.
Out of all the mid-d runners from 70s & 80s, only Aouita would have doped? How many mid-d elites competed through those two decades? Hundreds maybe? And only Aouita would be so gutsy to use PEDs?
I like most of your posts Coevett - insightful & informative, but to believe that no one else was using PEDs other than possibly Aouita seems illogical and bit of a stretch.
PED use with elites (and I'm not saying all elites dope) is contingent on what's available for that particular era (e.g. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.) and a benefit/risk analysis. If the athlete thinks a particular PED will help their performance and the risk of getting caught is low they're more inclined to give it a try. Also, if an athlete feels their competition is benefiting from a particular PED(s), they may also feel complelled to use the same PED(s) so as to not be a disadvantage. We definitely saw this with EPO starting in the 90s.
The main reason you see fast times at Monaco is because it is always a deep field of the top runners and they all go for time at that race.
You don't see that in any other race.