Official 2018 Monaco Diamond League Discussion Thread

Renato Canova wrote:

Some comment directly from the hotel in Monaco.

Women steeple : Beatrice Chepkoech at the moment is able to run under 8'20" and under 4' in 3000 and 1500m. She is by far very much faster than Ruth Jebet, Celiphine Chespol and Hyvin Kiyeng, who are problems to run under 4'10" and 8'35".

Because the barrier are very low, Beatrice (who is 1.72 tall and has a very good technique in both barriers and water jump) can have a difference about 22" - 26" between the distance flat of with barriers, so her time is normal for her attitude.

What is not normal is the way she ran. The pacer left the race after 1 km, and Beatrice was able running completely alone the last two km in 5'49", that is a performance better than the previous Best Performance in 2000 steeple.

She is of another class from all the other specialists. She runs with elegance, technically perfect, and has an incredible motivation and aggressiveness in both training and competition. For the next 3 years, she, in my opinion, is unbeatable, and can do in the women field what Shaheen did with men, with 28 following victories between 2002 and 2006.

1500m Men : Timothy confirmed he is the number one currently, and Elijah Manangoi is not yet at his best after the injury. Many idiots continue to speak of doping (somebody wrote the real WR can't be faster than 3'33", of course if you are not white and specifically British) while running in Monaco in 3'28"41 is nothing special with a perfect distribution of the pace like this time. At the moment, 3'26" is not in the possibility of anybody, therefore it's not only useless, but damageous, to try splits under 1'50" that have the only effect to kill the athletes. The pace this night was perfect, and this means that this kind of races become the occasion for PB for almost all the athletes.

The biggest fact, in my opinion, was the PB of both the Ingebrigtsen : Filip, already 3'32" this year, is now the logic favourite for the European Championships (he's already the Champion), and in a perfect race can look at a time under 3'30". But Jakob was incredible : personally I supposed possible something around 3'33" staying in the group, but his last lap was amazing, and really we can't speak about the future, because at the moment we don't see any limit for this athlete not yet 18, who physically grew of 15 cm in the last two years, but already trains with a volume that the most part of seniors are not able to do.

800m Men : The come back of Nigel Amos is something connected with the absence of Rudisha, who blocked the motivation of the Botswana guy for long time, reducing his stimuli to train hard, because Nigel is the type of athletes who train hard only if they can win. The talent of Nigel is still the same of 6 years ago : some day ago he ran 400m in 45"55, showing he recovered his speed and finally was fit. In these conditions, it's very difficult to defeat him.

Another thing is to understand that strong times can arrive only when the races are fast because there is a good pacer, and good pacers cost money. This means that many organizers are not interested to put good pacers in the races, and we can have top results from ALL the participants only when the organization is perfect and there is focus on great times.

This is the reason because Monaco every year produces top results : the track is fast (but forget the effect "trampoline", that there is in some indoor track only, when the track presents some cm empty between the basic pavement and the track itself). the weather is normally very good without humidity, and the pacers are the best, because the organizers invest good money to prepare big performances.

Only suspicious, and stupid, people can think an international track, with all the criteria requested for the homologation, can be short. Too many posters here don't have any clue about the activity of top meetings, and don't know the rules of DL (for example, about the number of doping tests).

800m Women : Caster Semenya, after the last rule of IAAF, wants to better the WR in this season, not knowing if from 2019 she can still be allowed to run in the same conditions of this year. For that reason, in the last 2 competitions she tried, for the first time, to attack the WR, running alone from the start. The WR is possible, with a pacer going till 500m in 1'10" she can be more relaxed and can finish the last 300m in 43". Without proper pacer, she was too much aggressive, and at the end she paid reducing her speed. But, with an athlete like her in front, all the other competitors can have the best possible rabbit, and this can produce a lot of PB (the same that happened in the past in 5000m having Bekele as rabbit, or in 1500m having before Morceli and after El Guerrouj).

Finally, it's time to finish to overtake the effects of doping on the performances, thinking that, if you run fast, OBVIOUSLY you MUST be doped. Cheruiyot and Manangoi don't need any doping for running what they did this night, exactly like Filip and Jakob. I repeat again : if a talent like Asbel, world champion while junior in cross country 8 km, and able running 1'43"15 in 800m, had the same motivation, continuity and professionalism of El Guerrouj or of the great British of the 80 years (Coe, Cram, Ovett...), the WR today could be 3'24" CLEAN.

The performance of the Ingebtitsen brothers can show that, when there is a good talent, proper training, big motivation and total focus in running, can produce results of the same level of African athletes. Of course, for being the best, we need a very good talent. However, athletes with 90% of the talent of the most talented athletes can reach the top winning the most important medals, and bettering WR, if they have continuity and total dedication, something practically impossible in Kenya and Ethiopia. When there is this behaviour, you can become the number one for long time, also if your talent is not the absolute best : Eliud Kipchoge is the most clear example of this situation.