I'm delighted to read what posters who don't know anything speaks about me showing great certainty in their words. They show to be very well informed, for example when write about my connection with Chinese Federation, that I left one year before the termination of my contract (so, after WC in Beijing 2015) because had problems to communicate with the athletes after losing a good translator, a young lady who was hired by a Company of import-export in Shanghai with contract 12 times higher than the contract with Federation, replacing by students of English language whose English was totally incomprehensible, and their knowledge about athletics didn't exist (so their infos about me are updated to October 2015...).
I don't care, because I use to take the words from the mouth that produces them, and in all these cases the only truth those people can show is their idiocy and their intellectual dishonesty.
Coming back to the main topic, I want to highlight a more general mistake we usually do looking at athletics performances.
We continue to compare the performances of today with the one achieved in the past, without considering that from 5-6 years athletics lives a new period, with liberalization of situations not allowed in the past, cancelling or updating rules that for more than 100 years were very strict penalizing athletes' performances.
For example, in the past coaches were not allowed to communicate with athletes during their competition. During the Europen Junior Championships 1979 in Bydgoszcz, there were more than 40 judges whose role was to look at people on the stand, for identifying coaches giving indications to the athletes, punished with yellow of red cards suche as in soccer. I remember the case of the sovietic triple jumper Beskrovniy, who bettered the Junior WR during the qualification with 16.83m, who in the final was sanctioned with a yellow card during the first jump because of the indications from his coach who was at the top of the stand, and with a red card after the 3rd attempts, meaning he was no more allowed to continue the competition.
Now there is a specific area for the coaches of the technical events near the board, the athletes after each jump or throw are authorized go to the coach who shows them their technical execution from a tablet, and the athlete can immediately see his mistakes for correcting his technique in the next attempt.
Coaches of middle distances were not allowed to commuinicate the splits during the races, one WR in the relay 4x800m from GBR (with Coe and Cram) was not ratified because the speaker gave their splits during the race !
In the European Championships in Rome, this year, the springboard for long and triple jump was elevated of 20 cm and empty under the board itself, helping the rebound of the athletes, and the first 2 seasonal performances, over 18 meters, happened their.
In the pole vaulting, there were exhibitions in squares in many European towns, never included among the valid results : now many national records are officially ratified also if achieved on movable boards, previously not allowed.
In the past, pacers were not allowed. Now, not only pacers are officialized, but there are wave-lights too, giving the exact pace for a performance.
The shoes didn't change too much from 1980 and 2015, but in the last 6-8 years big brands (the first was Nike, the other followed in one-two years time) started to study and to produce racing shoes with special foam for reducing their weight, and to put in the sole a carbon plate, able to give back the elastic force accumulated in the impact with the ground. Similar solution had room in the spike shoes too, and the advantage can be between half second and one second per lap, at the speed of 800m.
If there is historical memory, many current performances can't amaze today.
For example, look at 800m, maybe this year the event of middle distances with biggest improvement compared with the previous years. We had 5 athletes under 1'42" and 12 under 1'43", something never achieved in the past. However, already 40 years ago some athlete was able to run so fast without the current technology :
Sebastian Coe 1'41"73 (1981), Joaquim Cruz 1'41"77 (1984), always in 1984 Sammy Koskei ran 1'42"28 and Johnny Gray 1'42"60, and more than 20 years ago we had Wilson Kipketer running 1'41"11 in 1997, Wilfred Bungei 1'42"34 in 2002, Andre Bucher 1'42"55 in 2001, Viljorn Rodal 1'42"58 in 1996 : athletes not only African, but British, Swiss, American, Norwegian. If we consider the "lower" possible advantage of the new shoes (not less than 1 second in 800m, probably very close 2 secs), we can see that the performances under 1'42" are not better than the old one :
Emmanuel Wanyonyi : 1'41"11 (estimated with old technology : 1'42"1 - 1'42"6) previous PB with shoes 2023 : 1'42"80 (improvement 1"69)
Marco Arop : 1'41"20 (estimated : 1'42"2 - 1'42"7) previous PB : 1'43"24 (- 2"04)
Djamal Sejdati : 1'41"46 (estimated : 1'42"4 - 1'42"9) previous PB : 1'43"06 (-1"60)
Gabriel Tual : 1'41"61 (estimated : 1'42"6 - 1'43"1) previous PB : 1'44"46 (-2"85)
Bryce Hoppel : 1'41"67 (estimated : 1'42"7 - 1'43"2) previous PB : 1'43"23 (2020) (-1"56)
What I want to say, is that there are many components for the improvements of the most part of athletes this year in all the events, and particularly in middle and long distances, if we are able to analyze not only the present, but also the past, while the ONLY explanation for posters in this forum is DOPING.
I don't see any doping in the other Countries that can justify the fact that in Great Britain in 2003 the best marathon runner was a woman, because no men were able running faster than 2:15:25 of Paula Radcliffe. I don't see any doping for African athletes in 1500m able to justify that in 2011 the best British specialist in 1500m was Shane with 3'36"22, when at the end of 1991 the 10th british all time already was 10 seconds faster.
Maybe some dopes, or maybe not, but always is a big mistake, and big limitation, to look at the doping of other athletes for justifying the bad performances of some athlete.
So, the real question is not "how possible African athletes run so fast without doping", but "why we are no more able to repeat the same level of performances of 40-30 years ago", and the solution of the problem is to look at our training and at a right methodology (with right motivation) instead to think the other perfromances are exceptional, while are normal only if we know the past
