4th and 7th in 10K isn’t really disappeared. And to another posters point, their initial 3rd rep in the 5000 won the Copenhagen half in 58:23 in rainy conditions despite a fall. Their other two 5,000 guys had been running really well but bombed.
Everyone able to run something noteworthy is in the marathon. Kiptum probably could have dropped down and ran 26:30 if he really wanted to for some reason.
I very much doubt this is due to testing since it does not affect women , does not affect the 800/1500 and marathon.
Maybe they get more incentives financially to run the marathon and that women don't get the same opportunities and sponsoring for that.
Now that I think about it, the silver medalist of the 5000m, Kimeli, is belgian but Kenyan born. Still , that's very strange to see that there is such a black hole for them on track distance.
Also, we must say that the competition is getting very strong as all the other countries still send their top athetes on track rather than marathon.
1) the distribution of success will always fluctuate meet to meet and year by year.
2) the west is catching up. Both the men and the women.
3) pre-determined expectations. One guy went so far as to start an elaborate thread proudly proclaiming the USA failure on the medal count. The reality was that it was an above average year and a record haul of gold medals. That was despite them not getting gold on two normally reliable events - both men's relays
No one says there will be no top Kenyans once true, even handed testing is universal. There will be far less Kenyansetc dominating, which is what we’re seeing on the men’s side. They may end up holding a little bit of dominance on the women’s side as their is less sexual dimorphism in blacks.
I also believe changing lifestyles is making more Kenyan men be less devoted to hard training , especially the sacrifices and self discipline this requires.It will start affecting women too soon enough.It was rare in the olden days to come across Kenyan athletes partying on a Saturday night.Offcourse except a few like Henry Rono, however nowadays it is quite common to come across some well reputable and upcoming athletes on a night out in Eldoret,Kapsabet or Iten.
It’s a combination of drug testing / top runners focusing on the marathon / and the Westerners catching up with the advent of double threshold training. Then you have the complete dysfunction for how they select their team and they probably haven’t truly sent their best team to an Olympics or Worlds in awhile. They still have World Class talents in the 800 and 1,500 in Wanyonyi, the Cheryiots, and Koech. My guess is their best talents at 5/10 go straight to marathons at this point.
As testing becomes more stringent and crooked officials are (hopefully) weeded out, that will gradually change as more and more clean runners get back into it.
So the theory is they don’t test the woman or the marathoners? Seems odd to me.
My money is on running a 2:05 pays better than running 12:45 these days…. Westerners are the reverse as they are getting paid to make national teams…
Disingenuous. The majority of the scrutiny has been on the men recently. The women are still getting away with murder because officials want to look the other way and still can look the other way, but the grumbling is growing. Everyone knew the 2:09 woman was doped to her lying eyes, and then we just had a top Ethiopian flat out refuse a drug test, no doubt assuming nothing would happen because that was what usually happened to these women, nothing. These two examples of women getting booted occured with low levels of enforcement. Imagine what decent levels of enforcement would uncover.
Kenyan men haven't won the 5000 or 10000 in coming on a quarter century. Yes, that long.
I got downvoted for stating a verifiable fact. But because it doesn't fit the narrative you're all trying to spin, you don't want to hear the truth. Kenya hasn't won the 5000 or 10000 in over two decades. It's not because of drug testing that they win this time, the best Kenyans go to the roads.