rekrunner wrote:
Well you wouldn't have to tear up the track, just repaint the lines (perhaps secretly overnight), assuming there's enough track on the inside.
Maybe more relevant than the sprint events is the winner of the men's 5K. Bo Hong ran 13:32.46 in Beijing in 1993, and repeated it next year with a 13:32.28 in Tokyo in 1994. Considering the Chinese national record is 13:25 (by Feng-yuan Xia in Shanghai in 1997), and Bo Hong was 1.27 seconds shy of the 1994 Chinese national record with his Tokyo performance, it's hard to argue that Beijing or Shanghai could have been shorter than Tokyo in 1994.
He's the only men's "distance" example I could find.
http://www.arrs.net/AllTime/AL_O5K3.htmLooking at that link, it's interesting to look at the contrast between the Chinese women's and men's top national performances. While the men produced 5 of the best 8 performances in Shanghai (1997) and Beijing (1993), 3rd and 4th best performance occurred in London (1986) and Tokyo (1994). Two men broke the 1986 record in Shanghai in 1997, by 6 and 3 seconds, respectively.
This progression seems credible, assuming the national importance of the Shanghai and Beijing meets.
However, the women tell a statistically different story. They didn't run the 5000m in Beijing in 1993, but they did in Shanghai in 1997.
8 women produced 12 of the top 16 women's national performances in Shanghai within three days in 1997.
6 women managed to break the previous national record holder's 1995 time of 14:45.90.
4 women broke it twice over three days.
3 women managed to break the existing world record, Fernanda Ribeiro's 14:36.45. 2 of them broke it twice (while "bronze" was 1.7 seconds slower).
Ji-ang Bo, the previous national record holder, broke her own record twice, by 14, then 17 seconds. She broke the world record by 8.36 seconds.
Only two women remain in the top 20, with performances outside of China.
I hope everyone re-reads and reflects on this. All of the posts that compare Junxia's times to Dibaba and Defar's lifetime best completely miss the point that all of these performances were run in six days in a domestic only meet in September. You're comparing them to performances accumulated over an entire career at the best meets in the world, with elite competition and pacemakers. There is no comparison.
Regarding the men's times-- again, five national records were set. As for the other events-- is it possible that some of the races might have been tactical? If the meet was as important as everyone here is claiming, might some of the men have chosen to sit and kick (especially given the depth of the male fields was pretty low)? In the sprints, which obviously aren't tactical, three national records were set (100, 400, 400h). The 200 time is slow, yes-- but perhaps the winner's lane did not confer the benefit that running in lane 1 did.
I don't know the answer to those questions. I just don't understand how any drug in the world can make a woman run 27:30 pace for the last 2k of an already world-record pace 10k. It defies every single thing we know about human physiology and performance, and has never been replicated by any other system, even those that doped extensively.