Keira D'amato is Suspicious

Yes shes probably on EPO and even other drugs,but all elite athletes use drugs.No such thing as clean at that level.

Armstronglivs wrote:

You've just made an argument that without her recent efforts she would have been an averagely good college athlete known only to other college athletes. I doubt that she would have made professional at that level. Then we see at the advanced age of 37 she becomes the fastest woman marathoner in America. Two different universes.

Uh, no. I argued that in college, she was comparable to a number of other runners who went on to set American records and win medals. Most significantly for our purposes, I pointed out that she was better in college than the woman whose record she took. Is it your position that Deena's career is equally suspect? She was a 34 minute 10k runner in college.

Armstronglivs wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Let's not move the goalposts.

You were predicting "making professional" - another prediction made without any regard to historical fact back here in the real world.

You said: "I doubt that she would have made professional at that level."

Turns out your prediction was wrong. At that level, she did make professional.

It appears that is a pretty low bar. Like a 16.10 for the 5k, her previous best, which 14 year-old schoolboys could run. Not quite in the realm of a 2.19 marathon. If she did make "professional" I doubt we were reading headlines about her victories. Unlike Mu at a similar age.

What is most apparent is that when you express a doubt, it is not well informed, and easily contradicted by simple fact checking.

Are you predicting that Athing Mu will break the American Record in the women's marathon?

Why should we even be looking at 5000m?

It looks like at university D'Amato focused on the 1500m, and just ran the 5000m for one year in 2005/2006.

Looks like she also improved in 5000m by more than 1 minute from June 2005 to June 2006 -- maybe there was still some unrealized improvement.

Looks like after university, she didn't run any more 5000m races, and continued with 1500m.

Maybe 1500m wasn't her best event.

She also needed foot surgery -- something that cut short her professional career in 2009. I wonder how much that hindered her performance.

It doesn't seem very intelligent to project this 5000m result from 2006, to circumstances 10+ years post retirement and post foot surgery, before she resumed serious training at longer distances.

rekrunner wrote:

...pure and unadulterated sophistry...

Do you how to distinguish between 'possible' and 'likely?'

800 dude wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You've just made an argument that without her recent efforts she would have been an averagely good college athlete known only to other college athletes. I doubt that she would have made professional at that level. Then we see at the advanced age of 37 she becomes the fastest woman marathoner in America. Two different universes.

Uh, no. I argued that in college, she was comparable to a number of other runners who went on to set American records and win medals. Most significantly for our purposes, I pointed out that she was better in college than the woman whose record she took. Is it your position that Deena's career is equally suspect? She was a 34 minute 10k runner in college.

I'm never entirely convinced when a fairly modest talent rises to the top. You have to wonder how they do it when most don't.

I'll ask the question, if you could go back to her college days would you have picked her to become the fastest marathon runner in America, and at an age when most athletes' careers are over?

I stopped reading after you asked whether I was predicting Mu would become an American marathon champion. If that is your take from what I said there is no point in attempting discussion on this. You are the master of calculated stupidity.

I wrote this previously in the thread.

Women like D'Amato are running times comparable to top males in the '60's like Olympic bronze medallist Barry Magee. He was in the Lydiard stable and typically trained 100mpw - at least as hard as these women - and was also a 13.36 runner over 5k, which was just off the then wr. It isn't only talent, training and shoes that have enabled women to catch up.[/quote]

Much has been made of D'Amato improving her 5k pr by over a minute to run 15.06. She is a minute and a half slower than Magee was over that distance and yet she is running comparable marathon times - and the marathon was his main event. As I said, he was Lydiard-trained, which meant he regularly ran 100mpw. He was also over 10 years younger than D'Amato when running these times. Yet we see a working mother, who left the sport for years, running as fast as a male former Olympic medallist while being nowhere comparable at shorter distances. That is off-the-charts endurance. So what is she doing - and other female runners like her - to close the gap on the best males in the past? She isn't more talented, she isn't training harder, she is much older, and the shoes alone won't do it, so you'll pardon my scepticism about "progress" in the sport.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I wrote this previously in the thread.

Women like D'Amato are running times comparable to top males in the '60's like Olympic bronze medallist Barry Magee. He was in the Lydiard stable and typically trained 100mpw - at least as hard as these women - and was also a 13.36 runner over 5k, which was just off the then wr. It isn't only talent, training and shoes that have enabled women to catch up.

Much has been made of D'Amato improving her 5k pr by over a minute to run 15.06. She is a minute and a half slower than Magee was over that distance and yet she is running comparable marathon times - and the marathon was his main event. As I said, he was Lydiard-trained, which meant he regularly ran 100mpw. He was also over 10 years younger than D'Amato when running these times. Yet we see a working mother, who left the sport for years, running as fast as a male former Olympic medallist while being nowhere comparable at shorter distances. That is off-the-charts endurance. So what is she doing - and other female runners like her - to close the gap on the best males in the past? She isn't more talented, she isn't training harder, she is much older, and the shoes alone won't do it, so you'll pardon my scepticism about "progress" in the sport.[/quote]

Who cares about running 100MPW? People who don't know anything about training think that when you run 100mpw you just become an elite marathoner. I've known plenty of people who run 100MPW and never run faster than 2:50 because 100MPW is a meaningless data point.

It's "on the chart" endurance. A 13:36 guy should be sub-2:10 if the marathon is really his best event. The IAAF points tables equate a 13:36 to a 2:14. If he ran 2:17 as a PR, he did not reach his potential in the event.

Yeah - what did Lydiard know about training!

Armstronglivs wrote:

800 dude wrote:

Uh, no. I argued that in college, she was comparable to a number of other runners who went on to set American records and win medals. Most significantly for our purposes, I pointed out that she was better in college than the woman whose record she took. Is it your position that Deena's career is equally suspect? She was a 34 minute 10k runner in college.

I'm never entirely convinced when a fairly modest talent rises to the top. You have to wonder how they do it when most don't.

I'll ask the question, if you could go back to her college days would you have picked her to become the fastest marathon runner in America, and at an age when most athletes' careers are over?

Now we're getting somewhere. If your position is "they're all suspect," with Keira no more suspect than Deena and a lot of others, then at least you're being consistent. (Though I still don't think it's fair to call a multiple All-American a "modest talent.")

To answer your question, of course I wouldn't have picked her specifically at the age of 21 to eventually set an American record. My point is that the same is true of most people who set American records. When you're talking about super rare events like setting American records, you can't use the low odds ex ante as proof that it didn't legitimately happen. What you can do is ask if it's likely that the AR could be set by someone who was at Keira's level in college. The answer to that is definitely yes because if you are talking about people who were at a level beyond Keira, you're basically talking about only a few runners in the last two decades. The smart money is on the field.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Yeah - what did Lydiard know about training!

You do realize Peter Snell wouldn't even win NCAAs nowadays?

Now we're getting somewhere. If your position is "they're all suspect," with Keira no more suspect than Deena and a lot of others, then at least you're being consistent. (Though I still don't think it's fair to call a multiple All-American a "modest talent.")

To answer your question, of course I wouldn't have picked her specifically at the age of 21 to eventually set an American record. My point is that the same is true of most people who set American records. When you're talking about super rare events like setting American records, you can't use the low odds ex ante as proof that it didn't legitimately happen. What you can do is ask if it's likely that the AR could be set by someone who was at Keira's level in college. The answer to that is definitely yes because if you are talking about people who were at a level beyond Keira, you're basically talking about only a few runners in the last two decades. The smart money is on the field.[/quote]

It is fair to put someone like Deena in the "nobody at the top is beyond suspicion" category.

However, she famously moved to Alamosa, CO and trained her butt off after college. Her progression followed a fairly traditional arch with several years of high mileage and consistent results.

A college 16:00 5k runner taking several years off and coming back to run 2:19 is a totally different story.

All things considered, perhaps some degree of suspicion is warranted, but conclusions are not warranted with 3 weak datapoints. The datapoints are her performance, age and the lack of a pedigree. 10 minutes of research will tell you that all 3 of those datapoints have been replicated in the marathon. Desiree Linden never won an NCAA conference title and most of America's top female marathoners Denna, Flanagan, Cragg and Hall all had some of their best performances in their mid-30s. Btw, doping in the USA is not easy. If you are getting randomly tested a half dozen times a year, you are taking a big risk if you decide to dope.

llort_vbo wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

...pure and unadulterated sophistry...

Do you how (sic) to distinguish between 'possible' and 'likely?'

I do.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I stopped reading after you asked whether I was predicting Mu would become an American marathon champion. If that is your take from what I said there is no point in attempting discussion on this. You are the master of calculated stupidity.

How convenient. I don't ever get the impression you start reading.

Here is a shorter version:

Speculating and projecting from D'Amato's 5000m performance in 2006 doesn't seem very intelligent.

Also FYI: D'Amato is not Mu. No one else is. Mu is not typical.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I wrote this previously in the thread.

Women like D'Amato are running times comparable to top males in the '60's like Olympic bronze medallist Barry Magee. He was in the Lydiard stable and typically trained 100mpw - at least as hard as these women - and was also a 13.36 runner over 5k, which was just off the then wr. It isn't only talent, training and shoes that have enabled women to catch up.

Much has been made of D'Amato improving her 5k pr by over a minute to run 15.06. She is a minute and a half slower than Magee was over that distance and yet she is running comparable marathon times - and the marathon was his main event. As I said, he was Lydiard-trained, which meant he regularly ran 100mpw. He was also over 10 years younger than D'Amato when running these times. Yet we see a working mother, who left the sport for years, running as fast as a male former Olympic medallist while being nowhere comparable at shorter distances. That is off-the-charts endurance. So what is she doing - and other female runners like her - to close the gap on the best males in the past? She isn't more talented, she isn't training harder, she is much older, and the shoes alone won't do it, so you'll pardon my scepticism about "progress" in the sport.[/quote]

Thicomment tells so much about you.

1: you're old - no other reason to be invoking a 60-year old comparable

2: you have an ingrained level of sexism - which is why you'd compare a modern woman to a historical male, as if it might be impossible for a woman today to ever match up against a man of any era

3: you haven't learned much in the last few years, so it makes sense to you that a sentence like " we see a working mother, who left the sport for years, running as fast as a male former Olympic medallist while being nowhere comparable at shorter distances" would be applicable to anything, when in fact, we've learned that training is highly individual and you can't extrapolate marathon performance from shorter distances at all.

It takes a special kind of gibberish to think "I know what will prove that she's cheating - i'll compare her results to an Olympic race 62 years ago."

* stipe wrote:

It is fair to put someone like Deena in the "nobody at the top is beyond suspicion" category.

However, she famously moved to Alamosa, CO and trained her butt off after college. Her progression followed a fairly traditional arch with several years of high mileage and consistent results.

A college 16:00 5k runner taking several years off and coming back to run 2:19 is a totally different story.

Okay, so the 16:00 5k runner? That's Deena. Her PR was a few seconds under, and she only did it once. Her 10k times were comparably much worse. She is not on any Arkansas top-10 performance list for outdoors.

And like Deena, Keira most definitely trained her butt off. And it wasn't some overnight tranformation. She's been at it for 6-7 years, building up to really high mileage that she never hit before.

So the only things I can see making it a "totally different story" is that Keira took time off before returning to the sport, and when she came back, she didn't go to altitude. Otherwise, they're the same.

Anyway, the point people were trying to make earlier was that Keira wasn't good enough in college to be this good now. It's a different proposition to say that her time off (or lack of altitude) means she can't be that good now. Though I can't think of any reason why taking your late 20s off would mean that you can't reach your full marathon potential in your late 30s.

Respectfully disagree, that 16 min runner isn’t Deena. Deena continued to train and compete. Completely different trajectory.

Kiera certainly wasn’t a couch potato; but she was not training at a level that would point towards world class marathoning in late 30s.

Someone else pointed out that Des and Amy didn’t scream future world class marathoners either.

Though Kiera is most unique among women and men running 10:30 hs 2 mile and 16:00 college 5k to 51:00 10 mile and 2:19 marathon 18ish years later.

For someone who doesn't want to write a book when simply asked to provide a name, you sure write a lot.

I think you meant her 15:08 5km road race time? The one she ran that as part of a marathon build up, 10 days before her superior 10 mile American record, a 5 weeks before her superior marathon PR.

Once again, how does it make sense to look at her 5km time?

As for the rest:

How does it make sense to compare a woman to a man?

Women tend to be more resistant (retain more of their speed) as distances get longer, than men.

How does it make sense to compare performances from the 2020's to performances from the 1960's?

A lot has changed since the days of Lydiard, with respect to training and racing and clothes and shoes.

How does it make sense to use Barry Magee as a good reference for the marathon?

The Lydiard trained Barry Magee was good but before the '60s was over, completely self-trained Derek Clayton ran 8 minutes faster than Magee, with a time most non-African men would struggle to beat today. Barry Magee was not in the same league as his own contemporaries. I wonder Clayton's 5K PR is.