Keira D'amato is Suspicious

Armstronglivs wrote:

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?

Who would have predicted Arthur Newton's career after his graduation from Bedford School, or even at D'Amato's ripe age of 37?

Although he ran sporadically before, he started running at 38 years old, winning his first Comrades off of just 20 weeks of training, and eventually breaking the Comrades record by more than 2 hours, and setting world records until he was 51.

I wonder what his 5000m PR was.

I wonder how he did that when most don't.

I wonder how he did that when most don't.

Drugz

Give me another similar case.

Several years off. Rapid progression. Advanced age. And I’m not accusing anyone of anything.

Just saying her case is unique like no other.

Roberta Groner was slower in college and she is slower than Kiera now, but her progression was pretty similar. In college she ran 17:35 and as a 40 year old she ran 16:24. She took a big break and got back into it in her 30s. She first went after trying to hit the OTQ standard and was running 2:49 or so after her first serious training block and ended up running 2:29 while working full time as a nurse with two kids.

Yes! A much more understandable story!

OTQ and 2:29 isn’t the same.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

Yeah - what did Lydiard know about training!

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

1.44.3 on grass in '62 says you're an idiot. But at least you're not saying it is normal for women to run as fast as him today, like you are about D'Amato and Barry Magee.

rekrunner wrote:

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.

Neither is a 37 year-old running an American record but showing nothing like that ability at a younger age.

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."[/quote]

So I see that you are "ageist". The years do confer experience that you have apparently yet to acquire. I am not sexist. The debate about transgender participation in sport is precisely along the lines that biological males have an advantage females cannot match. Yet we think nothing of females today running as fast as the best men of yesteryear on much the same training. I simply ask, how is this possible when we know of the inherent male advantage in sports?

You are right but not in the way you intend when you say we can't extrapolate marathon performances from shorter distances. That is because D'Amato's runs over the shorter distances showed none of the potential she has now demonstrated in the marathon - unlike other marathon runners, such as Kipchoge and Magee.

To clarify your point above, I might say all top runners are suspect but some more than others. My point is really quite simple. Yes - there are athletes who make big career jumps but some defy credulity. If it were not so no one would ever be doping. We know many are. The question for you is whether there is any point in an athlete's career progression that you say, with everything you know about the sport, that you don't buy it?

Priscilla Welch.

zeikel wrote:

*stipe wrote:

Give me another similar case.

Several years off. Rapid progression. Advanced age. And I’m not accusing anyone of anything.

Just saying her case is unique like no other.

Priscilla Welch.

Interesting comparison. Welch took running up late, at 35. Her first marathon was 2.59 - compared with D'Amatos 3.49 (and subsequent 3 hour-plus efforts), while her best at age 39 was just under 2.29 - nearly 10 minutes slower than D'Amato has run. So why such a big difference favouring D'Amato in their best times? Is D'Amato that much more talented, and if so why was she so much slower than Welch when you compare their early efforts? Maybe they are not so comparable after all. D'Amato pretty much stands out on her own for extent of improvement at a late age.

Armstronglivs wrote:

zeikel wrote:

Priscilla Welch.

Interesting comparison. Welch took running up late, at 35. Her first marathon was 2.59 - compared with D'Amatos 3.49 (and subsequent 3 hour-plus efforts), while her best at age 39 was just under 2.29 - nearly 10 minutes slower than D'Amato has run. So why such a big difference favouring D'Amato in their best times? Is D'Amato that much more talented, and if so why was she so much slower than Welch when you compare their early efforts? Maybe they are not so comparable after all. D'Amato pretty much stands out on her own for extent of improvement at a late age.

Actually, it's a great case. no case will be exactly the same but this is reasonable enough. All your "comparisons" are not apples to apples at all as it has been well explained ad nauseum on here why D'Amato's earlier marathons were so slow and it had nothing to do with lack of ability. You really need to take the blinders off.

Yeah, if you're bringing up the fact that she ran 3:49, I don't really know what to say to you. That's called being really out of shape. You can't honestly believe that mark tells you anything. That's like when some former pro runner goes out to the track and can't run a single 6-minute mile.

Anyway, as I said before, I can't think of anyone else who was elite in their early 20s, retired, and then came back in their 30s (regardless of whether their comeback was successful). But I can think of some situations that aren't that far off. Jen Toomey didn't run in college, didn't start until her late 20s, and was a sub-2 800 meter runner, at a time when sub-2 was a really big deal. That's potentially even more impressive than Keira's performance because it's pretty rare for people to run elite 800s in their 30s, whereas it's the norm in the marathon. Jo Pavey didn't run competitively in her early 20s, but she went on to compete in 4 or 5 Olympics after getting into it again in her late 20s. There are probably a lot more Europeans with stories like that because they don't have an NCAA. It's also common in Africa (Kimetto, Ngeny).

Also Sinead Diver who ran 2:24 at age 42 at London in 2019 and was 10th in the olympics at age 44 in 2021. She works full time as an IT consultant and has two kids. Didn't start running until 33 after she had kids. Her first marathon was 2:34, but she didn't run a marathon until she had been training fairly seriously for 4-5 years.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Neither is a 37 year-old running an American record but showing nothing like that ability at a younger age.

A 37 year old running an American record is simply reality -- I know reality is not really your thing.

At University, D'Amato she showed quite a bit of promise, as a 4-time All American and eleven time Patriot League Champion. At that level, she made pro.

Armstronglivs wrote:

Interesting comparison. Welch took running up late, at 35. Her first marathon was 2.59 - compared with D'Amatos 3.49 (and subsequent 3 hour-plus efforts), while her best at age 39 was just under 2.29 - nearly 10 minutes slower than D'Amato has run. So why such a big difference favouring D'Amato in their best times? Is D'Amato that much more talented, and if so why was she so much slower than Welch when you compare their early efforts? Maybe they are not so comparable after all. D'Amato pretty much stands out on her own for extent of improvement at a late age.

Running fast is a combination of talent and training.

If a 2:20 runner runs 3:50, it is because of a lack of training.

Seems like a pretty basic fail for someone with near 6 decades of experience.

Whenever you compare two different people, there will always be differences, because they are different people.

someone wrote:

Also Sinead Diver who ran 2:24 at age 42 at London in 2019 and was 10th in the olympics at age 44 in 2021. She works full time as an IT consultant and has two kids. Didn't start running until 33 after she had kids. Her first marathon was 2:34, but she didn't run a marathon until she had been training fairly seriously for 4-5 years.

Diver and D'amato may have benefited from having two children. There has always been that the theory that childbirth may help women endurance athletes !

You have that backwards...if a 3:50 runner runs 2:19, it is because of PEDs. Seems like a pretty basic fail on your side.

rekrunner wrote:

Running fast is a combination of talent and training.

If a 2:20 runner runs 3:50, it is because of a lack of training.

Seems like a pretty basic fail for someone with near 6 decades of experience.

Whenever you compare two different people, there will always be differences, because they are different people.

There is no such thing as a "3:50 runner"