When I joined this forum nearly 10 years ago, it was almost universally agreed that East Africans had a massive genetic advantage. (You can search through old forum threads if you don't believe this).
Now Kenyans are getting busted every week and a 16 year old Kiwi has run a 3:48 indoor mile (and just the latest and probably not the last in a line of non-African teen prodigies).
Back in the 90's it was assumed they had a genetic advantage,because theyre so good,so numerous,and they train at high altitude. Now kenya is a byword for doping,and eventually ethiopia will be as well. They are still very talented,still very numerous,and they still churn out the runners like an endless production line. Not much has changed.The sad thing about endless talent,and endless doping,is that everyone else has to dope just to be in with a chance to compete with them.
You're wrong. All that needed to happen and did happen was regular busts to expose the myth, and give Western athletes the belief that they can compete on a level playing field. That's why Western performances have skyrocketed (and if Sam Ruthe is any indication, we might just be at the beginning of take-off).
East African performances have declined intrinsically, but it's been masked by the fact that they are in super shoes and taking bicarb as well.
You're wrong. All that needed to happen and did happen was regular busts to expose the myth, and give Western athletes the belief that they can compete on a level playing field. That's why Western performances have skyrocketed (and if Sam Ruthe is any indication, we might just be at the beginning of take-off).
East African performances have declined intrinsically, but it's been masked by the fact that they are in super shoes and taking bicarb as well.
“Declined intrinsically” ~ data for this? Numerous World Records on the women’s side, an overhaul of records/bests on the roads in the marathon, and record numbers of male athletes under 1:43 and 3:30 seem to make your argument a faulty one.
You're wrong. All that needed to happen and did happen was regular busts to expose the myth, and give Western athletes the belief that they can compete on a level playing field. That's why Western performances have skyrocketed (and if Sam Ruthe is any indication, we might just be at the beginning of take-off).
East African performances have declined intrinsically, but it's been masked by the fact that they are in super shoes and taking bicarb as well.
“Declined intrinsically” ~ data for this? Numerous World Records on the women’s side, an overhaul of records/bests on the roads in the marathon, and record numbers of male athletes under 1:43 and 3:30 seem to make your argument a faulty one.
Yep, there are still quite a few megadoped performances from the East Africans, but remember what it use to be like. Every single championship was just a precession of untouchable science projects, jogging away from the rest of the world and then finishing with incredible speed.
That was when East African doping was completely off the rails, now they're having to be a bit more careful, but there are still plenty at it.
When I joined this forum nearly 10 years ago, it was almost universally agreed that East Africans had a massive genetic advantage. (You can search through old forum threads if you don't believe this).
Now Kenyans are getting busted every week and a 16 year old Kiwi has run a 3:48 indoor mile (and just the latest and probably not the last in a line of non-African teen prodigies).
You keep reducing what "was almost universally agreed" to "genetics", when it has long been thought to be a combination of many factors (possibly unknown) that give East Africans their advantage.
The best scientists were not able to isolate any single factor like genes. If anyone in 2016 ever thought it was genetics, there was no scientific basis for that.
East Africans started declining on the track as far back as 2010, when the money dried up, and East Africans started skipping the tracks and running on the roads. This opened the door for slower athletes, like Sir Slo Mo, to start winning on the track, and opened the door for non-Africans to start winning in middle distance, where East African dominance was always the weakest.
Since 2017, supershoes and super spikes have made the slower athletes faster than before.
This post was edited 18 seconds after it was posted.
Who was the last clean championship Kenyan distance runner? How far back would one have to go?
Pre 1987. From’87 on they’ve been doping like fiends.
As a joke I was going to say "Henry Rono" but its not as funny these days.
I personally think that Rono was 100% clean. And I'd love to think that Tergat was clean as well, but once you get into the EPO '90's, its hard to believe that you could compete without doping. Sadly.
Fifth behind a Ugandan, Ethiopian, American, and Canadian. But only Kenya has a doping problem, right?
It appears this case is not a slam dunk. There are possibilities that Kibet developed abnormal readings with a combination of COVID, altitude training and innocuous supplements. I may be wrong but there's a chance this extreme ectomorph is not guilty of the charges levied against him. There are precedents. Let's not jump the gun.
I think the judges were too hasty in dishing out this sanction (4 year ban) which effectively ends his career. Full due diligence appears not to have been accomplished. Sad.
Quote:
"Kenyan Olympic 10,000m finalist disqualified for doping Benard Kibet Koech has been issued a four-year ban for discrepancies in his Athlete Biological Passport. He had finished fifth at the Paris Olympics Marley DickinsonPublished February 5, 2026 On Thursday, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) banned Kenyan distance runner and 2024 Olympic finalist Benard Kibet Koech for four years after discrepancies were found in his Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), a method used to monitor athletes indirectly for signs of performance-enhancing drug use. The 26-year-old finished fifth in the men’s 10,000m final at the Paris 2024 Games in 26:43.98. The AIU says this result will be disqualified.
When Kibet was provisionally suspended last June, he was ranked sixth in the world in the men’s 10,000m and holds the world record over 10 miles (16.09 km), with a time of 44:02. He reached the finals in each of the last two major global championships, finishing fifth in the 10,000m at both the Paris 2024 Olympics and the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, where he placed finished one spot ahead of Canada’s Moh Ahmed. (In Paris, he placed one place behind him.) In the last five years, Kibet has been tested 23 times, and the AIU found a significant rise in his hemoglobin levels in several samples collected around the 2024 Kenyan Olympic Trials and the Paris Olympics. His ABP was flagged and submitted to an expert panel, which found abnormalities in the blood samples collected during this period. The panel concluded that the elevated values indicated a likelihood that Kibet had engaged in blood doping. The purpose of ABP is to track biological markers over time, flagging irregular changes that may indicate doping. Kibet and his team had argued the abnormalities in his ABP were caused by a combination of COVID-19 infection, oral iron supplementation and altitude training. His team even cited the Norah Jeruto case, in which COVID was accepted as a confounding factor."
You're wrong. All that needed to happen and did happen was regular busts to expose the myth, and give Western athletes the belief that they can compete on a level playing field. That's why Western performances have skyrocketed (and if Sam Ruthe is any indication, we might just be at the beginning of take-off).
East African performances have declined intrinsically, but it's been masked by the fact that they are in super shoes and taking bicarb as well.
“Declined intrinsically” ~ data for this? Numerous World Records on the women’s side, an overhaul of records/bests on the roads in the marathon, and record numbers of male athletes under 1:43 and 3:30 seem to make your argument a faulty one.
We need to split the men and women up here: as we learned from the East Germans, the Russians and Ma's Army, women have a higher ceiling with reacting to whatever the new rocket fuel is, or just to plain ol' steroids and EPO. Whatever it is, we've seen the women make 2:14 commonplace and destroy all preconceptions on the track about what is a "normal" women's time.
That's not happening on the mens side. We have greater numbers of men approaching once "out of reach" WR's, but the mens Kenyan medal haul at the Olympics has dramatically tapered off. How many men have medaled at the 5K in the last couple of olympic cycles? They OWNED the steeple for so long and now... nope. While the women keep breaking land speed records over and over, on and off the track.
So yeah, this is happening, but here is some nuance to the discussion.
It appears this case is not a slam dunk. There are possibilities that Kibet developed abnormal readings with a combination of COVID, altitude training and innocuous supplements. I may be wrong but there's a chance this extreme ectomorph is not guilty of the charges levied against him. There are precedents. Let's not jump the gun.
I think the judges were too hasty in dishing out this sanction (4 year ban) which effectively ends his career. Full due diligence appears not to have been accomplished. Sad.
Hmmm - did you read 111 - 148 of the decision? Sounds like the athlete, and his expert, was making up nonsense.
For a quick summary, read 154:
In reaching this decision, the Panel places decisive weight on the Expert Panel's clear, consistent, and evidence-based assessment of the sequence, magnitude, and timing of the abnormalities observed. By contrast, the explanations advanced by the Athlete rely on general medical propositions and theoretical possibilities that are not supported by a demonstrated causal link to the specific values recorded in the Passport....
"In a statement, AIU said the Paris Olympian is guilty of doping despite Koech arguing that the presence of erythropoietin (EPO) was due to a combination of factors, including Covid-19, high altitude training and use of oral iron supplements."
lol, admitting you had EPO in your system but still going with "it's not my fault" is quite the strategy.
EPO Is produced by your kidneys so we all have EPO In our system, (people in kidney failure are often given EPO as they stop making it.) He was trying to argue for abnormal levels/exogenous EPO to be physiological.
This post was edited 6 minutes after it was posted.
Back in the 90's it was assumed they had a genetic advantage,because theyre so good,so numerous,and they train at high altitude. Now kenya is a byword for doping,and eventually ethiopia will be as well. They are still very talented,still very numerous,and they still churn out the runners like an endless production line. Not much has changed.The sad thing about endless talent,and endless doping,is that everyone else has to dope just to be in with a chance to compete with them.
Why aren’t we seeing loads from Ethiopia? Similar results in races, is it just there hasn’t been the same focus? Is it brushed under the table at a local level- ie what they wanted to do with world champs. I find it hard to understand why we’re not catching Ethiopians too.
We need to split the men and women up here: as we learned from the East Germans, the Russians and Ma's Army, women have a higher ceiling with reacting to whatever the new rocket fuel is, or just to plain ol' steroids and EPO. Whatever it is, we've seen the women make 2:14 commonplace and destroy all preconceptions on the track about what is a "normal" women's time.
That's not happening on the mens side. We have greater numbers of men approaching once "out of reach" WR's, but the mens Kenyan medal haul at the Olympics has dramatically tapered off. How many men have medaled at the 5K in the last couple of olympic cycles? They OWNED the steeple for so long and now... nope. While the women keep breaking land speed records over and over, on and off the track.
So yeah, this is happening, but here is some nuance to the discussion.
It has? I think people have a misunderstanding of how prolific Kenya was getting Olympic distance medals. Kenya typically gets 1 or 0 in the 5,000. They got 1 in 2024. In 2016/21 a Kenyan-born American got one (Chelimo). The steeple has seen slippage, but it’s more just some happenstance and a more competitive event. Amos Serem won the DL in a year he had a whole collision in the prelims. Conseslus Kipruto fell off quickly and there’s been a lot of injuries to their current group of guys. They have the younger Serem who looks like the real deal. Why are the women so dominant? I d argue Westerners have closed the gap more effectively on the men’s side. On the women’s side there’s still a hesitancy to exceed 80 miles a week.
The 5000 metres at the Summer Olympics has been contested since the fifth edition of the multi-sport event. The men's 5000 m has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since 1912. The 3000 metres was the first women'...
Why aren’t we seeing loads from Ethiopia? Similar results in races, is it just there hasn’t been the same focus? Is it brushed under the table at a local level- ie what they wanted to do with world champs. I find it hard to understand why we’re not catching Ethiopians too.
Ethiopia is more tightly controlled. So you can look at it optimistically and say athletes don’t freelance and start taking drugs in Kenya without any plan. Or you can look at it skeptically and say Ethiopia controls things so dopers don’t slip up. The Welteji bust was a big one and also pointed to a possibility the national body like USADA arguably is letting athletes get away with some things too
Just absurd. And meanwhile, D1 schools are taking dozens of roster spots from deserving Americans and handing them over to Kenyans.
This is state-sponsored doping. Kenya needs to be banned. I fail to understand why this is even controversial... 100+ Kenyan distance runners busted every year.
I'm not sure if you know how this works. Everyone has EPO in their system, the body produces it. Injection of Synthesized EPO is not detectable, which is why the ABP system was used. To detect an unusual increase over time.
Not to defend the guy, but I'd be curious to know how much his hemoglobin level increased, and also what is the accepted standard on a normal increase due to the effects of altitude training and iron supplements.
this is a hilarious reply because you are so wrong.
yes, EPO is produced by the body. The EPO that people take when they are doping is different, grown in a biological matrix and so they are slightly different in molecular structure. There is a test that can separate endogenous (produced by the body) and recombinant (produced synthetically) EPO that WADA has relied on for more than 20 years.
the introduction of such tests in 2000/2001 are why we say that the EPO era "ended". It clearly didn't, people still take EPO, but at least they should have to be careful about it, whereas in the 1990's synthetic EPO it was undetectable. That's what made it the "EPO era".
26:43 for 5th at the 2024 Paris Olympics, world best for 10 miles (58:45), and a 58:45 half marathon to his credit. All results from June 26, 2024 to June 10, 2025 will be deleted.
Seb Coe- get on the ball. It's LONG past time to ban Kenya.
And redistribute the 76 Olympic Marathon medals while you're at it.
You think Seb Coe doesn't know way more about the actual doping and people happening in real time than we do? You think he is not aware of the who's who among countries, suppliers, manager's and athletes involved in systematic doping programmes? So he will not intervene, because that would just expose his own knowabouts whoabouts whereabouts failures. Heads of organisations known damn well what sick things are happening inside. But to expose everythingvat once when they all got dirt on each other will not happen. And they tell each other not to blow the whistle for the sake of the "brand." When in fact it is for the sake of their own person and pockets.
