Is Mo's 3:28 Huge in Your Suspicions of NOP Doping?

clearly people are ageing slower than a generation ago.

therefore what would be suspicious in 1980 is no longer so.

Mo is clean.

Sometimes you just got to go with the guy being a phenomenal runner.

Hey, "runthecountry," thanks for your post. Truly appreciate it when someone with your experience shares like this.

This board and these dialogues are far the better for it.

This is exactly how I see it (and the majority of people off of message boards I bet!).

You've said it better than I could.

People can choose, "suspicious" or "great run!"

I don't think those that think or say "great run!" have their heads in the sand.

If you are not supporting the system to do its job, and to keep doing it to its highest level... And want to see everything with suspicion and cast a negative confirmation bias on great performances... You might as well stop following the sport.

Your message seems to be "follow it to be positive" and deal with evidence and facts when there are evidence and facts.

We know there are cheaters out there, I can't for the life of me see why some people continue to follow the sport with such a negative projection...full well knowing their are giving their favorite runners a pass.

Support the system doing its job, and as you say "enjoy your sport."

It's a losers game to think a single fan can control everything by projection and "logical fallacy."

What a way to live, not.

Other British endurance athletes who have recently become sudden world beaters later in their careers:

Chrissie Wellington

Chris Froome

Bradley Wiggins

Could maybe add Paula Radcliffe to that list but she was competing at a very elite level before her domination of the marathon scene.

Al Sal's success is overrated. The real suspicion should lie with whoever is a common denominator behind those listed athletes.

Or how about the fact Farah got accidentally busted with vials of adrenaline in his back-pack a matter of months ago. Does nobody remember when this went down? Jesus.

Go ask the high profile NOP athlete why she'left' the group coincidently around this time.

Ask some of Farahs contemporaries who have known him for years why he can't look them in the eye anymore.

same age as rojo wrote:

5k/10k

Haile G was on top when i started paying attention. 1st world title in 1993 at age 20.

Bekele - phenom from the start. First world title at age 20.

1500

Hicham - world champ at age 22.

Asbel Kiprop - won an Olympic title at age 19.

This ages are false, they are all older. Just look at how badly Bekele performs now.

I don't really think the 3:28 is all that shocking. Confidence goes a long way in a 1500 race. It makes sense to me that he thought he'd run 3:30ish and figured his best bet was to trail Kiprop, then Kiprop blazed it and MO got dragged to his 3:28. If Mo was less confident maybe he drops off and maybe drops out when the pace is so fast, but he probably had no idea how fast they were going. When you're on in a mile sometimes it's almost an out of body experience. I know I've had some shocking miles where you hit that last lap and you're flying and you cross the line and find you ran way faster then you've ever expected. You finish and you're just like wow! How did I do that?

Thanks A Duck.

In the day when Sir Roger Banister broke that metaphorical sound barrier, running the first ever 4 minute mile it enabled many others to follow soon there after.

Good thing drugs of the type being suspected in today's world were not relavent as he too would have been suspected.

It was an opportunity for people to believe in the magic of the mental ability humans have.

Now, unfortunately many can not accept the wonder of human achievement through the work and beliefs he or she had to achieve such hights.

Yes some climb mt Everest with Oxygen, but some have without. I know some will lie about this, but without evidence I accept the feat as real and not a lie.

I believe in human greatness and the heights we can achieve and do so without a compromised view. Thank goodness.

I try to do what I can to share these ideas, perhaps some might agree, some might re think his or her ideas, but some will remain to stay recalcatrent in his or her attitude.

Half of you have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, in college, a bunch of Kenyan's and I were joking around and they said the following, "we have our real age and then the age we tell the Mzungu". So you're dead wrong about the many African's not lying about their age. It often is deliberate (can't say always, of course).

Second, it seems completely reasonable to me that Mo Farah can run a 1500 faster 6.5 seconds than Kyle Merber. His 3:35 was just as suspicious as Mo's 3:28.81. You're telling me its not possible that the double Olympic and World Champ in the 5000 and 10,000, someone who can run those events 1:30-3:00 faster than Kyle and who also probably has similar basic speed to Merber (I would guess about 49:low for both) can't run 6.5 seconds faster in a 1500? That's ludicrous. Note Ventolin's call for Mo prio to his 1500. It was SPOT on. It should not have come as much of a surprise as it did.

Per the Teg comments. The argument about Teg also bulsters Mo's case for doing it legally. The fact Teg could run so fast after missing cumulative YEARS of training due to injury is probably more suspicious than anything Mo has done. Running 12:58 and 3:34.25 off of really limited training in the grand scheme of professional running is probably just as impressive as what Mo has done on years of ideal training. I would argue if you strip out Teg's injuries over the course of his entire career, and you're looking at a 3:31/12:51 guy. Not too dissimilar to Mo. Throw in perhaps better coaching, a better head on his shoulder, more resources and better training response, and you get a guy like Mo. You have to realize how much time Teg missed due to injury. Its quite astounding what he was able to do on relatively so little lifetime mileage/training from a professional context.

I share your same sentiment. This is precisely in my mind why Doping is such a let-down to the fans.

As much as I'd like to celebrate great performances, the cold hard facts are that Track & Field has a history of doping scandals. There is a spectre of suspicion and uncertainty that hangs over the sport--and some of this is unavoidable and reasonable. The Dopers ruin it for everybody, in the sense that fans and athletes can't ever be 100% sure what sporting greatness they should wholeheartedly celebrate as a triumph of human will and discipline versus which performances might be attributable to doping.

Make no mistake, all elites will have to put in intense training schedules to achieve success, with or without PED use.

But the clean athlete is the most inspiring because, like Alberto Salazar said in his rebuttal of recent accusations, the clean and winning athlete demonstrates that the sky is the limit, and by really covering all your bases, there is a higher, transcendent plane of achievement possible.

Or, something like that. I don't think Mo Farah, personally, is doping, but if years from now--just a hypothetical example to try to relate to what I'm saying--if years from now he is confirmed to have dope, then I will be greatly disappointed, as might others, because it seemed that all that beauty and inspiring triumph was less about all the great sacrifices and things he did in the NOP programme and more about the PEDs.

In fact, it might be the most disappointing.

I have not done exhaustive research to try and find out all the training secrets and biographies of the distance running greats of history, but Mo Farah's regimen and certain details of the NOP seem to be more visible than, say, El Guerrouj's lifestyle back in the day. That may just be a contemporary bias, or effective marketing by Nike, effective media promotion and visibility, or whatever, but that's how I feel.

When athletes take PEDs, it obscures the contribution of many other factors to athletic success.

Most of us lay Joes or even semi serious athletes will never ascend to the elite ranks of performance, will never live that life and push the limits and explore the possibilities for ourselves.

But some of us still believe in the power of doing as much stuff as we can right in our living and lifestyle towards health and training. At the very limits of human endeavour, when we as a society could learn a great deal about the contribution of many variables in running excellence, among other insights, the spectre of PED use (and any confirmed reports) make a mockery of our hopes and quest for betterment and knowledge.

I didn't even really feel this way about PEDs until recently. Of course, I don't and didn't approve of PEDs, but, aside from unsafe health and scientific aspects of PED use, as well as the immorality of cheating other fair-playing athletes and blatantly violating the groundrules of sport, still, I was as categorically opposed to PEDs as most were. I even didn't fully understand people like Renato Canova who said that the worst thing about PEDs is "cheating yourself."

That is, until I put my views about lifestyle and human potentiation together with the spectre of PEDs.

But I am still divided about the issue, though, especially in the grey area of PEDs. EPO and related PED regimens and even some crazier, more out-there (out on the frontier of technology, like "gene" doping, which I don't know much about but have read about) seem to be clearly excessive and transgressive to me, but I am, particularly, divided about the grey area including supplements that try to boost physiology to "legal" limits (highest allowable testosterone) and Lord-knows what NOP might be doing. Is this in the same class of permissible performance enhancement as Altitude training or Altitude living? Is there any situation in which rather extreme performance enhancement could be construed as, in any measure, admirable, in terms of pushing human limits? I don't know the answers to those questions.

I think Teg could've gotten faster if he kept developing his speed. Instead, he got injured, lost all his speed, and moved to 10k.

jjjjjjjjj wrote:

You had essentially a Tegenkamp level talent, slightly faster, 12:57/3:33.9, who all of a sudden, as he neared 30, became a 5 time World or Olympic gold medalist and a 3:28.8 1500m runner with a 26:4x 10k pr and an obvious shot at coming close to world records at 3, 5, and 10. Salazar says Farah hadn't done anything before. Okay. And he says he can be the greatest ever. Well, let's see him go after the world records now that the drug accusations are already there. Nothing to lose, right?

I believe Salazar is smart enough to technically stay within legal limitation, but to do everything legal to optimize performance.

I think this is a good point about Tegenkamp. Adding to that, when Tegenkamp set the American outdoor 2-mile record (breaking Alan Webb's record) at Prefontaine half a decade ago, I was so excited. But, truly, since then, and, before then even (during his college career, at least), injuries, as you say, were a serious issue. I agree that Tegenkamp would have run faster had he not been hampered by injuries, and in a best case scenario.

But would he have run 3:28.mid or 3.28.high fast? And be the 6th fastest unique 1500m performer of all time (or something like that?) Would he have also broken 27 minutes for 10k, and well below 27:00 (26:4x at Prefontaine that one year)? And attained such profound success in big non-championship races and championship races?

I don't think Ventolin^3's prediction of Mo Farah's 1500m time is the proof you are looking for that Mo is clean. It only means that Ventolin^3 thought Mo Farah was capable of such a performance given his recent previous achievements--not about his pre NOP abilities. How did Mo Farah attain such great numbers necessary to even make possible Ventolin^3's predictive line of fit? And that line of fit is very generous. Some might say that line of fit is realistic, but I think that, the whole picture of having that requisite 3k, 5k, and 10k ability and sprint speed is rather phenomenal.

I say that to question your comparison to Kyle Merber and Matt Tegenkamp.

Merber's 5k PR listed on his Columbia University bio is 14 flat about. That is not 1:30 slower than Mo Farah at any point in Farah's career, unless you think Farah can run 12:30 right now. But that's right now. Before NOP, Farah's ability was not 12:30. It was ~12:55.

How is it that Farah manages to be the Double Olympic and World champion at 5000m and 10,000m? And have such speed? There's one particular individual that comes to mind when I think about that: Kenenisa Bekele. There might be more examples, but not necessarily individuals with both the range of Mo Farah AND the big stage consistency.

Many people on this board questioned Bekele's interview claims that, for instance, he ran a really fast time for 800m.

Mo Farah's 1500m achievement would have been a stretch for Komen, for Geb, for Bekele. I, personally, mostly believe, or would like to believe in Mo Farah's legitimacy as a clean athlete. But Farah is now at a level beyond just "feasible" and "reasonable" progression of very great talented athletes (like Tegenkamp)--he is among the all-time greats, it appears. Unless you believe Tegenkamp in the best case counter-factual scenario would have been in the rare company of Geb, Bekele, Komen, Guerrouj, Aouita, Cram, Coe, Ovett, etc.

I can't fully explain it, but something seems off about your analogies to Merber and Tegenkamp.

Sad to say, yes. I was happy to believe him getting much better in his core events, even at age 30, but adding a sub-3:29 to boot just stretches my credulity too far. Hope I'm wrong.

TLW wrote:

Sagarin wrote:

Mo's 3:28 raises some eyebrows but isn't necessarily indicative of suspicious activity. Lagat ran 7:29 and 12:53 after age 35. Mo had run 12:57 before joining Salazar, and by all appearances, hadn't really been fully committed to the sport the way a champion would be, certainly not with regard to his speed. If Mo had run 7:29, would we be having the same "suspicions?"

you don't run sub 13 without being fully committed. come on dude, think about what you just said. it's beyond stupid.

Mo didn't do nearly the intensity or volume or focusing on biomechanics and winding it up for a fast finish before joining up with Salazar. Pretty sure he didn't live in an altitude house, run on underwater treadmills, and do workouts after races either, to say nothing about the little details like injury prevention and nutrition. However, it appears he might have broken the rules:

In all seriousness, this comment from Salazar's rebuttal yesterday seems strange:

“We don’t take that much stuff and everything that Mo takes is from UK Athletics,” he said. “None of our athletes are on any sports-specific supplement other than beta alanine, which is an amino acid. Other than that, it’s iron, vitamin D and that’s it. You don’t really need anything else.”

This seems inadequate, not only because of the reference to UK athletics, but also no explicit acknowledgement of the TUEs. However, I'm no biomechanics specialist, and maybe this matters, even as it appears to have wrecked Ritz for a bit:

Salazar points to the blistering last-lap surges that have brought Farah three golds and a silver medal in the last four global championship finals over 5,000m and 10,000m.

"When Mo first came to the US, he was very weak muscularly, with a lot of muscle imbalances," says Salazar. "The improvement in that area is the number one reason for Mo's kick [at the end of his races].”

"Now, instead of flailing with his arms and a lot of excessive bobbing movement with his head, losing upper body posture at the end of races, he's so much stronger that he's able to finish very strongly."

Maybe tweaking his biomechanics and working on his finish was all he needed. Remember, he had already run 3:33 and 12:57 before joining Salazar, so 26:46 isn't too much of a stretch. I don't know how I feel about Mo's 3:28, other than it was more like a 3:29, run perfectly, with absolutely no wasted energy as the splits were very even, which is rare. And this when he had already honed his speed.

Unlike Lance, Mo doesn't have a lot of detractors. Lance had people throwing him under the bus often and early, former therapists, people associated with the group, eventually teammates. He also had an "A" sample test positive and refused a test until he could "validate" the testing personnel's credentials, buying extra time.

I am not defending Mo so much as I'm keeping an open mind. If there is something going on beyond what is allowed by the governing authorities, it seems it would've leaked out by now. Perhaps it will in time, but Kara's "gimmicks" comment is hardly evidence. You can't imperil somebody on suspicion alone. Mo and Rupp get tested often, in and out of competition. I'm not sure Lance was even tested that much.

You'd think Centrowitz and, particularly, Rupp would've run 3:28 by now...

Kip Keino - a 5k/10k/steeplechase runner - ran his best 1500 at 28 and 1/2 years old, clocking 3:34 at 8,000 feet in Mexico City. That was 45 years ago.

So, Mo Farah running 3:28 at Monaco while getting handily beaten by Kiprop doesn't shout PEDs to me.

I do think that he may be benefiting from therapeutic supplements that help his body function at its best. But that is permissible by the rules of the sport - same as altitude tents, under water treadmills, massage, and cryotherapy.

Salazar won't do anything without medical clearance necessary to keep it within the rules of the game. That's my take anywho.

I personally question everything now a days that looks too good to be true in track in field. If you look at sprinters, you can see that their fastest points in there is life is when they are 25 to 29. Usually after that they start to slow down unless they are on something. distance runners seem to be able to get faster in 5000 to 10,000 races up to 29 or 30 because they get stronger (why most people move up to the marathon). Usually their 1500 time does not improve especially not drastically improve when they are 30. The crazy thing about Mo is that he has gotten dramatically faster over 800(yet to be shown), 1500, and closing speed. In 2008, at the age of 25 he set his PB in the 800 at 1:48. In 2013, he almost runs that pace for 1500 meters. That would suggest that he has gotten almost 5 seconds faster for 800 meters from the age of 25 to 30. He is also able to close in 50 seconds after a 5000 meter race. So in 2008 it was difficult to run 54, 54 in an 800 but now He can run a 5000 meter race and close in 53. Nothing fishy here. I understand...it is just hard training. No one trains as hard as Mo. Nobody crawls off the track after workouts except Mo and 14 year old girls. I believed in Armstrong at one time....