Explain the "rocket fuelled performance" concept. Or at least admit that your above post is self contradictory.
So you have a guy whose PB going in (3:30.8) was running 4.4 seconds behind Hicham El Guerrouj in 1998. Noah Ngeny is the only guy expected to be close at all to El Guerrouj having managed to nearly get past him in the Mile World Record (a la Nuguse at Pre). He's run very fast (most of the year's top times) and has a great pedigree as well from his junior days and even pacing 1150 of El Guerrouj's 3:26.00 World Record 1500. Outside of that you have an aging Fermin Cacho and Nourredine Morceli running up front, so perhaps they could summon some old "magic." And some decent Kenyans in the 3:30-1 range. Estevez himself has run ~3:32 a couple times on the season to finish 6th on the circuit twice and a 3rd at the Spanish Champs.
The gun goes off and it is a glorified time trial with El G's teammate taking them out. 54.3(likely 55.0 for Estevez)/1:52.15 (~1:52.8 for Estevez). So this unevenly paced but blazing fast race should be pretty much flat-out for a guy who never would go under 3:30.4 in his career. 3rd race in 4 days, really fast first lap. Good time to settle and try to kick behind the top 2 as other fades. Instead at 550 to go, Estevez rips off a sensational 250 meters. He goes from 15 meters behind Hicham El Guerrouj (who is running a ~40.5 300m segment within a 54.5 lap mind you) at 950 meters to a stride behind at 1,200 meters. That's with running wide on the curve. He probably ran that 250 meter segment at about 52.5 pace. His 300 from 900 to 1200 is 39.8 or so despite running some of it wide and only really starting his big move midway through the cure. To me, that might be believable for a guy with 3:27-8 talent. Estevez never showed that before and after and settled into being a 3:32 type guy. What changed? The EPO test was introduced among other things.
In 2001, you can watch a similar race at Edmonton and watch how different an athlete he was. He's positioned exactly the same in a slower race. The guy who roared past Cacho, Morceli and Ngeny comes through 800m almost 1.5 seconds slower and allows El Guerrouj to easily gap him while passing nobody essentially.
He may well have been a doper but your logic is flawed here. Running a fast segment in a race doesn't prove anything. He slowed down again (probably with fatigue) so that kind of flies in the face of your theory.
Not sure about the rules permitting this to be a record based on the 100 meters drop from the start line, and in any case I think that would mean his time on a flat course would be roughly 15 to 20 seconds slower so we go from 2856 to 29:11-29:16. Still good, but obviously less impressive. Sub 29:00 at age 47 really catches attention.
100m net downhill is worth more than 15-20 seconds, the maximum allowed is 10m
Going by this his time could be adjusted to 29:30-30:00, still impressive for a 47 year old.
He may well have been a doper but your logic is flawed here. Running a fast segment in a race doesn't prove anything. He slowed down again (probably with fatigue) so that kind of flies in the face of your theory.
He slowed down to run a career-best performance within his third race in four days in a highly unevenly paced race. It’s like if Sam Tanner had finished bronze this year/last in a PB after flying onto Jakobs shoulder after passing Kipsang, Kerr/Wightman and Nuguse from 950 to the bell. You’d think what am I watching and expect a future superstar.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.