Age is a factor yes, but he was training for months to compete Kiptum, and then that is suddenly taken away. A huge part of marathon running is mental.
Come on, it's drugs, Kipchoge finishes all marathons in 1st position, what injury or redlining are you talking about??? Bekele would be the same if he took drugs like Kipchoge.
It's not father time. You don't just drop off in high-performance ability from 2:01:09 in September 2022 to suddenly 2:09 in 2023 Boston or 2:02:42 in Berlin 2023.
If Kipchoge were to drop off with father time he would already have done sone in 2021 and 2022 and he wouldn't have won Tokyo 2022 and Berlin 2022 in 2:02 and 2:01 at all, he would have declined there and then and not declined in 2023 only!!!
Therefore the only reasons that can explain his unusual decline isn't really age but drugs. He stopped taking the PEDs or whatever cheating technique and so explains the drastic drop off.
An athlete not on drugs will not drop off any more than 5minutes off his 2:01:09 PB in my judgement. He would still be running lots of 2:02s and 2:03s at any marathon in the world, not 2:06 and 2:09, on supershoes no less.
Those of us who have experienced it will tell you, the first sign you are getting old is inconstancy. Some days you feel like you still have it and other days you just don’t. And there’s no real way to tell ahead of time.
This is it, really. It's a lot more noticeable in basketball or soccer, where you have multiple games a week.
In those sports, decline doesn't look like someone getting 10% worse year after year. What really happens is the variance between their performances starts to increase. Instead of being a star every night, they'll be a star every third game, and the quality of the off nights gets worse and worse. Then the number of off games starts to increase, and then suddenly they just can't reach their old performance anymore (the proverbial "cliff").
Kipchoge's only running two marathons a year, so we don't see the variance as clearly. I'm sure it's evident in his training sessions.
I can’t believe I’m actually engaging with you, but you are selectively choosing observations to suit your hypothesis. How do you explain his subsequent 2:02:42 in September 2023, an almost 7 minute and 5 position improvement only 5 months later!!!!? He’s now doping for all his fall races but not his spring races?
What about London 2020 when he was only 8th in 2:06:49 when he had run 1:59:40 in his previous race? Or only 2:04:30 in the Netherlands after that, only to come back and dominate the Olympics and set the WR?
The point is that he's likely now a mid to high 2:03 guy. But for at least a while longer, he'll keep racing like he's a 2:01 guy. And if it's not his day, he'll fade to 2:06.
Small quibbles: (1) He did just run 2:02:42 in Berlin, so I'd say he is a mid to high 2:02 guy now, and (2) I think he was swinging for the fences and going for a world record, not 2:01 or just the win, which was his bigger problem. Those pacers 100% went out on the pace he agreed to (told them to), it wasn't random. If they would have paced it for a 2:02:xx I think the results would have been very different - and not just for EK, that first half pace wasn't the best pace for anyone, they all dropped off in the second half.
Even the UN,who were part of the terrorist attack on Israel,have admitted that rape,sexual torture and other war crimes have been and are currently being committed by Hamas.
Sure this will just be classed as propaganda by Carmine etc.
Not an expert problem solver but I run and love doing it. I don't know how effective performance drugs are in running world or how quickly they can induce an increase in performance but what I do believe is that yes time has taken a toll on EK but not to the degree of fall off which is being seen his last couple races, but more like poor race execution. Coming out too hot attempting to show the world that you can run a 2hr marathon just because some youngster came along and tore your record down and blow up 1/2 way through because exceeded your threshold too early.
Why hasn’t Rojo or John Gault recapped Tokyo on the home page? I mean, not including the obvious reasons that they are more preoccupied with discussing World Indoors and that they did discuss the race during the live stream. One would think a recap of Tokyo would take precedence over the U.S. 15K championships and other road racing results. The marathon was on Saturday/Sunday so it’s not like there hasn’t been enough time for them to finish writing something. Am I missing something here?
It's not father time. You don't just drop off in high-performance ability from 2:01:09 in September 2022 to suddenly 2:09 in 2023 Boston or 2:02:42 in Berlin 2023.
If Kipchoge were to drop off with father time he would already have done sone in 2021 and 2022 and he wouldn't have won Tokyo 2022 and Berlin 2022 in 2:02 and 2:01 at all, he would have declined there and then and not declined in 2023 only!!!
Therefore the only reasons that can explain his unusual decline isn't really age but drugs. He stopped taking the PEDs or whatever cheating technique and so explains the drastic drop off.
An athlete not on drugs will not drop off any more than 5minutes off his 2:01:09 PB in my judgement. He would still be running lots of 2:02s and 2:03s at any marathon in the world, not 2:06 and 2:09, on supershoes no less airbrush guides.
It's important to clarify that without additional context, it's challenging to provide accurate information about a specific event involving Eliud Kipchoge. However, as of my last update in January 2022, Eliud Kipchoge is a renowned Kenyan long-distance runner, widely regarded as one of the greatest marathon runners of all time. He has achieved numerous accolades, including winning the Olympic gold medal in the marathon event at the 2016 Rio Olympics and breaking the marathon world record in 2018.
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