"Finally, I'm sure the things you say about Geb are true, but somebody can be a great person and great champion, work his ass off, sign autographs for the kids, and still take PEDs."
But if you take PEDs you are a liar and a cheater. You are therefore not a great person or a great champion.
http://www.iaaf.org/GP02/news/Kind=2/newsId=19519.htmlveritas wrote:
ElG did not train specifically for 12:50! what the heck are you talking about?? and he ran it in June as one of his first races of the season!
(2002) At the beginning of the season El Guerrouj expressed his wish to compete in the 5000 metres in Rieti, as the first milestone towards his goal to double 1500 and 5000 metres at the IAAF World Championships in Paris.
But he "didn't train" for that 2003 5000 meters. He just ran it cold, even though he planned out the event the year before. You'll also notice El G doesn't race unless he's prepared. He almost withdrew from the 2004 Olympics because of early season preparation issues.
Far as June being an excuse, June sounds like a pretty good month to me. Not as good as July/August, but better than April/May.
yeah there is another interview where he stated he wanted to focus on the 5000 but then he changed his mind and focused on the 1500 more. any way you cut it, he didn't specifically train for the 5000 so that 12:50 is not his maximum effort. and yes June does make a difference, especially it's your first foray in an event. A little thing called peaking will enable you to run even faster after a few months. Duh!
ttc,
Regina Jacobs
Cathal Lombard
Ayhan
Jerome Young
Tim Montgomery
Mickey Grimes
All convicted dopers who got beat by someone else. It's not magic.
You have a population who, for thousands of years (since the dawn of man), have lived at altitude. This (it is postulated) accounts for their unique adaptation to low O2 environments -- different than in those adaptations observed anywhere else on the planet.
They have also relied on their own two feet for running to and fro as well as farming and grazing. Thus, those who were naturally adept to running around better, were more likely to be successful, etc.
So this population with a unique adaptation to low O2 environments and thousands of years of selection for those better at running, and many of them run long distances every day from early on in youth in addition to chasing goats after school and going long distances to fetch water.
Then you take one of them, who has been running 20km daily, in addition to all the farming, and when he grows up you put him on a good program, with consistent training and steady mileage.
You get the most talented runners in the world on the best program possible, all training under the same system, with set goals: world/olympic titles and WRs. Money comes second, glory for Ethiopia first. That's why they are so much better.
In the 70s and 80s, testing was a joke. It's obvious with women's times. Remember how people kept saying that with HGH and EPO testing that the fast 5k/10k times of the 90s would be gone?
another sad day on Lets Run
trackhead, I'm at odds with you a lot with your views of footware, but I want to congratulate you on a wonderful post.
Trackhead, I understand your point and you made it well. Seriously. I'm not saying for certain, because obviously it's an IMO.
I know the Ethiopians and Kenyans are hungry, but just on this board alone, we've seen our own give up their jobs and life around to move across the country and run. We've also seen many others consider it. The U.S. has had major talents train to their max, barely avoiding injury, but still not touch what we're seeing. I know the hunger isn't the same as being in those other countries, but at the same time, we have people giving up a lot more to be runners.
Mostly, I think 26:22, 12:58 splits (blowing Webb away in an open 5K) are too fast. At some point times are going to be suspicious and they crossed that line with me.
yeah we have major talents, but for every one of our talents, there is at least ten Kenyans that are of comparable talent or better. with that kind of competitive atmosphere just within their country it's no wonder they succeed. look at us, we pin all our hopes on a few guys like webb or ritz - kenya or ethiopia don't have to worry about this because their top guys could all quit tomorrow and they could easily replace them.
I really don't think 12:58 closer is too out of control. I mean Alan Webb hasn't even approached the WR from TWENTY years ago, the rest of the world has moved on, like it or not.
brilliant run by the wee african!
Had the intenet been around at the time people no doubt would have been having the same discussion in the 80's with regard to the Eastern Block athletics revolution.
Doubters would be calling Marita Koch, Krachmilcova (SP?) and the like druggies. People would have been questioning how Women were suddenly running 1.53's for 800m, or running 47 seconds for 400m.
Their Eastern Block supporters would have been saying that their training was more sophisticated. The sports scientists would be on the internet saying how Eastern Block Women were greater physical specimins than their competitors and that is why they were more successful.
Their would also be the argument that because these athletes were taken out of school at an early age and developed to become athletes was the reason why these athlets could perform so much better than Women in the past.
There wlould also be the argument that Eastern European females had only just taken up the sport in the late 70's and thats why there has been so much improvement
Only time will tell whether the current crop of distance athletes are clean or not. Certainly the radical improvement of the Men's distance world records in 1995 is similar to what happen to Womens world records in the 80's.
None of the female world record holders from the 80's were caught for drugs. In the same way none of the chinese athletes in the 90's were caught for drugs. Yet I think it is fairly safe to say that Ma's army were dopped of their heads and that the Eastern European Women were full of steriods.
Athletics is all about money and whilst athletes are bringing in the sponsors by breaking world records, the establishment are not going to want to catch them for whatever they are taking
trackhead wrote:
In the 70s and 80s, testing was a joke. It's obvious with women's times. Remember how people kept saying that with HGH and EPO testing that the fast 5k/10k times of the 90s would be gone?
And you know today's testing is effective because...? Look, it's not that I really even disagree with anything you're arguing here--Geb is the greatest ever, hands down. It's possible he's never ingested any PEDs. But I'll say it again, it's ridiculous to pretend that you can be CERTAIN he is clean. I wouldn't even respond if you just said, because of these factors (genetic, cultural, etc.), I can believe he's clean. Instead, you state your absolute certainty about this and attack anybody who suggests that there is some question about this.
Geb is afforded the right of being innocent until proven guilty. But I'm not the IAAF doping panel. I can think what I want. And my opinion (that there is a good chance he's dirty) is just as based in fact as your opinion (that he's always been clean). That is, both opinions rely on coincidence, conjecture, and supposition. Don't pretend your study about O2 use in Ethiopian highlanders "proves" that 12:37 is possible naturally. Don't pretend that passed drug tests prove innocence. And don't pretend your brief meeting with the guy gives you any insight at all into whether he'd dope or not.
I am with TTC, the doping evidence is there. Yes, humans will most likely always slightly increase, but the increments they are increasing by is gettin ridiculous, cutting 10, 20, 30 seconds off the WR's.
Bekele won the 4km World cross by beating a formiddable 12:47 5k runner. The runner who was beaten was quoted the next day as saying, "I dont know how he does it, i cant even walk today", in reference to BEKELE dominating the 12k, beating the worlds best by 20-30 seconds the day after dominating the worlds best in the 4k. EPO my friends.
Im a 16:30 5k runner, so my race pace is 5:17 or so, and I can do 3x1 mile in 5:02 average, 2:00 mins rest. If bekele and geb were doing mile repeats at faster that 4:04 race pace, are they doing 3:50-3:55 averages on mile repeats? that seems a little ridiculous to me, Bekele couldnt even run one 4:00 mile on US soil two months ago(maybe a down period for his EPO usage).
There was a worry in the year 2000 that drug testing was going to a new level. The warning was that EPO use could be detected.
Oddly enough, no Ethiopian broke 27:00 for 10k that year, nor 13:00 for 5k.
the reason we had big drops (or it seems like big drops) is that the 1500/5k/10k times really lagged for 10-12yrs in the mid80s to mid90s. Depth decreased as well. Look at who Morceli ran against, the fields were arguably weaker than the ones Coe and Ovett had to deal with. And during that time WR's rarely improved if at all. Now imagine if they had fallen at the same rate as they had been doing in the 70s to 80s, or actually a smaller rate, we'd be around high 1230s low 12:40s. Now things have caght up and we only get improvememnts of a second or so now in the 5 and 10
you sure about that?5000 METERS12:49.28 .............. Brahim Lahlafi (Mor)12:49.71 ............ Mohammed Mourhit (Bel)12:50.86 .............. Ali Saïdi Sief (Alg)12:54.07 .............. Sammy Kipketer (Ken)12:55.18 ................. Paul Tergat (Ken)12:55.63 ................... Mark Bett (Ken)12:55.82 ............... Benjamin Limo (Ken)12:56.50 .............. Luke Kipkosgei (Ken)12:57.95 .......... Haile Gebrselassie (Eth)12:58.70 ................ Richard Limo (Ken)(10)12:58.83 ................. Smaïl Sghir (Fra)12:59.90 ............ Albert Chepkirui (Ken)Just because a time was broken doesn't mean that it is caused by a drug announcement. Just like just because times are fast doesn't necessarily mean people are taking drugs. Can't have it both ways.
perspective wrote:
There was a worry in the year 2000 that drug testing was going to a new level. The warning was that EPO use could be detected.
Oddly enough, no Ethiopian broke 27:00 for 10k that year, nor 13:00 for 5k.
gunther 23 wrote:
the reason we had big drops (or it seems like big drops) is that the 1500/5k/10k times really lagged for 10-12yrs in the mid80s to mid90s. Depth decreased as well. Look at who Morceli ran against, the fields were arguably weaker than the ones Coe and Ovett had to deal with. And during that time WR's rarely improved if at all. Now imagine if they had fallen at the same rate as they had been doing in the 70s to 80s, or actually a smaller rate, we'd be around high 1230s low 12:40s. Now things have caght up and we only get improvememnts of a second or so now in the 5 and 10
You have no explanation for the ten-year stalling out of record progression, though, do you? I do. Steroids had done as much as they could (and testing was getting better). EPO had not arrived.
yeah here's some reasons:
1. not all improvements follow a normal nice curve.
2. ethiopia, which was coming into its own in the early 80s (they won 3 WC team titles btw) went through civil war so they had no athletes to send until they reappeared in the mid90s, post civil-war
3. A lot of the guys that were awesome in the early 80s became injured or just retired. A lot of them were US and Western Europe guys. BY this time, athletics in both countries was fizzling out for whatever reason so there weren't a lot of younger guys to take their place. It's no secret that 1984-1985 had the most US guys under 2:20 ever and we can't come close to that now. So low participation from the formerly good Western countries, and low participation from African countries combined is not a good climate for WR improvements.
I was right on the 10k, but wrong on the 5k. Haile did get that get 2 seconds under 5k. One performace list of the IAAF missed that result,:
On the other hand, 12:58 is a good ways away from 12:39 and sluggish compared to 26:22.
it probably didn't help that Haile was injured leading up to the Olympics so he didn't put in a 10k.... or a decent 5k. Don't you know this?
And it's pretty obvious that there were a lot of good 5k performances that year. Singling out Ethiopia when they had an off year doesn't really make your argument convincing.