Renato Canova wrote:
Armstronglivs and Coevett, I think you don't have historical memory, or, more simple, don't know the value of performances.
The PB of Ngeny puts him in position 113 in the World. His time is the performance number 502 in the history of athletics.
You consider only what happened in the last 4-5 years, but in thye past Athletics produced a lot of results, almost normal, that now people consider "exceptional".
In 1998 (first year I went Kenya) I saw the National Championships. A totally unknown athlete was number 3 in 800m with 1'45"52, and I liked his way of running. I went to talk with him, and discovered that he was a sergent of Army, who had the role to select young athletes for the Team of Defense (at that time the only Military Club in Kenya). So, he sometimes went running with very young athletes, many of them not really strong. He knew was fast, and his brigade asked him to run during the Army Championships, because at the end there was a classification for Brigades. He won running in 1'49"2 the first race of his career, the second race were the National Championsips. He didn't know his exact year of birth : his birth certificate had the date of 01.01.1973, but of sure he was 4-5 years older, about 30 years old.
I spoke with Gianni Demadonna, who agreed to manage him. After 6 weeks of training with me, he went for his first race in Europe (3rd race of his career), in Stuttgart (19th July). Japhet Kimutai was the winner in 1'42"76, and Kennedy Kimwetich was 2nd in 1'43"03 in the 3rd competition of his career when was already almost 30 years old.
You really don't know what the talent is, and suppose of doping for every "normal" performance if we look at the athletic history.
I want to write here the times for the performance n. 100-200-300-500-1000 in all the events of middle and long distances :
800m : 1'42"97 (100) - 1'43"32 (200) - 1'43"56 (300) - 1'43"84 (500) - 1'44"30 (1000)
1500m : 3'29"95 (100) - 3'30"76 (200) - 3'31"20 (300) - 3'31"95 (500) - 3'33"14 (1000)
5000m : 12'54"21 (100) - 12'57"23 (200) - 12'59"09 (300) - 13'01"64 (500) - 13'06"71 (1000)
10000m : 26'56"46 (100) - 27'07"29 (200) - 27'13"81 (300) - 27'22"89 (500) - 27'36"76 (1000)
HM : 59'16" (100) - 59'32" (200) - 59'45" (300) - 1:00'03" (500) - 1:00'35" (1000)
Mar : 2:04'54" (100) - 2:05'42" (200) - 2:06'13" (300) - 2:06'47" (500) - 2:07'48" (1000)
Steeple : 8'02"69 (100) - 8'05"43 (200) - 8'06"96 (300) - 8'09"23 (500) - 8'12"74 (1000)
Do you understand because it's ridiculous to speak of doping for NORMAL performances ?
And do you understand because I laugh when the pseudo-scientists researchers call "Elite" the subject of their researches (who are not in top 20,000 performances in the World) ?
Without knowing the history of the past, it's not possible to have ideas about the present, and without knowing what is possible to achieve with REAL talent it's not possible to have ideas about the future.
Renato, it is precisely because I have lived long enough to have a sense of what history can tell us that I recognize the implausible when I see it. Your arguments only confirm that you will never see the possibility of doping in any runner's performances and particularly with extreme improvements. To you everything can be explained away. Ngeny is no rapidly improving teenager; he is a 24 year old, by which age many champions in the past had peaked. At a time when there has been greatly reduced testing he has gone from being a 1948-level runner to world-class in 2021. That is implausible - without doping being seriously considered.