TrackCoach wrote:
I have posted extensively on this board about age cheating; I am not going to cover old ground, do a Search on "Age Fraud" if you are interested. Every youth and junior male world record over 400m is fake, not a single one of those records is legit. One of America’s greatest distance runners, Dathan Ritzenhein’s greatest accomplishment is finishing 3rd at world junior cross. WJrXC in some years is more competitive than the U.S. senior national XC Championships. For more perspective, there is no guarantee Alan Webb would have medaled at the WJrs or even America’s junior 800m record Donavan Brazier. Several Africans have 1:43x 800m at the World Youth Championships. When Mary Cain won the World Junior 3K, it was one of the few times Africa actually used high school girls. If Cain had ran her specialty, the 1500, she most definitely would have lost. The reason why Africa choose to run high school girls in the 3K is a mystery. Why isn’t the world record in the 800m 1:38, or 3:23 for the 1500, or 12 flat of the 5K, or 26 flat for the 10K, or 1:59 for the marathon. If just a few of these African juniors made what would be considered a normal progression, the middle and long distance world records would be way below what they currently are. The fact is, most of these supposedly junior phenoms made very little to no improvement over their junior marks. I suspect some of them were at their physical peak, in their mid to late-20s while competing as a junior. While athletes like David Rudisha and Asbel Kiprop, never had mind blowing junior performances, had documented ages and continued to improve.
Don't focus too much on what the athletes looks like because in many cases, nowadays, African countries will exclude athletes from youth and junior completions because they look old. Although there have some really old looking athletes in age level competitions, but several years ago African countries started excluding really old looking dudes to add some legitimacy to the process, when in fact they don’t care how old the athlete actually is. What is sad, age fraud doesn’t just affect American and other countries, but it denies opportunities for age appropriate African athletes. Among the males, it is very rare for Kenyan Secondary School Champion to even be invited to compete for a spot on the youth or junior national team. The Youth and Junior athletes are usually unknown athletes with no grade school and age group performances that would document their age and who have been training in professional training groups. People perhaps think of age cheating as 20 year old posing as an 17 year old, in some cases, these athletes are in their late 20s competing in World Youth competitions.
What is equally sad is the fact that the IAAF allows this to happen. The fact is, most Kenyans for example, born in the last 20 years have a documented record of their birth and/or a number of ways to approximate their age. Other sports take age cheating much more seriously, FIFA for example has banded entire national teams for age cheating and routinely uses bone scans and dental X-rays when an athlete’s age is in question. If FIFA finds more than 3 athletes on a team overage, they simple exclude the entire team from competition.
Most Kenyans born the last 20 years still have Federation backing when it comes to lying about their ages if they smell a chance for a medal.
Track needs to do what was done in soccer. The MRI Wrist Test is over 99% percent accurate up through age 18 (some sites incorrectly state age 17 for 'some reason' or other). They might have to adjust the age limits for juniors, but who cares? Soccer was out of control with literally all Sub-Saharan nations filling their junior teams with guys 25 - 40, and some N. African countries like Morocco were sending guys in their mid and upper 20's to compete in junior matches as "teens".
The E. Africans have talented runners, but between the rampant age cheating and the wink and nod drug use they've been able to get away with, the world has been flim-flammed for decades. This is why the media keeps trying to put everyone's attention on those bad ol' Russians while ignoring Aden, Hermens, Rosa and the rest of those who facilitate drug use in E. Africa and other regions.