You guessed wrong. The studies have shown that the foam in super shoes provides greater benefit to women, than men, due to being lighter on average. Lighter people get better energy return.
So it's even more obvious the impact that better testing has had on East African times.
How so?
According to World Athletics, since 1/1/2024, the fastest 4 runners are East African, with Gebrhiwet only 1 second off the world record. Grant Fisher and Nico Young, as fast as they are, rank #5 and #6, some 9-10 seconds slower than the WR.
If you really mean testing in Kenya, only one Kenyan in history has ever run faster than Nico Young, and that was Daniel Komen. #2 is Jakob Krop and #3 is Nicholas Kipkorir from 2022 (#14 and #16 respectively).
Before 1/1/2024, excluding the aforementioned 4 runners and Daniel Komen, only 5 more East Africans in all of history have ever run faster than Nico Young, who comes in at #13. The remaining non-East Africans are Grant Fisher, and Mo Katir.
Jakob is #25 and GBR George Mills is #19.
At the very top, while the non-Africans are noticeably faster, the East African times don't seem to be slowing down either in quantity or quality.
The East African dominance started at the ‘87 WCs when Rosa provided Kenya with a flotilla of athletes loaded on EPO. Things really took off at the ‘88 Games. It’s taken decades for other runners to start to catch up via improved training methods and slighly better testing.
What about the 1981 World Cross Country Championship, with Ethiopia beating a strong USA team, and Kenya in third, beating the rest of the world?
Ethiopia placed 2 in the top-10, and 5 in the top-15.
Kenya was about a half-minute behind the leaders, but still placed 6 runners in the top-60.
At the very top, while the non-Africans are noticeably faster, the East African times don't seem to be slowing down either in quantity or quality.
Do you really not understand the points here?
a) The gap between US and EA keeps decreasing; US keeps getting faster at a much faster rate.
b) The shoes help the lighter athletes more. So the shoes cannot be the reason.
Pointing out that the Africans don't slow down doesn't address any of these points. Reminding people that testing in Africa has increased does - they have to decrease their doping, or risk losing their eligibility and fast times. See Koech, Kandie, Kipruto, A. Kiptum etc. etc.: those world record setters can't compete atm and have in part lost their WR.
In music, the notes are not new, and have existed for centuries, if not millennia, and yet we are still finding new ways to combine them and make new music.
Kenya was about a half-minute behind the leaders, but still placed 6 runners in the top-60.
That doesn't sound dominant to me.
Did you read the rest of the post, in the context of the post I was responding to? Relative to the world, Kenya still beat 36 out of 39 countries, in a race with 460 athletes.
In response to "The East African dominance started at the ‘87 WCs", we can see that East Africans were already clearly World Dominant in 1981 Cross Country, long before EPO was discovered by cyclists, with two East African countries placing 1st and 3rd. If we look at the rest of the decade, the Kenyans improved from 1981, and Kenyans and Ethiopians and other East Africans have dominated Cross Country, the track, and the roads, ever since.
At the very top, while the non-Africans are noticeably faster, the East African times don't seem to be slowing down either in quantity or quality.
Do you really not understand the points here?
a) The gap between US and EA keeps decreasing; US keeps getting faster at a much faster rate.
b) The shoes help the lighter athletes more. So the shoes cannot be the reason.
Pointing out that the Africans don't slow down doesn't address any of these points. Reminding people that testing in Africa has increased does - they have to decrease their doping, or risk losing their eligibility and fast times. See Koech, Kandie, Kipruto, A. Kiptum etc. etc.: those world record setters can't compete atm and have in part lost their WR.
I do. Do you? I didn't attempt to address any of these points, but I was responding to "Coevett" asking him to explain how "it's even more obvious the impact that better testing has had on East African times", when there is no obvious impact on East African times.
I didn't just point out that "the Africans don't slow down". In fact, if anything, in the 5000m, more East Africans are getting faster.
There's another conclusion. More drugs. Better than shoes.
They are right - it’s mostly the shoes. Unless you’re proposing that US runners started doping at the exact same time as the shoes. In 2019 there was nothing unique or special about US distance running. It is a combination of both, but things really took off after 2020.
Doping never stopped. It continues to develop. Even better than shoes.
Then it isn't the explanation for a sudden change in performances.
Drugs aren't new, so why would they be the explanation for sudden changes in performance?
Let me guess: there are new and different drugs. Maybe the same could be said about threshold training. There are new and different ways to implement it.
Drugs might explain some performances for some runners, but it's not the only explanation.
Also, these aren't sudden changes. Guys have been working at this for years.
Drugs are constantly being developed. It is ongoing. It didn't stop with EPO.
Who is this Armstronglivs character? where is he from? Is he angry because wherever he’s from has no runners of note right now? The way he makes post after post reveals a very obsessive personality. Strange.
You haven't noticed thread after thread that raises the subject of doping in the sport - like this one? So Letsrun is obviously obsessed with doping.
Who was training like Bakken method before Bakken?
Answer this question, fraud.
It's still threshold training. But no form of training is producing these kinds of gains. You only assume that training must make all the difference because the more likely explanation of doping is unacceptable to you.
You can't read. It was nothing about threshold training being new.
It was the assumption that a form of training that has long been practiced in the sport is now suddenly making all the difference with American runners. That is rubbish, of course.
In music, the notes are not new, and have existed for centuries, if not millennia, and yet we are still finding new ways to combine them and make new music.
Combining them in new ways isn't improving on what Bach, Beethoven and Mozart achieved centuries ago - merely producing different music. Your analogy works against you.