NON-STEROID ALL-TIME WORLD LISTS

Personally i never doubted El G. No one else had his level of endurance? what about baala or lagat? no, they did not have his level of consistency but i think this situation reflects the what ifs of coe, ovett and cram, as in how fast would those three have run if they had proper pacing, technology, ext of today? What would have happened if coe cram ovett lagat and baala had all been under the same training program as el g, with rabbits to train with and doctors watching your every move with a perfect diet and perfect training facilities year in year out?

And i have also never taken his IAAF listing of his 146 800 to mean much at all. Is it that hard to understand that he never wanted to run that race? Especially if his base millage as his coach often stated was geared towards the 5000 to 10000. I also think that the understanding of the Moroccan National team is lost on most people outside of the country. Its more like soccer than say, the old Russian block countries in the manner in which they control there athletes. They have track clubs, its not all government controlled. There government simply gives more money to track clubs than other sports or organizations. It also explains why there has been a deterioration of Morocco’s progression, as the new king, king Hassan, doesn’t really care about track, many of there programs began to deteriorate as soon as his rein began and cut major funding for all clubs other than Abd-el-Kader Kada’s

As always, please forgive spelling and grammer errors, i have been in my mother country for 9 months and i fear that my Adequacy in my third language will never be up to Letsrun par.

ccc

The US runners who cheat have the big shoe copany money to bail them out...(they are, afterall, going along with "the program" laid out by the big shoe companies....decker and lewis got bailed out in the 83 wc by nike...price tag? 10 mill i heard....

boof wrote:

The US runners who cheat have the big shoe copany money to bail them out...(they are, afterall, going along with "the program" laid out by the big shoe companies....decker and lewis got bailed out in the 83 wc by nike...price tag? 10 mill i heard....

TrackCoach wrote:

There is far more evidence to suggest Bolt and Gay are clean, than to suggest they are dirty. You simply can't implicate someone based on great performances alone becasue in that case every WR holder would have to be implicated.

Exactly, all the WRs except those of Seko are obviously PED-aided. Why do we know this? Because 1)we know that the drugs in question offer HUGE advantages, far greater than the margin of talent differences at the very top, and 2)drug testing lags far, far behind drug usage; in the case of many of the WRs in question, occurring when the PEDs in question were not tested for (3:26) or were tested for a totally ineffective manner (47.60).

1) doped athletes have passed tests. Numerous tests. This is the most difficult thing for the everyone-is-clean crowd. I've never seen a good explanation for why testing that didn't work then now does (when you consider that those using PEDs are always ahead of the testing curve this seems even more difficult to accept.)

2) Basically the best all time 800, 1500, 3000 runners of all time ran in the 1990s. Not only were they great, they were significantly better than runners just a few years earlier. In the 5000 and 10000 two all time greats. I can't think of another time off the top of my head when every event was completely stacked. If it was based on just having talented runners, the distribution shouldn't be even (i.e. not every event should have had some of the best ever seen at it). It's somewhat believable that individual events could peak and taper significantly(athletes collectively push one another, the stars align for certain races, ect), but for every event to peak at the same time? If we remove Bekele from the picture for a second we're basically claiming that every single event from the 800 to 10000 peaked in talent in the 1990s and tapered off through the 2000s. Certainly possible, but quite improbable. And remember the same athletes aren't competing in the 800 as 10000. This is a whole list of athletes who happened to be best ever at their respective events, all competing in the same time period.

3) Training methods have improved, the talent pool is deeper, ect. Why have times regressed recently? If those explanations acquit the 1990s and early 2000s runners, why haven't times continued to drop significantly? After all, I can't imagine training has gotten worse in the last few years, yet times have gotten slower and the all time lists have stagnated.

4) Changes in the Golden League ect as the reason for declining times. This just isn't adequate. No one is even trying for records either. It's hard to believe that things have changed so much that the times would slow markedly. Year to year volatility is expected, but a consistent and marked slowing is indicative of something more than just bad weather at one big race or whatnot.

I don't think it's impossible that El G, Geb, ect weren't doping. Just improbable. We're basically being asked to believe that a drug that couldn't be tested for during much of this time that could significantly increase performance wasn't being touched? Or that it's impossible for athletes to be using something currently untestable despite the history of that being the case?

Ultimately, it doesn't matter. It's a spectacle, I seriously doubt anyone posting here is personally harmed by chemically aided records. It's just entertainment.

to assess likelihood of doping thruout the last few decades we can use a simple statistical method to eliminate the outliers ( kip/hicham/geb ) :

for the years '80, '85, '90, '95, '00, '05, '09 ( as we haven't completed '10 yet ), find the mean of the top 5 - 10 performers ( not performances ) for 800m, 1500m, 5k & 10k & see what that shows ( better woud be yearly starting with '80 - '09 but that's too much to ask )

this woud show what the trend was for the "fields'" times & off course they woud be just as likely to dope as the outliers - if there was a peak in times in mid-'90s - '00 compared to either side, then you have evidence of possible doping, if not, then those outliers were just that - supreme talents

Frankie Fredericks 9.86...The End

ukathleticscoach wrote:

'Do you think that Ramzi only started using Cera (a new form of EPO) in 08, and that his double world victories in '05 and his 3:29. 1 in '06 were completely unaided?'

Nobody wins world champs and then thinks they need to get on the gear. Same for Marion Jones who someone above (DOB 6/7/10) reckons was clean in 97.

Once someone is done for doping all their previous records should be wiped. That is after thay are banged up for fraud.

I agree entirely. Perhaps such a deterrent might make some think twice.

I find it ridiculous that Ramzi's & Saïdi-Sief's 3:29's are allowed to stand on the all-time list! Same for Sepeng's 1:42.

"Brother O'Connell started coaching in Kenya at the end of the 1970s and it was at the 1988 Olympics where Kenyan men started to assert dominance, winning the 800m, 1500m, steeplechase and 5000m."

LOL We discussed it several months ago. And I showed my analysis to you:

http://ospage2000.ic.cz/SportGraphs.htm

The picture is quite clear: White runners left track in mid 80's and Africans started to "dominate" disciplines, where their competition suddenly disappeared. At the same time, the African performances were not spectacular and in the 800/1500 m, they were actually very mediocre. Then in 1995, EPO came on the scene... You know the rest of the story.

Of the top 20 performances ever in the Men's 10000m, just five came from the pre-EPO testing era. Of the 67 times 27:00 has been broken, 53 of them occurred after the EPO test had become available. In the 5000m, 13:00 has been broken 249 times: 73 before 2000, and 176 since. It seems that your argument relies heavily on a few outliers. Take out Bekele, Gebrselassie and Komen, and the 5000m world record is Eliud Kipchoge's 12:46.53, and suddenly Ritzenhein and Mottram are less than 10 seconds out from the world record, as opposed to nearly 20. Same in the 10000m: take out Gebrselassie, Bekele and Tergat, and your world record falls back to Kemboi's 26:30.

Could I have not made similar arguments 25 years ago, saying that the 800m, 1500m, Mile, and 5000m were all taken apart from 1978 to 1985? And in retrospect, Coe, Cram and Rono are judged as being among the greatest of all time (and Moorcroft as having the race of his life in a period of injury free training in 1982).

I don't see how times have regressed. As I stated above, most of the fastest 5000m and 10000m times have been recorded this decade. In the 1500m, you could argue that 39 sub 3:30s were run before 2000, compared to 33 since, but El Guerrouj alone represents 44.4% of all sub 3:30 performances. Apart from him, 27 sub 3:30s were recorded before 2000, and 15 since. And of those 27 run before 2000, 16 belong to Morceli and Ngeny.

And the marathon and half-marathon record books have been totally revised in the last few years alone.

Is the regressing you're writing about in reference to the absence of many performances approaching the world record at those distances? Brussles will often cancel its Men's 10000m if Bekele isn't up for a bid for the record, because the idea is that it'll be boring for TV and spectators if the record isn't on the line. And in the 5000m, the record is out of reach for most, to the point that any serious attempt needs a pacemaker who can run 7:35 largely on their own, and there aren't many men with that ability who wouldn't want to be in the race themselves.

You're right, many could have taken EPO in the 1990s and gotten away with it. But just like any opportunity to commit a crime, some will take it, some won't.

I think the point "up in the air" was making is that all the best ever times for almost every distance race (800 - 10000m) occurred during that 1993-2000 era when EPO was available and undetected. Even if one of those guys was an "outlier", it does seem quite improbable that they all arrived on the scene at their peak during the same 5 or so seasons. This seems more than a coincidence.

I think "up in the air"'s comments are very valid. The idea that no top athletes were willing to take advantage (even for a few seasons) of taking a PED which would take seconds off their times (and more $ to boot), is a very naive one, especially when one considers that athletes are still taking risks and getting caught when there is a test for them.

Everyone seems to view the whole EPO think as very black and white (and I'm not referring to skin colour). Many seem to think of Sydney 2000 as some sort of watershed. If you ran fast before you could be using EPO, if you ran after you weren't because there was a test. People who take this laissez-faire attitude really are lulling themselves into a false sense of security. While I would think the numbers using EPO probably declined after 2000m, there was almost certainly people continuing or starting its use from 2001 onwards.

Saidi-Sief was caught in 01, Sepeng tested positive in 2002, and Ramzi in 08.

All were for different substances, the former 2 taking peds for which there was a "reliable" test for. Why would someone take a drug which they could get caught for?.... because they have intricate systems in place which are designed to evade detection. The same would apply for EPO. More haven't got caught, regardless of the test (which was criticised by various parties as unreliable from the outset, anyway) because they have been sensible. Those that have are generally either unlucky or stupid.

epopians wrote:

I think the point "up in the air" was making is that all the best ever times for almost every distance race (800 - 10000m) occurred during that 1993-2000 era when EPO was available and undetected.

I don't see that at all.

Obviously, that was Kipketer's era, but the #2, #3, #4 and #5 all-time performers are from either before or after.

In the 1500m, the #2, #3, #5, #6, #8 and #10 times ever recorded were run when subject to EPO testing.

The 5000m and 10000m world records were set in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and more than 70% of all sub-13:00 clockings were run after 2000. More than half of all sub 12:52s were run after 2000. Only eight times was 26:50 broken in the 1990s, compared to 31 times since the advent of EPO testing.

Where do you get the figures on which you've based your claim?

epopians wrote:

I think the point "up in the air" was making is that all the best ever times for almost every distance race (800 - 10000m) occurred during that 1993-2000 era when EPO was available and undetected. Even if one of those guys was an "outlier", it does seem quite improbable that they all arrived on the scene at their peak during the same 5 or so seasons. This seems more than a coincidence

clueless about statistical theory

in '70s, viren, foster, puttemans, bedford , yifter, jipcho & rono all were present in the '70s & raced each other & all were capable of breaking the 5k &/or 10k record in the right race - all of them alltime great athletes

Why would someone take a drug which they could get caught for?.... because they have intricate systems in place which are designed to evade detection

drivel

name these "systems" moron ???

when a tester comes to your door & demands you piss into a bottle in front of him, how you are you going to get a -ve test if you are doping ???

"The 5000m and 10000m world records were set in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and more than 70% of all sub-13:00 clockings were run after 2000."

Please, don't count TIMES, but ATHLETES.

IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?!

The truth is that the performances in track middle/long distances haven't markedly improved since late 90's. This reflects the fact that limits of human potential were approached during 80's and without the artifical +EPO seconds, the development continues in a very slow manner, like before. Curiously, it seems that the fight with EPO dopers is very successful in the recent years, and as a result, today's 800/1500 m runners are on standards seen 25 years ago, and in longer distances, the times like 12:50 or 27:00 would be probably natural world records without blood doping.

Czech guy wrote:

"The 5000m and 10000m world records were set in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and more than 70% of all sub-13:00 clockings were run after 2000."

Please, don't count TIMES, but ATHLETES.

IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?!

Explain it to me, since of all the men to break 13 minutes, 21 of them set their personal best before EPO testing, compared to 52 since.

A statistics textbook of mine used this exact example except it stopped in '04 or '05 and used the top 20 preformances, and coupled it with a time line of EPO's use. It turned out the field was dirty.

I still remember it because I thought it was funny that the textbook had a running example.

There were apparently two EPO-eras: The first one between 1995-98 and the second one in 2004-2005. Since 2005 the times have been dropping dramatically in all distances and returned on the level of 1995.

drivel

so wada/iaaf stopped doing epo testing for the 2 seasons '04/'05 ???