by today's standard, Nurmi trained like a weekend warrior.
by today's standard, Nurmi trained like a weekend warrior.
Bad Wigins wrote:
never mind the men's 10,000, you can see the EPO effect and the transfusion effect in all distance event progressions.
Women's marathon is the most obvious, where the WR improved by leaps and bounds until 1985 - the last year transfusions were legal - and then hit a brick wall that would not be broken until 1998.
The men's 5000 WR inched toward sub-13 and then Aouita, last of the great early 80's dopers, finally got there in 1987, after which nobody got near 13 until Gebreselassie.
Look at the men's 1500 - 3:29's by Coe and Aouita, then no sub-3:30's for the next 5 years until Morceli.
What did Kipketer and Coe have that nobody else had? Between 1979 and 1985, the WL was under 1:42.50 four times. Transfusions got banned, and between 1986 and 1993, nobody broke 1:42.50. Along comes EPO and the WL drops back to sub-1:42.50 five times from 1994-2002.
women's 5000. WR advances by leaps and bounds until 1986 when Kristiansen is just a little bit better than Zola Budd. Then suddenly the WL falls back to around 15 flat for several years, nobody beats Kristiansen until 1995.
The years between 1986 and 1993 are the elephant in the room of athletics. Everyone points to 90's performances as a sign of rampant doping, but they ignore the equally damning evidence against the early 80's. After 1986, athletes got slower and stayed slower, across the board. If all the 90's greats have an asterisk by their name, so should all those 1978-1985 superstars.
Konchellah was probably capable of sub 1:42.50, his PB of 1:43.07 is a championship race and I don't think he had many paced races.
Aouita ran a 5000m in '87 and 3000m WR in '89. There was a 10k WR in '89
MagicMiler wrote:
Bad Wigins wrote:never mind the men's 10,000, you can see the EPO effect and the transfusion effect in all distance event progressions.
Women's marathon is the most obvious, where the WR improved by leaps and bounds until 1985 - the last year transfusions were legal - and then hit a brick wall that would not be broken until 1998.
The men's 5000 WR inched toward sub-13 and then Aouita, last of the great early 80's dopers, finally got there in 1987, after which nobody got near 13 until Gebreselassie.
Look at the men's 1500 - 3:29's by Coe and Aouita, then no sub-3:30's for the next 5 years until Morceli.
What did Kipketer and Coe have that nobody else had? Between 1979 and 1985, the WL was under 1:42.50 four times. Transfusions got banned, and between 1986 and 1993, nobody broke 1:42.50. Along comes EPO and the WL drops back to sub-1:42.50 five times from 1994-2002.
women's 5000. WR advances by leaps and bounds until 1986 when Kristiansen is just a little bit better than Zola Budd. Then suddenly the WL falls back to around 15 flat for several years, nobody beats Kristiansen until 1995.
The years between 1986 and 1993 are the elephant in the room of athletics. Everyone points to 90's performances as a sign of rampant doping, but they ignore the equally damning evidence against the early 80's. After 1986, athletes got slower and stayed slower, across the board. If all the 90's greats have an asterisk by their name, so should all those 1978-1985 superstars.
Konchellah was probably capable of sub 1:42.50, his PB of 1:43.07 is a championship race and I don't think he had many paced races.
Aouita ran a 5000m in '87 and 3000m WR in '89. There was a 10k WR in '89
Did you go through the archives looking for this especially?
Interestingly there has only been one fast 5k since the ABP came in (Paris 2012 Diamond League) less are running sub 13 too compared with 20 years ago. Take out Monaco 1500m and times in that event have stalled to.
Sport physiologist wrote:
[quote]
This is an explanation that uninformed people repeat over and over again. But they don't realize that when East Africans started to "rule" distance running around 1990, they didn't run much faster than the generation of runners before. In fact, in the 800/1500 m they were running SLOWER times! It was only after the introduction of EPO in 1995 that their times exploded to unseen heights in all distances.
Kiptanui was breaking WRs from '92 onwards and that was on the basis of gatecrashing Baumann's WR attempt. Not many top African's were running in paced world records at this stage.
Kirui ran 13:02 as a 19yo alone without to win 1993 5k beating a 19yo Geb who was in silver. With drafting/pacing Kirui surely could have taken the WR. Geb took the 5000m WR as a 20yo the next year.
Now they may or may not have doped but in terms of natural talent that's pretty immense from both men.
Over the last 30 years we'd have to say they're more talented at longer distances than 800/1500 where they still have talent but not as much in depth.
Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:
[quote]
Did you go through the archives looking for this especially?
Interestingly there has only been one fast 5k since the ABP came in (Paris 2012 Diamond League) less are running sub 13 too compared with 20 years ago. Take out Monaco 1500m and times in that event have stalled to.
Pretty much, it's a topic that intrigues me.
There is more money on the road than track now. While the 5k/10k have stalled the marathon has gone from 2:06 to 2:02. Some of the best like Musyoki and Kiprotich have never ran track. Farah complained he couldn't get pacing for a 10k time trial, whether he was attempting a record, I don't know. He is probably better than his 26:46 and 12:53. He's managed high 7:23 for the indoor 3k. That's faster than Geb, Bekele and nearly as quick as Guerrouj. Although the argument with Farah is he may simply be trained to be fast at the final stages of races rather than be a world record breaker anyway.
MagicMiler wrote:
He's managed high 7:23 for the indoor 3k.
No, he hasn't. The world record is 7:24.90 by Daniel Komen.
I remembered that wrong, you're right, it's 2mile Farah managed 8:03 in, which is the 4th fastest man at the distance as a whole. Albeit that it isn't ran too frequently and 5 seconds slower than Komen.
The marathon doesn't appear to be relevant to EPO discussion.The record has dropped since blood testing tightened up but the event is dominated by ageing track stars.
Where is the new generation of East African talent that can run the sort of times we saw 20 years ago. If the events weren't affected greatly by blood doping we should be seeing these times on a regular basis. The rabbits are still available for pacing. There are a couple of female athletes producing great times but they are highly suspicious athletes.
But remember that most of the world was pretty much occupied with non athletic pursuits 1939-45 and life - by which I mean standard of living, availability of sufficient good quality food etc. - didn't return to "normal" in many European counties until well after 1945. In the UK rationing of some very basic foodstuffs lasted until well into the 1950s.
I really don't believe there was an EPO era that affected the 10,000m world record progression.
You really just had a handful of talented guys that went after it a lot and today's runners don't chase the clock on the track.
I am not saying they were clean while breaking the record over and over.
I am saying that today's runners may be just as drugged but focus more on winning races than leading at a fast pace.
We do not know how fats Farah can run. We know that he doesn't attempt to run fast but his range indicates he should be able to run quite fast over 10,000m.
The marathon times keep dropping.
There are more sub 3:30 1500m runners than ever.
I don't think we are in a clean era right now.
It's that the 5000 and 10000 runners don't go for it now.
Excellent post and analysis. I agree with all of it.
Questioner of Things wrote:
Ho Hum wrote:On the other hand, Solinsky destroyed 27:07 and hasn't even made a US Olympic team, let alone medaled. Or take Derrick for example; most would agree that he's clean, and he ran faster as a college senior than Viren ever did. These performances both came in the EPO testing era. I think the 10000m WR was very weak leading into the '90s, which set up what looks like an incredible drop.
Also, the 10000m as an event has been disappearing from Diamond League meets, which makes it much more difficult to run a fast time. I'm not saying that EPO didn't have an effect, but much of that record drop should've come regardless of whether guys were clean.
Nothing against Derrick. He is one of my favorite athletes. And I have absolutely no reason to suspect him beyond the "everyone is under suspicion at this point" argument.
That said, how does anyone know? Seriously, I have no freakin clue as to whether Derrick is clean. And the "most would agree" standard carries absolutely zero weight in my book.
Come on, that's a little ridiculous. "Most would agree" is a normative arguments, and I think most would agree that consensus carries a lot of weight in our sport. Norms are quite powerful in this sense; Eastern European women from the 90s, for example, have an established norm of doping - so much so that, even without definitive proof, we can essentially dismiss their times. There is nothing to indicate that Derrick has doped nor is there to indicate a culture of EPO use within the Bowerman TC.
MagicMiler wrote:Konchellah was probably capable of sub 1:42.50, his PB of 1:43.07 is a championship race and I don't think he had many paced races
he was worth helluva lot quicker than 1'42.5 on day of his 1'43-flat gold
he ran ~ 6m extra wide on bends with little drafting as so wide most of race
a route-1 time of
~ 1'42-low
& with lack of drafting
1'42-flat
his 1st slap was far too slow compared to what he wouda gone out in if chasing clock
he went ~ 50.9 / 52.1 which cost compared to 2s +ve splits ~ 0.25s
-> 1'41-high
& that was his 4th consecutive day of 800s !!!
he ran 1'47.9, 1'45.5 !, 1'46.1 then 1'43.0
if he was fully rested for final in a 1-off TT drafted to bell, he wouda been looking at
1'41-mid
OP's analysis has a lot of words.
Just look at the times and how large of chunks Gebresalassie took out of it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10,000_metres_world_record_progression
MagicMiler wrote:
Subway Surfers Addiction wrote:[quote]
Did you go through the archives looking for this especially?
Interestingly there has only been one fast 5k since the ABP came in (Paris 2012 Diamond League) less are running sub 13 too compared with 20 years ago. Take out Monaco 1500m and times in that event have stalled to.
Pretty much, it's a topic that intrigues me.
There is more money on the road than track now. While the 5k/10k have stalled the marathon has gone from 2:06 to 2:02. Some of the best like Musyoki and Kiprotich have never ran track. Farah complained he couldn't get pacing for a 10k time trial, whether he was attempting a record, I don't know. He is probably better than his 26:46 and 12:53. He's managed high 7:23 for the indoor 3k. That's faster than Geb, Bekele and nearly as quick as Guerrouj. Although the argument with Farah is he may simply be trained to be fast at the final stages of races rather than be a world record breaker anyway.
Mo's best 3k is 7:32 in Birmingham this year outdoor and 7:33 indoors in Birmingham as well.
Renato Canova is digging his own grave