OMG...Jakob 3:46.46 in the mile!!

Caveat to that, one of the 5 times faster than Ingebrigtsen (Cram's 3:46.32) was run in an era when EPO (the drug) didn't exist, so of course there was no test for it!

Well technically the drug did exist then but yeah…

No one got near Bekele's marks over 5 and 10k for well over a decade, then just as a new shoe with improved energy return emerges in 2019, someone comes along and knocks massive chunks off their pbs and breaks 2 WR that had hitherto been unapproacheable.

Of course the new shoes and faster tracks (Warholm's ridiculous time on track designed to be faster than any before it) have enabled faster times the past 3 or 4 seasons.

I'd say a conservative conversion for the new shoes would be about 6-7 secs over 5000m and about 1.5 - 2 secs over 1500m/mile.

I concur with your point here. It seems pretty clear.

Coe run only once 1:41

Don't make him a God.

One of the best qualities of a runner is consistency.

Shall we enumerate the number of defeats of Coe in the 800m (even in a weakened Olympic event) with his 1:41?

Je crois, oui. Tous les meilleurs, ceux qui ont fait la légende de l’athlétisme, Sebastian Coe, Alberto Juantorena, Mirius Yfter, s’ils couraient à l’époque actuelle, ils seraient largués, ils ne seraient rien.

JI ran that 3:31.1 on the Monaco track, which is notoriously faster than the others in the Diamond League. Has been for years.
Most athletes run about 2 secs faster there than their fastest 'non Monaco' time.
JI's next fastest time in 2018? 3:36.06.
While I'm not saying 3:36 was a measure of his top ability then, 3:31.1 was not really indicative of what he was capable of either. If you're going to accept it then you can safely say almost anyone competing before 2010 would have run some 2 secs faster than their pb had they the Monaco track (and the even paced set up) to run on.

The first EPO test arrived at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and was not particularly effective. It could only detect if you had taken EPO for something like 48hrs before. I'm not sure if that is the exact stat, but the window of detection was pretty small. The IOC had purposely gone for the test that had a narrow window of detection rather than the one with a longer period of effectiveness. Then there were several false positives thrown up by the first test.

It wasn't until 2005 that a second and vastly improved EPO test was introduced, and thereafter, for the next few years, the number of really fats times in endurance events fell off. It is now known that during all this time many of the poorer countries (including Kenya but I'm not sure about Morroco)couldn't afford OOC or OOS testing for their athletes, so I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of tests took place on the circuit.

Said Aouita made an ignorant statement. Seb Coe won 2 Olympic Gold medals at 1500m and ran 1:41 and 3:29. Wearing today’s shoes he could compete with the best of today. You sound like an idiot.

Ok, he ran a 1:42.3 and a 2:12.1 1000m (worth 1:42.5 for 800m) too. During the period he ran those times, no one else in history had run faster than 1:43.4, so there wasn't much cause for him to be running regular 1:41's to win races! There also wasn't the circuit (Diamond League) like it is today. Not every meet had a pacer running a 50 secs first lap, as has been the case the past 25 years or so. In those days there were actual tactics involved in trying to win races. The modern scene is far more conducive to run multiple fast times over 2 laps during the course of a season than was the case in the early 1980's.

The fact Coe was world ranked No. 1 in 79, 81, 82 and 86, ranked No. 2 in 80, 84, and No. 3 in 78 and 85. I think that's more consistency than any current elites competing over 800m have managed.

The fact that ony 2 men over 800m and 1 over 1000m have run faster than he did over 40 years ago, without the faster tracks and super spikes, not to mention double Olympic gold over 1500m and still the 12th fastest over 1 mile, does indeed justify a claim to being an all time great.

He won far more than he lost. He only lost 2 races in 4 years between Sep 78 and Sep 82. Yes, 1 was in the Olympic final, but he ran a terrible tactical race and was only beaten by Ovett, another alltime great. His record in the Olympics is better than Kipketer's over 2 laps.

Coe also won golds over 800m at the European Indoors in 77, the European Cups in 79 and 81, the World Cup in 81 and the 86 European Championships.

Even running in old shoes on tracks from 40 years ago, 1:41 trumps anyone currently competing with the faster spikes. Wearing today's shoes he would be the man to beat in both event.

If Monaco ran a mile, how many 346 would we see? Seriously go look at the all time list since 2010. The top 50 performance list in Monaco and toyoko and a few random races.

Yeah I was agreeing with you and now you just made the case that Coe was doping and you are probably correct.

No it doesn't. If Rudisha was running in the latest spikes on the Tokyo track from last year's Olympics, he would probably go sub 1:40. I just don't think the current crop of 800m runners are as good as Coe or Cruz from the 80's ot Kipketer from the 90's.

And yes, I was agreeing with your agreeing with me.

Well anyway I am sure you will agree with me that Aouita was suspect and he was the one complaining about all the doping in the modern era in that interview. Coe was one of the all time greats, clean or not. Aouita was an all time great as well.

I don't understand why you go to such great lengths to weave this tapestry together to explain 4 performers in the "EPO-era".

If EPO and testing were so highly connected to high distance running performance, we should have seen many more runners *worldwide* surpassing the middle distance greats of the '80s like Coe and Ovett and Cram, over the course of a decade and a half, up to your magic milestone of 2005, and similarly for longer distances, the performances of Moorcroft, Steve Jones, Fernando Mamede, and Carlos Lopes. It should have been as obvious as the worldwide jump in performances we saw with new shoes. Instead, we only see it from local regions in East and somewhat less in North Africa, including those athletes who went to countries that can afford OOC testing, like the USA, Denmark, the UK, and Japan.

I think it was first synthesised in 1985. So no it wasn't available as a drug until the 90s.