Surprise! wrote:
So you don't think Kipchoge is doping even though he has rewritten the record books in the most dominant way possible, but Jakob running several seconds off the world record is? I think they both are as well as most everyone at the top, but I don't see Jakob running times that "don't seem real" when plenty of people have run those times, but Kipchoge's a believable. So bizarre.
No, with Ingebrigtsen it doesn't have anything to do with the times he puts up. No, his times are fine to me. No, it's his kick with me.
Seeing a white guy from Norway doing that to Africans just looks kind of weird to me, because it's not something you see everyday.
The 5000 final at the World Championships.
Like who else in the world does that other than him? That's why sometimes it doesn't look real to me.
It's fun to watch, and I always like to see his races, but he just sometimes does something that I've never seen anybody do before. And of course he's been good since he was a teenager, but it's still weird to me to see something like that just the same.
If he were African, I honestly wouldn't bat an eye. And he would still be fun to watch, but it wouldn't be as weird to me. Like Mo Farah's kick in 2012. He was probably doping, but it wasn't weird or unbelievable to me to see his kick, because you see that kind of thing all the time with the Africans, and it was fun as hell to watch.
If Ingebrigtsen were to break El Guerrouj's "godly" 3:26 I would believe it. I believe it is possible for him to do it, but the dude is still kind of weird to me. He is a bit of a unicorn, in my opinion. 😁
As for Kipchoge and the marathon, as was posted, his times are dropping the record by 30 seconds here and 30 seconds there over a span of years.
If it were a minute and half here, and two minutes there, ever year, then that would be unbelievable. But 30 seconds here and there over 26 miles over a span of years doesn't really feel otherworldly to me, it just doesn't. It's very easy to buy.
And like Spike Lee: "Is it the hair cut?" "Is it the extra long shorts?" "Is it the short socks?" "Money, it's gotta be the shoes."
Obviously the super shoes help too.
If you've worn them, don't you feel faster in them too? Whether it's a combination of placebo effect and marketing hype, or if it's real, the shoes are fast.
What percentage they help, a little or a lot, I don't know. But it is undeniable that they help. And could Kipchoge put up those times without the shoes? I would say no, I believe they are that much of a factor.
Abebe Bikila ran 2:15 barefoot in 1960, and 2:12 four years later in Puma's. And 58 years later, Eliud Kipchoge ran 2:01 in Nike's super shoes. Okay, I buy it.
And of course, yes, he could be doping. But like I said earlier, oddly enough, to me, because it's the marathon, it doesn't really hit me like it would for a 100, or 200 or 400 or something like that. So it doesn't feel unreal in the same sense that it would in shorter events. It just doesn't.
If what Kipchoge is doing feels unreal to you, what do you think is a real time that he could do?