What’s your opinion on Sebastian Coe?

Ah ok, then clearly he's off the hook!

Glad to hear he also never tested positive, like Armstrong, Virenque etc...

The 36.2 300m wasn´t THE FOLLOWING YEAR (to 1973) but one year later namely 1975 (he was injured most of 1974). The junior international 1500m win was also in 1975 where Coe 18.

Coe started early and was an good runner on local and regional level from early on but he wasn´t dominant on national and international level before passing 20.

In his youth wasn´t a talent comparable to the current young top runner Jakob I.

Age 13:
Coe: 4:31 in the 1500m

Jakob: 4:05

Age 14:

Coe: 2:08 in the 800m and 4:18 in the 1500m

Jakob: 1:52.60 and 3:48.37

Age 15:

Coe: 1:59.9, 4:05.9 and 8:49.9 in the 3000m

Jakob: 1:51.07, 3:42.44 and 8:22.25

Age 16:

Coe: 1:56.0, 3:55, 8:34.6

Jakob: 149.4, 3:39.92 and 8:00.01

Age 17:

Coe: Injured

Jakob: 3:31.18 in the 1500m

Age 18:

Coe: 1:53.8, 3:45.2 and 8:14.2

Jakob: 3:30.16

Age 19:

Coe: 1:47.4, 3:58.3 in the mile

Jakob: 1:46.44 and 3:51.30 in the mile at 18 (didn´t run at 19)

So until age 20 Jakob was on a much higher level than Coe except for the 800m where Jakob was only about 1 second in front at 19.

Coe got a bronze in the European Junior Championships at 18.

Jakob didn´t win a 1500m U20 title since he was tripped in the final at 16 but he won the 5000m and the 3000m st. easily. And next year at 17 he took silver in the U20 WC 1500m and bronze in the 5000m. And later that year he won the European senior title in both the 1500m and the 5000m.

Coe ran a lot of X country races as a young teenager but was normally beaten on the national level.

Jakob won at least a Nordic title as a young teenager.

And at age 15 he was a close runner up in the national SENIOR X country 4 km race and after that probably nobody in Norway (including his older brothers?) were able beat him.

Shortly after turning 16 he won his first European U20 X country title which was followed by 3 more (until he moved directly to the senior level where he now has 2 titles).

Your 'point' doesn't have any substance. Do Putin and the UK tabloids have strong motives to uncover British insider traders?? So your argument Is that although there is not a shred of evidence that Coe doped, he must have because the Brits never caught Jack the Ripper??

Well I think this thread needs to be closed now. The LetsRun anti-bad teeth British doping unit have proven conclusively that Coe doped because his times at 13 were inferior to Jakob's, and because the British never caught Jack the Ripper.

I think you are seriously under-estimating Coe's win in the English Schools at age 16. That in effect is the national championship for the age group (or was at that time). He beat a very good runner in Ian Ray, a national x-country champion at the time, and later winner of the Berlin Marathon.

In short he was a very good 16-year-old.

That said, he was still very physical underdeveloped for his age, which can be seen in the video posted early when he is racing Moorcroft and Walker as a 19-year-old.

He may not have been Jacob at 13-20, but he was always among the best of his age, and was a National Champion at 16.

Infidelity, impropriety: weak moral fiber.

I don't think anyone can claim Coe "conclusively" doped, but the knowledge about the benefits of e.g. blood doping was common knowledge by the early 1980s, his fellow Brits inquired from their doctors about the possibility to blood dope, and there was public speculation of Coe having blood doped because of his strange illnesses etc.

Nothing of the above holds true in regarding to Kipchoge Keino, who you consider a doper. There is even barely any speculation of him having doped even later except some evolving and very vague allegations by Charlie Francis made some 2-3 decades later that other books and articles do not even bother using as a source, so dubious the source is.

Holy crud. Just watching that footage of Walker in his all black NZ strip absoutely motoring around that last bend and down the finishing straight makes me want to get out of the door and hammer out a hard ten miler. But I can't as I'm nursing a calf strain right now ... Oh no I wish I hadn't watched that ...

But speed wise, he was very slow for a person who would run 1:44 at 20.

He ran a 50.5 relay split which is about a 51 open 400m. Then, 2 years later he’s running two 400s at nearly the same pace.

Imagine if every 53 second HS senior became a 1:48 runner at age 20.

Did I write ANYTHING about doping.

Opposite you I almost never do.

I just stated that Coe as a teen was a good runner on the national level but far from Jakob´s level troughout that part of their careers.

No, you didn't, but then your post is irrelevant to the thread if it's not about doping. I apologize if I credited you with a normal level of intelligence and social ability. Other posters were arguing that Coe doped because he was in their eyes not an outstandingly talented junior. Then you make a post comparing his times with Jakob's. As I say, most people not on the aspergers scale would assume you were making a point in relation to that, and not just butting into a thread discussing whether Coe doped with a completely random and irrelevant post.

Americans here often make the point that Coe doped because he retired 'just after' blood doping was made illegal' or 'just after testing for steroids was brought in', ignoring the fact that he continued for at least several years past these points, and recorded world class times despite his advancing age.

Well what about the fact that he retired just as EPO was coming on to the scene? So Coe was a dirty doper, and worse than his rivals, and he and his father had access to all the cutting edge doping tricks, but he chose to quit just when the most powerful and game changing endurance drug was coming on to the scene? Strange. If he had gone on the EPO bandwagon, in 90 or 91, even assuming he had been blood doping previously, you would expect EPO to give him a big boost in his twilight years. He could have had a good shot at getting that 3rd 1500m gold in Barcelona given that he still had low 1:43 speed in 89.

For that matter, all the Brits retired in 1990-1992, including Peter Elliott, just when EPO was coming on to the scene. Not only did British performances (almost uniquely) get slower during the full throttle EPO era, which to any logical person would suggest the British did not get on the EPO wagon in the 90's, but the 'dirty' 80's Brits all retired just when EPO came on the scene and could be expected to extend their world class careers into their mid-30s.

But there has never been such a prodigous talent as Jakob over those distances in his teens, so does that mean that all elite athletes as seniors must have doped as they weren't as good as Jakob as a teenager?

Everyone develops at a different rate. Some stop growing and are practically adults by 15/16, while others are still scrawny kids at 18. Considering his lack of height and small frame, Coe was always one of the country's leading talents. He was the best in the UK over 3000m at 16 and the third best in Europe over 1500m at 18. Comparisons with Jakob are meaningless as they are from eras 40 years apart and developed at different rates.

While EPO wasn't mass produced and available to the masses (as a medical treatment) until the late 80s, techniques to refine, purify and prepare it were well known in the late 70s to early 80s. In 1985, patents to mass produce synthetic EPO were submitted, which means the research and the ability to produce it in a non industrial scale was already well established.

Any chemist at the time with a bit of education on EPO, such as those who created the Loughborough University Science lab in 1978, would have been able to produce small injectable quantities, but plenty enough to cover a few athletes.

The Brits in question simply retired when EPO became a little too visible, and available to others, and officially banned by the IOC in the year 1990.

So when did Steve Ovett get his first Loughborough University science lab EPO injection? Pretty sure the guy who won the 77 World Cup and 78 European Championships waving to the crowd had gone on EPO in late 78 or 79 he would have ran faster than El G instead of a 3:30 pb.

Based

Such an ignorant and baseless claim. Performance-enhancing drugs were widely available in the 1980s & testing was, prior to 1989, very limited. The overwhelming majority of '80s vintage PEDS, however, would not have advantaged a middle-stance runner like Coe. There was no EPO back then & no designer steroids that could have boosted his performance without increasing his mass to his detriment. Amphetamines? Not a great option for anyone competing in events in which a low-resting heartrate is pretty important. If he'd been a competitive archer, shooter, or biathlete beta blockers might have offered an edge, but they tend to diminish anaerobic capacity, which you still need a good bit of if you're competing at any race from 400-1500m, give or take. Coe very likely was just what he appeared to be--a great talent who trained very hard & trained smart. Were there long sprinters & middle-distance runners who juiced in the '70s & '80s who juiced? Yes, most definitely, but the anyone who was on gear in that era stuck out like a sore (and very muscular!) thumb. Coe's 5-9 (175 cm tall) & competed at a weight of about 54-55 kilos. Coe DID have a superb strength-to-weight ratio & more fast-twitch muscle fiber than most of his competitors. Like most great runners, he chose his parents (and ancestors) very wisely. His father was (mostly) English/Irish but he's 1/4 Punjabi on his mum's side. He's also got a goodly chunk of West African (Jamaican) DNA. That's a pretty damn good template for an 800/1500 meter superstar. Plus his dad was an athletics coach, which certainly didn't hurt. A modern middle-distance runner might be able to find a way to gear up without putting on a lot of mass but back in Coe's time juicers, both male & female, who competed in races from the quarter to the mile couldn't help looking jacked. They all kinda looked like Lance Armstrong, including the women. ;-)

Say what you will about the British athletics culture at the time (and there are plenty of uncomplimentary things to say) but this isn't the USSR or GDR we're talking about. The country may be athletics mad, and they may have subsidized the care & feeding of top athletes, but they didn't use them as lab rats. Synthetic EPO didn't even exist before 1983. Britain's secret sauce for athletic success wasn't brewed in a lab. Colonialism did a good bit to expand their athletic fortunes, however. Dunno about Cram & Ovett but Coe's 1/4 Punjabi Indian on his Mum's side & also has West African blood vis-a-vis George Hyde Clark, a slave-owning ancestor who made his fortune in Jamaica. Given Seb's extremely light build & the kinds of PEDs that were available in the '70s & '80s it is VERY unlikely that he got his 46 second quarter speed & killer kick out of a bottle. He got 'em from slaves!