For middle distance athletes from 800m-5000m, only those who can OPEN THEIR LEGS UP have any future in these events.
The scouts will filter the athletes at youth level and assess who can open up their legs and who cannot. Those who can gets streamed into 800-5000m events while those who can't get bounced to the 10000m, half marathon or marathon immediately.
Have you seen Naoko Takahashi the marathoner run before? Those nauseating baby steps with super high cadence frequency? No wonder she can only succeed in the marathon and only briefly before injury took a toll on her because her legs hit the ground way more times than all the other marathoners who had bigger stride length and lower cadence frequency, thus causing her more wear and tear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Naoko was gone as fast as she burned brightly.
Can you see the logic now sir???? The larger your stride length at the same cadence frequency in any given race of any distance, you are airborne far longer than another athlete with smaller stride length and higher or same cadence frequency, thus you are not only faster or move faster since you spend more time flying in the air, you are more durable in terms of wear and tear as you are literally 'flying in the air' most of the time rather than stuck on the ground with longer ground contact times due to small stride length and higher cadence frequency.
An athlete with small stride length and same/higher cadence frequency (assuming both athletes are same height and same age group of course!!!) doesn't have as much powerful elasticity or coefficient of springy-ness in his muscle fibers, or, doesn't utilize and recruit enough muscle fiber numbers from every square inch of his body to propel him or her forwards which means that for 2 athletes of the same height and same age-group at least, the one with the smaller stride length and higher/same cadence frequency isn't as epigenetically talented or environmentally well-trained and sharpened than the other with a bigger one.
But height shouldn't also matter actually as guys like Morceli and El G were slightly shorter than Jakob and Josh Kerr and wore shoes that literally glued to the track surface and had no spring but had nearly twice as large stride length at same cadence frequency???????
This is why there is more prestige in the 800-5000m events. Those athletes who can get streamed into these events 'have made it' as these are the creme de la creme of athletic talents, while those that get streamed straight into the 10000m and above are considered 'unwanted' or 'second rate' at best. Athletically, they are inferior to the very best at the 800-5000m who later will obviously make the move up to the 10000m and above events and beat the sh*t out of those 'second rate' athletes, you feeling me sir????
It's all about stride length, the cadence follows or is a given for the given stride length.
Those athletes on PEDs tend to be unable to open up their legs as well as clean and naturally environmentally epigenetically gifted guys like Morceli and El G. You will know who are the PED junkies just based off of one of the salient correlating attributes which is their stunted and underdeveloped stride length and very high cadence frequency yet running just as fast!!!! That's impossible and against the laws of Physics. That would be the law of Chemistry (PEDs)!!!!!
Length is how you move and cover ground first and foremost, not cadence. Cadence is just an afterthought!!!!