Beatrice Chebet World record 5km 13:52 Cursa dels Nassos

19 seconds. But only 11 off her track record. And according to you track and road are comparable, as you always compare Cheptegei's track time to Jakob's road time.

I look forward to more women showing their true potential, so that misogynists like you will continue to seethe and post 100 times a day about it.

I don't get the folks making the super shoes argument in 2025. They've been out for 9 years, widely used by every pro for at least 6 years and haven't really gotten better IMO in about 6 years as well(OG Next% is still my favorite.)

So it's not like their breaking non-supershoe records.

You’re assuming every pro has been in their prime for 6 years? The best 1500-HM runners in this generation are Kipyegon/Chebet/Hassan/Gidey/Tsegay and maybe N’getich. The data pretty much shows they’ll blow away any existing pre-supershoes mark (road or track) when they get good conditions with the new shoes. So it’s not the supershoes argument as much when this crop of the best in the era gets the opportunity.

Only 11 secs on the track? Well, given her road performance she should be able to take 20 off her best track time, too - so get ready for 12:45. But it won't stop there - 13 mins, here she comes. Gee - she will be catching Jakob! A farcical sport followed by simple-minded dreamers.

Why are people making doping arguments in 2025? EPO has been out since the '90s, blood doping since the '70s, HGH was used as far back as the '80s, and steroids as far back as the '50s.

Before supershoes, the 5000m track times were 14:11 from Tirunesh Dibaba (2008), and 14:12.6 (2016) from Almaz Ayana. For the road, Joyciline Kepkosgei in 14:32. Seems like if doping is the reason now for 13:54, it's hard to explain why we had to wait until 2024.

Besides shoes, there are other factors, like pacing and drafting and conditions. It seems reasonable that it takes years for the new records to come, as all the factors align based on an increasing number of opportunities.

"It seems reasonable that it takes years for the new records to come, as all the factors align based on an increasing number of opportunities."

A long-winded description of advances in doping.

I guess when you thinking is the equivalent of a hammer, you can only see nails.

In 1985, Ingrid Kristiansen ran 5000m in 14:37. 35 years later, after three decades of the EPO-era, the record was 26 seconds faster, at 14:11, as late as summer 2020.

But for you, the next 17 seconds, in the 4+ years from Oct. 2020- Dec. 2024, in the supershoe era, with increased East African testing including a local East African lab, is best explained by speculative "advances in doping".

As you know: EPO has been out since the '90s, blood doping since the '70s, HGH was used as far back as the '80s, and steroids as far back as the '50s. What is your point comparing Kristiansen (no OOC testing, possibly steroids + (uncontrolled) blood doping + HGH according to Rekrunner), T. Dibaba (OOC testing, no ABP, possibly (tested) EPO + steroids + (uncontrolled) blood doping + HGH), and Chebet (OOC testing, ABP, possibly SARMS + speed peptides + (tested) EPO + steroids + blood doping + HGH, supershoes)?

Obviously doping continues to improve in addition to the above. Examples include CERA, advances in SARMS and steroids, and speed peptides. Likewise, technologies improve, examples being shoes, track, and drug testing.

One can, often in hindsight only, see whether the doping improvements outpace the testing improvements - distance and gender specific. See e.g. the very old 800 m W WR and the 1500 m M WR, and that supershoes were needed to break the decades old WRs of 3000 m M, 5000 m M, and 10,000 m M, and marathon W. Or, the spread of steroid, of blood doping, of EPO compared to the beginning of testing at Olympics, out of competition testing, EPO tests, and ABP.

When was the last substantial testing advancement? Steroidal module in the ABP? That was about a decade ago.

If doping were irrelevant, all WRs would continue to improve from decade to decade, along with the tech improvements and training knowledge etc.

When your brain has clearly been affected by a hammer what you imagine is that somewhere in the distant past, when doping entered the sport, it suddenly stopped - for no reason - and unlike every other part of the sport there have been absolutely no advancements in that which athletes purchase on the black market for over a billion Euros world-wide every year.

I thought the comparison was rather telling -- in the 35 years between 1985 and 2020, the average rate of improvement from all sources was less than 1 second per year, while in about 4+ years of the supershoe era, the rate of improvement jumped to about 4 seconds per year. If we use my convention of looking at non-Africans as their own group, as the East African women were rather late to the party, then the incremental improvements since 1985, from all sources, become even smaller.

Yet still for some, it is more obvious to think the shoes haven't improved performance all that much, and the huge performance jumps we are seeing in the "supershoe era" are due to advances in doping -- some powerful new superdrug that no one really knows about yet.

One new advancement in anti-doping is a local WADA lab in Nairobi which permits OOC blood testing. Other new advancements are the creation of the AIU, the creation of Rule 15 and Category A, B, C groups, and increased IC and OOC testing from both the AIU and ADAK. These are all recent advancements in the supershoe era.

I guess I will have to wait again, for the day we can look in hindsight at the new drug of the 2020s.

You are mixing 5000 track with 5k road, and are ignoring the men. And the up and down in drugs and testing, causing stagnation between 2004/2008 and 2020. (Ingrid Kristiansen ran 5000m in 14:37 in 1986, not 1985.)

Let's look at the whole picture:

World records, 5000 m, men/women:

1985: 13:00.40/14:48.07

1990: 12:58.39/14:37.33 - biggest jump for the women, 2.2 sec/year

1995: 12:44.39/14:36.45 - biggest jump for the men, 2.8 sec/year

2000: 12:39.36/14:28.09

2005: 12:37.35/14:24.68 - EPO testing start in 2000/01

2010: 12:37.35/14:11.15 - stagnation for men (ABP start in 2009)

2015: 12:37.35/14:11.15 - stagnation for men and women

2020: 12:35.36/14:06.62 - first improvements since 2004/2008 (superspikes in 2019)
2024: 12:35.36/14:00.21 - stagnation for men

Men, 1985 - 2020: 0.7 sec/year; since 2020: no improvement (!)

Women, 1985 - 2020: 0.9 sec/year; since 2020: 1.6 sec/year (not 4!)

You are welcome.

It was in 1986.

Right, 1986, not 1985.

So, looking at your track data, for the men, using your 5-year snapshots, in the 29+ years between 1995 and 2024, we have 9 seconds improvement, or 0.3 seconds per year. This suggests against any significant advances in doping post-1995, let alone during the supershoe era. While for the women, on the track, we have 36 seconds improvement in that same time period, 4x the men, at 1.2 seconds per year.

The reason for these discrepancies is that doping and testing are not the only relevant factors (if at all). Attempts to link these improvements with doping and testing milestones, while ignoring the remaining context, seem artificial and forced, and often contradictory.

Here are the relevant factors I see:

- Comparing women's progress to men's progress needs to consider that more men compete and have been competing for longer, meaning the WR milestones are achieved sooner than with women. The relevant milestones won't necessarily line up in the same 5-year windows.

- 1980-1986 was an era of maturation for the women's 5000m. A Zola Budd and Ingrid Kristiansen rivalry (along with a few others) took a weak record of 15:30 down to 14:37. This seems like a more relevant "mature" starting point, and may still be relatively weak.

- Much of the recent progress from the 1980s to today comes from East Africans: the men starting with Geb in the mid-1990s, and for the women, with Defar/Dibaba around the mid-2000s. If we isolate and look at non-Africans, the changes become much smaller. For the men, between Moorcroft's 13:00.41 and Baumann's 12:54.7 non-African record, this was a 6-second improvement over nearly 40 years, from 1982 to as late as 2020, before an explosion of supershoe era performances from at least half a dozen non-Africans faster than Baumann brought the non-African record down by 7.7 seconds to 12:46.96. For the women, we see a 14 second improvement from Kristiansen's 14:37 to Shobukhova's 14:23, until 2020, and thereafter only Alicia Monson runs faster by another 4 seconds to 14:19.

- Comparing East Africans to non-Africans, the non-African men have been 12-17 seconds slower than the East Africans, while the non-African women have been 15-19 seconds slower.

Has doping been reduced in the sport and has it ceased to develop? Or are you just maintaining your oft-repeated view that doping doesn't generally enhance performance?

I don't know. Maybe doping has reduced in sport, and has ceased to develop. What does the data tell us?

My often repeated view is that you don't have sufficient data to support your many beliefs.

Without any data strongly connecting doping to elite performances and showing doped elite performances are superior to clean elite performances, every doping discussion is speculative hypotheticals and can lead to no conclusions.