Farah saying he was in France but posting a picture of Sabadell Spain

trackfan. wrote:

Every kenyan mens track distance record is now at least 15 years old,all set between 1997 and 2001

Thanks. Looks like these "coincidences" keep coming. Where is rjm?

And then, there is Rudisha.

Where your statistical trend fails:1) When you apply this same analysis to non-African nations. We should be able to observe similar trends in the '90's for Americans, Europeans, or Australians, matching your timeline. Maybe the track athletes couldn't get EPO because the cyclists were using it all up.2) We see the marathon records (and half marathon and other road events) dropping massively in a timeframe when track records are stagnating, something you say is due to advances in EPO testing and the ABP.

casual obsever wrote:

Well, the statistics back me up, or more precisely, back up the timeline of the EPO tests and ABP. It is somewhat saddening, but nothing new.

...

All trolling fun aside, I really can't fathom how anyone can still (pretend to) believe in clean athletics. Note also that quite a few of the above listed world records came from runners later convicted of doping. Or covered up, e.g. Carl Lewis. Or highly suspected, e.g. Flo, Junxia and Michael Johnson - I won't mention your idol here, no worries.

rekrunner wrote:

Where your statistical trend fails:

1) When you apply this same analysis to non-African nations. We should be able to observe similar trends in the '90's for Americans, Europeans, or Australians, matching your timeline. Maybe the track athletes couldn't get EPO because the cyclists were using it all up.

2) We see the marathon records (and half marathon and other road events) dropping massively in a timeframe when track records are stagnating, something you say is due to advances in EPO testing and the ABP.

1) Works pretty much the same way.

Male: 3000 + 5000 m European records are from the year 2000, and 10000 m was even older, until doorbell Mo Farah (coached by Salazar and timed by Aden) came along.

Female: 3000 m from 2002, 5000 m from 2008, 10000 m from 2008. Ok, the last two are a bit newer, but pre-ABP and they were achieved by drug cheats Shobukhova and Abeylegesse.

2) Again, there were significantly fewer half and full marathon world records from 06 - 15 than from 96 - 05, as I wrote yesterday. And this despite the focus on road instead of 10000 track. So we have no 3000, no 5000 and no 10000 m world records in the last ten years, and less on the road compared to the ten years before. Overall a huge decline in all long distance races since the incorporation of the EPO test. And that despite the briberies etc.

And "dropping massively"? Female: marathon WR is from 2003.........; half dropped by 1:32 from 1999 to 2014.

Male: marathon WR dropped by 2:45 from 1999 - 2014 (not "massively" compared to earlier times:

); half by 0:54 from 1998 to 2010.

rekrunner, for someone who claims to be so evidence based, you love to make up facts.We do observe the same trend in most European nations. A post I made from an old thread:

1) I should have said "non-Africans" and not non-African nations.

3000m record from 2000 is an African. Compare Western Europeans to Dave Moorcroft 1982, and there hasn't been much movement.

Similar for 5000m -- record from 2000 is an African. Compare Western Europeans to Dave Moorcroft 1982.

10000m -- again two Africans, and one Portuguese (barely) beat 1984 Fernando Mamede.

If the EPO-era was so great for track, shouldn't we see more European depth in the 1990s or 2000s?

Compare to cycling: in the 1990s, super-rich countries took EPO, but on the track, only Africans took EPO, outside of a few exceptions, while the super-rich countries watched.

2) Isn't 1999-2014 your timeline for improved EPO testing, where records start become scarce (all those 0's)?

Generally things took off the last 10 years on the road:

Men's marathon dropped 2 minutes between Sep. 2007 and Sep. 2014.

Half marathon, most of the gain, 53 seconds, is 2005-2010.

Women's marathon is an anomaly -- let's keep it out of this thread.

Women's half -- most of the gain, 1:13 is again 2007-2014

Clerk wrote:

rekrunner, for someone who claims to be so evidence based, you love to make up facts.

We do observe the same trend in most European nations. A post I made from an old thread:

Some notes: EPO test delivered in 2000. Italian doping investigations regarding Conconi, cyclists, in 1997. Dieter Bauman caught in 1999. I noticed that Ukraine also drew up suspicios results but wasn't recording them. PEDs illegal in France since 1967(I think). SVK national record holder Róbert Štefko (13:19, 1995) is coach of recently banned Lisa Nemec.

Conclusions: except for Norway and Sweeden, every country follows the same pattern. Several years at the 13:20 range, and then performances reaching down to 13:05 range. POR, ITA, ESP, GER, IRL all drop below 13:05, while GBR and FRA get to 13:10.

Cool stats. Thanks. I remember the impressive amount of large data in that thread...

How many of these countries got new national records over 5000 m in the last 10 years?

He was talking EPO being the cause for breaking records in the great undetectable EPO era of the 1990s, and improved testing causing the decline, then stagnation of record setting. Moorcroft had already run 13:00.41 in 1982. Times of 13:20 to 13:05 during the EPO era are not interesting, and for non-africans, EPO seems to have had a negligible record setting impact.

Clerk wrote:

rekrunner, for someone who claims to be so evidence based, you love to make up facts.

We do observe the same trend in most European nations. A post I made from an old thread:

...

Some notes: EPO test delivered in 2000. Italian doping investigations regarding Conconi, cyclists, in 1997. Dieter Bauman caught in 1999. I noticed that Ukraine also drew up suspicios results but wasn't recording them. PEDs illegal in France since 1967(I think). SVK national record holder Róbert Štefko (13:19, 1995) is coach of recently banned Lisa Nemec.

Conclusions: except for Norway and Sweeden, every country follows the same pattern. Several years at the 13:20 range, and then performances reaching down to 13:05 range. POR, ITA, ESP, GER, IRL all drop below 13:05, while GBR and FRA get to 13:10.

Read more:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6669078&page=5#ixzz4Ct6JJ9RQ

Sorry. Overlooked that this morning.

rekrunner wrote:

Generally things took off the last 10 years on the road:

Men's marathon dropped 2 minutes between Sep. 2007 and Sep. 2014.

Half marathon, most of the gain, 53 seconds, is 2005-2010.

Women's marathon is an anomaly -- let's keep it out of this thread.

Women's half -- most of the gain, 1:13 is again 2007-2014

If you click at the link above, you notice that 2 minutes in 10 years is actually not a lot of improvement for the marathon, regardless of whether you look at ladies or gentlemen. Likewise 1 minute for the half. All of that is well below average, compared to earlier times. Of course, the improvements should slowly wind down, as times progress, because of the natural limits (it can't keep progressing linearly), but still.

However, we all realize - and you said so yourself - that runners moved from the long distances on the track to the longer road races. So one would expect overall - including everything from 5000 m to the marathon - only a small decrease in the frequency of improvements. I summed that up before, but here it is again:

All long distance world records from 5000 m - marathon (it would look even more obvious when including the 3000) using your suggested 10-year increments:

06 - 15: 16*

96 - 05: 32**

86 - 95: 24

* Several of those 16 come from convicted drug cheats, as mentioned earlier today.

** The majority came from 96 - 00 of course: 20 vs. 12.

Let's not forget all the prize money and extra bonus for fast performances in recent years, which provides extra motivation and a lot of more fast runners from Kenya and Ethiopia.

There can be multiple things happening at the same time. There could be EPO use and a big increase in the number of African competitors, which caused a drop in participation among non-african countries. (The US maintained more participation than Europe.) I am not suggesting causation or correlation. I am just saying that you could have multiple factors to explain the stats that you are citing. In the 00's there is the EPO era and a decrease in track participation by non African countries. Later the economics drove a move to the roads but there also may be less testing with the road races.

This discussion probably belongs in the other "EPO doesn't work" thread.So at least we are no longer talking about these concerning zeros.I hate to beat this point, but, again, what happens to your numbers when you filter out Africans from your "world record" statistics?This is where I said your statistics break down. These "drops in records" would shrink greatly both in MAGNITUDE and in FREQUENCY.The "EPO-era" model doesn't explain why nearly ALL non-Africans worldwide missed the EPO train for three decades.Consider the ENTIRE world population, EXCLUDING East, North and South Africans, and you will see that non-African athletes worldwide have only made marginal improvements, compared to 1980s records, if at all, since the pre-EPO heyday times of Dave Moorcroft, Carlos Lopes, Fernando Mamede, etc.The zeros you were concerned about now start appearing in 1990.Shouldn't we expect more American, Europeans, Africans, Asians to at least better pre-EPO 1980s records?Exceptions are events like women's middle distance (and athletes like Dieter Baumann), where other known performance enhancing drugs, like steroids and testosterone, cannot be ruled out, and in fact seem more likely candidates than EPO.If you carry this train of thought further, it leads to some fantastic implications:- In world class distance running, in the 1990s and 2000s, ONLY Africans, took EPO, whether competing for Africa, or for/in other nations, like USA, UK, Belgium, Qatar, Japan, etc.- For 3 decades, the rest of the rich distance running world did not take EPO or blood transfusions (or for that matter any PED), since the 1985 ban of transfusions. (You picked world records, so classic "proof by example" runners like Cathal Lombard, unable to set a European record, are not interesting)- Alternatively, African athletes, like the high altitude dwelling East Africans, turn out to be the highest responders to EPO (counter-intuitively lacking altitude adaptations)- While non-African athletes in the rest of the rich running world turn out to be largely immune to the performance enhancing benefits of EPO, with respect to world record setting performance- If we want to include Clerk's data, where he sees EPO patterns, European athletes of the 1990's and 2000's needed EPO just to come within 5 seconds of the 1982 times of Moorcroft, during a small window between 1997 and 2000.If you think these implications are ridiculous, you are not alone.Recall that EPO was a globally available drug, widely abused in sports, and completely untestable until 2000.EPO abuse was "global" in cycling (almost, if not, purely by non-Africans) in the 1990s, and blood doping, micro-dosing EPO in the 2000s.Yet in track, world record performance gains for three decades seems to be selectively contained to Africans, with less than a handful of exceptions.Is it lack of testing? EPO was untestable globally until 2000. The IAAF started out-of-competition testing (urine) for EPO in 2002. The IAAF started blood testing in 2001, and enforcing it in 2009.Lack of testing applies globally in the 1990s, and the EPO test was highly beatable in the 2000s.Playing with statistics is fuzzy, but I'm inclined to think the world record setting performance improvements, limited to Africans, is better explained by social or genetic factors unique to Africans, rather than a globally available PED that failed to target non-African runners.

Ding ding ding. The reality is not black and white but there are multiple factors that cannot be ignored.If you propose "there could be EPO use", that's much different than saying "only a blind man cannot see the great EPO-era, get your head out of the sand".

thanks for the info wrote:

There can be multiple things happening at the same time. There could be EPO use and a big increase in the number of African competitors, which caused a drop in participation among non-african countries. (The US maintained more participation than Europe.) I am not suggesting causation or correlation. I am just saying that you could have multiple factors to explain the stats that you are citing. In the 00's there is the EPO era and a decrease in track participation by non African countries. Later the economics drove a move to the roads but there also may be less testing with the road races.

This is bollocks, from Rekrunner yet again.

What about the likes of Stephan Franke, Damian Kallabis, bog standard runners running bog standard times and then all of a sudden bang... world class and in the mix, what about the Portugese, do you think Pinto was clean? What about the Spanish? Fiz and Anton? What about Cacho, Estevez.... take a look at the European Championships 10,000 where Jon Brown lost out on a medal, clean race??? It's not just about times, often it's about the way a race is run, if it looks ridiculous it usually is, take a look at Pinto running the last mile at London, he was nearly bumping into the lead car.

Same with morroco 1995-2000https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Moroccan_records_in_athletics

trackfan. wrote:

Every kenyan mens track distance record is now at least 15 years old,all set between 1997 and 2001

1000m

1500m

2000m

3000m

2 miles

5000m

10000m

Did any of these athletes at least set a European record? By how much?When you say "it's not just about times", please take that up with "casual obsever" who chose to count frequency of setting world records as the metric.If you want to say that some races, or athletes, were dirty, that is an entirely different question. I will not comment on that.The distinction I made is not whether a race, or an athlete, was "clean" or "dirty", but rather, were EPO-era world records caused by taking "EPO" or by being "African".Whatever you think the "right" answer is, why we don't have more non-African candidates bettering pre-EPO records? Because of EPO testing? Doesn't seem likely, especially in a pre-WADA era for an untestable drug.Because of non-African morality, or lack of non-African appetite for victory? We didn't see that in cycling.

PR Not OK wrote:

This is bollocks, from Rekrunner yet again.

What about the likes of Stephan Franke, Damian Kallabis, bog standard runners running bog standard times and then all of a sudden bang... world class and in the mix, what about the Portugese, do you think Pinto was clean? What about the Spanish? Fiz and Anton? What about Cacho, Estevez.... take a look at the European Championships 10,000 where Jon Brown lost out on a medal, clean race??? It's not just about times, often it's about the way a race is run, if it looks ridiculous it usually is, take a look at Pinto running the last mile at London, he was nearly bumping into the lead car.

The reason for that is obvious Rekrunner, in 1990 if you were white and you were running 13.05/27.20 you could make a good living in the sport. You could win medals. We now have a situation where those times get you nothing, not even the guarantee of a final spot.

What incentive is there for white European distance runners? European Champs are dominated by athletes of African or Middle Eastern origin, Major games don't just have 3 Kenyans and 3 Ethiopians, you now might have 3 kenyans running for Bahrain, 3 for Qatar, 3 for Turkey, Moroccans and Algerians running for France, we even have Ethiopians and Kenyans running for Finland, Germany etc...

Take a look at how many 5000 and 10000 races there are on the circuit of good quality these days, barely any and each that we see is full of just Africans.

The sport is also dying in terms of numbers, football takes most of the talent, running particularly distance running is not a popular proposition for European males. Take a look at the AAA 10000m in 1989, take a look at this year, totally different situation, nothing to do with clean or dirty.

EPO testing doesn't work, show me one, just one high profile distance runner who has been caught by the EPO test? Statistics show that it would take 9 years of testing at the current rate of frequency to catch an epo user.