World Champion Emma Coburn Expresses Doubt that Beatrice Chepkoech's World Record in Steeple is Clean

wejo wrote:

don't do it wrote:

Is Shelby H clean?

I have no idea. I hope so. But drug testing is considered to be better in the US and there haven't been a lot of doping positive and most of the people visiting this site are American so more people are going to believe so. Same with Frerichs.

Emma clearly thinks Frerichs is clean. If she had been a Kenyan with her huge improvement at Worlds, I wonder if she would think differently.

As Paula Radcliffe told me, "At the end of the day you only know about one person being clean- yourself." That was after she said she had befriend I think Ali Saidi Sief and started to think he might be clean and then he tested positive. Her point was our friendships can cloud our beliefs.

...... ..

Thank you Wejo for asking the question would Emma think Courtney was clean if she was Kenyan. I liked Emma until her whiny accusations with no proof. Its easy to defame someone name and hope your right but pissibly be wrong and cause damage to an innocent athlete. Could Beatruce be dirty, certainly she could but she is such an underdeveloped talent in a still developing event she could be clean.

Emma "I'm slang mud anywhere" Coburn be classy and just compete let the drug testers find the culprits. If its true it will be revealed with testing improving every year.

VIPAM wrote:

HOW SAD! Emma loses her AR and failed miserably in her sub 9 minute goal. The only alternative is to attack simeone who would have destroyed her at 2017 Worlds had she

1. not had to double back to go over the water jump.

2. Fell later in the race and still finished 4th

This is hilarious. We could do these hypotheticals all day.

- Makh Daddy would have won the 2016 Olympics if he had kicked earlier.

- Rupp would have a 2:04 marathon PR if he had run London instead of Boston.

- Jakob would have two golds from World Juniors if there were no age cheats.

Etc..... x infinity.

I dunno what your point is. And it's Chepkoech's own fault she didn't run the damn 2017 race correctly. Clownish mistake.

In any event, a clean Emma would utterly annihilate a clean Chepkoech.

rojo wrote:

People wonder why these boards allow anonymous postings. It's because we know there are many pros with thoughts like this and many of them don't want to post them under their name as they get curcified when they do.

People tossing out anonymous accusations with no valid evidence is NOT a good thing.

What you end up with then is drug busts based on confirmation bias, and not based on any use of peds.

In fact we have seen this happen quite a bit - which this web site is notorious for promoting.

This.

Freirichs progression:

2012: 10:34

2013: 9:55

2014: 9:43

2015: 9:31

2016: 9:20

2017: 9:03 (being one huge drop in time at WCs)

2018: 9:00

Best supporting distance markers: 4:14 1500 (2018) and 15:31 5000 (indoor dec 2015).

The 15:31 from a few years back suggests she is much stronger on the aerobic side than speed side. A steady drop in time of ~10 seconds/year in the steeple.. not crazy? But the fact that that absolute drop continued as she got to elite times is either a true notion of talent, or something fishy.

Add in that Shelby H is now a rockstar, and Colleen Quigley can go for X months at a time being injured then show up and win races or run a PR... a little fishy.

Last I checked, Emma Coburn is not even the American Record holder. Not even the best in her own country.

Get a reality check, Emma. When a talent that comes along like Molly Huddle or Shannon Rowbury turns to the Steeple, we'll see 8:50 from Americans.

Shelby, Emma, and Colleen are clean you morans. Literally no evidence against them besides "they're fast!"

Compare this to no out-of-competition testing, Canova, Hermens, Rosa, numerous Kenyan busts, hundreds of sketchy oddball performances and suspicious improvements, etc...

2018

Emma: fast white lady, lost AR

Beatrice: African, WR, 4 sub 9min, possibly IAAF and Track in Field female Athlete of the Year

Dont slang mud Emma train harder and run faster like Beatrice, Courtney, and Shelby.

Lije another poster stated when more top elite flat runners besides Beatrice try the steeple we will see sub 8:40 by Worlds 2021.

Heck if Jenny Simpson stuck to the steeple the AR today would easily be sub 8:55. So stop whining Emma and run faster

That is not a good thing wrote:

rojo wrote:

People wonder why these boards allow anonymous postings. It's because we know there are many pros with thoughts like this and many of them don't want to post them under their name as they get curcified when they do.

People tossing out anonymous accusations with no valid evidence is NOT a good thing.

What you end up with then is drug busts based on confirmation bias, and not based on any use of peds.

In fact we have seen this happen quite a bit - which this web site is notorious for promoting.

You know what? Even if Coburn turned out to be right, she'd still remain a classless hater because she's publicly cast aspersions on a competitor's character and credibility with no proof.

Ped's were routine in Eastern bloc countries from the 1960's; mainly in strength-related events such as weight-lifting and field events but began to be employed on the track in the 70's with blood-doping. Thus began a "Golden Age of Doping" that was at its peak in the 80's through to the early 2000's, and at its forefront was the State-sponsored doping in the Eastern bloc countries, across a range of sports, in the sprint events (led there mostly by the US) and the increasingly prodigious middle and long-distance records of the EPO era in the 90's and early 2000's. As testing improved in the last decade doping became more subtle, to be characterised by virtually undetectable micro-dosing (which would also get around the biological passport). The extraordinary performances typical of the earlier era fell away as athletes were unable to enagage in industrial-scale doping without risk of being caught - except in those countries where testing was/is minimal, if virtually non-existent. And that's where most of the current world records reside (except for those presently unreachable records still found in women's track). Because of the sheer pervasiveness of doping and its duration in the sport it means that the last clean world records were most likely set forty or more years ago and that all improvements since have been assisted i.e. built on a foundation of ped's. This may be hard for some Letsrunners to accept, that doping has dominated the sport longer than they have been alive. A bed-time story: a weightlifter at the London Olympics was last year elevated from 9th place in his division to the bronze medal - because the six who finished ahead of him had all subsequently tested positive. The final irony to this unfortunate tale is that he was himself undergoing a doping violation ban at the time he became eligible for the bronze medal. If Letsrunners think track may be any different from weightlifting when it comes to athletes seeking a competitive advantage by whatever means they can then they are living in a fantasy world. Coburn is right - although not necessarily for the reasons she alludes to, but because no clean performance can surpass a doped world record, which is what all records are now. And a 15 or so second improvement in a distance event just brings back memories of the good old days. Sure, there's may still be some clean athletes out there - but they won't be breaking any records soon.

That is pure speculation. There are athletes that will come along with enough pure talent to eventually break every world record. There is no world record out there that after careful study over the last few years that I see as unbreakable by a clean athlete in the next 12-20 years (every record is ATTAINABLE may not be broken but none are out of reach of a clean, once in a generation elite type talent athlete).

So pure talent beats dope? Don't you mean pure hate?

VIPAM wrote:

That is pure speculation. There are athletes that will come along with enough pure talent to eventually break every world record. There is no world record out there that after careful study over the last few years that I see as unbreakable by a clean athlete in the next 12-20 years (every record is ATTAINABLE may not be broken but none are out of reach of a clean, once in a generation elite type talent athlete).

"There are athletes that will come along with enough pure talent to eventually break every world record." -- now THAT is pure speculation!

"There is no world record out there that after careful study over the last few years that I see as unbreakable by a clean athlete in the next 12-20 years" -- ROTFLMAO I repeat, ROTFLMAO

Incredible. "after careful study" ... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!!

Sorry man, that was great. Best post ever, if you were serious--but I think I just fell for a load of sarcasm. Well done, though!

Precisely... +1

I think Emma is maybe a bit frustrated, not the best season she had hoped for.

No sub 9, no big wins, a group of woman running faster and another American steepler stealing her thunder. Her world is stuck at breaking 9, the africans see it different and run as fast as you can, 9 is not the barrier for them.

Ride The Pony wrote:

This is a tough topic for a letsrun troll like me. Do I let my incel instincts take over and use this opportunity to call an attractive woman with an opinion a lazy, entitled crybaby, or should I channel my inner bigot and accuse every person from Africa of being a doper?

This post should be in the onboarding packet for new visitors to the message boards.

"Remember, each time you post, you will have important choices to make..."

So true. Yes there are Africans cheating but Kenta will always have mire top tier steeplers than any country because its their country's signature event folliwed by the marathon. Just like the 100m and then the 200m is America and Jamica's. So despite the cheats those countries will be the ones to beat in those event for many years to come. Good luck to Emma "big nose" Coburn. I just lost alot of respect for her publicly and unfounded accusations. Until/ IF EVER Beatrice is busted she is just as innocent as Emma "cant break 9" Coburn.

rojo wrote:

.... after the WR I called up John Kellogg (who didn't watch the race or no about the WR) and ....

"no about"???

Rojo, sometimes I think you're just messing with people here.

In his last DL 800m Korir won in 1.46.5, with roughly even splits. That wouldn't have beaten Snell at the Rome Olympics in 1960, or even have come anywhere close to Snell's Tokyo time in 1964. Taking into account the rough cinder tracks that he ran on, Snell's times of 1.46.3 and 1.45.1, respectively, were probably each worth a good couple of seconds faster on today's tracks. And these were championship races, achieved after a series of draining earlier rounds. Snell was also an amateur. What might he have been able to do as a full-time professional? It is interesting that times in events like this are now falling within the range of what a top athlete could do (or even better) nearly sixty years ago. (And Snell's 1.44 on grass in 1962 - ridiculous - is probably at least equal to Korir's 1.42 this year.) It looks very much like the athletes of today may not be significantly better than the best of yesteryear - of even half a century ago. Take away improvements in tracks (big), shoes, training and nutrition (less so) and they match up as being pretty even. But doping certainly changes the look of that picture. Today's world records.

My main issue with this video is the following:

1.) Are we assuming that an 8:45 steeple isn't attainable by a female without doping? Coburn seems to think it's possible, but doesn't believe that Chepkoech is the person to do it (clean)

2.) If it is attainable by a clean athlete, a person with Chepkoech's flat-track PR's would make sense as she's run 4:02/8:28/14:39, which are not out-of-this-world times for an elite flat-track female distance runner (see Simpson, Houlihan, etc. on the US side).

So are we assuming that everyone who runs these times is dirty across the board, or just Chepkoech? And if so, why just her? She progressed down to 9:10 in 2016 when she started to take the steeple seriously, then ran around 9 minutes (including one sub-9) 4 times in 2017, then in 2018 (despite Coburn saying "I don't think you can run 8:45 when you've been running 9 minutes all season" ) Chepkoech ran 8 steeplechase races. She won 7, two were at altitude in Kenya, 3 were sub 9.

Obviously we don't know if Chepkoech is clean. The same as we don't know if Frerich's or Houlihan are clean (or even Coburn for that matter). I would argue that regardless if her 8:45 is clean, we can reasonably assume that females running 8:30-8:35 and 14:40-50 clean could absolutely destroy the 9 minute barrier. And as we know, Coburn would not be close to world class in any event outside of the steeple, so who is to say that a world-class type 3k/5k runner with decent form (and low barriers) couldn't clean up in the steeple?