Women are running faster than Bikila did in Rome. They are approaching his best time at Tokyo - they are only 2 minutes away. He was an endurance-trained athlete of exceptional talent. So how is it they are approaching his best? There is a limit on the weekly mileage that works for top runners - they won't be putting in more distance than he did. There is only one thing that would enable them to draw level.
There is only one time proven thing -- better training. There is a compelling argument for a second factor in recent years: new shoes.
So now you've backpedaled -- the women of today are not faster than Bikila.
Once again, the main explanation for your awkward question is that your chosen benchmark from another era is absurdly slow, even for his own era. Bikila's time from 62 years ago, in Rome, is slow, when compared to his time in Tokyo, and compared to 6 other athletes from 4 other countries, from the 1960s, not to mention hundreds or thousands of athletes with thousands if not 10s of thousands of performances, from athletes of all continents. As great as Bikila was in 1960 and 1964, just one year later, the great Shigematsu surpassed him (why aren't you comparing the women to Shigematsu?), and three years later Derek Clayton was breaking sub-2:10.
You're a chronic liar. I haven't "back-pedalled". I said the women of today are faster than Bikila when he won in Rome. I also said they are also approaching his Tokyo time.
Your claim of "better training" is empty waffle. Marathon runners require mileage above all. So what are women doing today that Bikila and his contemporaries weren't? How are women able to train harder than men - if they do? Don't bother - you have no knowledge or experience of their training - just your fantasies.
Bikila's time wasn't "absurdly slow" for his era. He won in Tokyo by 3 minutes. He improved on his Rome time - a previous Olympic best - by the same margin. The subsequent improvements by such as Clayton several years later says absolutely NOTHING about how women are able improve to equal men's championship times.
That you drivel on about "shoes" - a marginal improvement at best - shows the sheer vacuity in your understanding of athletic talent.
Your defence - denial - of doping has no limits. But you have plenty of company on this site. Dreamers. If any of you were a champion athlete - and you are not - you would know that if you aren't doping there are plenty of your competitors who are. I look forward to the next Kenyan bust. I won't have to wait long.
The only answer has to be doping, when Kenyans and Ethiopians who grow up outside of Africa fail to dominate their competition in North America and Europe.
Provocatively entitled Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports And Why We're Afraid To Talk About It, the book has brought up to date a controversy that, in various guises, has been stirring ever since black sportsmen began regularly beating their white counterparts. One critic, writing in the New York Times, described the book as 'demagogic quackery' and a 'piece of good-old fashioned American anti-intellectualism', while another drew parallels with Nazi ideology. 'Didn't we hear all this in Germany in 1936?' asked Richard Lapchick, the founder of America's Centre for the Study of Sport in Society. Elsewhere the book has been praised as brave, reasoned and honest. What is beyond doubt is that, regardless of its strengths or flaws, the book plugs into a belief that is widely shared but seldom stated: that people with black skin are better suited to the athleticism of sport than people with white skin. Which is to say, it provides back-up to an unthinking stereotype, not necessarily an offensive stereotype, but one that could easily be conflated with those that are... ..There are a number of questions that might be asked about this situation but perhaps the first is why there should be any questions? Why look for biological reasons to explain black success? Why not just accept it in the same complacent spirit that we accept the supremacy of whites in just about every other field of human endeavour? Harry Edwards, the sociology professor who organised the Black Power demonstrations at the 1968 Olympics, believes that there is in fact a consensus of indifference on the matter that amounts to tacit racism. 'Whites,' he says, 'have always been comfortable with blacks working in the fields, whether they're cotton fields or football fields.' He argues that the reasons for black advancement in sport are not to be found in the biological sciences but in the 'social environment and racism' that creates the conditions for that success. It's certainly true that the history of research inspired by black achievements in sport is not one of which scientists can be proud. All manner of bizarre theories and contrived studies have in the past been presented as established fact, only subsequently to be utterly discredited by experience. In the 19th century the widespread belief that blacks were physically inferior was underpinned by warped interpretations of Darwin's theory of evolution. Indeed, the many theorists claimed that sub-Saharan Africans composed a different, less evolved, inferior species. The concept of a hierarchy of races saw its practical application in an effective separation of blacks from whites. Blacks were seldom allowed to compete against whites in sport and thus the untruth was able to flourish that whites were by nature superior athletes... ...The legacy of such crude racism is the suspicion that any attempt to attribute a physical advantage to an ethnic group also implicitly apportions a mental disadvantage. And the suspicion is not paranoia. In 1994 Charles Murray published The Bell Curve, a book that examined IQ differences among races and drew heavily on the work of a Canadian psychologist, J Philippe Rushton, a proponent of the inversely proportional relationship between brains and brawn. Entine is aware of the problem and argues that it's 'time to decouple intelligence and physicality'. All the same, much of the criticism that has been levelled at Taboo in the States stems from a conviction that the ideas explored in the book will have precisely the opposite effect. If the conclusion drawn from black domination of Olympic track medals is that blacks are physically superior, what is to be made of the enormous over-representation of whites on the list of Nobel prize winners? The science is limited,' concedes Entine. 'It's fascinating, it does point in all kinds of directions, and you can speculate. But the fact is the way we tend to speculate is really the important issue.' In fact, Entine himself inadvertently demonstrates the way in which we allow race to colour our interpretation of events. Partly, I suspect, to make the book fit the title, he plays down the contribution of (non-black) North Africans in middle and long-distance running and concentrates on (black) East Africans. He is also not above bringing in misleading evidence to back up his case... ..his two most vocal antagonists are black Americans, Harry Edwards, and another sociologist, Todd Boyd. Edwards recently said that the data presented in the book amounted to an 'underhand way' of saying that blacks were 'closer to beast ' than they are to the rest of humanity.' Still, Entine is certain that whites in America are obsessed with race in a way that black Americans are not, and that, furthermore, white liberals feel obliged to see any discussion of race as inherently racist. 'I'll tell you this,' says Entine defiantly.'It's very condescending, especially to sports fans and African-Americans and others who I think are far more interested in understanding the world in ways that they see around them.' Exactly how Taboo will lessen the American obsession with race is not at present easy to see. For all Entine's talk of respecting the 'biodiversity' of humanity, our attitudes to race are not yet so evolved that we are able to take ethnic difference in our stride. Even in Britain - which, if not as afflicted by racial division as America, is a long way from being colour blind - few have the appetite to confront the notion of racial superiority in any form. When Sir Roger Bannister , the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes, spoke in 1995 as a neurologist at a British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting of 'certain natural anatomical advantages' possessed by 'black sprinters and black athletes in general', he provoked a mixture of fear, anxiety and silence. Garth Crooks, the (black) former Spurs striker who is now BBC football reporter, said at the time: 'I don't think it matters what the biological conclusions are. It forges a distinction between black and white athletes which is unhealthy, unhelpful, and untrue.' Linford Christie, the only Briton ever to run under 10 seconds, and a man who has been made acutely aware of his skin colour, was less condemnatory. But he refused to accept Bannister's argument: 'What Sir Roger said is a cop out, in a way. As long as white people believe that black people can run faster, they always will. It makes my job a lot easier. I'll accept that. But Allan Wells was an Olympic champion. Valeri Borzov was an Olympic champion. So it can be done.'
I remember watching Linford Christie take part in a discussion program on 'Central Weekend' back in the 90's. It something related to this subject, and it also brought up the white journalist's obession with 'Linford's Lunchbox', which he hated. He compared the obsession with his 'lunchbox' with the view among white people that blacks are inherently better sprinters and athletes, and said that both attitudes were expressions of the racist view that black people are closer to animals than white people are.
The African country became a medal-winning power at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in August 1966, and hasn’t looked back.
On August 6, 50 (56) years ago, runners from the country of Kenya changed the face of distance running.
It happened in Kingston, Jamaica, at what was then called the British Empire and Commonwealth Games. In seven previous events, athletes from the “old Commonwealth” countries—the British teams, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa—had been dominant, dividing up the medals for distance running. Only once had a Kenyan runner medaled, in 1958 when Arere Anentia picked up a bronze in the 6-mile race.
But in August 1966 runners from the Republic of Kenya, which had gained independence from Britain just three years earlier, took home three gold medals as well as a silver and a bronze. Six other Kenyans placed in the top 10 across middle- and long-distance running events: in the 880 yards, 1 mile, 3 miles, 6 miles, 3,000-meter steeplechase, and the marathon.
It was a revolution.
“I expect many … great African champions to emerge now that they have the opportunity,” wrote Ron Clarke, an Australian who set 17 world records between 1963 and 1968, in The Unforgiving Minute, published the month before the Games. Clarke may not have expected champions to emerge so quickly.
Clarke was twice defeated at Kingston by Kenyan runners. He’d spent two years amassing the greatest collection of world records in the history of distance running, and he was fastest in the 6 mile event by almost 30 seconds, the only man ever to break 27 minutes (26:47.0). Even on a warm Jamaica evening, most onlookers expected that to be enough of a margin.
Clarke’s customary front-running style—at world record pace that night—soon left Ron Hill of England, Fergus Murray of Scotland, Andy Boychuk of Canada, and Bill Baillie of New Zealand behind. All of them were well-known Olympians. But one slight figure, wearing the red Kenyan uniform, stuck with Clarke, moving with a lithe flowing stride that, while unfamiliar at the time, is now instantly recognizable.
Naftali Temu had dropped out of the 10,000 meters in the 1964 Olympics, and finished an obscure 49th in the Olympic marathon. He was nowhere on Clarke’s radar. But now Temu was surging past Ron Hill and staying with the greatest record-breaker on earth, matching every move, even audaciously edging ahead.
“Clarke was Superman. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. I knew [about] Kipchoge Keino, but Temu was a total surprise,” said England’s Bruce Tulloh, having watched from the stands in 1966 as he waited to run the 3-mile heats.
With four laps to go, Clarke was toast. Temu ran on alone, to a Games record 27:14.6. His gold medal was the first, outside of Africa, in Kenyan history. Two years later he beat Clarke again in the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Games in Mexico City, winning Kenya’s first Olympic gold medal.
That same first night, another Kenyan burst onto the scene. Benjamin Kogo led most of the steeplechase and held on to finish strongly in third, ahead of prerace favorite Maurice Herriott, of England. In the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Herriott had won the silver medal, while Kogo, unnoticed, was eliminated in the heats. But by the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Kogo would win silver, only edged out by another Kenyan, Amos Biwott.
Kogo’s bronze at Kingston launched the Kenyan dominance of the steeplechase that will almost certainly continue in Rio next week.
“I didn’t know anything about Kenyans other than Keino. I’d heard of no Kenyan steeplechasers. It wasn’t that those 1966 Games were color-conscious, not being held in Jamaica. All athletes were equal and we made many friends. But we were familiar back then with black sprinters, not distance runners,” said the 1966 steeplechase gold medalist Peter Welsh, of New Zealand.
As we watched the races from Kingston, it was apparent something transformative had occurred. Five distance running medals for Kenya! That was more than Australia or England.
I vividly remember a crowded room loud with amazement: student runners in Cambridge, England, were leaning over the small TV, as our hero, Ron Clarke, the man who commanded our sport, was beaten, first by one Kenyan, then another, launching a dominance of the sport that has continued for 50 (56) years.
Of course, this was post-Abebe Bikila, but before doping as we know it today. So they had started winning when everyone was presumably clean.
As for the big city marathons, the Kenyans and the other Africans didn’t start dominating New York until the late 80s. Likewise with Boston. And I’m guessing that’s when they started running in both places. The didn’t start to dominate London and Berlin until the early 2000s.
Starting in Boston and New York isn’t surprising, because growing up in America during those years when Salazar was winning those were the only marathons that mattered. The greats of today of course basically only run London and Berlin.
I blame Nike. 😁
Because when did the marathon world record become a thing? In 2017 or something? Because who trained and ran to set a world record at a marathon? Everyone trained and ran to win, but to set a world record? Who cared?
Anyway, doping of course exists. And if we’re to assume that only the Kenyans dope, then that would explain why they win all the time.
But of course they started winning before doping as we know it today. So how did that happen, right. There has to be some explanation for that.
Coming back to today, if we are again to assume that everyone else in the rest of the world are too noble to cheat (at the distance races in terms of this discussion), except for the Kenyans, then okay. But in reality we know that’s not the case, so we just have to determine who else is cheating and just not getting caught as much.
My favorite argument of course is, well if everyone is cheating, and the same people are winning, then what are we to make of that other than the obvious. The best athletes who are clean win when everyone is clean. And the best athletes who are doping win when everyone is doping.
Speaking of which, if we jump out of the pro ranks and go down to the U20s, the Kenyans and the other Africans are dominant in the distance races there too. The results that are readily available go back to ’98.
I imagine one can argue that doping is rampant in the U20s too, and that would explain the Kenyan and other African nation dominance in the U20 distance events. The only doping information in the U20s that’s readily available show that the few violations that there are come primarily from the field events, and none from African countries.
So if we can presume that the U20s are clean for the most part, and the Kenyan and African dominance in the distance events are already apparent there, then it doesn’t take too big of a leap to extrapolate from there and extend it to the pro ranks.
So the Kenyans started winning before doping as we know it today existed, they’re dominant in the U20s today (and we presume the kids are clean for the most part), and in the pro ranks they’re still dominant. And the only way to explain that dominance away is to posit that they’re the only ones in the world doping in the pro ranks.
Anyway, I just had some time to kill and this was top of mind. I just wanted to get if off my chest. I feel better now. 😁
You're a chronic liar. I haven't "back-pedalled". I said the women of today are faster than Bikila when he won in Rome. I also said they are also approaching his Tokyo time.
Your claim of "better training" is empty waffle. Marathon runners require mileage above all. So what are women doing today that Bikila and his contemporaries weren't? How are women able to train harder than men - if they do? Don't bother - you have no knowledge or experience of their training - just your fantasies.
Bikila's time wasn't "absurdly slow" for his era. He won in Tokyo by 3 minutes. He improved on his Rome time - a previous Olympic best - by the same margin. The subsequent improvements by such as Clayton several years later says absolutely NOTHING about how women are able improve to equal men's championship times.
That you drivel on about "shoes" - a marginal improvement at best - shows the sheer vacuity in your understanding of athletic talent.
Your defence - denial - of doping has no limits. But you have plenty of company on this site. Dreamers. If any of you were a champion athlete - and you are not - you would know that if you aren't doping there are plenty of your competitors who are. I look forward to the next Kenyan bust. I won't have to wait long.
It's sad and borderline pathetic you construe my listing historical performances from the 1960s and suggestions that training and shoes have improved over the last five decades, as a defence and denial of doping.
What you say now, after being contradicted by harsh reality, is precisely the back-pedal from "How do you explain today's top women runners running faster than he did?"
The established historical reality is 1) the great Abebe Bikila is still faster than women today by nearly two minutes (making you the chronic liar until you were disproved by historical fact), and 2) Bikila's Rome time is slow, by his own standard, as you yourself now concede, and 3) his Tokyo time is slow by 1960's standards, not to mention the men's world standard today is some +/- 10 minutes faster.
The first absurdity is your arbitrary choice of a demonstrably weak benchmark, and the second absurdity is your own lack of perspective to grasp how absurd your arbitrary choice is. Why not pick the championship times of 1922? Women in 10000m are faster today than the great Paavo Nurmi from 1921. Also faster than the great Emil Zatopek of 1949, but not faster than the great Emil Zatopek of 1954. They have long surpassed the great champion Walter George, unparalleled champion in his era. If any of that sounds absurd to you, only then you can begin to understand how absurd you sound when you attempt to compare times of today with times closer to a century ago than the present.
Next you continue to demonstrate the depth of your own lack of understanding of training and how it has evolved since the era of Lydiard, as well as performance and how it has evolved since the days when you were young and naive and gullible and impressionable, just forming your long held faiths that you cling to today.
Mileage is indeed important for the marathon. How the miles are run are also important. The recovery time in between running miles is important. The nynber of years you've run them are also important. Also important is that men and women are trying to run world records in the marathon today, and organizers are trying to make that happen with pacers. Olympic Rome and Tokyo courses are not the fast and flat and paced courses of London and Berlin. Today's women also wear shoes.
Finally you continue to conflate doping and doping busts with performance enhancement, when, for the marathon, there has never been any comparable demonstration of the widespread global improvement on the scale the "marginal improvement" you dismiss for the shoes.
Speaking of which, if we jump out of the pro ranks and go down to the U20s, the Kenyans and the other Africans are dominant in the distance races there too. The results that are readily available go back to ’98. I imagine one can argue that doping is rampant in the U20s too, and that would explain the Kenyan and other African nation dominance in the U20 distance events. The only doping information in the U20s that’s readily available show that the few violations that there are come primarily from the field events, and none from African countries.
Have you just come to LetsRun yesterday to defend the view that East Africans are a subset of humanity?
You are aware that even the hardened doping apologists here understand that the average Kenyan 'U20' is closer to 25?
Yeah, I 'suppose' we could argue that those 'U20s' 'dominating' U20 competitions dope. Esepcially given that a number of Kenyan 'U20' world champions such as Kiprop, Bett, Kipketer etc have been busted later, and several teens have failed tests despite being subjected to almost zero testing (and several others dropped dead).
The origins of Kenyan successes in athletics has been well discussed here. A sports scientist by the name of John Velzian was watching kenyans compete in an English meet and decided on the spot that they were 'natural born runners' who would dominate athletics. He then moved to Kenya and spent the rest of his life making a career out of making good on his prophecy. However, up until the 80's, their success was almost entirely dependent upon him. At the start of the 1968 season, the top Kenyan runners led by Kip Keino, staged a revolt because they thought Velzian was taking too much credit for their success and sacked him as their coach/manager. The performances of all the top Kenyans plummetted as a result, including Keino's and Daniel Rushida's (father of David). Mexico looked set to be a disaster for Kenya, so they grudgingly got down on their knees and begged Velzian to come back, which he did, and the rest is history (including Keino literally getting out of a hospital bed seriously ill, sprinting to the stadium to get to the starting line, and then running the sea-level equivalent of 3:18 to crush Ryun - after 6 rounds of the 5000, 10000, and 1500).
You're a chronic liar. I haven't "back-pedalled". I said the women of today are faster than Bikila when he won in Rome. I also said they are also approaching his Tokyo time.
Your claim of "better training" is empty waffle. Marathon runners require mileage above all. So what are women doing today that Bikila and his contemporaries weren't? How are women able to train harder than men - if they do? Don't bother - you have no knowledge or experience of their training - just your fantasies.
Bikila's time wasn't "absurdly slow" for his era. He won in Tokyo by 3 minutes. He improved on his Rome time - a previous Olympic best - by the same margin. The subsequent improvements by such as Clayton several years later says absolutely NOTHING about how women are able improve to equal men's championship times.
That you drivel on about "shoes" - a marginal improvement at best - shows the sheer vacuity in your understanding of athletic talent.
Your defence - denial - of doping has no limits. But you have plenty of company on this site. Dreamers. If any of you were a champion athlete - and you are not - you would know that if you aren't doping there are plenty of your competitors who are. I look forward to the next Kenyan bust. I won't have to wait long.
It's sad and borderline pathetic you construe my listing historical performances from the 1960s and suggestions that training and shoes have improved over the last five decades, as a defence and denial of doping.
What you say now, after being contradicted by harsh reality, is precisely the back-pedal from "How do you explain today's top women runners running faster than he did?"
The established historical reality is 1) the great Abebe Bikila is still faster than women today by nearly two minutes (making you the chronic liar until you were disproved by historical fact), and 2) Bikila's Rome time is slow, by his own standard, as you yourself now concede, and 3) his Tokyo time is slow by 1960's standards, not to mention the men's world standard today is some +/- 10 minutes faster.
The first absurdity is your arbitrary choice of a demonstrably weak benchmark, and the second absurdity is your own lack of perspective to grasp how absurd your arbitrary choice is. Why not pick the championship times of 1922? Women in 10000m are faster today than the great Paavo Nurmi from 1921. Also faster than the great Emil Zatopek of 1949, but not faster than the great Emil Zatopek of 1954. They have long surpassed the great champion Walter George, unparalleled champion in his era. If any of that sounds absurd to you, only then you can begin to understand how absurd you sound when you attempt to compare times of today with times closer to a century ago than the present.
Next you continue to demonstrate the depth of your own lack of understanding of training and how it has evolved since the era of Lydiard, as well as performance and how it has evolved since the days when you were young and naive and gullible and impressionable, just forming your long held faiths that you cling to today.
Mileage is indeed important for the marathon. How the miles are run are also important. The recovery time in between running miles is important. The nynber of years you've run them are also important. Also important is that men and women are trying to run world records in the marathon today, and organizers are trying to make that happen with pacers. Olympic Rome and Tokyo courses are not the fast and flat and paced courses of London and Berlin. Today's women also wear shoes.
Finally you continue to conflate doping and doping busts with performance enhancement, when, for the marathon, there has never been any comparable demonstration of the widespread global improvement on the scale the "marginal improvement" you dismiss for the shoes.
The only accurate term you used in that spiel was "borderline". Indeed you are.
Abebe Bikila set Olympic records at both Games. He was never "slow" by the standards of the time. As I said, but you cannot grasp, women are now faster than when he won his first Olympic gold and are only two minutes away from his Tokyo time. Two minutes in the marathon is no great margin. If women were within two minutes of Kipchoge's record we would say that they are in the same class. 2.03 is enough to win championship titles today. So was 2.14 in the early '60's.
You know nothing about how women train today. But high mileage over varying terrain is the basis for all endurance events. They cannot be doing anything significantly different from how he and his contemporaries trained. The best men in that era were not hobby joggers.
Your myopia about this subject is so acute it is a wonder you can see well enough to type the rubbish that you do.
Bikila certainly trained in a modern way, it was a huge leap forward from how other marathoners and long distance runners trained, who were still completely amateur and part-time runners.
Full time at a government military training camp at high altitude, 100+MPW and regular speed sessions on the track. It's funny how he is used by the 'natural born runners' advocates as the original innocent African native emerging out of the jungle with no sense of time and dominating the well-trained high-tech Western runners with all their 'advantages'.
The 'running barefoot' thing was likely an act of symbolism given he was competing in Rome for the Emporer who had seen his country conquered by Mussolini seeking to build a new Roman Empire. And to hide the fact that he was in fact the product of the most scientific training available at the time.
I pretty much doubt if running barefoot literally on Roman roads was any worse, if at all, than the basic running shoes they had at the time. Some of Zola Bud's junior records ran barefoot still stand today.
The African country became a medal-winning power at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in August 1966, and hasn’t looked back.
Of course, this was post-Abebe Bikila, but before doping as we know it today. So they had started winning when everyone was presumably clean.
...
Because when did the marathon world record become a thing? In 2017 or something? Because who trained and ran to set a world record at a marathon? Everyone trained and ran to win, but to set a world record? Who cared?
...
But of course they started winning before doping as we know it today. So how did that happen, right. There has to be some explanation for that.
...
Speaking of which, if we jump out of the pro ranks and go down to the U20s, the Kenyans and the other Africans are dominant in the distance races there too. The results that are readily available go back to ’98.
I imagine one can argue that doping is rampant in the U20s too, and that would explain the Kenyan and other African nation dominance in the U20 distance events. The only doping information in the U20s that’s readily available show that the few violations that there are come primarily from the field events, and none from African countries.
So if we can presume that the U20s are clean for the most part, and the Kenyan and African dominance in the distance events are already apparent there, then it doesn’t take too big of a leap to extrapolate from there and extend it to the pro ranks.
So the Kenyans started winning before doping as we know it today existed, they’re dominant in the U20s today (and we presume the kids are clean for the most part), and in the pro ranks they’re still dominant. And the only way to explain that dominance away is to posit that they’re the only ones in the world doping in the pro ranks.
Anyway, I just had some time to kill and this was top of mind. I just wanted to get if off my chest. I feel better now. 😁
Interesting and lengthy insights. Indeed East African dominance did not just start in the 1990s. Before the track, Kenyans and Ethiopians demonstrated their depth of talent that led to the world domination in the 1980s, in World Cross Country, at both senior and junior levels, long before EPO was discovered in cycling, and long before the introduction of Italian/Dutch coaching and management.
With respect to U20s, the conspiracy is that they are age-cheating. But again, even in the 1980s, the juniors were dominating along with the seniors, demonstrating their depth of talent.
To answer your question about when marathon world records became important, it was Haile Gebrselassie in 2007-2008 who showed us how fast marathons can be run at the end of a long career, when marathons were mainly run by athletes to old to compete in track. This is particularly notable if you want to imagine he age cheated, and was even a few years older. And it was around 2010, when young athletes started skipping a career in track altogether and heading for the roads.
It's sad and borderline pathetic you construe my listing historical performances from the 1960s and suggestions that training and shoes have improved over the last five decades, as a defence and denial of doping.
What you say now, after being contradicted by harsh reality, is precisely the back-pedal from "How do you explain today's top women runners running faster than he did?"
The established historical reality is 1) the great Abebe Bikila is still faster than women today by nearly two minutes (making you the chronic liar until you were disproved by historical fact), and 2) Bikila's Rome time is slow, by his own standard, as you yourself now concede, and 3) his Tokyo time is slow by 1960's standards, not to mention the men's world standard today is some +/- 10 minutes faster.
The first absurdity is your arbitrary choice of a demonstrably weak benchmark, and the second absurdity is your own lack of perspective to grasp how absurd your arbitrary choice is. Why not pick the championship times of 1922? Women in 10000m are faster today than the great Paavo Nurmi from 1921. Also faster than the great Emil Zatopek of 1949, but not faster than the great Emil Zatopek of 1954. They have long surpassed the great champion Walter George, unparalleled champion in his era. If any of that sounds absurd to you, only then you can begin to understand how absurd you sound when you attempt to compare times of today with times closer to a century ago than the present.
Next you continue to demonstrate the depth of your own lack of understanding of training and how it has evolved since the era of Lydiard, as well as performance and how it has evolved since the days when you were young and naive and gullible and impressionable, just forming your long held faiths that you cling to today.
Mileage is indeed important for the marathon. How the miles are run are also important. The recovery time in between running miles is important. The nynber of years you've run them are also important. Also important is that men and women are trying to run world records in the marathon today, and organizers are trying to make that happen with pacers. Olympic Rome and Tokyo courses are not the fast and flat and paced courses of London and Berlin. Today's women also wear shoes.
Finally you continue to conflate doping and doping busts with performance enhancement, when, for the marathon, there has never been any comparable demonstration of the widespread global improvement on the scale the "marginal improvement" you dismiss for the shoes.
The only accurate term you used in that spiel was "borderline". Indeed you are.
Abebe Bikila set Olympic records at both Games. He was never "slow" by the standards of the time. As I said, but you cannot grasp, women are now faster than when he won his first Olympic gold and are only two minutes away from his Tokyo time. Two minutes in the marathon is no great margin. If women were within two minutes of Kipchoge's record we would say that they are in the same class. 2.03 is enough to win championship titles today. So was 2.14 in the early '60's.
You know nothing about how women train today. But high mileage over varying terrain is the basis for all endurance events. They cannot be doing anything significantly different from how he and his contemporaries trained. The best men in that era were not hobby joggers.
Your myopia about this subject is so acute it is a wonder you can see well enough to type the rubbish that you do.
It's an absolute fair point, to ask why you choose 1960 as your male benchmark.
The fastest women today are 13 minutes slower than the fastest men. Are the women doping? The men? Both? I don't know, it's not to see from this numbers.
The origins of Kenyan successes in athletics has been well discussed here. A sports scientist by the name of John Velzian was watching kenyans compete in an English meet and decided on the spot that they were 'natural born runners' who would dominate athletics. He then moved to Kenya and spent the rest of his life making a career out of making good on his prophecy. However, up until the 80's, their success was almost entirely dependent upon him. At the start of the 1968 season, the top Kenyan runners led by Kip Keino, staged a revolt because they thought Velzian was taking too much credit for their success and sacked him as their coach/manager. The performances of all the top Kenyans plummetted as a result, including Keino's and Daniel Rushida's (father of David). Mexico looked set to be a disaster for Kenya, so they grudgingly got down on their knees and begged Velzian to come back, which he did, and the rest is history (including Keino literally getting out of a hospital bed seriously ill, sprinting to the stadium to get to the starting line, and then running the sea-level equivalent of 3:18 to crush Ryun - after 6 rounds of the 5000, 10000, and 1500).
David Rushida! One of the all-time greats alongside Abdi Bikklia or Juan Torena.
The origins of Kenyan successes in athletics has been well discussed here. A sports scientist by the name of John Velzian was watching kenyans compete in an English meet and decided on the spot that they were 'natural born runners' who would dominate athletics. He then moved to Kenya and spent the rest of his life making a career out of making good on his prophecy. However, up until the 80's, their success was almost entirely dependent upon him. At the start of the 1968 season, the top Kenyan runners led by Kip Keino, staged a revolt because they thought Velzian was taking too much credit for their success and sacked him as their coach/manager. The performances of all the top Kenyans plummetted as a result, including Keino's and Daniel Rushida's (father of David). Mexico looked set to be a disaster for Kenya, so they grudgingly got down on their knees and begged Velzian to come back, which he did, and the rest is history (including Keino literally getting out of a hospital bed seriously ill, sprinting to the stadium to get to the starting line, and then running the sea-level equivalent of 3:18 to crush Ryun - after 6 rounds of the 5000, 10000, and 1500).
David Rushida! One of the all-time greats alongside Abdi Bikklia or Juan Torena.
Bikila certainly trained in a modern way, it was a huge leap forward from how other marathoners and long distance runners trained, who were still completely amateur and part-time runners.
Full time at a government military training camp at high altitude, 100+MPW and regular speed sessions on the track. It's funny how he is used by the 'natural born runners' advocates as the original innocent African native emerging out of the jungle with no sense of time and dominating the well-trained high-tech Western runners with all their 'advantages'.
The 'running barefoot' thing was likely an act of symbolism given he was competing in Rome for the Emporer who had seen his country conquered by Mussolini seeking to build a new Roman Empire. And to hide the fact that he was in fact the product of the most scientific training available at the time.
I pretty much doubt if running barefoot literally on Roman roads was any worse, if at all, than the basic running shoes they had at the time. Some of Zola Bud's junior records ran barefoot still stand today.
Bikila's success barefoot, as well as Budd's, gives the lie to the prevailing view here that the shoes are the biggest part of modern running improvements. Both Bikila and Budd beat the best runners of their eras who ran in shoes.
In terms of training, Bikila was probably the first truly modern marathon runner. It is to be expected that his successors would build on his achievements but not obliterate them - as they have - of which the greatest absurdity is to see women now closing in on Bikila and his contemporaries best performances. This site has frequently debated the unbridgeable gap between elite male and female athletic performances. That gap is now closing in marathon running, as the best doped women today are catching up with the best men of yesteryear, who were unlikely to be doped. Blood doping and later EPO had yet to enter the sport in the early '60's. But since then doping has become endemic in running and has sent both male and female performances into the stratosphere. And this still on 100mpw, that the top male athletes were running in the early '60's.
The only accurate term you used in that spiel was "borderline". Indeed you are.
Abebe Bikila set Olympic records at both Games. He was never "slow" by the standards of the time. As I said, but you cannot grasp, women are now faster than when he won his first Olympic gold and are only two minutes away from his Tokyo time. Two minutes in the marathon is no great margin. If women were within two minutes of Kipchoge's record we would say that they are in the same class. 2.03 is enough to win championship titles today. So was 2.14 in the early '60's.
You know nothing about how women train today. But high mileage over varying terrain is the basis for all endurance events. They cannot be doing anything significantly different from how he and his contemporaries trained. The best men in that era were not hobby joggers.
Your myopia about this subject is so acute it is a wonder you can see well enough to type the rubbish that you do.
It's an absolute fair point, to ask why you choose 1960 as your male benchmark.
The fastest women today are 13 minutes slower than the fastest men. Are the women doping? The men? Both? I don't know, it's not to see from this numbers.
I chose the early '60's as a fairly safe benchmark for suggesting distance running was still clean then because the biggest aids to performance had not found their way into the sport or had been invented. Blood doping was not identified as a factor in elite sport until the late '60's, and it was only believed to be present in skiing and alpine sports in Scandinavia. It was not suspected in running until the mid-70's, with the Finn's (who, interestingly, are part of the Scandinavian winter sports fraternity, who were already claimed to be using it). EPO, which is even more effective, was not developed until the late '80's.
Although I have focussed on women in this discussion, to make a point questioning the credibility of recent improvements, my arguments apply equally to men. It is my view that doping is a key factor in modern performances at elite and professional levels. I take that from those who have investigated the issue of doping in sports.
Bikila certainly trained in a modern way, it was a huge leap forward from how other marathoners and long distance runners trained, who were still completely amateur and part-time runners.
Full time at a government military training camp at high altitude, 100+MPW and regular speed sessions on the track. It's funny how he is used by the 'natural born runners' advocates as the original innocent African native emerging out of the jungle with no sense of time and dominating the well-trained high-tech Western runners with all their 'advantages'.
The 'running barefoot' thing was likely an act of symbolism given he was competing in Rome for the Emporer who had seen his country conquered by Mussolini seeking to build a new Roman Empire. And to hide the fact that he was in fact the product of the most scientific training available at the time.
I pretty much doubt if running barefoot literally on Roman roads was any worse, if at all, than the basic running shoes they had at the time. Some of Zola Bud's junior records ran barefoot still stand today.
Bikila's success barefoot, as well as Budd's, gives the lie to the prevailing view here that the shoes are the biggest part of modern running improvements. Both Bikila and Budd beat the best runners of their eras who ran in shoes.
In terms of training, Bikila was probably the first truly modern marathon runner. It is to be expected that his successors would build on his achievements but not obliterate them - as they have - of which the greatest absurdity is to see women now closing in on Bikila and his contemporaries best performances. This site has frequently debated the unbridgeable gap between elite male and female athletic performances. That gap is now closing in marathon running, as the best doped women today are catching up with the best men of yesteryear, who were unlikely to be doped. Blood doping and later EPO had yet to enter the sport in the early '60's. But since then doping has become endemic in running and has sent both male and female performances into the stratosphere. And this still on 100mpw, that the top male athletes were running in the early '60's.
How do explain the African diaspora dominance? Recently in America both abdi hamid nur and yared nguse made teams in 2021 and 2022 the top German is a Somalian the top Swiss marathon/half is a Ethiopian, top Belgian and Netherland marathoners are Somali, another African athlete lobalu ran 12:52 after getting a fair chance to train from being a refugee, how many Caucasian have broken 13, 27, 60 lmk
The origins of Kenyan successes in athletics has been well discussed here. A sports scientist by the name of John Velzian was watching kenyans compete in an English meet and decided on the spot that they were 'natural born runners' who would dominate athletics. He then moved to Kenya and spent the rest of his life making a career out of making good on his prophecy. However, up until the 80's, their success was almost entirely dependent upon him. At the start of the 1968 season, the top Kenyan runners led by Kip Keino, staged a revolt because they thought Velzian was taking too much credit for their success and sacked him as their coach/manager. The performances of all the top Kenyans plummetted as a result, including Keino's and Daniel Rushida's (father of David). Mexico looked set to be a disaster for Kenya, so they grudgingly got down on their knees and begged Velzian to come back, which he did, and the rest is history (including Keino literally getting out of a hospital bed seriously ill, sprinting to the stadium to get to the starting line, and then running the sea-level equivalent of 3:18 to crush Ryun - after 6 rounds of the 5000, 10000, and 1500).
David Rushida! One of the all-time greats alongside Abdi Bikklia or Juan Torena.
3:18? More like 3:33. And learn to count up to 5.
Ryun was almost 5 seconds slower at altitude than his sea-level record. Keino's 3.34x was on that basis more equivalent to 3.30-32 at least at sea level - an absurdity in 1968 and probably a greater achievement than Beamon's freakish effort in the long jump. This is especially so when we consider that Keino left a hospital bed to race.
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