A few criticized Rojo for his question. One said he'd be fine with the question if LetsRun had been consistent on the matter. Here is Rojo's reply to that.
We have been very consistent since day 1 at LetsRun. We've asked doping questions or let the messageboarders ask doping questions from the moment this website was founded.
Also in the same year, when I started coaching at Cornell, a freshman on the team from Oregon came up to me at the first practice and said, "Alberto Salazar does not like you guys."
Why? Because people were talking about doping at Athletics West on the messageboard.
We've been 100% consistent on doping. We ask the questions that need to be asked whether you are white (Galen Rupp, Salazar, etc), black (Regina Jacobs, Justin Gatlin, etc.), male, female, American or Kenyan.
For those who think it was a good question, I'm wondering what do they consider would be a good answer?
What can she possibly say that won't sound like what every innocent and guilty athlete alike would say, or has already said?
At its core, the question isn't about Chepngetich, but about what a selected group of fans are prepared to believe and disbelieve, selected on the basis of doubting a performance can be clean, and who implicitly believe (on what basis?) that only doping can produce the best performances?
What can she say to change the minds of a group of people who stopped listening to what athletes say?
For the athlete who just achieved what every athlete strives to achieve with a lifetime of training, it's a lose-lose question.
Saying "I don't know" and "people will talk" seems like a good response.
Wow! First time I have ever agreed with any of your arguments. Wonders truly never cease.
When the burrito eating athlete was banned, the questionner and a few others incessantly went out of their way to claim the athlete was innocent, not once did they ask the same type of questions as they asked this Kenyan runner. One can only wonder why.
I didn't wonder why. It's bc Shelby is white (and relatively attractive--the kind of woman the Brojos want to fvck) and the others are not
I definitely wouldn't say he is a coward after he banned Russia, but he seems to have some kind of soft spot for Kenya that is making him overly reticent to pull the trigger on them. He's tried the carrot and stick approach and it has worked to a degree. I think if it wasn't for Coe, the Paris 1500m final would have looked a lot different.
However, there are still freak Kenyan performances occuring that are obviously doped. It's time to ban Kenya.
I've said it on multiple threads -- obviously LRC does have a consistency problem but that doesn't undermine genuine questions about this performance. It doesn't explain away this situation if the critique is that the brojos wouldn't have treated other runners exactly like this. It's a problem but it doesn't remove suspicion. The supplied answer at the top of this shows all sorts of insecurities. There was no black page for this result. The post race article went straight to what is going on here in a way that really hasn't happened when men run really fast. You had better believe there'd be a black page for a white guy smashing the WR. That's what people mean by consistency but it's right to take a hard line on doping/ask difficult questions. Just don't be insecure about it.
Edit: it's crazy that Chavez/Citius posted the tweet embedded in the article like they would ever ask that kind of a question. I'm sure the Citius follow up was about if she likes deep dish or not.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
While I commend you for questioning Chepngetich, and do not think you should be criticized for that. I think you’re kidding yourself by saying you’ve “been consistent”
You said:
“We have been very consistent since day 1 at LetsRun. We've asked doping questions or let the messageboarders ask doping questions from the moment this website was founded.”
1) There is a massive difference between people on a message board questioning if someone is doping and the editor of the actual website questioning people live
2) You cherry picked a few examples, but the year after you questions Regina Jacob, your brother wrote an article on how proud he was the pace Paula Radcliffe, who, at the time, broke the record by basically the same percentage that Chepngetich did. I‘m fairly confident you believe that record is clean, although it probably should’ve been subject to the same line of questioning, especially considering Salazar was Radcliffe’s coach.
3) I want to point out that even if it was not your intention, when Shelby was banned, your interview with Ross Tucker came off as you desperately trying to find a reason why she didn’t do it, or how her excuse could be real.
I think a lot of running news sites are a bit too familiar with pros. Criticism of and questioning athletes is evidence of an informed fan base. I don’t think you should apologize for asking an athlete about doping. However, criticisms of your lack of consistency are valid.
"Ruth, today, at age 30, you destroyed the world record in the marathon by two minutes. You set a personal record, on the same course, by 4 minutes and 22 seconds. To what do you attribute your astonishing improvement? And can you understand why some would not believe this performance, given that there have been over 300 Kenyan athletes banned for doping in the past ten years?"
Marathon 2017 2:22:36 Istanbul (TUR) 12 NOV 2017 2018 2:18:35 Istanbul (TUR) 11 NOV 2018 2019 2:17:08 Dubai (UAE) 25 JAN 2019 2020 2:22:05 London (GBR) 04 OCT 2020 2021 2:22:31 Chicago, IL (USA) 10 OCT 2021 2022 2:14:18 Chicago, IL (USA) 09 OCT 2022 2023 2:15:37 Chicago, IL (USA) 08 OCT 2023 2024 2:09:56 Chicago, IL (USA) 13 OCT 2024
Jakob does not come from a country with 150 distance runners currently suspended.
Jakob is not a woman running as fast as the best Americans.
Anti-doping in Norway is not bankrupt with no tests performed since the start of August.
Jakob ran 3 seconds faster with super shoes, wave lights, a mondo track than a WR set nearly 30 years ago. (that's around 0.4 second a lap faster than Komen, yet you think the likes of him and El G running 1 second faster a lap than Coe and Cram just 15 years before with no new tracks, shoes, or training methods were clean).
What parts of the above do you not understand?
Jakob is more of an outlier than Ruth. White runners have not shown they can run as fast as East Africans, except for Jakob. He is the only one. But you racists, and you know you are one, attribute it to his and his father’s advantage in intelligence and training methods. Tell me who is the second fastest white runner at 3000m?
The only one? Did you happen to catch theis year's Olympic 1500m final?
There is no reason to think they would run their best marathon any faster doped.
Are you for real? What a stupid, clueless remark. There are so many reasons to think so, note for example
1) The science/scientists, on record with e.g. up to 3% via blood doping, up to 1 minute over 10k.
2) The coaches, e.g. Canova and Salazar both estimating a 2 minute gain in the marathon.
3) The athletes. E.g. Flanagan (also a coach now) claiming that Jeptoo's success in Boston was due to doping.
4) The many many successful dopers in the marathon, from Olympic Champ Sumgong to countless majors winners like Jeptoo, Cherono, Wanjiru,... to 2:02 runner Ekiru.
5) The fact that Radcliffe's pre-ABP WR of 2:15 wasn't even approached by anyone for over 16 years (until supershoes).
6) Radcliffe's super blood history (in competition hgb jumps of over 20% concurring with ret-% decreases of 20%, indicative of the typical 1 L blood transfusions).
7) Countless insiders like rojo and Burfoot.
Or, these are stupid and clueless reasons:
1) 10K is not a marathon; scientists have no real insight into blood doping for the marathon, let alone elite marathon performance; they are false authorities relying on studies that caution against making such estimates for elite athlete performances.
2) Speculative theoretical estimates. No known examples.
3) Jeptoo ran 2:18:57; her success was largely due to Flanagan's aggressive pacemaking bringing a large group to 20 miles.
4) Sumgong also ran 2:20:41; examples of fast runners busted for doping is not enough of a reason to think doping made them faster, only that they believed it would.
5) If a powerful PED existed for the marathon, surely this would not be true.
6) The "super blood history" was after her world records not to mentioned completely explained by non-doping reasons
7) False authority fallacy. Not clear they have any reasons to believe it either.
Are you for real? What a stupid, clueless remark. There are so many reasons to think so, note for example
1) The science/scientists, on record with e.g. up to 3% via blood doping, up to 1 minute over 10k.
2) The coaches, e.g. Canova and Salazar both estimating a 2 minute gain in the marathon.
3) The athletes. E.g. Flanagan (also a coach now) claiming that Jeptoo's success in Boston was due to doping.
4) The many many successful dopers in the marathon, from Olympic Champ Sumgong to countless majors winners like Jeptoo, Cherono, Wanjiru,... to 2:02 runner Ekiru.
5) The fact that Radcliffe's pre-ABP WR of 2:15 wasn't even approached by anyone for over 16 years (until supershoes).
6) Radcliffe's super blood history (in competition hgb jumps of over 20% concurring with ret-% decreases of 20%, indicative of the typical 1 L blood transfusions).
7) Countless insiders like rojo and Burfoot.
Or, these are stupid and clueless reasons:
1) 10K is not a marathon; scientists have no real insight into blood doping for the marathon, let alone elite marathon performance; they are false authorities relying on studies that caution against making such estimates for elite athlete performances.
2) Speculative theoretical estimates. No known examples.
3) Jeptoo ran 2:18:57; her success was largely due to Flanagan's aggressive pacemaking bringing a large group to 20 miles.
4) Sumgong also ran 2:20:41; examples of fast runners busted for doping is not enough of a reason to think doping made them faster, only that they believed it would.
5) If a powerful PED existed for the marathon, surely this would not be true.
6) The "super blood history" was after her world records not to mentioned completely explained by non-doping reasons
7) False authority fallacy. Not clear they have any reasons to believe it either.
The same as every other comment you have made all the years you have posted here - doping doesn't enable performance enhancement for distance runners. Same old drum you are beating - from someone who was never an elite distance runner who has never tried doping - and always consistently wrong.
The same as every other comment you have made all the years you have posted here - doping doesn't enable performance enhancement for distance runners. Same old drum you are beating - from someone who was never an elite distance runner who has never tried doping - and always consistently wrong.
It would be different if someone could come up with a better reason than "because someone else believes".
The same as every other comment you have made all the years you have posted here - doping doesn't enable performance enhancement for distance runners. Same old drum you are beating - from someone who was never an elite distance runner who has never tried doping - and always consistently wrong.
It would be different if someone could come up with a better reason than "because someone else believes".
That isn't the reason but is your usual misrepresentation of the arguments. All arguments based on facts drawn together ultimately amount to an assessment, a conclusion, or a "belief", but a belief that is soundly supported unlike your pretensions to knowledge. So tell us how you are sure doping doesn't aid elites when elites dope in considerable numbers and you have never been elite and never taken the peds they have?
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
Thanks for posting! For folks who did see his handle, the time-stamp is the 20 minute mark.
p.s. It is not just the "Karen" either. The next speaker also jumped on the "how dare they insinuate that we're doping!" bandwagon. It seems that their politicians have no idea about Kenya's current difficulty with big doping busts... To be fair, I am sure most US politicians have no idea how common doping is in our own country.
This post was edited 7 minutes after it was posted.
I definitely wouldn't say he is a coward after he banned Russia, but he seems to have some kind of soft spot for Kenya that is making him overly reticent to pull the trigger on them.
And it's hard to conceive of anything more despicable than using your government's intelligence apparatus, the KGB, to cheat at an Olympics that you've been entrusted with hosting. That's what Russia did at Sochi. Kenya, as a nation, hasn't done anything comparable.
It would be different if someone could come up with a better reason than "because someone else believes".
That isn't the reason but is your usual misrepresentation of the arguments. All arguments based on facts drawn together ultimately amount to an assessment, a conclusion, or a "belief", but a belief that is soundly supported unlike your pretensions to knowledge. So tell us how you are sure doping doesn't aid elites when elites dope in considerable numbers and you have never been elite and never taken the peds they have?
Look again at BfB's "reasons". They can be reduced without any loss to "scientists/coaches/athletes/insiders believe", lacking any "arguments based on facts" and not "soundly supported".
And it's hard to conceive of anything more despicable than using your government's intelligence apparatus, the KGB, to cheat at an Olympics that you've been entrusted with hosting. That's what Russia did at Sochi. Kenya, as a nation, hasn't done anything comparable.
It amounts to the same thing if doping is evidently the norm among the nation's athletes, and none can be trusted or believed.
Is there a huge difference between what Russia was doing, and the endemic practice of medical professionals in Kenya helping athletes to dope, or the Kenyan athletics manager taking bribes to warn athletes of 'random tests'?
Look again at BfB's "reasons". They can be reduced without any loss to "scientists/coaches/athletes/insiders believe", lacking any "arguments based on facts" and not "soundly supported".
According to your strange and desperate distortions of what I wrote, maybe. In reality, nope, not at all.
If you are serious (for your sakes, I hope you are trolling): you are seriously underestimating the knowledge and experience the field (evidently from insiders to athletes to doctors to coaches to research scientists) has gained in the last 60 years. We are obviously not starting just now to look into doping!
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