LateRunnerPhil wrote:
It also goes against Jakob - he got absolutely smoked in the world's XC U20 championship, you better hope most of the Africans (who also look older) weren't actually U20 but a lot older, or it looks even worse for Western distance running than it already does if he actually gets beat by a dozen African U20 runners at the same age where the only reason they are not in Olympics/world championship is that there are already 3 Ken/Eth/Uga runners on their team and they have no more slots available.
Um... Jakob got a gold medal in the 2020 Olympics... why does he look bad?
Is he supposed to win every single race he ever runs? He races a lot, so I assume that many of those races he is training through. He seems to have a decent peak each year, and gets not just one great performance, but a number of great performances in a row.
If anything, he lends credence to the idea that many of those Africans aren't "age doping." Jakob comes from a country with unimpeachable record keeping and is running age records, so why would we think people who ran slower were cheating on their records? Could some have been cheating? Sure, but it is reasonable to think that if Jakob can run those times at those ages, some of the other similar times are also legit.