Salvitore Stitchmo wrote:
Is anyone else picking up the crazy similarities between Hassan and, well I dunno, uhh, Genzebe Dibaba here?
Lets do a little refresher on Dibaba.
Remember back in 2015 when she destroyed the WR over 1500m, taking 7 seconds off her outdoor best and then went to World Championships and ran 1.56.xx for the last 800m and basically handled the field with ease?
Then a year later her coach Jama Aden got busted a few months prior to Rio. She went and got destroyed by Kipyegon in the final 150m but still held on for silver. Since then she has not broken 3.55 for 1500m. And sure, some of you might say "but 3.55-56 is still a good level" and yes it is for a female 1500m runner - but it's not the same stratosphere as 3.50.01. If you trained a good high school boy with a 1500m PR of 3.50.01 and they were running 3.55-56 would you think that's good? Exactly.
So back to Hassan and why this sounds familiar?
1. Both athletes insanely dominant and running performances that seem to defy explanation
2. Both athletes coaches get caught/implicated/arrested/banned from the sport for doping infractions
3. Since that moment ? well draw your own conclusions....
Last night Hassan looked like she couldn't overcome her awful running form anymore (a classic tell-tale of the doped distance runner is the ability to inexplicably grind and bash through inefficient running form and still run insane times) and looked completely out of her depth in a race that a world 1500m/10000m champ should have been just fine in. She pulled out of the race because she was going to run 14.55 and be completely exposed. Covid isn't an excuse (as we saw in the results overall last night) - many of the worlds elite have used it as a measure to focus even more and train even harder as evidenced by 1.43, 3.28,12.35 on the means side and 2.29, 14.22
Hassan with no Salazar is just another 3.57ish, 14.52ish talent - which is very good by global womens standards, but not the 3.51, 4.12 (mile), 14.22 runner we think we have been witnessing the last 2 seasons in particular.
Oh, and she was doping with Alberto in case that wasn't clearly obvious from the above.