Wearing Nike spikes, adidas' Gudaf Tsegay runs 14:49 5k at altitude 5k & destroys world record holder Letesenbet Gidey

BZ wrote:

This may be a nice win, but the best news is that Gidey is still alive and competing.

Agreed!

igotoneforyou wrote:

BZ wrote:

This may be a nice win, but the best news is that Gidey is still alive and competing.

Agreed!

+2

Disclaimer - for the past few years Tseguy has been one of my favourite athletes to watch across all disciplines.

"Oh but Tseguy ran a 3:54 in Doha, 3:54 outdoor to 3:53 indoor isn't that crazy a progression." Is funny, because it's that result that actually made me first have have questions. Tseguy was not in great shape in the back half of the 2019 season. 3:59 and 4th (behind 1. Kipyegon 2. Muir 3. Houlihan), in Pre, 4:18 and 4th in Monaco mile (behind 1. Hassan 2. Weightman 3. DeBues-Stafford), 4:03 and 9th in Zurich (1. Hassan 2. Klosterhalfen 3. DeBues-Stafford 4. Dibaba 5. Nanyondo 6. Chebet 7. Arafi 8. Simpson).

There was absolutely nothing to suggest in any of those performances that she was close to 3:54 shape. Also noteworthy, that in none of those races did Tseguy do her trademark - lead from the front and hold on. She was drafting but just couldn't hold onto the leaders.

You really go from 4:03 and 9/14 in a race with multiple sub 4s, to running 4:01 in semis + 48hrs later a 3:54 beating a bunch of people who had so recently been beating you? In a month? Something clearly changed in her approach September 2019, and if it's all above board I would really love to know.

In Doha she beat Laura Muir by 1.4s - though Muir had missed late July-August-Sept with a calf tear and admitted she didn't think she had 3:55 fitness in her/wasn't as fit as she was earlier in the season. Muir is a good comparison as the two have had a good rivalry over the past few years. Between the semi-finals London 2017 and Doha, Muir had a 7-3 head to head record with Gudaf. The margin of victory between them never exceeding 3s (Rome 2019, London 2018), and being 1.8s on average. Then along comes Lievin 2021 - Tseguy runs a headless, erratically paced 1500m yet obliterates Muir by 6.5 seconds. And it's not like Muir choked in Lievin - she ran #5 All Time, PR, NR and got absolutely blown out of the water by someone who did just about everything wrong in her race execution. For those who care about such things, she also did this while Muir was in the Dragonflies and Tseguy in old Avantis.

I'm an avid fan of the women's 1500m, and in particular someone who has always liked Gudaf Tseguy and really appreciated how her place on a startline basically guaranteed a good, fast, entertaining race. I *really* hope there's nothing sketchy going on. I absolutely do not buy however that "this is standard with her progression" - something clearly changed between Zurich-Doha 2019, and that input has continued to reap massive rewards since. If it's just "my group does more speed now" I would absolutely love to know:

a) what on earth they were doing before speed wise and

b) what they are now doing, because it clearly is working. Also

c) if everything was approaching from a strength POV before hand, how come her 5000m was so mediocre relatively speaking compared to her 1500 (pre 2019: 3:57/14:51).

Nailed it.

This is all fair, but I have a couple nitpicks.

1. I am not convinced by the Muir part of your argument. She was not fully healthy/fit in Doha, and proceeded to do classic Laura Muir things tactically. Running the 4th turn completely in lane 2 even though they're running WR pace. Going all-out from 300 out and saving nothing for the final 100. And she still ran 3:55 right?

This year, yes she got blown out indoors but 3:59 is 3:59. It's ho-hum nowadays. Linden Hall can run it. Just because you put it indoors doesn't change what it is. Ellie Purrier would've blown her out at Millrose last year if she could only muster a 3:59.

2. Your analysis of Tsegay's season is misleading at best. Yes, Tsegay was only 4th in Monaco. But that's because she went with Hassan for 3+ laps and died a painful death. She ran a 68 last 400, and got pipped by athletes who paced themselves sensibly. After watching that race, you'd definitely not count her out to beat DBS and Weightman who had perfect pacing and ran completely different races. At Pre, her kick wasn't that strong, which again had generally been her weakness. But she lost to Houlihan and Muir narrowly and following their season progression makes a later 3:54 not crazy. She had a terrible race in Zurich, it seems the tactics got to her. It happens, you can have a bad race. It helps that Doha was tactic-less for her, she just let Hassan make it a drag race.

Obviously she's taken a step forward since Doha. Yes, it seems a bit far-fetched that all of this improvement is due to added speedwork. But maybe she means track work in general. Long intervals, short intervals etc. If it was a really strength-based approach with very little at faster than HM pace, she could really be tapping into something new. She is also young, and certainly improving a lot from 22 to 24 is not weird.

It's a lot of improvement and something could be up certainly, but her Doha 3rd place didn't strike me as particularly weird. And a 3:53 with erratic and fast pacing is certainly impressive, but I mean Shelby Houlihan and Karissa Schweizer ran what they ran who am I say to say they're less suspicious.

This sport will never be clean when obvious doping is rationalized or obfuscated away. Drug cheat, plain and simple. Nothing unique about it. That's the sport. But hey, claim it is something else or that pointing it out must be bias. That's the same sport also.

Yeah, I mentioned Muir wasn't fully fit in Doha. Main point RE: Muir is that for years Tseguy and Muir have been pretty much level, always within a second or so of each other. The 3:53i is a massive departure from that trend, especially as Muir's result indicates that her fitness hasn't dropped.

3:59 is 3:59? Doesn't matter if it's indoors? Nine women in history have broken 4 indoors. 111 women have broken 4 outdoors. Yes, more people run outdoors than indoors, but that's still more than an 11x the number of sub 4 times. That's a fun crossover from our good convo about Purrier, but I think you might be getting carried away both on how comparable indoor to outdoor is, and on Purrier still. She ran 4:16 - equivalent to 3:57, sitting in the slipstream of the others until the last 200. Muir ran an entire 1500m in no man's land with Tseguy blazing ahead after she opened in 58/59 and no one else behind her. Those are two very different races. Put 2021 Muir v 2020 Purrier and I'm still taking Muir 4 races out of 5.

So Monaco, Hassan runs a 4:12 which is approx a 3:53-3:54 1500m. Tseguy can't handle it and blows up with a 68 last quarter. Doha, Hassan runs a 3:51 - even faster, and Tseguy not only doesn't blow up, but in fact holds on for a 3:54? They were basically identical races but with two drastically different outcomes. RE: Zurich, yeah Tseguy does not often do well tactically, but tactics weren't her problem in Zurich. -She didn't miss a move or fall asleep. She ran that race perfect tactically, reacting to everything Dibaba and Hassan threw down: she responded to Dibaba's initial surges, and was right there responding to the last lap surge. Just when push came to shove in the last 250m she didn't have anything left. She wasn't fit enough.

Someone screwing up tactics and losing would be Houlihan in the DL final 2018 - left too much ground to be covered in the last lap, probably could have run if she covered moves better. Zurich wasn't that.

"Impressive" -?! Dude, Tseguy popped **Genzebe Dibaba's** world record by 2 seconds. Solo. With nightmarish pacing. Houlihan and Schweizer ran a nice little perfectly controlled time trial. They get a cookie, it was nice. I like them, but in their dreams was that performance at Jesuit in the same stratosphere as what Tseguy did in Lievin. That wasn't even a top 10 all time mark by Houlihan. I really would go nuts if they ever did achieve something like that, but realistically they never will. No way in hell Shelby ever runs 3:48 solo outdoors or 3:51 solo indoors. Maybe, maybe she might squeek a WR with a Jerry Schumacher Special time trial conditions.

I like you, I enjoy our conversations as they're so pure track, but boy you're understated sometimes. Waiting for you to describe Rudisha's WR as just "a strong performance" next.

Anyway, to re-emphasize, I'm not saying she's glowing, I'm saying for an already top tier athlete to suddenly go to another level, that's got to be indicative of a pretty fundamental shift in training approaches *or* something else. 22 to 24? Yea... to an extent. I think that development matters less with phenoms who were already unreal aged 17-19. E.g. Jakob Ingebrigtsen, he ran 3:28 at 19, while say Matt Centrowitz ran 3:44 at 19. Centro cut 14s off his PR by the time he was 26, yet with Jakob he realistically has only a couple more seconds to find max until he hits his ceiling. Similarly, Klosterhalfen ran 3:58 at 20 while Houlihan did a 4:13. When you're a prodigy you're progressions hit different.

Anyway, good chats.

Great post. Honestly, of all the fantastic improvements we saw over the last years (Houlihan, GDS, Schweizer etc) I think Tsegay's is the least suspicious because she basically always showed world class talent. I also agree that her Doha 1500m wasm't that mindblowing if we consider that 1) Hassan still owned her and 2) even someone like GDS who she actually had beaten twice earlier the season wasn"t far behind. The real step forward came this year, not before Doha 2019.

Also those who want to enjoy the race this thread is about in a bit better quality can do it here:

That's because indoors has not been prioritized for years. Hate to bring in my own experience, but I ran on great indoor tracks hailing from the Boston area. It is just as fast outdoors. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You can look at the NCAA lists which continue to get shattered, and the trends on the world lists now that top athletes are running indoors on the college/world level. The depth of the lists are not to be trusted. Cole Hocker and Cooper Teare don't morph into 3:31 guys because they get to run outside where hey the weather might suck and there's wind.

You're missing the point on Muir. Tsegay went through in 2:05.94 at 800. Muir was nowhere to be seen. Not even close! She just wasn't that fit for the race...it's pretty evident. When she's in shape, in a fast race she's hitting 800 in 2:06.xx no problem. And she didn't really get sucked into the wild first 400, but she seems to have gotten psyched out and ran her "own race." She had an athlete in front of her as well who she let go early, she just wasn't up for her usual pace. Probably because she knew she was in 3:59 shape for that race not 3:54-5 shape like she generally is.

As for your Purrier take, you're just not placing Muir's run into context and instead homing in on what is artificially propping it up (thin all-time lists). It was a passively-run 3:59. Purrier was in better form when she ran the 4:16, she ran aggressively and kicked hard.

Monaco was months before Doha. Tons of time to improve, and the race being 109 meters shorter helps as far as the epic rig Tsegay had. It also helps that it was more even pacing from Hassan. In Monaco in the 3rd lap she dropped the hammer moreso and it was a pretty even build for Tsegay this time around with pacing and drafting in front of her thanks to Muir essentially rabbiting her to a medal. Tsegay was smart and laid off Hassan a bit more on the 3rd lap.These little nuances matter.

For Zurich, she just had a crap race. That's not always fitness. It could be a million things. If it's all doping, what did her drug regimen just not work that race? Who's to say if Doha had been a more up-and-down race she wouldn't have struggled again. It worked to her advantage Hassan and Muir turned it into a time trial, drag race.

It was a really great run indoors. I didn't mean to understate. It was a really fast first 200 and a fast 400 (around 59.5), something we've seen before but after that it settled into more sensibly-run race. Hutchings overreacted a bit in my view because it was unexpected and indoors. You and him need to forget that stuff about indoors being "impressive" vis a vis outdoors. It's bunk.

I bring up Houlihan/Schweizer to show that huge time drops are possible in your low-20s. Tsegay was a really promising young runner, but she's similar to Hassan where it took some time for the talent to click. Much like Houlihan. I'd still rather have the athlete with the better starting point. Good chats as always too.

I think it is very difficult to draw any reliable conclusions from a Tigray woman racing in Ethiopia at the current time - there is just too much and not enough going on in that part of the world. Unless you look very carefully for the information I am referring to, you will not know - it is well hidden.

it's an anonymous message board man...

astro wrote:

So it was the shoes and not the massive amounts of EPO? LOL. That sport at this level is a farce.

This.

These relatively slow times at altitude don't translate to fast times at sea level

Not for these Ethiopian elites

mikehammer wrote:

These relatively slow times at altitude don't translate to fast times at sea level

Not for these Ethiopian elites

Someone who understands.

The world record holder was one of these women so you are incorrect.

mikehammer wrote:

These relatively slow times at altitude don't translate to fast times at sea level

Not for these Ethiopian elites

There's a reason why times are slow at altitude. It's harder than sea level - even for altitude-trained athletes.

mikehammer wrote:

These relatively slow times at altitude don't translate to fast times at sea level

Not for these Ethiopian elites

Er, Giday ran 14:06 not so long ago...

Yes, she was bouncing a great deal to prevent herself from passing, and her arms, so low and loose indicated that she had a lot of reserve energy. She did not want to be the pacesetter, she could have certainly dropped her time but chose to play it safe. It would be exciting to see her and Hassan in Tokyo. I think sometimes you just have an exceptional day. I tend to doubt how much the swoosh contributed to her win.

I’m claiming victory on my Muir arguments after how she ran today. If you think Tsegay’s 3:53 was wild in how it was run vis a vis Muir...Muir just sprinted out and tried to run 3:53 in dreadful conditions. Pretty clear she just was not engaged in that indoor race. 61.5 is crappy weather completely solo with no pacing. If she’d been in today’s shape or had the approach at that in indoor meet I think she would’ve run 3:55.