Katir improves by 8 seconds in 12 months at age 23. After Monaco, he seemed to be on a trajectory where double gold in Tokyo would be his, and the 1500, Mile, 3000, and 5000m World records under threat in 2022.
Instead, he absolutely flopped in Tokyo, took a couple of weeks rest, and ran 7th and 5th in his last 2 races of the season, against depleted, tired fields.
To most objective observers here, it was clear by Monaco that he was the most obvious doper since Ramzi burst on to the scene. His dramatic decline from Tokyo onwards didn't come as a great suprise to many here, who predicted that as soon as he was subjected to more testing, he would either get busted or throttle back and slow down.
We can be fairly sure that Katir took advantage of the pandemic and not being in the testing pool in the first place, to go heavy on the sauce for at least 12 months, which brought about an 8 second improvement in the 1500m, and a minute improvement in the 5000m. And this isn't going from c level to b level. This is going from lower b level to second fastest ever European in the space of 12 months.
He comes back fresh after Tokyo, yet has clearly lost 4 seconds from his season's peak. If this, as likely, is because he stopped doping just before Tokyo, then we can say that EPO improved him by 8 seconds in 12 months and he lost 1/3rd of that improvement in only a month or two after stopping. We can extrapolate that unless he refuels during the winter, he will likely be back to being a 3:36 runner next season.
Ramzi's progression was very similar - improving 9 seconds in one breakout season at age 24. We know now what was obvious to everybody except the usual hardened doping apologists here - it was entirely due to EPO. After serving his suspension and attempting a comeback, he was 22 seconds slower than at his EPO peak, although he did get back down to 3:37 at a point in his career when he really had nothing further to lose and may well have been back to at least micro-dosing again.
Ramzi and Katir both suggest that in only a 12 month time-frame, moving from no or little doping to full-throttle EPO doping will improve a sub elite from the 3:36-3:39 range down to the 3:28/29 range. An improvement of about 8 - 10 seconds in only 12 months.
How does this reflect on the full throttle era guys such as El G, Ngeny, Lagat, Komen? It means that we really should add at least 8 seconds to their times. The history of this sport between 1990 or so to very recently has been an utter joke.