After this morning’s result I’m struggling to find enjoyment in following this sport

misso wrote:

epo giddy wrote:

There is though. Not enough corruption at the ADA level and lack of access to epo and support systems around it.

From the runners’ perspective, not America’s. A country’s running achievement is always a combination of its people’s talent and the country’s support systems. Your stance is that USADA (and Nike, BTC etc) is being restrained and example-setting (really??) in strictly adhering to the letter and spirit of WADA rules while East African ADAs are not. That is a stance of moral American exceptionalism, not opportunity inequity.

If you believe the level of corruption is basically the same around the world you haven’t traveled much.

A question mark would have been good but no worries. Yeah, it seems like we're on the same page but maybe a paragraph or two apart. I think that in the West because we have more out of competition tests you need to be a bit more sophisticated to dope and get away with it. I know people who want Ethiopia and Kenya banned like Russia's been (which seems kind of a joke but there you go) because they think there's something like state sponsored doping going on there. But to me, East African doping looks like it's free lanced. I'd bet what we have in the US is actually closer to institutionally sponsored doping than anything going on in East Africa. I also agree with you that if everyone was clean East Africans would be winning more stuff than westerners, though I think that Japanese marathoners, who I do believe are clean, would be doing as well as clean East Africans.

epo giddy wrote:

misso wrote:

From the runners’ perspective, not America’s. A country’s running achievement is always a combination of its people’s talent and the country’s support systems. Your stance is that USADA (and Nike, BTC etc) is being restrained and example-setting (really??) in strictly adhering to the letter and spirit of WADA rules while East African ADAs are not. That is a stance of moral American exceptionalism, not opportunity inequity.

If you believe the level of corruption is basically the same around the world you haven’t traveled much.

I indicated no such belief.

Doped to the gills.

Until drug testing is uniformly performed, consistent, and ubiquitous we will always have cause to doubt these "performances." Why wasn't she carted off to doping control immediately after the race? I didn't hear if there was even any testing being done there.

Agree with everything above. On Japanese runners, I haven’t followed them enough but am aware of their depth of talent and that, combined with my understanding how honor and shame works in their culture, if forced to bet, my money would be that their distance runners, especially road runners, have some of the highest talent per nanomole of banned substances.

“struggling to find enjoyment in following this sport” is a predictable consequence of incomplete or misleading science, logical fallacies, myths, rumors, and bad “investigative journalism”. This is why constant accusations directly linked to success, without any real evidence, is so damaging for the sport. You are not the first, and not the only one.

You should not read too much into the events in Tokyo, or attempt to use it as a predictor of road race performance, given her other track and road race performances.

You say “there are arguments for it being a not doped up result” yet what is lacking are serious arguments that it can be a “doped up result”, let alone “can only be”.

Excuse me sir, what kind of cheese do you prefer with your whine?

Dude you sound like a MAGAwhiner. When elections don't go their way they cry foul. Until a test confirms she is positive just stfu please.

notsatirepost wrote:

To find a similar improvement in the men’s half, you have to go all the way back to 2006. e

wow, a whole checks notes 15 years ago?

yeesh

honestly, we all know doping runs deep in kenya n ethiopia. maybe also uganda. its no secret. we have to take the results with a grain of salt. no need to get upset. there are worse problems.

Your whole argument is based on baselines that are incomplete due to the history of women in sport.

The women that you believe are “world class” are not world class. There are HUGE gaps from the top 4 to the rest of the field. We’re still waiting for them to catch up.

I can't watch road and tra k winning any longer, too many drug cheats. I have moved to trail uktras until those get ruined.

Anti-doping agencies need to find a way to ensure no one is even in the gray area with zero chance if beating the tests. Until then I just don't care about these events any longer. I'd rather slow clean times than fast juiced times

but Gidey has the smoothest form.

what a strong yet silky stride.

This is the same stupid debate for the millionth time in which everyone willy-nilly ranks countries based on their own personal biases.

What is new are the shoes. I find this performance less suspicious because I think the shoes have an enormous effect.

That said, back to the doping, the reason the sport is screwed is because every great performance is suspicious because no one knows who is doping. Probably a lot of people are clean and a lot of people are dirty. We can't tell the difference, so sport is tough to care about too much. . . .

yeah, but take principle out of it wrote:

but Gidey has the smoothest form.

what a strong yet silky stride.

Yes. It´s poetry in motion.

No PEDs are going to make you run like that.

And she has a very good and strong head to match.

If you have the stride of an 800m runner and the head of a grinder/ time trailer you will see great results.

It´s perfectly fine to be sceptical about a wr and sure, it might be doping but she is extremly talented to the point that it is visably obvious even compared to other elite runners.

Tyjjddhkdsxhkgf wrote:

And its really never occurred to you that women's records are being broken so frequently now because there are a lot more women running competitively than in the past?

You know, what with marathon running only being introduced as competitive events in the 80s, you never thought about it taking women longer to catch up in terms of numbers of competitors to men (still not at parity). Never heard of peer pressure or social attitudes affecting women at all? Greater competition improving times?

What do you think mens running would be like if men had been banned from competing over further than 800m until 40 years ago in case their penises got damaged?

Agreed, I don' think there should be gender competition divisions in a sport like distance running. Keep tabs on men's and women's times for statistical interest but scrap the gender competition categories. It seems very patronizing to women to tell them that they are running fast for a woman or to give them prize money for being the first woman in a race. Women should be treated as equals in distance running and open competition should be the way forward. This would also resolve the problem of trans athletes.

^^^^ Pretty much that ^^^^

Here we are doping with an arm tied behind our back. E.g., UKAD does OOC tests without warning calls, USADA provides warning calls up to several hours before a test, and AKAD several days (or at least used to).

former fan, now just a hobby jogger wrote:

Then don't follow it. I stopped following the elite side of the sport years ago. I don't care in the least what the elites do, because I don't control them. Some elite is underperforming? So what? It makes no difference in my life at all.

You know what I can control? My running. I can choose to train to the best of my ability, eat a good diet, get adequate rest, and then go run a race myself, taking satisfaction in the outcome while learning to improve next time.

Forget about the elites. Look in the mirror. That's where the real challenge, and the real joy, in the sport lies. You will never find real fulfillment as a spectator.

You left out, "Don't compare yourself with others." Otherwise, solid advice!