Niels Laros 18 yo runs 13:23 5K!!

Now that Coevett has turned this into another Kenyan-bashing thread, all there is left is for Armstronglivs to say/imply that Laros is doping. Then rekrunner will post and this thread will be gone.

This time by Laros is especially impressive because it was a season opener. I believe he can run close to 13:10 this season.

Some of your statements are accurate but many of your statements are inaccurate, period. Actually about Kenyan kids - most of them aspire to be like Premier League football players, not athletes. Running is for economic reasons. Same deal in Ethiopia.In most Kenyan towns, the kids much prefer Football/ Soccer to Track/athletics.

I've lived with sub elite groups in Kenya, guys like Sammy Nyokaye, and his group of 30-50 runners, in Keroka, and Kericho, with stops in Nakuru, Kisii and Nairobi, 1:02:00/2:14:00 and seen no evidence of doping. I did see, however, that in his humble abode, Sammy's Adidas shoes had been partially eaten by a rat. He had won the shoes in a half marathon race in France a few years ago, Lille. True.

He's the Dutch Cooper Teare. Super cool.

It doesn't matter. No Kenyan kid has more than a zero chance of playing for Manchester United or Real Madrid. Every Kenyan kid with a small degree of athletic talent has the financial incentive to train full-time and dope and make a living (by Kenyan standards). Galen Rupp wanted to play for Manchester United. Usain Bolt would have swapped careers to play for Manchester United in a heartbeat, even when he was breaking world records and Olympic golds. There are precisely two Kenyans playing professional soccer in the entire world. That compares to thousands in England alone. You yourself said there are 'thousands of international class runners in Iten alone'. So I'd suggest there are at least 1,000 teenage Kenyans training full-time to be professional distance runners, and there are zero teenage Kenyans training full-time to be professional soccer players. In Europe, it would be more like at least 10,000 teenagers training full-time (at academies) to be professional soccer players, and probably less than 100 training full-time to be distance runners (including 5000m track runners).

I don't apologize. There are still posters on LetsRun today that fervently insist East Africans have a genetic advantage, as Ghost1 is in this thread. What do you think that does to young non-African kids who find this forum on Google searching for training advice? It would probably be worse if I hadn't stood my ground over these years and presented the counter case, which is being proved correct every passing day, both by the emergence of incredible non-African talents like Laros, and by every new Kenyan doping bust.

I'm proud of myself.

You shouldn't be - you have nothing to be proud of that I can tell with your posts over the years. You are just a pathetic miscreant. I don't see the East Africans for more than they are as individuals, you are just a racist who only sees a mass of black people whose single common denominator is doping.

Laros is a great talent. It is hard to compare him with American high schoolers, since he trains with pros in a club team (Connor Burns has great coaching but doesn't exactly have faster teammates to train with, for instance), more proof that the club circuit is a much more efficient way of producing great results with a lot fewer people than we throw into the high school xc and track system.

You called?

He was the second 18 year old in that race.

Keneth Kiprop of Uganda, also born in 2005, finished in 13:15

Lol

Binns ran 13:27.04 for the European U20 record. He improved to 13:23.71 by '88.

He does have plenty of swagger. Laros clearly enjoyed being at that European awards banquet late last year, especially when the female hostess interviewed him on camera and really jumped the gun by touting Jakob vs Laros in Paris 2024. Laros grinned and didn't say anything about 2024 being too early.

He's a sunglasses and suit posing in the limelight type of kid but he also seems like a really good guy. He follows almost all of the Dutch track and field athletes on Instagram regardless of age or event and Likes everything they post.

Fortunately Jakob didn’t listen to geniuses like you! He hasn’t lost a 5k race in years, and is undefeated against the WR holder in the event.

Kenyans, especially from certain groups like Kalenjin, do have a genetic and physiological advantage compared with bigger boned and wider ankles Euro kids, in general. The Kalenjin, who tend towards ectomorph physiques, with shorter torsos, and relatively long legs, slim below the knees, can move at relatively high speeds with less energy costs. Compare Sondre Moen, the Norge monster (2:05/Fukuoka winner 2017) with most elite Kenyan 2:05:00 -2:06:00 blokes. Laros is a freak, both in terms of physique (extreme ectomorph) and precocious ability. Euro kids, in general, have lives that are too "rich" with too many other options, leaving few wishing to emulate 5.7/115 pound Kenyan mini monsters.

On the other hand, I don't necessarily believe Coevett is a racist, as he lives in multicultural Great Britain where being a racist would be virtually impossible, impractical not to mention illegal, if voiced, but his generalizations about Kenyans and doping is misguided, I think.

This forum is a scream.

A guy expounds at length his racial theory that Kenyans are massively physiologically different to Europeans, then in the next sentence graciously denies I'm a racist.

It's like being on Stormfront and Nazis accusing me of racism for denying that Arayans are physically superior Uebermensch.

If a German LetsRun forum existed in 1942, would I be a racist if I denied that Rudolf Harbig was proof of Arayan supremacy given that he'd just ran nearly 2 seconds faster over 800m than any other human in history? And doubly a 'racist' if I claimed it was most likely due to amphetamines and other peds that the NAZIs were feeding their athletes?

This is all psuedo-scientific junk reasoning. It's like how Kiprop was obviously the phsyiological proof of Kenyan genetic advantage. Maybe proof of what a scrawny unathletic body can do when fed with EPO and other peds every day. East Africans dominate through peds and participation levels, and East Africans have a certain look, so that look must be the reason for their success. No, peds and participation levels are.

Watch Steve Cram smashing the mile world record and it's easy to think that his physiology was obviously the perfect one.

I don't live in Britain anymore, but even in Britain, unless I had super woke friends, I wouldn't fear having my views here 'exposed'. I don't think there's any other place online or offline where claiming that Kenya has a massive doping problem, and that their success over the last 30 years has been due to that doping rather than being an offshoot of Homo Sapiens, would get me labeled a 'racist'.

On the other hand, going about in public saying that black people are radically genetically different and that their craniums are areodynamically suited for running etc would probably get you beaten up.

Speed is everything? That's why Jakob smokes everybody with a 1:46 800 speed?

Strengh is everything for 1500+. If you have enough strengh, everything else is easier. Obivously that does not mean you should not train speed at all.