Heading into last year's Worlds, African-born-runners had won 64 straight men's distance finals, they've now lost 4 of 8, why?

Gjert Ingebrigtsen

Must be the culture and genetic superiority among Scotland runners. Do they live at altitude and run 5 miles to school each way each day?

No Scot won the distance races being discussed. Reading and comprehending be hard.

It's multifactorial.

Improved drug testing in Kenya and elsewhere is a factor, especially in the last couple years.

U.S. and European training has improved substantially, including at the youth level.

There's also associative mating, at least in the U.S. People who are into running marry a partner who is also into running. They then create a family environment and lifestyle conducive to running for their children.

If Jakob had moved up to the 10000m it might have been 0 out of 4!

Interesting when this kind of coupling happens in East Africa, the more successful the parents are at running, the less likely the kids will end up running professionally. They won't need the money and will lack grit.

Ethiopia and Kenya have prioritized the roads over the track because that is where the money is. Podiums of all the big marathons and half marathons are solidly E. African. Back in the days of Bekele and Geb, E. Africans would start on the track and move to the marathon after establishing themselves on the track. Now, they just go straight to the roads. This is not to say that the Ethiopians and Kenyans who are on the track are second rate. Kipyegon is the best ever at 15/5. But the talent pool is much more shallow on the track than ever before.

But for the rest of the world, the opposite is true. The track is still a priority and the marathon is for later in your career.

I hope this doesn’t happen to the children of Tirunesh Dibaba and Sileshi Sihine. I’m patiently waiting for one of their kids to grow up and annihilate world records.

You should change the thread title to 4 of 8, right?

And Kipyegon and Kitum

Increased money in road marathons deserves a spot somewhere on the top 5 list of reasons.

Look at the number of Kenyans skipping the track altogether and looking for big paydays in marathons. Why mess with national trials, rounds at Worlds, etc. when you can hit it big at one road marathon and make a career's worth of track winnings?

A lot of these young guys running marathons would be really good track runners. Easily some 3k steeple to 10k track world medalists in the bunch, though picking who would be tricky.

There’re a couple things going on here. One is that for the 1500, it’s been somewhat muddled since El Guerrouj retired. The streak as it were included Kiprop and Ramzi. So if you want to put that to drug testing sure…But it’s also worth noting that it wasn’t like the next tier of 1500 runners were European at the time of Kiprop. It was Moroccan, Algerian, American and New Zealand runners. So most of the shift is a huge improvement by British runners and then Jakob.
The 5,000-10,000 to me seems a bit misleading because it’s Jakob really alone on this with Grant Fisher in the mix somewhat. One guy doesn’t really make a trend when Jakob is a massive outlier as far as non-Africans in the 5,000 and up.

I take it Rojo is lumping the Moroccan in with the EAs?

I think some of the above posters are looking at it in the wrong way. Instead of rationalizing why the Africans are losing, we should be asking why non-Africans sucked so much in the 90s and early 2000s or why they’ve improved so much since.

Look through old championship 5k results and you’ll see what I mean. In 2003, all the non-Africans were left in the dust before the last 800m burn up, and the top non-African finisher was Juan Carlos de la Ossa in 13:21–over 28 seconds behind Kipchoge! The American in the final, Jorge Torres, placed last in 13:43. He had a 13:20 lifetime best with 3:41 1500 speed—he wouldn’t even come close to making a U.S. team these days. 1999 is another good one: the top 8 finishers were African-born and the remaining 6 finishers were non-African. Americans Bob Kennedy and Adam Goucher ran 13:23 and 13:39 respectively, in a race won in 12:58…

Bob Kennedy and Craig Mottram at their peaks were seen as total anomalies, far separated from their countrymen and the only non-Africans running sub-13 for 5k. Now there are a dozen non-Africans of a similar caliber + a Jakob Ingebrigtsen who’s on another level entirely. There are still plenty of Africans running fast 5ks, the difference is non-Africans are running much faster.

As for the 1500, would you believe that throughout the entire decade of the 90s only 7 men broke 3:30?—6 of whom were African, 1 of whom was Fermin Cacho. Whereas in 2023 alone 5 men not of African heritage have broken 3:30, plus a slew of guys in the 3:30-3:32 range.

There are more cohesive training groups in Western countries now. In the 90s, the Western runners didn't have the kinds of groups we have now. Bob Kennedy had to go and train a big chunk of his time in Australia and other countries with a Kenyan group.

Jerry's original group with Solinsky and company really started this off. Now you have OAC and others. It helps train in a cohesive, talented group led by a good coach.

Jakob has had that since like age 11 with his brothers. Perfect role models.

Is Centro African born?