At what point do you look at a performance and say "Yeah, he's gotta be doping."

Among non-elites, I can tell who is on gear near me by how quickly they can recover. For some I can tell by their muscles in comparison to their running volume but mostly recovery.

Sub 48.

When they pr by a whopping margin and don't bend over after the race, just walk normally instead of keeled over dying.

The fact that you armchair quarterbacks think this is of the utmost hilariousness.

I think the only ones that are obvious are the ‘generational’ dopers. For example, the mid 90s EPO gang whose records remain untouched.

Real cabbage patch kids.

I hope, and think, you are wrong that today no clean athlete one can go sub 13.
My cutoffs vary, as training and technology improve.

Ballpark: if some comes within 2% of the WR (or came within 2% of the then current WR in the last 50 years), then that someone is super sus. Within 1%, I am sure it's a doper.

Examples:

1500 m: 1% of 3:26.00 equals 2 seconds - a 3:28.01 runner might be clean but I doubt it.

5000 m: 1% of 12:35.36 equals 7.6 seconds - a 12:43 runner might be clean but I doubt it.
Marathon: 1% of 2:00:35 equals 72 seconds - a 2:01:48 runner might be clean but I doubt it.

For me it's nonsensical group performances. When half of the top ten runners at a major marathon are from the same country and several of them have times under 2:07. When this country's top finishers change every year. This suggests that race organizers who are ambitious for records cultivate a supply of runners from that country, manipulate testing to protect them, and even encourage or demand they dope.

In the case of Bekele, about 2008

This site is full of apprentice clairvoyants

All fast times are doped until Jakob breaks them. Then they are clean.

The time I saw Assefa run Berlin in 2:11 oh and that time I saw Kelvin Kiptum run London and Chicago

If the runner hails from any of the following countries, I suspect they’re doping:

China
Ethiopia
Kenya
Morocco
Russia
Uganda

Sage Canaday has a lot to say about steroids. They costed him a lot in life apparently. He rants on the subject every week it seems.

Those who cry doping in East Africa, like those who do so for Eastern Europe, have been right a lot of the time in the past three decades.

Nearly 300 Kenyan doping cases from 2015 to November 2023.

Exactly. If a runner is from Europe, their chance of cheating increases from 20% to 80% as the countries becoming further away from the United States. If a runner is from Asia (outside Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) or Africa, they are definitely 100% cheating. Runners from America don’t cheat in sports; we only cheat in elections.

Anyone who beats me, but looks as if they might not train as hard as me. I figure it’s pretty obvious at that point.

Yeah, and these masters guys that train & recover like 20 yr olds is another joke.