Reasons why Jakob Ingebrigtsen is drug-free

It depends on what one means by winning. Is it winning if you cheat? Not for someone who wants to win by becoming the best possible version of themselves.

The sport is full of childhood phenoms - Sydney and Usain, for example. That has never stopped rampant speculation on these boards that those athletes are doping.

Should be noted that the last time Jakob said that, he was still being coached by Gjert.

He has just smashed one of the longest standing records in the sport, a record that was likely set by an athlete on EPO, for which there was then no effective test. That virtually ends the speculation about Ingebrigtsen doping there.

His teenage times mean nothing. None of the athletes who finished in front of him in Paris or who have beaten him in successive WC 1500 finals have that background.

When gut feelings and deep-seated biases overshadow scientific curiosity. You have no idea how much Ingebrigtsen's training regimen might have contributed to his performances compared to former heroes.

And according to you, Ingebrigtsen is too weak in the 800 meters to perform well in the 1500 meters, as shown in recent finals where speed at the end has been crucial. Hard to see why his vulnerability as an athlete is a sign of widespread doping use. Doomed if you do doomed if you dont 🤷‍♂️

Jakob ran 8:26 with a 2:02 last 800 in 2015. 14 years old, barely hit puberty.

Nothing remarkable about his progress when you look at his early history.

At 19, Bekele became the first athlete ever to win both the short- and long-course senior titles at the World XC Championships.

How many 19-year-olds in history were capable of doing that?

Being a prep phenom is basically a prerequisite to challenging the distance WRs.

It doesn’t even remotely explain what we’re witnessing with Jakob — and the existence of threads like this one are evidence of that. The notion that someone could hold 10 distance WRs at once, which appears to be possible for Jakob, is absurd.

I hope he’s clean. But there’s plenty of room for skepticism here.

I’d argue this actually increases the chances of someone “buying advantages.” I mean, you can only buy so much if you’re poverty stricken, especially at a young age, right?
The motivation to win is largely a constant. Wealth, if anything, makes it easier to cheat in sophisticated ways.

He’s as drug free as Jessica hull of Australia 🇦🇺.

🛎️ 🛎️ 🛎️

Ding! Ding! Ding!

The runners in the '90's who set the records were gifted athletes, as it is claimed Ingebrigtsen is. They had access to and were using EPO, which is known as a powerful performance enhancing drug - which is why it has been so often used - and for which there was then no effective test. So it is inevitable it was being widely used in that era.

Yet we have a runner in Ingebrigtsen who has shown he is now way faster than the most talented and likely doped record-holders of the past. So either his ability is in completely another stratosphere than those athletes - it isn't, as Kerr has shown - or EPO isn't a powerful ped - it is.

You have failed to understand the point about Ingebrigtsen and the 800. His pedestrian 800 performances show he is relatively slow compared to the great 1500 runners. (So does his finish show that. Outsprinted by 3 athletes). What he has is endurance far and above what the greats of the past possessed - and they were amongst the most talented athletes on the planet and trained just as hard. What gives him that superiority is doping, because it can hugely magnify endurance, as the athletes in the so-called "EPO era" knew. Today, doping is much more sophisticated than it was 30 years ago, and athletes know better how to beat testing. We are seeing it again and again - as Paris demonstrated and now also this latest world record.

The motivation to win cannot be said to be constant at all when it is the only way out of poverty for many young athletes from Africa.

Some of the greatest runners in the sport didn't take it up till their late teens. Being a teenage phenomenon isn't a prerequisite for getting to the top.

There is no elite sport without it. That is hard for many fans to accept.

Why would he not dope when he knows it is so easy to get away with microdosing and TUEs? He knows all his competitors would and clearly do the same

Jakob is filthy rich now because of his running... even if he would get caught tomorrow, doping would have been so worth it.

As for "He was as dominant at 12-14 years old as he is today.": exactly. He dominated clean teenagers then just like he is dominating doping adults now.

To dominate the best doped talents of the century, you have to be better in all.

I disagree: we’re not talking about the average Norwegian kid who grew up participating in sports casually.

Jakob grew up in an environment in which running was the foremost concern, with a father who was extremely involved, demanding, and knowledgeable.

You're being disingenuous if you can’t see how relative wealth, in this instance, would make doping easier.