Have you guys realized Bekele and Farah are from the same era?

An obvious explanation is that they were doping their entire careers, while Farah waited until his late 20s.

Bekele still strikes me as the most naturally talented runner ever though, so maybe that's not the case.

But I don't know. Geb had the achilles problems, and also, maybe he wins more if no Bekele. Im not sure how they overlap.

Bekele by all accounts didn't love training, so maybe it just got harder for his body to come back as he aged. Normal.

Cheptegei just stopped. He certainly may have been able to keep it going.

What are the odds that Farah is the only doper from the group?

I knew doping would be mentioned early on. I don't have much to say since it's mostly speculation, but I suppose it's plausible, especially since Farah is the outlier and probably has the most doping allegations. We'll never know for real.

I would say that Bekele and Geb retired from the track simply because they couldn't win anymore. Both lost two championships on the track before just moving completely to the roads (with Geb making a short return to the track for 2008 Olympics). Both had successful road careers. Chep seems to be retiring from the track because of a lack of motivation to win more on the track, and probably because there is more money on the roads.

In terms of overlap, the 2003 Paris Worlds 10k was probably the best prime v prime matchup between the 10k GOATs. That was Bekele's first title, and Geb was a close silver in the twilight of his track career. Keep in mind, the 2003 World Champs also had the 5k with Kipchoge, El Guerrouj and Bekele. Quite an amazing championship that year.

The 2017 London Worlds 10k was another great prime v prime with Farah winning his last title, and a 20-yr-old (supposedly) Cheptegei getting silver.

But both of these examples were matchups where we had one GOAT close to the end of his track career, and one at the beginning.

Crazy we never saw a true prime v prime with Bekele and Farah.

If anybody can think of any great races between these guys outside of the championships and Great North Run, let me know.

Before he became a world beater, Farah was considered a freak talent due to his brilliant finishing kick. He had been hyped for years, but wasn't living up to the hype.

The big change for Farah was switching to Alberto Salazar as his coach. Also, he and Rupp became best buds and fantastic teammates. They would help each other out in championship races like the Kenyans. No more of the "every man for himself" mindset so common among Western athletes.

Salazar said that Farah's biggest problem was that he was pathetically weak. In the weight room, he was about as strong as a 10-year-old. Al Sal prescribed some heavy deadlifting and squatting which helped him a ton.

Gerry Lindgren (born in 1946), Frank Shorter (born in 1947), and Bill Rodgers (also born in 1947) were all of a similar ages, and yet their prime careers did not overlap. Lindgren was past his best years when Shorter entered his best years on the track and in the marathon. Similarly, Shorter was only at his best for about a year-and-a-half of Rodgers prime years.

Growing up in UK vs Ethiopia is the main difference - training at a higher level from a younger age

More then enough people will go into doping allegations, so I'll try and offer some other potential context.

According to people around Farah at the time, he was very poorly disciplined in his training. This was coming from people within UKA like Barry Fudge, as well as people around the sport like Steve Cram and Brendan Foster. I can believe that, even at his peak, I remember returning from a post championships break in awful shape. One particular Edinburgh Cross Challenge he even looked kind of fat.

The other issue is that British distance coaching is awful and was even worse back in the 2000s. It was all about trying to do as little mileage as possible. This still festers among some older club coaches who would rather athletes smash themselves for 50 mpw than run 90-100 mpw with more controlled intensity. I can't tell you many times coaches and athletes over the age of 50 have told me it's all about quality over quantity. You'll notice that even today almost all of the world class British distance runners have got themselves away from the British system.

So, yes, there was a feeling that Farah had underperformed his talent up to 2009 and that he could definitely compete for a medal with better coaching. No one thought he could dominate in the way that he did.

Who did Farah train with before Salazar?

Somebody was describing how Gjert gets the improvements out of European runners, saying its basically because most Euros are ridiculously soft in their training, not pushing to the limits to squeeze every drop. Im not knowledgeable, but the description seemed plausible the way it was written.

Maybe this was the case with Farah?

edit: looked it up. ALan Storey. WHat's his background?

Decent coach with some success, notably Sonia O'Sullivan. Also sacked by UKA for sleeping with a much younger athlete he was coaching. Not big on altitude. No other big successes from 2000s onwards, once the East Africans really came onto the scene.

I have no idea why Cheptegei wants to move to the marathon. I just feel like his form isn't meant for it. He had at least another year of domination in the 10k on the track, and a 4th 10k world championship gold would have put him in the same camp as Geb and Bekele.

Might be because that is where the money is. Also, if he is going to run a marathon better now when he could still be at the peak of his career than in a few years when he won't be able to reach his potential.

no disrespect intended, but there's a chepetgei era?

If Bukele had Kipchoge work ethic he’d have run sub 12:30 and 26.

Bekele was an early developer who kept it going for a very long time.

Farah was a late developer who showed early promise.

2017: silver

2019: Gold

2021: silver

2022: gold

2023 : gold

2024: gold

Mo was a phenom as a child, easily winning at national events which Cram and co had struggled at at similar ages, but he stagnated in his early 20's. He was not a part of a consistent group in those early years. He had his own coach, but he was nomadic. He was weak, couldn't sprint, but showed tremendous talent. I want to say it was Malmo who talked on here about Mo breaking 13 off minimal training (and possibly while sick, I forget?) in 2010 in Switzerland which was the point his then-coach started to believe he could be a world beater.

At the same time he was heavy. Before Farah went to Al Sal, he was competing at 58kg and had no muscle tone. Under Al Sal at age 27 came the bespoke strength programme, through which he went down to 52kg (lots of caveats from Fudge and Salazar out there about doing this carefully; you can make your own assumptions). But keep in mind, once again, that he was already a sub 13 guy, maybe a 12:50 guy on the right day, when he came to Salazar. And that was accomplished in an era when sub 13 was still something special, and he was doing it raw. Massive talent.

The weights and sprint emphasis in addition to the removal of 4-6 kg can't be understated. Salazar focused on marginal gains in ways other coaches did not at the time. He needed world beaters who could stay lean AND flat-out sprint. This meant real weight training. Look at Sifan's similar body change through the same tactics.

I want to stress how bad Farah's sprint speed was when he went to Salazar. There was an article I came across (or perhaps a video) way back in the day of AlSal explaining this uphill 200m sprint test he used to use for base setting for all of his new athletes. It translated directly to efficiency, strength, and finishing speed. Farah's was something like the worst he'd ever seen from a high-level runner, slower even than some of the females in the group.

I'll leave it there for now for brevity's sake. But you get the point. There is a logical explanation to the progression, and of course you're right to question if you can be that strong and fast naturally at that weight, but that's a topic for another day.

Hope this is helpful.

No, that wouldn't have been me. Some other guy. Thanks for thinking about me, though.

Cram was national class at 16, and then jumping up a notch with an age 16 WR of 3:47.7 in the 1500. He didn’t “struggle” in youth competitions. He ran a 3:57 mile at 17. Please work on your descriptions.

As a youth/junior Cram only had problems at long cross country races because he wasn’t that type of runner.

Mo was a long time cheat. A very long time cheat.