Wang Junxia's PRs/WRs?!?!?!

I don't know much about her, but the circumstances surrounding her career/performances point right at the use of PEDs. She was competing for a nation that would have no qualms about supporting doping, her career was relatively short, her times are a ridiculous amount faster than anyone else (except a few other Chinese women from that time period), and those huge performances just happened to take place in Beijing instead of Europe like most records.

Wang was one of the Coach Ma's athletes that became known as Ma's Army in the early 90's. She was the most recognized (as she medaled twice in 2 Olympics) but was one of many that DESTROYED the all-time 10 in distances from 800m to the marathon. There was about 6-7 athletes of his that in a two year time frame reconstructed the all-time list for female middle and long distance athletics. Almost all of those athletes had mindboggling range and displayed such in the same calendar year ie 800m to 10000m or 1500m to marathon. They attributed their success to their extremely aggressive training and a Chinese catepillar/worm.

China had a crazy program in the early 90s. They would force hundreds, maybe even thousands, of the most talented women in China to run 100+ mpw of insane training, and whichever ones survived the incredibly difficult training would be world champions. There have been many allegations of doping, or perhaps even a short track (they were breaking world records in the prelims of distance events at the Chinese nationals... for God's sake), but no one really knows.

Wang Junxia was Olympic champion, at least. Although most of their best times did come from China, some of the athletes did display incredible ability even with against the world's best and on the world's biggest stage.

Actually, her 5000M time looks mediocre in retrospect, considering Defar has now run 14:16. Go ahead and double that time and add the traditional minute and you get her WR. The 8:06 is insane, but she was very consistent over quite a period of time. I am sure many on here will argue that Paula Radcliffe, when she was in 2:15:25 Marathon shape perhaps could have run 29:05 or so.

That coach also had 6 athletes busted for doping (EPO) prior to the 2000 OG....

Wang medaled at only one Olympics - 1996. And then she immediately retired at 23 years old.

Leirbag wrote:

Actually, her 5000M time looks mediocre in retrospect, considering Defar has now run 14:16. Go ahead and double that time and add the traditional minute and you get her WR. The 8:06 is insane, but she was very consistent over quite a period of time. I am sure many on here will argue that Paula Radcliffe, when she was in 2:15:25 Marathon shape perhaps could have run 29:05 or so.

Yeah, she broke the 5k world record on-route to the 10k world record. I guess she never gave that one a really good shot. There was a great article about her, and a few good threads -- she went to the University of Colorado Boulder for college after she was done with running.

rgtegfd wrote:

Yeah, she broke the 5k world record on-route to the 10k world record.

Note that the en route part of that is the second half. According to the numbers, she went through 5K at 15:05.8 and finished in 29:31.78. That makes for a 14:26 second 5K, which would be current #5 on the all time 5000 lists.

Is there a video of any of her WR races?

where are they now? wrote:

Is there a video of any of her WR races?

That was not long after the Tiananmen square massacre, so I am sure that cameras were banned in China at that time.

I remember when I first went to China in 2002, even google.com was banned!

A Wang Junxia thread always comes up a few times a year.

There is no denying that the Chinese government is a brutal and oppressive regime. I do believe that the Chinese sports authorities will do ANYTHING within their powers to get at the top of the medal table in Beijing next year.

However, I believe that Wang Junxia was clean, at least during her 10km WR.

MAYEROFF wrote:

A Wang Junxia thread always comes up a few times a year.

There is no denying that the Chinese government is a brutal and oppressive regime. I do believe that the Chinese sports authorities will do ANYTHING within their powers to get at the top of the medal table in Beijing next year.

However, I believe that Wang Junxia was clean, at least during her 10km WR.

Are you serious? You buy this stuff? I can't buy it. Look at the all time women's 3k list. 1-7, 10, 11, 13, and several other impressive times further down, were all run by Chinese women on the 12th and 13th of September in 1993. She broke the WR on the 12th, in a heat, by THIRTEEN SECONDS, then beat her own new record by 6 seconds the very next day!! And all of her countrywomen were right behind her with these astonishingly fast times. She and they managed to do all of this after she had set the 10k WR 5 days earlier, by FORTY-TWO SECONDS! 10ks take a lot out of you, but she still was able to absolutely destroy the 3k records days later, along with many other women. There's no way you can say that something fishy wasn't going on there, and I honestly am shocked that these records are all ratified and standing as the records. There's too great a correlation here to be coincidence.

that 3k time of 8:06 is roughly equal to an 8:40 2 mile. No woman alive can run that kind of a time. Seems rather suspect to me.

That's 4 WRs, in 6 days. Her second best 10k (and fastest outside of China) was 30:49.3. The runner who finished second that day in 30:13 (Huan-di Zhong) never broke 31 in another race.

I'm not 100% sure on this one, but I think Wang Junxia's best open 5k was 14:50-something, yet she closed with a 14:26 that day.

MAYEROFF wrote:

A Wang Junxia thread always comes up a few times a year.

There is no denying that the Chinese government is a brutal and oppressive regime. I do believe that the Chinese sports authorities will do ANYTHING within their powers to get at the top of the medal table in Beijing next year.

However, I believe that Wang Junxia was clean, at least during her 10km WR.

I could believe 29:31. But 8:06....

And keep in mind one year earlier Wang lost the World Junior XC title to Paula Radcliffe.

MAYEROFF wrote:

where are they now? wrote:

Is there a video of any of her WR races?

That was not long after the Tiananmen square massacre, so I am sure that cameras were banned in China at that time.

I remember when I first went to China in 2002, even google.com was banned!

I have some videos of their races. Danged if I know where I put them, though.

video guy wrote:

I have some videos of their races. Danged if I know where I put them, though.

If you're serious, you could make A LOT of track fans really happy by finding and posting them, myself included.

No promises, but I'll see if I can unearth them. They're mainly from the 1997 National Champs, however, where Jiang Bo was tearing up the scene (she won the 15 and 5 at those championships, breaking the then-WR in the latter, narrowly missing it in the former). I'm still trying to get my hands on some of the '93 footage. Wish me luck in finding the vids. BTW, they're all in Mandarin, but all races are shown in their entirety.

video guy wrote:

No promises, but I'll see if I can unearth them. They're mainly from the 1997 National Champs, however, where Jiang Bo was tearing up the scene (she won the 15 and 5 at those championships, breaking the then-WR in the latter, narrowly missing it in the former). I'm still trying to get my hands on some of the '93 footage. Wish me luck in finding the vids. BTW, they're all in Mandarin, but all races are shown in their entirety.

Anything you might happen to find would certainly be appreciated. The 1993 races are of course the Holy Grail (at least to me), but the 1997 champs were quite anomalous as well.