would Bekele break 26:00 for 10k if he was on EPO?

i believe the correct question would be...

would bekele have broken 27:00 had he not been on drugs?

ha!

"Would Bekele break 26:00 for 10k if he was on EPO?"

Well, he hasn't yet...

Even if he isn't on drugs, I doubt EPO would shave 17 seconds off his WR. Last time he broke the WR, he only broke it by 3 seconds

If he was only on EPO, he might have trouble breaking 26:30. Salah Hissou never did it.

Would the Pope be better if he was Catholic?

Just kiddin, luv ya Kenny.

that other guy wrote:

how fast do you think Bekele could be if he was taking PED's?

26:17. Or maybe a little faster.

the way we see it wrote:

If he was only on EPO, he might have trouble breaking 26:30. Salah Hissou never did it.

This is the correct answer.

Would you run faster if you lived in a country where distance running is a huge deal, you have high altitude training readily available and you get to train with some of the greatest distance runners in the world? Plus, I am certain Bekele outworks you by a ton.

And let me guess he outworks a bunch of top Kenyans who before the EPO 90's could barely break 27 minutes by more than 40 seconds.

Obvious PED wrote:

And let me guess he outworks a bunch of top Kenyans who before the EPO 90's could barely break 27 minutes by more than 40 seconds.

Nobody broke 27 pre-EPO. With good reason.

This is the closest thing to being correct in our current "situation".

reality is fun wrote:

Nobody broke 27 pre-EPO. With good reason.

What are you saying?Man ... back in the "good ol' days" there were only steroids, amphetamines and blood doping.

reality is fun wrote:

Nobody broke 27 pre-EPO. With good reason.

that other guy wrote:

since i don't think that the world record holder would ever do drugs, how fast do you think Bekele could be if he was taking PED's?

About the same as he's doing now. Go back to what Renato has said about the East Africans NOT benefitting from EPO because they get the EPO effect "naturally" from living/training at altitude. It's not going to give them much if anything over what they already have.

The real PED here comes from being able to live and train at 7000-10000' altitude year-round. Go the a world globe and note all the places you can traing at altitude near the equator: That's where the best distance people have been coming from (not counting places like Bolivia and Nepal where the sport isn't poopular).

The only thing that EPO use by the Kenyans and Ethiopians would affect is their margin of victory over their white European and North American competitors.

The notion that the OVERWHELMING dominance of East Africa in distance running is due to some vast, miraculously concealed drug conspiracy is patently absurd. Let's face it, they are physically different! Smaller, lighter, different combination of fast/slow twitch muscles, born and raised at altitude (for generations) -- all ingredients of a superior distance runner.

Sometimes I feel like Larry Summers here; the very suggestion that the East African dominance in distance running is due to INNATE differences invites scorn. "No, surely it must be the result of conspiracy, bias against white Westerners by WADA, etc.!"

This is not an East African vs. White situation. We are talking about 40 seconds being knocked off records which were already held by East Africans.

We are not talking about a miraculously concealed drug conspiracy. We are talking about few established super elites, which just happen to be East African or Eithiopian who through their access to dubious agents have used PED to take their probably already good performances to levels which are beyond the realms of being realistic.

As to a miraculously concealed drug conspiracy I suggest you look at cycling to see just how developed the doping scene actually got before it was exposed. Even after it was exposed it still is providing positive tests. Track and Field is no where near as developed in the drug testing scene and as much as we would love to believe all these hard working individuals are clean they simply are not.

I would suggest there is no difference in drug usage culture between distance running and sprinting, except drugs which can be used in sprinting are far cheaper and more readily available than EPO for example. This would indicate that only the top elites in distance running would be able to afford them.

Obvious PED wrote:

This is not an East African vs. White situation. We are talking about 40 seconds being knocked off records which were already held by East Africans.

We are not talking about a miraculously concealed drug conspiracy. We are talking about few established super elites, which just happen to be East African or Eithiopian who through their access to dubious agents have used PED to take their probably already good performances to levels which are beyond the realms of being realistic.

Where do you draw the line on a realistic level? Is it once a runner runs 26 something? Is that just not possible clean? Most consider Rono clean and he ran 27:22 without close to the same commitment that the current stars have to their sport. It's more then just a few Africans who have now gone sub 27. Are Tadese and Kiprop also taking PED's because they have run sub 26:40? If you actually look at who has been caught, you will see that it is the distance runners who are on the second tier level that are most likely to cheat. Guys like Mourhit and Boulami who spent years being beaten by the Kenyans then decided to take the extra step in their training to get to the top.

EPO has been around since the early 1990s. Why would we see such huge improvements in the world distance running records in this century, over a decade after EPO was introduced? During this same period American and European runners barely surpassed the records set in the '80s. David Moorecroft ran 13:00.41 in 1982, Arturo Barrios 27.08.23 in 1989. More than two decades (including the introduction of EPO) later only Bob Kennedy and Craig Mottram have been faster over 5k, while Barrios' "non african" record still stands firmly. In my opinion the Frank Shorter mentality: "we can't beat them because they're black, have good managers, use PEDs, were born at altitude, have long legs, drink tea, eat ugali, (name your own lame excuse here)" has been the cause of this lack in performance. Fortunately with the new generation of non African and non whining distance runners (Tegenkamp, Mottram, Hall and more to come) non-Africa will once again be represented in the biggest distance events.

Guys like Mottram , Cragg , Tegenkamp are generally running pre 90's times and they were run by athletes previously. They also struggle to deliver consistently.

Mottrams 12:56 is within the realms off possibility (Assuming he is clean). I would also bet some of the Kenyans who are clean have run similar sorts of times but what I find is on a completely different level and I believe points to PEDs are the times Geb / Bekele / Komen / Tergat / and Choge are running and they are running close to these times consistently.

I mean Komen had run like 5 races in 5 weeks when he broke the 3k record.

The really "out there" performances in my opinion and it is only an opinion are just too far "out there" to be clean.

EPO came along and all of sudden we see a massive improvement in distance records all round.

Its not like all of a sudden East African running developed, they were already there in the late 80's and are not training significantly differently to how they trained then.