Haile Gebrselassie, Now I'm suspicious!

Geb is clean. He is arguably the best distance runner of all time. He has held so many world records. And Ryan Hall is clean, because he is. Until anyone tests positive, no one should assume they're cheating. Success is possible for these guys, because they are just raw talent. So lay off.

landry bennett wrote:

Until anyone tests positive, no one should assume they're cheating. Success is possible for these guys, because they are just raw talent. So lay off.

LMAO!!! You are so incredibly naive and have your head buried deep beneath the sand. Get out of here and go wait for the great pumpkin or the great black-eyed pea or whatever, silly kid.

[quote]MAYEROFF wrote:

ALSO, if I may be so bold as to say this, I don't think that he is 34 either. Some Kenyans agree with me here, and yes I think that he is closer to 40.

quote]

He has (?) to be 34 because he ran in the 1992 world junior championships (and won). If he's 40 today, that means that he would have been 25 years old then.

I will grant you that he looks old, but Webb looks much older than his years, too, so looks can be deceiving.

In my opinion, Haile has had a very natural progression since he came onto the world stage at 17-18 years of age. This is why I don't view him as a cheat. That talent was evident a long time ago! DOB 4/18/73

5000 m

1992 13:36.06

1993 13:03.17

1994 12:56.96

1995 12:44.39

1996 12:52.70

1997 12:41.86

1998 12:39.36

1999 12:49.64

2000 12:57.95

2003 12:54.36

2004 12:55.51

10000 m

1992 28:03.99

1993 27:30.17

1994 27:15.00

1995 26:43.53

1996 27:07.34

1997 26:31.32

1998 26:22.75

1999 27:57.27

2000 27:18.20

2001 27:54.41

2003 26:29.22

2004 26:41.58

2007 26:52.81

Didn't Lance say something like that too?

mobile9 wrote:

Geb isn't on anything except injera and 250km/wk.

So he's _consistently_ been on drugs to compete rather than intermittently, and he's _consistently_ gotten away with it, just like Lance, just like Ben Johnson from 1982-1988, just like Marita Koch, just like Ronnie Coleman and Lee Haney, just like Evander Holyfield, just like Roger Clemens, just like Ed Coan, just like Miguel Indurain, just like El G, just like ARNOLD, yada yada yada.

Geb's age was questionable then too.

CENTCOM wrote:

In my opinion, Haile has had a very natural progression

5000 m

1992 13:36.06

1993 13:03.17

Do you even know what you're looking at?

CENTCOM wrote:

In my opinion, Haile has had a very natural progression

5000 m

1992 13:36.06

1993 13:03.17

Do you even know what you're looking at?[/quote]

Yeah, it was a big jump, but Geb was obviously waaaay more capable of a 13:36 in 1992. He was WORLD JUNIOR CHAMP in the 5k AND 10k that year, so do the math, he probably was capable of around 13:10 that year at least.

And if you want to question big jumps, what about ?

Matt Tegenkamp

2005: Bests of 13:25 & 7:43

2006: Bests of 13:04 & 7:34. hmmm....

Pretty big jump.

How about Rupp??

2005: 28:15

2006: 30:42

2007: 27:33 !! hmmm......

How about Solinsky?

Didn't he go from a PR of right around 13:30 to 13:12??

And Hall's jump from up and down college career to 59:43 in the 1/2 marathon is the biggest jump I've seen in a loooong time. DOUBLE hmmm.......

(Now in all seriousness, I don't think any of these guys are necessarily on drugs, but if you want to accuse Geb because he had an misleading big jump in his 5k pr early in his career, you've got a lot of others to accuse based on the same logic)

Sir Lance-alot wrote:

(Now in all seriousness, I don't think any of these guys are necessarily on drugs, but if you want to accuse Geb because he had an misleading big jump in his 5k pr early in his career, you've got a lot of others to accuse based on the same logic)

But I wasn't.

Bohica wrote:

Sir Lance-alot wrote:

(Now in all seriousness, I don't think any of these guys are necessarily on drugs, but if you want to accuse Geb because he had an misleading big jump in his 5k pr early in his career, you've got a lot of others to accuse based on the same logic)

But I wasn't.

ok, then that would be my bad.

But then what did you mean to imply by quoting the guy saying that Geb had had a "natural progression" and then only showing his really big jump in pr's and asking "do you even know what you are looking at?" ? Was that not really Geb's pr in 1992? It just appeared that you were saying that the guy was contradicting himself when he stated that Geb had had a natural progression and yet at the same time listed a progression that included an apparent "unnatural" jump from '92 - '93.

Where did you mean ?

Your bad for saying that I would accuse Geb, or anyone, based on one piece of information. Information that, by the way, is contradictory to the statement it follows, as you suggest. That's what I mean. A single puzzle piece does not a case make, several pieces that fit together start to reveal a clearer picture.

Bohica wrote:

Your bad for saying that I would accuse Geb, or anyone, based on one piece of information. Information that, by the way, is contradictory to the statement it follows, as you suggest. That's what I mean. A single puzzle piece does not a case make, several pieces that fit together start to reveal a clearer picture.

Fast progressions are not evidence of drug use. Absolute levels of performance are. Very few 11th graders who drop a minute from their 10th grade XC PR are on drugs. Every single man who has bench pressed over 700lbs, run 100 meters under 9.80 or won the Tour De France in the past 15 years has been on drugs, regardless of how fast they got there.

There are some people that are deserving of suspicion (anyone connected to Graham, Charlie Francis, many of the Eastern Europeans, etc). But Geb is not one of these. Guys like Shorter will tell you that everyone who's been under 27min is a cheat, but anyone who is really connected to the sport knows better.

reality is fun wrote:

Fast progressions are not evidence of drug use.

Sure, whatever you say. I guess altered physical appearance in the middle of a career (just as an example) isn't evidence, either.

So why not anyone connected to Hermens?

Neutral wrote:

EVERYONE JUICES AND DRINKS JUICE there is no other way. If juicing wasn't there best 10K times would have been more like 26:55 or 27:05 or even slower, just the way they are in Olympics and world championships aha. You realize the fastest times are in some other races.

if you really believe this, why do you even follow the sport anymore? i would've given up on XC/T&F a long time ago if i believed that. of course there are some cheaters, like the ones who have been caught, and there are some out there that haven't been caught yet (*cough*RAMZI*cough*) but it's not all, or even most, of world-class runners.