Is Solomon Haile really 20 years old?

I skimmed the 14 pages of this thread and didn't see the reason why Solomon won't show his passport to a Washington Post reporter. What gives? He sure looks more physically mature than most 18 year old runners.

Whoa, this thread is loaded with hate and misinformation. I get the impression that most of it originates from one or two sources, but still, pretty scary stuff. Move on with your life fellas.

How about you point out the "misinformation".

Nah, he was just 4 years old when he was born. Or something like that.

maybe he was a late term birth ya know. he just stayed in the womb past his due date and matured in there before he was born. I think peoples age should be determined by date of conception rather than birth. I was born 2 months pre mature. That means I get screwed out of 2 monthes of development compared to someone who was born on their due date.

How can you base age of looks? Seriously, I'd like to know some of these tell-tale signs used by the age identifying experts of letsrun. Last time I checked looks at any age vary widely depending on someones genetics. Is there some sort of carbon dating technology built into Adobe Photoshop?

My favorite quote from this thread went something like "I know his mother is lying, I don't know why but I just know." Okay great, thanks.

if visual age grading wasn't viable as a forensic technology, then why is it that the FBI, INTERPOL and other security agencies use it for their work?that is just a completely ignorant response.this is an important issue because it allows further taint of our sport, as if it weren't bad enough all the the PEDs at the pro level, now even high school running is becoming messed up. it would be infinitely simple if this dope's family simply showed his passport to a bonafide major newspaper reporter. those guys handle confidential information all the time and this way a lot of the cloud over this kid's win would be lifted. personally, the whole thing appears and smells illegitimate and the stonewalling of solomon's family just adds to this. if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck right?

heyyo wrote:

How can you base age of looks? Seriously, I'd like to know some of these tell-tale signs used by the age identifying experts of letsrun. Last time I checked looks at any age vary widely depending on someones genetics. Is there some sort of carbon dating technology built into Adobe Photoshop?

My favorite quote from this thread went something like "I know his mother is lying, I don't know why but I just know." Okay great, thanks.

This thread is pretty long. I pulled a few exact quotes from some of the posts to summarize the typical intellect and tone. If you want to learn anything or introduce a relevant fact you better go elsewhere, because this is what you're up against.

"Hey Mom, we're going to leave the sh!thole called Ethiopia and go to America."

"Haile will probably scream racist at everyone if they call him on it."

"They know they can play the race game and call anyone white who questions them a "racist"."

"You won't be happy until every last remnant of what it means to be an American is erased and we're "one world community." You people make me sick. Our kids deserve what they work hard for, not an outsider who is neither American or a kid."

"I'm fed up with illegals and more importantly, Americans who have no problems with their ruining this country."

"sorry, but this kid is a whiny bitch! Get out of America...not only do we not wan you here, but being in this country will eventually ruin your running."

They use visual age grading to distinguish between 18 and 20 year old boys? Please provide an example.

These two people at the time of the photos were in the same grade. I'm guessing your scentific method of determining age, "forensic age-grading", would deem them to be two very different ages.

In other news:

Forensic - Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law

Please explain how profiling at an airport and on a online running site involves any degree of science in establishing facts or evidence?

I'll answer your question:

if visual age grading wasn't viable as a forensic technology, then why is it that the FBI, INTERPOL and other security agencies use it for their work?

Because they have no other options...If it was feasible to use a more sophisticated and accurate system that wasn't based on someone's instinct they would.

Look, reasonable people do not hold any animus against this young man.

And I concur that racism does play a role, but not in any way you think (more on that later).

But at the same time he and his sister brought this on himself. Show an authenticated passport and birth certificate, and the problems will go away.

As far as racism, his move from McLean to Maryland being motivated by a subtle form of racism. Although unprovable, he and his sister could have intuited that it wasn't going to be so easy to get credentials by McLean or Langley high school officials, especially if (as was obvious) his purpose was to run at the high school level. Think I am kidding? If he was in Fairfax County, you can bet that the parents of Thomas Jefferson High School (best academic high school in the nation bar none with pushy parents and a perennially good and often state champ cross country team) and Oakton High School (a very good school - state champs this year and another school with rich pushy parents) would have raised holy heck to get his age authenticated. Again, think I am kidding? If you do, you haven't run up against TJ parents, who absolutely go nuts when they think their 150 IQ darlings are being wronged (I am a TJ parent by the way, but my daughter does not run). Maryland made a lot more sense, for him because heck, they are so politically correct they don't want to keep an immigrant from an education (note his likely real age is a problem, because he is likely already too old for public school and the subsidy), and they are uber politically correct. Wise choice he made, at least for now. But perpetrating a fraud never works, even for people from different countries who others try to hold to a different or lesser standard.

Look, high school age rules are huge issues. Play one overage football player and a team can forfeit a whole season. And needless to say, thousands of kids in highly competitive Montgomery and Fairfax County are awaiting college admission - even the slightest hint of plagiarism dooms their future. It makes no sense countenancing any whisper of cheating.

He should come clean now. One, as reflected above, you can count on college coaches and the fear of the uglies the NCAA can rain on non-compliant programs to check (and really check) his age. The gossip is already unreal, you can bet. And if he continues to deny access, well, that like it or not everyone will know the inference that will be drawn. Two, if he really continues to improve - and his non-Footlocker performances indicate he could run tremendous track times - every sub 8:50 and lower two mile performance is going to race scrutiny all the more. And if he gets into German Fernandez territory, you can be the scrutiny will intensify.

This won't go away, irrespective of the siren calls to racism.

i agree, visual age grading is used because it does yield some results based on facts known about how people age in general. human judgment is still required. The fields of bioinformatics, physical anthropology, and forensics lend credence to visual age grading. Here are a few somewhat topical research articles on the subject.

Aspects of Age Variation in Facial Morphology Affecting Biometrics

Patterson, E.; Sethuram, A.; Albert, M.; Ricanek, K.; King, M.

Biometrics: Theory, Applications, and Systems, 2007. BTAS 2007. First IEEE International Conference on

Volume , Issue , 27-29 Sept. 2007 Page(s):1 - 6

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/BTAS.2007.4401953

Summary:There is a great degree of variation that occurs in the face during aging of adults that will affect outcomes for face- based biometric systems. These changes have been studied sporadically in anthropological research and have received even less attention in biometric-related literature. This paper presents a summary of recent research that spans biometric, forensic, and anthropologic literature in an attempt to unify a variety of findings related to adult aging, discusses work in synthesizing images of aged faces and its relation to the anthropological findings, and also presents work demonstrating a need for further study in this area to improve face-based biometric techniques. Only age-invariant or aging-aware methods will have the best success in longer stretches of time.

Reliability of the methods applied to assess age minority in living subjects around 18 years old: A survey on a Moroccan origin population .

Forensic Science International , Volume 154 , Issue 1 , Pages 3 - 12

P . Garamendi , M . Landa , J . Ballesteros , M . Solano

Facial Soft Tissue Depths in Craniofacial Identification (Part II): An Analytical Review of the Published Sub-Adult Data*

Journal of Forensic Sciences

Volume 53, Issue 6, Date: November 2008, Pages: 1273-1279

Carl N. Stephan, Ellie K. Simpson

heyyo wrote:

http://www.bballone.com/lebronj/highschool/highschool10.htmlhttp://www.letsrun.com/photos/2008/footlocker/imagepages/image127.php

These two people at the time of the photos were in the same grade. I'm guessing your scentific method of determining age, "forensic age-grading", would deem them to be two very different ages.

In other news:

Forensic - Relating to the use of science or technology in the investigation and establishment of facts or evidence in a court of law

Please explain how profiling at an airport and on a online running site involves any degree of science in establishing facts or evidence?

I am going to stay out of this conversation right now because it seems like every other comment is just irresponsible and childish. They aren't attacking the arguments being made, they are attacking the people making the arguments.

To those who think he is too old, we don't have a horse in the race. We won't see his papers, nor does he have to show us. To those who are defending him tooth and nail, get over the idea that people are bringing this on him unfairly. He and his sister LIED at one point. Whether about his age before or his age after. The indirect evidence has mounted enough to further an investigation, but there aren't any specific authorities willing to go the extra step to answer it once and for all. Let's just wait and see what happens.

To the quote above - the picture of Lebron actually doesn't actually make him look all that old. He still has a pretty "childish" face. Yes, he is a monster of a kid, but if you look at the "wear and tear" of his skin and his facial features, he looks relatively young. Contrast that to the runner you posted a picture of and he shows signs of facial aging. I by no means think that age verification can be pin pointed to date of birth, but it does hold some sort of merit. And your example isn't very good to support your idea.

does anyone know if solomon is being recruited by the big schools who would normally go after a top high school athlete or are they backing away because of the controversy. i coach at a small school and even if i had a chance at bringing him in, i would not because of the baggage that would come with him. i know our athletic director would thank me for not getting involved with that mess. if anyone knows what schools are looking at him, let me know. thanks.

That's bogus. No way lebron looks younger than James. Likely you think he looks boyish compared the lebron you know today. Either way the entire process of determining age based on looks is inconclusive in this context because of inherent inacccuracies.

Until any one has any evidence that he isn't the age he states the accusations are growing old. I'm not defending him nor am I accusing. I merely pointing out that no knows the truth in this matter.

And lastly you're retarded if you actually think you can tell with accuracy the difference between a 18 and 20 year old based looks.

Hey man, I am with you - there is no indisputable evidence either way. Nor did I say that age can be determined by looks. And no I never said that Lebron looks older than the runner. I purely was stating that Lebron does not look so unbelievably old in that picture. Take a look at Matusak when he was in high school or the kid from his school now or Michael Coe or Alan Webb when they were all in high school - they all looked pretty old. But nobody really asked them because they gave evidence and there never really was any reason to doubt them.

Now, here is another case of somebody who looks older than what their claimed age is, BUT there is also plenty of claim to indirect evidence - him himself claiming to be 20 a year or two before. So either he lied then, lied now, or lied for both. And the explanation for the "miscalculation" has been proven to be suspect at best - the coptic calendar has the same amount of days per year, at least from the explanations so far. All I have been saying is the "looks" argument doesn't hold water either way - and nobody is REALLY using it as evidence. The "evidence people have been using is all indirect evidence and then the oppostie side is defending with word of mouth. As everybody is saying, just show the passport and be done with it. Or not and live with a cloud of suspicion.

Bottom line is yes, this kid looks older and plenty of others have, but he has some other questionable baggage to go along with that more matured look.

Time to start another page....keep the facts and insults coming, people!

college coach wrote:

does anyone know if solomon is being recruited by the big schools who would normally go after a top high school athlete or are they backing away because of the controversy. i coach at a small school and even if i had a chance at bringing him in, i would not because of the baggage that would come with him. i know our athletic director would thank me for not getting involved with that mess. if anyone knows what schools are looking at him, let me know. thanks.

From the Washington Post article,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110703798.html

"Texas, Kansas, Purdue and North Carolina State are among those vying for him."