15 year old Qatari 1.46? 17 year old 3.36?

The age of these two guys is correct. I coached Mohamed Al-Garni last year, and in very short time he ran 3'39"06. He is a very motivated athlete, living for athletics, with the model of El Guerrouj. This winter Qatar signed the contract with Jama Aden, following my advice, that I consider one of the best coaches for 800 and 1500m. The strategy of Qatar was to look for some very young athlete of Arab language, and of course for a coach speaking the same language, for short distances, while for long distances Qatar Federation could continue with the Kenyan born, already in the Team (nobody new).

About Hamza, this guy can have a shining future. He is 16 at the moment, and is the photocopy of Hicham El Guerrouj : same morphology, same way of running, almost same face....

I think this guy can win the Youth Olympic. When I was in Qatar at the beginning of December, Hamza was not able running 20' slowly with Mohamed Al-Garni. At the end of February, he ran 1'49"2 during a test on the indoor track, paced by Balla (another new guy for 800m now under 1'47"). After 3 months, he was able running under 1'47", and also 3'42" in his first 1500m. Believe me, this guy can become one of the top runners in the world, in a period of 3 years.

Hi Renato,

Congratulations on these performances of your athletes.

Would you be able to post samples of there training? What did their general training look like before they started more specific training to run these awesome times? Does their training still involve the majority of sessions being aerobic work as they are still quite young?

Currently, Mohamed and Hamza are not "my" athletes, as they are in training with Jama Aden. In any case, during winter the training system of Jama include a lot of aerobic training, carried on fast speed (for example, 6 times one lap of about 1450m at a pace of 2'50" or less for Al Garni with short recovery), a lot of gym for building the muscular strength, and already some very fast session on track for distances as 600 / 500 / 400m for increasing the lactic power and capacity (I remember one session of Mohamed with 5 times 600m, recovery 5', running the first 300m in 45" and the second in 38"5 / 39"5, already in January).

This is very similar the system Jama uses with Kaki. Jama believes a lot in the Aerobic Base, also if his training with Kaki and with Ismail is different, because the specific attitudes of these 2 athletes are different.

Impressive performances. At least I can be sure now I was not mistaken about a 15/16 year old guy in the results of a very small German track meet with a 2:19 1k in early June.

Coach Canova,

thank you for the replies. I was really impressed by Al-Garni in Oslo, opening too fast (1.51 for 800m), no fear, and held on pretty tough. He reminded me of El-Guerrouj.

I think we can expect some very fast times from these guys. The fastest (only) way to become good I guess is to focus on athletics be dedicated from a young age- lots of training camps, good coaching and maturity beyond their age.

I think only their mother really knows their true date of birth!

Are these athletes training at altitude?

Interesting thread to resurface. But yes any Jama Aden athlete was strongly encouraged/pressured to dope. David Torrence (RIP) was a whistleblower and had some excellent insight on how it went down. Any athlete who stuck with him for any matter of time is suspect. Seems like a nice guy with good training principles who just loved doping athletes.