Kenenisa Bekele: how soon will he totally annihilate the distance WR's?

This has to be the longest thread ever. 322 responses. Wow

jason rexings one was longer

Exactly, it's 12:25 & 2705/4191 seconds.

My opinion:

Kenenisa Bekele definitely have every intention on doubling in the 5000m and 10000m at the Olympics. Hopefully the Americans including Mebrahtom Keflezighi (he'll be in the 10000m) will run a team race and not be trounced severely.

Vipam

To all PEOPLE WHO SAID I was wrong or crazy, when I said Bekele would break Haile's world records when I started this post and others-I GUESS I WASN'T WRONG! He said he won't double at the Olympics but he will if his federation allow him to run both events. He will run one at the Ethopian Championships and hope to be selected to the other event.

Kenenisa believe or not is capable of running much faster then his world records in both the 5000m and 10000m (with better pacing he could have lowered the records more) and eventually will threaten 12:30.75 and 26:05.00 before the 2008 Olympics.

VIPAM

To all PEOPLE WHO SAID I was wrong or crazy, when I said Bekele would break Haile's world records when I started this post and others-I GUESS I WASN'T WRONG! He said he won't double at the Olympics but he will if his federation allow him to run both events. He will run one at the Ethopian Championships and hope to be selected to the other event.

Kenenisa believe or not is capable of running much faster then his world records in both the 5000m and 10000m (with better pacing he could have lowered the records more) and eventually will threaten 12:30.75 and 26:05.00 before the 2008 Olympics.

VIPAM

Vipam, I agree.

At the moment I think KB is just "Breaking" the records. By this I mean following the required pace to just better the old mark, kind of just to officially do it remove some pressure etc.

Next year, or the year after I expect him to try and "reset" the records. By this I mean virtualy unpaced just try and run the respective distances as fast as he can, putting the records as far out of reach as possible.

It is then and only then we will see sub 26 etc that people are talking.

look @ the 2nd post of this lonnngg and famous thread, Vipam

a guy named 'facts' said this:

"titles-- yes; records-- no...

now that they've curbed the epo thing, it will be a long time before we see 12:39 and 26:22 again..."

guess he didn't know jack shit!

Vipam what other events do you predict? 100m? 200m? 400m? you a genius!

Will you marry me and have my babies!!

Vipam,

I am one of the few who believes in you! You inspire me. Perhaps u have a sixth sense. Please keep it up.

I say give Bekele a few more weeks and he might have a shot at the 5k and 10k world records, as for now, he's running decently.

Randy Bekele wrote:

It is then and only then we will see sub 26 etc that people are talking.

Bekele is the best that I have ever seen, but sub-26 might be an impossibility. 4:11 for 6.2 miles, 25 sub-63 laps in a row. I agree that he will only get faster, but can he run that fast? If so, who is going to pace him? A professional 1500m runner?

Just think about how fast that really is.

On a related note, is there any way to calculate the absolute fastest that a human could potentially run?

Bekele will take little bites out of this record and get his bonuses along the way. Much like Bubka did with the Pole vault record years ago...No way did he go all out.

My guess is that he can go at least 10-15 seconds faster..

That picture of Bekele finishing his world record 10000 suggests that he and his brother, Tariku, got their bibs confused. So maybe he is human after all.

Jnative wrote:

I say give Bekele a few more weeks and he might have a shot at the 5k and 10k world records, as for now, he's running decently.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111

Vipam,

STOP LYING. Here is your prediction, on Page 15 of this thread, 2nd from the bottom:

I think if the weather and pacing are both extremely good that he will run 12:38.07-he will be trying to send out a message early! If the pacers don't do their job well, I think Kenenisa will still run 12:43.75.

Vipam

You have major insecurity issues. I love it that this website saves posts so we can catch people like Vipam misleading us.

Lone Star

Man did you really go thru the entire thread trying to find something to single out concerning my post (no need to ask you had to).

**** You are correct about page 15; however, in another thread prior to his 5000m race (someone's else thread pretaining to predictions) after I got the lastest update (I posted a time BEFORE his run) on Kenenisa's fitness I came within .20 of his new 5000m record! **** Search for that thread and see how close I was, my friend.

Seriously Lone Star you know what your problem is your the one with the insecuritites and I guess the only way you can grab attention (albeit briefly) is to try to attack

others. I hope everythings going well with you, GOODBYE Lone Star.

VIPAM

Kenenisa Bekele don't want people to think he will double in Athens, but its part of his plans-now only if the Federation will cooperate!

Whoopsie Daisy! wrote:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111

you like that?, haha

Kenenisa Bekele will tackle the 3000m; however, according to his coach he won't be after any records. I think differently I think Kenenisa wants to take a stab at Daniel Komen's extraordinary 3000m WR, the problem will be getting pacesetter(s) who can pace him for 1500m at sub 3:40 pace. Kenenisa to run the 1500m next year indoors is a great idea by his coach to introduce him to shorter distances will he is a young athlete.

I seriously think with a year of specific training and racing at the distance Kenenisa could run 3:30.75 indoors and 3:28.50 outdoors (but will he ever focus on the 1500m and 5000m for a full (indoor & outdoor) season instead of the 5000m and 10000m?

VIPAM

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Athletics: Bekele ready to shred the record books

By Simon Turnbull, Athletics Correspondent

13 June 2004

Two world records in two weeks - and the scary thing is how much more is to come

Kenenisa Bekele is planning to take it easy today. "I will just be doing one training run," he said. "It will not be a long run, just for one hour in the morning." It does happen to be Bekele's birthday today, and the Ethiopian runner has broken two world records in the past two weeks.

In Ostrava in the Czech Republic last Tuesday night, he ran 10,000m in 26min 20.31sec, breaking Haile Gebrselassie's six-year-old time by 2.44sec. He covered the second half of the race in 13min 05.89sec, which was faster than the world record for 5,000m at the time he was born, 13 June 1982.

Times and the tides stop for no man in the running game. Just ask Gebrselassie, who will be a guest at Bekele's 22nd birthday party in Addis Ababa this afternoon. The man known in Ethiopia as "the Little Emperor", the greatest distance runner of all time, is being rapidly consigned to history by his young successor.

In the past 10 months Bekele has broken Gebrselassie's two most treasured world records (he clocked 12min 37.35sec to eclipse the 5,000m mark by 2.01sec in the Dutch town of Hengelo on 31 May), has outsprinted him to win the World Championship 10,000m title, and has shattered his world indoor 5,000m record. He has also completed a third successive long- and short-course double at the World Cross Country Championships. In Athens two months hence the 31-year-old Gebrselassie and his Olympic 10,000m crown will be at the smooth-striding mercy of King Kenny.

The lengthening shadow of the Balco drugs case might be stealing the headlines right now, but Bekele's burgeoning progress is track-and-field history in the making. It is possibly only the start, too.

"We haven't reached the boundaries yet," Jos Hermens said. And he ought to know. As a manager and mentor, the former Dutch distance runner, who still holds the world's best time for 10 miles on the track, helped to orchestrate the 17 world records Gebrselassie has set in indoor and outdoor track competition and on the roads. And in tandem with Dr Wolde-Mesekel Kostre, Ethiopia's national distance-running coach, he has been grooming Bekele as heir to the Little Emperor for some five years now.

"The training has got a lot better," Hermens continued, "but things like nutrition and recovery could still improve. Records will always be broken. I don't expect the big jumps any more, though. The speed that Kenenisa and these guys are running at now is incredible. In the 5,000m, you're asking them to run 60-second laps. To do that for 12-and-a-half laps... that's just phenomenal.

"It's all about hard work. Kenenisa was in a training camp with the Ethiopian distance squad in Addis Ababa for six weeks before he ran in Hengelo, and he will repeat that before going to Athens. Some of the sessions they do make the mind boggle. For instance, five days before Hengelo, they ran 5,000m in 13min 22sec and continued at the same pace for another 3,000m. At altitude, 2,600m above sea level, that's just incredible.

"Dr Wolde is a very good coach, but there is so much talent in the squad that every day in the training camp it is like a competition. It's survival of the fittest.

"They work incredibly hard, although Kenenisa does have the physiological ingredients, too. We do some tests to check the health of the runners, and his hematocrit count [the percentage of oxygen-carrying red cells in the blood] is 49. Haile's is 42. And if you look at ferritin [a measure of iron in the blood] Kenenisa has 250. You and I probably have 50. Haile has 150."

The comparisons with Gebrselassie are inevitable, but Bekele has grown weary of them. "I don't feel comfortable with it," he said. "I would really just like to be myself. People are calling me the successor to Haile, and maybe in time I will do better than him. But at this moment Haile is the greatest distance runner of all time."

It is a fair assessment. Bekele may have become the fastest-ever man at 5,000m and 10,000m, and also the world champion at 10,000m, but he has yet to make the same impact as Gebrselassie, who took the 5,000m record from 12min 58.39sec to 12:39.36 and the 10,000m from 26:52.23 to 26:22.75. He has also yet to display the same range as Gebrselassie, who has run 3min 31.76sec for 1500m and 2hr 6min 35sec for the marathon.

It is his good fortune that he happens to have Hermens guiding him with the same shrewdness that kept Gebreslassie at the top for the best part of a decade. The Dutch guru is planning to test him over 1500m in the 2005 indoor season, with a view to maximising his basic speed. And Hermens has also instructed his charge to race the opposition rather than the world record in the two competitive events left on his schedule before the Olympics: a 3,000m in the Norwich Union British Grand Prix at Gateshead on 27 June and a 5,000m in Lausanne on 6 July.

After that, it will be off to the Ethiopian training camp for Athens, in the company of the Little Emperor. Gebrselassie, you can be sure, will be the first to wish King Kenny a happy birthday today - and another happy world record for last Tuesday, of course.

16 June 2004 23:19