Nijel Amos: 1:41.73 World Junior 800m record

Speaking of Amos, he has mostly been MIA this season, other than his terrible run in Rabat. Apparently he will be back at the African Championships in South Africa next weekend, then will run the (non-diamond league) 800 in Monaco.

I'll admit that I've seen some shady east Africans running in youth/junior races. I think that it has become part of the culture there. I remember reading in the book, Running with the Kenyans (I think), how the author described a cross country race where they would pull out runners who were clearly age cheating. So it is prevalent, no denying that.

On the other hand, I don't believe Botswana or SA has that culture. These two countries are way better developed than any other country in Africa, spare maybe Namibia, but they have such a small population.. Anyway, thats another argument.

But I will say that I've been around in Africa and in a lot of cases children are born in remote villages, surrounded by elephants, loins and other wild animals. The parents barley know about athletics (except maybe in Kanya), and couldn't care less about the western created concept of age, much less age cheating. Once the children can walk on their own (2/3 years) or when there is a census (every four years) the children will go to a city or come in contact with a government official and ask the parents when he or she was born and they'll guess, "uhmmm maybe 2 years ago" but it could've been 3 or 4.

When your life dependents on just surviving day to day, age cheating and age in general is the last thing on your mind. Again, maybe in Kenya and Ethiopia where people know athletics is a way out poverty this can be done on purpose. In other African countries, they just don't care.

Ugh, I hate arguing about this all the time, but I had a interesting conversation about this, time in Africa is an abstract concept, if thats the right description. For instance, in Western culture lunch is exactly 13:00 (1pm for all you Americans), but in Africa lunch is when you eat, that could be anything from 11:00 - 15:00. Same with age, they really don't care until they have to think about it and then - if the child looks 4 years old, they say 4, even though he might be 6.

possible combination of drug use,and being older than he says he is.

Of course the Africans age-cheat, it's obvious by just looking at the junior world record and comparing them to the US Junior records and then doing the same for the World and American Records.

Johnny Gray's US 800m record is only 1.7% slower than Rudisha's WR. Brazier's insane time at NCAA's put's the AJR just 1.8% slower than Amos WJR (Ryun's was 2.5% slower, Parilla's was 3.5% slower). In the 1500 Centro's time is just 2.1% slower than El Guerrouj's doped WR while Ryun's time is 3.5% slower than the Ronald Kwemoi's WJR (Webb's junior PR is 4.5% slower). In the 5000 Solinski's AR is 2.4% slower than Bekele's WR while German Fernandez's AJR is 4.9% slower than the WJR. And finally in the 10000 Rupp's AR is just 1.7% slower than Bekele's 10000 WR while Lindgren's AJR is 5.5% slower than Sammy Wanjiru's WJR (Rupp's junior PR is 5.8% slower).

I would think that the gaps would be about the same between open and junior records - that would be a logical assumption. Now I guess you could argue that African's mature faster and that they are more likely to be doping in the junior ranks (both are possibly true) but the simpler explanation is that they are just older.

YES every single fast time is doped. Armstrong and Marion Jones have never teseted positive.

Designer steroids.. they will never get caught.

I saw Steve Lewis run 46.3 in high school and then he emerged unbelievably rapidly in college, even more rapidly than Jeremy Wariner. Lewis has a documented birth certificate.

Given the amount of obvious doping American sprinters do both through testing, BALCO evidence and an obvious visual 'look', you must assume their distance running counterparts are either more moral or....what whiter? Don't white people cheat?

If your theory is everyone will cheat if you can't get caught then everyone is cheating because microdosing of PEDs will see you not getting caught. American/European runners have better doctors to help them microdose and/or give prescriptions to let them get away with PEDs like 'testosterone replacement therapy' and 'asthma medicene'.

Is everyone assuming Alan Webb was cheating? Here we have a man with a short legs, stocky, overly muscular, long torso, large calves and relatively thick bone structure running a 3:46 mile and 3:30 1500. His genetics aren't optimal. As a runner he isn't as graceful as Cram or Coe.

Logically a runner with proportionally longer legs, lighter bodyweight and not as stocky, smaller calves and shorter torso should be able to run 3-4 seconds quicker than Webb. So either both are doping or it's possible to go quicker without doping.

Metric Miler wrote:

TrackCoach wrote:

It is almost universally understood that every youth and junior record over 400m is false and is the result of age fraud. Amos' 1:41.73 was supposedly run at age 18, that is still his PR 4 years latter. Nearly all of the Africans on the junior 800m top-10 list never improved much beyond their junior marks, which suggest they were probably in their mid-20s when competing as juniors.

I agree with you on this matter usually.

But let's be fair, nobody in that race has improved since despite them all being different ages. That race was a one off.

Exactly.

TrackCoach is dumb.

None of the first five finishers have sniffed their times since. Maybe more of them.

When I watched Brazier 1.43 whatever he was clearly letting up damn I wish Oregon recruited him Oregon hasn't a stud 800 in days :(

jjjjjj wrote:

I saw Steve Lewis run 46.3 in high school and then he emerged unbelievably rapidly in college, even more rapidly than Jeremy Wariner. Lewis has a documented birth certificate.

I don't doubt that he does, that wasn't my point. My point was that he ran an equally astounding time as a Junior, yet there's never (rightly) been any dispute about his age. Not the case with Amos