Almaz Ayana Responds: “My doping is my training. My doping is Jesus. Otherwise. Nothing. I am crystal clear.”

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Something Fishy wrote:

So she is saying, thank goodness europeans conquered and oppressed us , otherwise I wouldn't have Jesus and would be left only to training? Gold medal and WR for Jesus!

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I will not say she is clean or dirty. I will say it was really nice seeing a 10k race were everyone did not hold back to let the 1500m runner out kick them at the end.
Her time seems suspect but for 20-30 years everyone seems to be holding back for the finish.

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Dafuq wrote:

"Kenyans winning the hurdles in amazing times and even the javelin"
How many Kenyans have won those events this year? I didn't know Kenyans wernt allowed to do shorter distances either? And I'm surprised it's taken so long for a Kenyan to be in the jav that's the way a lot of them hunt lol

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Your position is quite reasonable but it is different than a lot of the other knee jerk "she must be doping" responses. Some people are acting as if Molly Huddle is the true champion. The GOAT was hyperbole but some people really think that everyone else was cheating besides Huddle.

If your position is that every WR in distance running is inherently suspect now, I would agree. I would also add that every WR from about 1975 on is suspect. There was no out of competition testing then and we know that drugs were available. And I would add that it is not just WRs that are suspect. Molly Huddle's time is suspicious too.

If your position is that we have reasons to suspect runners from every country, I would agree. I was reacting to the view on this message board that Ethiopians are particularly suspect (when a few years ago, the position on this board seemed to be that Ethiopians had inherent genetic and cultural advantages that explained their performance). There is a good reason to suspect Ethiopians because of lax testing. However, there is also good reason to think that the best runners will come from Ethiopia. And you can come up with a story as to why Americans might be more suspect (history of high-tech doping that is never picked up--Lance; tons of resources to cheat in more subtle ways).

In the end, the sport is screwed. We know Jim Ryun wasn't doping because it wasn't available. And we know Kip Keino wasn't for the same reason. But--if doping was around back then--Ryun's 3:51 at age 19 and Keino's 3:36 at altitude--would have immediately been suspect.

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KudzuRunner wrote:

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Molly Huddle-GOAT wrote:

Five years ago, everyone said Ethiopians were genetically superior. Now everyone says every Ethiopian is a doper.

I guess it must be that Americans are genetically superior, so anyone who runs faster than them is cheating.

I guess if Molly Huddle had grown up poor in East Africa, running on dirt at altitude, with the example of many Olympic champions before her, she would have run exactly the same time she did today.

I guess Molly Huddle has reached the absolute pinnacle of human performance. No woman ever will be able to run faster than what she did today without doping. I also hope that someone gets her to a doctor, she must be near her deathbed given that no human being ever has run this sort of effort before and never will again.

All hail Molly Huddle.

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This takes the cake as silliest POD. But you're not the only poster who is (intentionally) missing the point.

The current state of elite running is such that ANY performance that falls far outside expected norms is automatically suspect. I don't blame anybody who questions Ayana's performance. (I certainly won't blame Vivian Cheriot if she chooses to question it.) It was unworldly. Nor to I blame anybody who questions Katie Ledecky's recent performances--in the 800 freestyle, for example. Both performances are equivalent, in some sense: freaky, crazy, admirable--but they also force us to ask, these days, whether we're watching drugs at work.

The next stage, after manifesting reasonable suspicion, is to behave like an adult. That means actually assembling the evidence. Does the athlete have ANY precedent for such performances? Do they, for example, have a known, or discoverable, association with known dopers, known coaches who dope athletes?

Nobody I know says that every Ethiopian runner is a doper. But some of them are.

Nobody I know says that every (white) American cyclist is a doper. But we, ah, had a little problem there.

It's not an either/or thing, ever. We've been through this already with the genetics vs. culture thing in discussions of East African runners. Some of us have figured out that when you put genetics and culture together, great things happen.

It's not racist to question whether specific outlier performances were made possible by PEDs. In this particular case, the existing record was dirty. So of course the runner who breaks it, in a wild outlier performance, is going to take some heat.

The stuff about Molly Huddle is a wonderful example of reductio ad absurdum--which is to say, it's absurd. Nobody is making that sort of claim about Molly Huddle. Great race for her, BTW. She wasn't going to beat Ayana--even without the drugs; only joking--but Ayana's crazy performance clearly helped drag her along to the AR. Nice.

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Yannis Pitsiladis, 48, is a professor of sport and exercise science at the University of Brighton in the England

…In recent years he has been the chief figure behind the Sub2 Project, which is using a range of innovations to drive distance running standards beyond what many consider possible.

…the sports scientist admits that they are only scratching the surface of her potential.

“I think the limit is very far away,†he says. “We’re only starting to use some of the innovations the project has, so imagine if you could adopt all the different sports science and sports medicine opportunities we use, for example, in the UK. Once we start doing those things, applying them to her and others, that’s going to get really fast.

…So if this is not the finished package, I ask Pitsiladis, how much faster can she go in the future?

“I think that was only 90 percent,†he says. “There’s 30 seconds more there.â€

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consider this wrote:

To the atheists who value moral behavior, you know what a great thing about God is? He sees right past all the bull that people say and judges righteously based on the heart as reflected by their actions.

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Almaz Ayana - her name means "diamond spirit" - her race came from a diamond spirit

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cleans wrote:

I think I've crossed the line. I don't care whether she doped or not. I've lost interest in distance athletics since it's become so hard to tell who is clean and who isn't.

When's the horse racing on?

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And now a world championship win with no prior racing. Outstanding.

Who knows if she is dirty or just extremely talented.