Age of Kenyan runners?

I have seen Boaz in person and he is not one day under 27+ years of age.....probably more like 30!

I think the Kenyans use their incredible junior times as sort of an intimidation factor.

JajA

There is a school in my area where there are about 4 African runners, none of them are really good but the best among them won the league freshman/sophmore meet and when i first saw him i thought he was in his late 20's, his fellow African friends don't look they age either.

i think what you have to consider here is that some of these African runners had a very hard childhood, most of them worked all day after school, so they do look older than they are because they were working since they were like 5.

....and now that there is more and more masters money, there are suddenly 40+ year old Kenyans popping up who seemed to be 32 year before last. Do major road races require proof of age for masters & grandmasters awards?

If running is by age, where are those old Americans that run comparable times to the kenyan's times? Who said that they dont go to school in Kenya? Better ask than use the "I hear thing." I thought You went to school, why do u still beleive in "I hear?"

I think this is just whining. I'm sure some of the Kenyans are a year or too older than they say they are. But really it seems people on this board just are looking for reasons to discredit the Kenyans all the time; drugs, age and such. They just work harder. Many of these trmendous juniors turn out to be great senior runners too, guys like Komen, Chelimo, Kiptanui, Kipketer. More of them look there age than don't look at the pictures from world cross this year. Those guys were definitely juniors and they were damn fast too. There was a similar statement back around during London this year about Geb's age, calling it into question, if you watch the 92 world juniors you can see he is definitely a youngster then. And the ages on many of the masters looks legit to me. We need to stop complaining about how this isn't fair and that isn't fair and just try and beat these guys. We aren't the only people in the world who respect fair play you know, although you get that impression on this board.

Seems to me that they are not lying about their ages.

Reason why ages may be falsified for Kenyan athletes:

Not many children are born in hospitals:

Lack of Infastructur, it takes several days, sometimes weeks to travel 50k by vehicle because of the poor dirt roads. There is no health care system in Kenya, meaning no trips to the doctors office. Then most schooling that is done happens by way of missionaries or children traveling to a near by town where it doesn't really matter how old a child is.

This means that a child would have no use for a birth certifcate until he becomes an adult and tries to leave the country. At that point how old an athlete is becomes very important. So they travel to the nearest town through some money at the guy behind the counter and say "he's 19, can we get a birth certificate." The guy behind the counter looks at them funny and says "are you sure he's not 25?" So a couple hundred more rupees and...oh would you look at that he really is 19.

It is hard for developed nations to understand how third world econmies work, but the process I decribed above is a reality. Kenyan athletes may not even be doing it on purpose. An entire family living on $2 a day isn't worried about what year it is or what kind of puppy dog is on the new insurance calander.

Lets combine DNA and Carbon dating testing on those foreigners...........we'll age "em before they can enter a race. Yeh! That's the ticket!

I don't have a clue about Kenyans but I do know that Ethiopians have a different calander year than the west does ( ala the Asain and the Lunar year ) When they come to the western world they change there birth date to match as close as possible...really