Geoffrey Kirui: the new Sammy Wanjiru?

You know what I like about the Kenyan "age" debates?

No one seems to wonder if all this is true, how come they suddenly stop aging? are you implying that over the years we are having Masters Kenyans beating the open elite fields?

Good for them.

Lickety Split wrote:

3...2...1 wrote:

Kirui had a nice race. The field fell apart pretty early and Rupp had a good day but

nothing brilliant.

kirui had to make one hard move and hold it. Kudos to him but let's see if he repeats it. In terms of style, I thought of Kebede.

I never get into age stuff. That all may be true. It hardly matters. There have been so many crazy stories about age records and then little improvement. If he builds on this, that is great.

I agree with respect to East African's and the "age thing" .... it's like seeing a Russian or Chinese woman world record-holder: not really legitimate.

East African is what?

rojo wrote:

Wanjiru is better but I like the analogy.

1) Wanjiru ran a world junior 10k record of 26:41.75 at 18. Kirui ran 26:55 at that age (#2).

2) By the time he'd run 3 marathons, Wanjiru had won Fukuoka, finished 2nd in London and destroyed the Olympic record.

Wanjiru was arguably the GREATEST talent ever. He ran 28:36 at age 15.

One thing I was thinking about with Kirui is he trains in a really hilly area so he'd do well in Boston.

Do you really believe that he ran 28:36 at 15?

I think the most amazing 10k Amer HS performance might be the 29:27 that McChesney ran at age 16. Which means that he might have been able to run 30:30-30:50 at age 15 as a frosh. Which is about equivalent to a 9:10-15 3200m which only the all-time best Amer freshman could have run.

I think the second might be Chapa's 28:36. Or maybe that is the best?

So do you really think that even the greatest talent of all-time would be THREE YEARS AHEAD of Chapa? Only TWO HSers in Amer history have run sub-29 and they were both 40 years ago.

You really think that Wanjiru was 15 then? I would buy that he was 18 or 19, but not 15. The same goes for his bogus 26:41. He was 22 or 23 when he ran that.

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

You know what I like about the Kenyan "age" debates?

No one seems to wonder if all this is true, how come they suddenly stop aging? are you implying that over the years we are having Masters Kenyans beating the open elite fields?

Good for them.

- Based on demonstrated performance of East African's that have immigrated to the US that most likely have had to produce a legitimate birth certificate.... Meb, Lagat, Abdi etc., yes I agree that many of them are of Master's class age levels and remain competitive at the WC level.

Tommy2Nuttz wrote:

You know what I like about the Kenyan "age" debates?

No one seems to wonder if all this is true, how come they suddenly stop aging? are you implying that over the years we are having Masters Kenyans beating the open elite fields?

Good for them.

- Based on demonstrated performance of East African's that have immigrated to the US that most likely have had to produce a legitimate birth certificate.... Meb, Lagat, Abdi etc., yes I agree that many of them are of Master's class age levels and remain competitive at the WC level.

Wanjiru ran his Jr World Record in the same race as Bekele set the Sr World record - that's basically pacing for free over the first half or something like that.

- Agree ... that said, who the hell knows how old he is to begin with .... check out Kirui's quads here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2017/04/18/kenyan-marathon-runners-defy-physiological-science-muscly-legs/

- Sick, Crazy!