so many questions wrote:
My main issue with this video is the following:
1.) Are we assuming that an 8:45 steeple isn't attainable by a female without doping? Coburn seems to think it's possible, but doesn't believe that Chepkoech is the person to do it (clean)
2.) If it is attainable by a clean athlete, a person with Chepkoech's flat-track PR's would make sense as she's run 4:02/8:28/14:39, which are not out-of-this-world times for an elite flat-track female distance runner (see Simpson, Houlihan, etc. on the US side).
So are we assuming that everyone who runs these times is dirty across the board, or just Chepkoech? And if so, why just her? She progressed down to 9:10 in 2016 when she started to take the steeple seriously, then ran around 9 minutes (including one sub-9) 4 times in 2017, then in 2018 (despite Coburn saying "I don't think you can run 8:45 when you've been running 9 minutes all season" ) Chepkoech ran 8 steeplechase races. She won 7, two were at altitude in Kenya, 3 were sub 9.
Obviously we don't know if Chepkoech is clean. The same as we don't know if Frerich's or Houlihan are clean (or even Coburn for that matter). I would argue that regardless if her 8:45 is clean, we can reasonably assume that females running 8:30-8:35 and 14:40-50 clean could absolutely destroy the 9 minute barrier. And as we know, Coburn would not be close to world class in any event outside of the steeple, so who is to say that a world-class type 3k/5k runner with decent form (and low barriers) couldn't clean up in the steeple?