rekrunner wrote:
Sorry.
Arthur Newton predated Lydiard by several decades.
Lydiard's value added was the way he combined "anaerobic" and "aerobic" training, and timed the peak to the important goals -- periodization and peaking.
As we have seen, Jakob's 400m/800m cannot be compared to his 1500m.
3:31 is not quite caught up to sub-3:30.
But once again, in your world, over a period of three decades of aerobic training and 1 in 2 doping, the list of runners faster than Coe and Cram is remarkably small -- hardly a ringing endorsement for the power of drugs as the only path to produce "unusual" performances.
I have to side with Rekrunner over Armstrong on this one.
I'm not saying it's wrong to be suspicious of any amazing talent like Jakob. Nick Willis himself has said that it's right that everybody should be suspicious of all the top runners these days, sadly, including himself.
The reason Jakob is standing out is because of a number of things. First of all he (if clean) is obviously one of the greatest talents in history. Secondly he's white, and white middle and distance running has been abysmal for the last four decades, to the point where a consensus had almost been reached that East Africans are naturally superior and that even the likes of Coe only succeeded because there were few East Africans around at the time.
It's not like Jakob is wiping the performances of Coe, Cram etc off the map as a teen (yet, anyway). It's perfectly reasonable to believe that Coe, Cram, Ovett, and for that matter, Elliott, Snell, Ryun could run sub 3:26 on the Monaco track in today's world. Coe and the Brits could well have gotten very close to that kind of time back in their day with just a little bit better pacemaking and competition or luck with injuries and health. So Jakob still has a bit to go.
If you believe Elliott, Snell, Ryun, and then the Brits were clean, I see no reason to doubt that (finally) a modern European descent athlete would emerge with the same talent. This talent is in the absolute perfect environment to flourish and reach full potential.
As far as I know Jakob only runs one or two 800m each season. I think the last one was in the same weekend as competing in two other events at the Norwegian championships.
Another thing is that sports physiology and health care has improved massively since even the 80's. Maybe Coe, Cram, and Ovett would have handled more mileage as teens today, and not gotten injured so much later in their careers as well.
And to make clear - I personally have no suspicions about Jakob at all.