Coevett wrote:
bladerunner wrote:
Don't watch. Morons like yourself will never be satisfied unless the results are mediocre. This is only sport I'm aware where great results are spat on, not celebrated. Do us a favor and find something else to watch.
Athletics is probably the only sport I'm aware of where an athlete who was transformed from a good runner into a superhuman GOAT in her mid-twenties, by a coach who was banned for doping offences just this week, could still be celebrated when she produces another superhuman performance.
And.....this is the problem I have. I will acknowledge it's very likely that Hassan is doping. This goes without saying.
But...and maybe it's a result of the number of people popped for doping, it's a real problem for a clean phenom. Let's say Hassan is a 3:47/13:40/28:30 level talent. Or a male analog might be a 3:28/12:20/25:50 talent. Such talent is certainly capable of existing in both running and cycling. Labs have tested thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of elite athletes. Even more humans. We know what values exist for gross efficiency, and what max values exist for VO2, and what values exist for % of VO2 that can be sustained (fractional utilization).
If you look at those numbers, you get performances on par with what I have listed for males, or something around 7w/kg for male cyclists at threshold. Both values are beyond even those seen by an elite athlete (doped or not).
Again, we are using REAL human values, seen in the world before. Not hypothetical race horse O2 capacities. The reason we haven't seen that athlete yet is because generally, efficiency and VO2 tend to be inversely related. Guys with insane VO2 usually have lower efficiency and vice versa....but there is no reason to think someone can't have both.
So, going back to the times above, let's say Hassan is that talent. If she is training shitty, a little overweight, and eating poorly, she could easily be a minute back from maximum capability. If you're doing 50mpw or something, and overweight that's going to account for a ton. Suddenly, Hassan switches from that shitty training, to quality training with AlSal. Boom. She finds a minute and goes from middle of the pack diamond league to GOAT.
Of course, the odds of that narrative are easily 1000:1 at a minimum, but quite probably more like 1,000,000:1 or higher. The problem I have is...what happens if you are THAT athlete? You're basically fvcked just for being good and nobody will ever believe you.