A longer deeper look at all-time top performances

Put this in charts and graphs, please. Not gonna look at anything but charts and graphs.

You can make a google doc with charts and graphs and post a link.

Charts! Graphs!

What the heck? wrote:

I still dont see what you're talking about.

1) You say that 40 achieved "that" time.

and

2) you say that the top 5 averaged 2:06:10

What is "that" time?

That answer can also be found in the first post.

40 unique athletes appeared on the all time list during the years specified. Effectively "that time" is:

"Marathon - 2:10:30 (3376 performances until 30-Jan-2019)"

My two measures for this example:

Quantity: 40 athletes from this group (REST) ran 2:10:30 or faster in the years 2017-2018

Quality: The average of the top-5 fastest of that 40 is 2:06:10

Bad Wigins wrote:

Put this in charts and graphs, please. Not gonna look at anything but charts and graphs.

You can make a google doc with charts and graphs and post a link.

Charts! Graphs!

When you subscribe to my PREMIUM service, I will send you high resolution graphs and charts through a secure anonymous link.

Or, you can import the numbers into something like Excel, and use a graph wizard.

Or, you can not look at them.

Under "The REST" - why do you continue to group together the Slavics, Anglo Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians & East Asians?

Well Said wrote:

Subway Surfers wrote:

The EPO era is clearly most visible in East and North Africa after 1989 over 5,000m. There was a clear switch to the roads circa 2008/2009. The Rest clearly reached their peak in the early 1980s. Was this the Cold War in full effect I hope note but we can't entirely rule it out. It should also be pointed out that western birth rates have been in decline since 1962, with birth control pills taking full effect after 1968-1970.

That is what seems most evident to me. But will rekrunner sign off on that? He doesn't seem to agree at all of the impact that EPO had on 5000m times post-1989, yet he can't offer an explanation as to why these times exploded with the North & East Africans over a relatively short period of time post-1989.

What shall I sign off on? Note Subway said "EPO era" which is a time period.

When I looked EPO-era performances, I saw three different trends, one for East Africans, one for North Africans, and one for the REST of the world. I saw improvements were highly correlated by ethnic origin, and not region. I observed that, all the while assuming EPO is both a global and powerful drug, the most significant progress in the fastest performances was highly correlated to athletes originating from small pockets in Africa, even when these athletes emigrated to America, Britain, Japan, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

Although these East and North African improvements occurred in the timeframe called the EPO-era, the timeframe alone is not enough to identify a single cause of these improvements. We would need to take a wider look at other potentially signficant factors, opening our mind like Subway is doing with population birth rates and birth control.

Several alternative explanations have repeatedly been provided for why these times exploded for the Africans: raw talent, less weight, higher motivation, and improved training.

I selected the groups by performance. I saw and see no real added value in splitting this large group of the REST further, for a number of reasons: - With respect to performance, no single ethnic group stood out as the best of the REST. - Each and every sub-group of the REST will not perform better than the whole group, and the group as a whole performed significantly worse than the much smaller populations of NORTH and EAST Africans. - If I singled out "Slavics, Anglo Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians & East Asians", both the QUANTITY and QUALITY of these smaller groups will be worse than the REST, making the observed gap wider, and any point stronger. - The variability will also increase greatly, due to the smaller sample sizes generating unwanted discussions. But please be my guest if you see something significant -- I welcome all value added contributions.

This is very confusing wrote:

Under "The REST" - why do you continue to group together the Slavics, Anglo Saxons, Celts, Scandinavians & East Asians?

Subway Surfers wrote:

The EPO era is clearly most visible in East and North Africa after 1989 over 5,000m. There was a clear switch to the roads circa 2008/2009. The Rest clearly reached their peak in the early 1980s. Was this the Cold War in full effect I hope note but we can't entirely rule it out. It should also be pointed out that western birth rates have been in decline since 1962, with birth control pills taking full effect after 1968-1970.

One of the reasons for generating the summary data is to cross-check claims like yours to see how well it fits with historical data.

You say the "REST" peaked in early 1980s. What I see in the data for these three events, for the REST:

1500m: A peak around 1985-1986

5000m: Steady improvement until 2012

Marathon: A peak in 2000

Suggesting the "REST" reached their peak decades ago is a pretty strong conclusion with several direct implications connected to the talent of the different groups:

It implies that the REST of the non-African world simply lack the talent (drugs or no drugs) to run (statistically significantly) faster than they already have.

This also implies that EAST and NORTH Africans have more talent than the REST, which helps explain the significant gap.

You suggest birth rates have declined, but in absolute terms the Western populations are still growing. Since 2010, the population of the USA and the UK has increased by about 5.5%.

When I look at evolution of the QUANTITY of the REST over the last three decades, I see:

- On the track, there was a steady decline in QUANTITY, until 2008, and then a massive upswing in the last decade

- In the marathon, the QUANTITY remained steady (at 40-50) with a huge peak (76 and 73) in the two periods between 1997-2004

Which conclusion? -- you said it was not statistically significant, and I agreed with you.

For the world as a whole, there was significant improvement in the 1500m, post-1988, and as I have already shown, these improvements were limited to small populations originating from North and East Africa, excluding the REST of the world.

In a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative summary of a long, deep look at all time performances, I was not interested in individual performers, like Willis, Centrowitz, and Manzano, but larger trends of selected populations over all time. That is one reason I selected an average of the top-5, to reduce the variability caused by single outliers, and to measure a certain depth of QUALITY greater than 1. In any case, as you observed, even individually, these athletes are not statistically significant compared to the peak average of the top-5 in 1985-1988.

Your plausible conclusions require more data than I, and you, provided. I'm not just looking for plausibilty, but what can be supported, or ruled out, by the raw data.

Here are the QUALITY figures of the individual groups expressed as relative improvement from the first 1960s-era reference (indicated).

1500m: 3:35.60

PERIOD : EAST | NORTH | REST

1957-1960: 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00%

1961-1964: 0.00% | 0.00% |-0.97%

1965-1968: 0.32% | 0.00% |-0.13%

1969-1972: -0.67% | 0.00% |-0.18%

1973-1976: 0.11% | 0.00% | 0.63%

1977-1980: -0.15% |-0.60% | 1.70%

1981-1984: 0.49% | 0.07% | 1.89%

1985-1988: 1.09% | 0.26% | 2.49%

1989-1992: 1.60% | 1.14% | 1.46%

1993-1996: 2.08% | 2.09% | 1.45%

1997-2000: 3.04% | 2.57% | 2.34%

2001-2004: 2.93% | 2.94% | 2.22%

2005-2008: 2.47% | 2.27% | 1.85%

2009-2012: 2.82% | 2.23% | 2.03%

2013-2016: 3.39% | 2.24% | 2.19%

2017-2019: 2.57% | 1.26% | 1.90%

MAXIMUM %: 3.39% | 2.94% | 2.49%

+------------------------

5000m: 13:24.48

PERIOD : EAST | NORTH | REST

1965-1968: 0.03% | 0.00% |-0.13%

1969-1972: -0.16% |-0.35% | 0.84%

1973-1976: 0.47% | 0.00% | 1.23%

1977-1980: 1.30% | 0.00% | 1.31%

1981-1984: 1.66% | 0.68% | 2.18%

1985-1988: 0.79% | 1.31% | 1.92%

1989-1992: 2.25% | 1.90% | 1.99%

1993-1996: 4.22% | 3.31% | 2.54%

1997-2000: 4.61% | 4.15% | 2.80%

2001-2004: 4.73% | 3.32% | 2.54%

2005-2008: 4.54% | 3.08% | 2.78%

2009-2012: 4.51% | 2.03% | 3.24%

2013-2016: 3.87% | 2.04% | 2.63%

2017-2018: 4.36% | 1.38% | 2.19%

MAXIMUM %: 4.73% | 4.15% | 3.24%

+------------------------

Marathon: 2:09:37

PERIOD : EAST | NORTH | REST

1965-1968: 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.00%

1969-1972: 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.46%

1973-1976: 0.00% | 0.00% |-0.22%

1977-1980: 0.00% | 0.00% | 0.17%

1981-1984: -0.16% | 0.00% | 0.86%

1985-1988: 1.58% |-0.41% | 1.63%

1989-1992: 0.86% | 0.00% | 0.95%

1993-1996: 1.27% |-0.17% | 1.30%

1997-2000: 2.26% | 1.36% | 2.32%

2001-2004: 3.07% | 1.98% | 2.09%

2005-2008: 3.40% | 1.84% | 2.09%

2009-2012: 4.68% | 2.24% | 2.07%

2013-2016: 5.03% | 0.17% | 1.29%

2017-2018: 4.73% | 0.59% | 2.66%

MAXIMUM %: 5.03% | 2.24% | 2.66%

Simply put, those differences can be summarized by stating that markets work, diversification reduces risk and certain company characteristics explain returns.

rekrunner wrote:When you subscribe to my PREMIUM service, I will send you high resolution graphs and charts through a secure anonymous link.

Or, you can import the numbers into something like Excel, and use a graph wizard.

Or, you can not look at them.

I see what you did there... :-)

The conclusion is that East Africans have a genetic monopoly on endurance but not speed.

When you subscribe to my PREMIUM service, I will send you high resolution graphs and charts through a secure anonymous link Or, you can import the numbers into something like Excel, and use a graph wizard. https://kodi.software/ & https://luckypatcher.cam/ & https://nox.tips/

When rekrunner invites us to take "a longer deeper look at all time top performances" I am reminded of the observation made about a theologian, that when he looked deep into the well to discover God it was his own reflection that was revealed. I am similarly sure that this apparently fresh inquiry by rekrunner will tell us, once again, what he has always thought about these issues.

You don't need an invitation from me to cross-check if your views are consistent with real world observations.
This is an intellectual habit that you should develop from your own personal motivation.

And I would say, in a sense, I was the one "invited" to take a longer look, when I was critiqued for looking at performances relative to 1990 benchmarks.
Looking back as far as the 1960s didn't reveal to me any inconsistencies with my observations relative to 1990.
This was predictable, since my conclusions were made after gaining a knowledge of historically recorded real world performance data based trends.
But I will invite everyone to look for any inconsistencies in my conclusions post-1990 versus post-1960 that I may have missed.

The data does help gain perspective when evaluating many of the claims that keep recurring. For example:
- When Dr. Schumacher says that blood doping helps 10000m "up to 3%" and helps even more in the shorter events, we can look at historical trends for any indications of such increasing gains for shorter events. Looking at the percentages above, we see that, relative to the 1960s, the percentage differences are smaller as the distances get shorter, which leads me to wonder what "helps even more" means for shorter distances.
- When Coevett gets excited that the Ingebrigtsens and the next generation UK athletes are "closing the gap" on East Africans, by virtue of 1500m performances, we can see that this is an event where the gaps were not ever that big in the 1500m, compared to longer events, whether we compare relative to the 1960s or compare the different groups to each other.
- When Subway suggests that the REST declined because of lower participations rates, and population decline, we can look at how the quantities of athletes producing the fastest times evolved to see if there are any indications confirming any significant reduction.
- When Moroccan Magic shows us that Morocco is 2nd only to Russia in ABP violations, the quality performance data tells us that North Africa's very best has regressed from their peak to performance levels that the world was running in the 1980s, and that Russian levels of doping did not help the REST of the world keep up with the East Africans and the North Africans in their peak.
- The list goes on and on ...

This performance data helps me dismiss many claims about performances "at the top" that I cannot see, even if we see gains in isolated and controlled conditions in studies on amateur athletes.

Armstronglivs wrote:
When rekrunner invites us to take "a longer deeper look at all time top performances" I am reminded of the observation made about a theologian, that when he looked deep into the well to discover God it was his own reflection that was revealed. I am similarly sure that this apparently fresh inquiry by rekrunner will tell us, once again, what he has always thought about these issues.

Armstronglivs wrote:

When rekrunner invites us to take "a longer deeper look at all time top performances" I am reminded of the observation made about a theologian, that when he looked deep into the well to discover God it was his own reflection that was revealed. I am similarly sure that this apparently fresh inquiry by rekrunner will tell us, once again, what he has always thought about these issues.

Please feel free to explain how EPO allows the human body to generate more ATP without overheating?

Obviously it can't. But you have to know some basic biology to grasp this fact.

As I said, even though it has taken you even longer to make your point than usual, your point remains the same. You are nothing if not consistent. That is even if your consistency is much the same as a door-knocking evangelist. But no Bible for me today, thanks. In the world I understand, doping is prevalent - and in some places more prevalent than others - and it works.

Drug Religion wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:When rekrunner invites us to take "a longer deeper look at all time top performances" I am reminded of the observation made about a theologian, that when he looked deep into the well to discover God it was his own reflection that was revealed. I am similarly sure that this apparently fresh inquiry by rekrunner will tell us, once again, what he has always thought about these issues.

Please feel free to explain how EPO allows the human body to generate more ATP without overheating?Obviously it can't. But you have to know some basic biology to grasp this fact.

The body produces EPO naturally - and for fit athletes more than others. We - and they - don't overheat, as you appear to think. Increasing the ability of the body to use oxygen, as EPO does, does not cause overheating. EPO is used as a form of blood-doping and we have long known that blood-doping works. The risk factor is clotting and thickening of the blood, not overheating. If the latter was the problem EPO would never have been used. EPO is a drug of choice for many today - and has been so for years. That in itself is sufficient refutation of your argument.

It's difficult in trying understand your thesis on this. Comparing historical trends with certain nations vs the rest of the world and all that is confusing. I guess as this argument goes around in circles it ultimately ends right back to your primary point of view that EPO is ineffective with elite distance runners (?). But if it's ineffective with elites, then how do you explain this:

Take Morocco - a country known for a high prevalence and culture of doping. For this illustration I'll use the 5000 (an event that Subway says would get the most benefit from EPO, and 02-vector doping in general). Aouita recorded the fastest 5000 in the pre-EPO time frame (pre-1990) running 12:58.39. No other Moroccans could break 13 in that era. No one else could break 13 either. It's a very fast time - I think you would agree with that.

Usher in the 90s and the start of the EPO-era and seven (7) Moroccans run faster than Aouita's time (Lahlafi/Mourhit/El G/Gourmi/Hissou/Boulami/Bellani). The first to run faster is Hissou in 1997 (12:50.80) and the last was Bellani in 2006 (12:55.52). Two Morrocans ran under 12:50: Lahlafi (12:49.38) & Mourhit (12:49.75). The average of the times is ~12:50. That's an average of about ~1% improvement over Aouita's time. And two Morrocans in this group are convicted dopers (Mourhit/EPO & Gourmi/ABP-hematological).

And it wasn't just a signficant improvement in times, but during this time period from 1997 to 2006, Moroccans won eight (8) Olympic & WC medals in the 5000 (including one Olympic gold). This is remarkable considering the domination by the East Africans in this event.

So, what's your theory on the number of Morrocans running significantly faster than Aouita's 1980's PB over a relatively short 10-year span during the full-throttle EPO-era? (No ABP & weak testing after 2000). I could see if it's 2 or maybe even 3...but 7 from a small country like Morocco? This sounds highly suspicious of an EPO program? And 2 out of the 7 were banned for doping.

Something else you might be interested in reading on the subject of Moroccan doping:

https://lawm.sportschau.de/doha2019/nachrichten/Morocco-A-paradise-for-sports-cheats,lawmdoha1138.html

And still to this day, Moroccans continue to get busted for EPO. This is the most recent ban:

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1085932/moroccan-banned-for-positive-drugs-test