Hassan 3:51.95

curious race watcher wrote:

Why were people so excited about Sifan Hassan’s 3:51.95 wc win last year when in the 90s there was a race where 4 women from the same country ran a faster time?

Two races* where two different women from the same country ran faster sorry for mistake

If you're referring to the Chinese runners it's because a couple of them admitted to doing state sponsored doping and the track was demolished after the races, it was arguably short. So the races done there in China have a very huge asterisk.

Are you referring to the Chinese? wrote:

If you're referring to the Chinese runners it's because a couple of them admitted to doing state sponsored doping and the track was demolished after the races, it was arguably short. So the races done there in China have a very huge asterisk.

If you look at the times for the men in that meet, they were about what would be expected

Never heard about the track, but yeah. A bunch of these athletes came out and wrote an open letter about how their coach had forced them to dope.

I actually wrote an article that I never bothered to finish on how doped up the top 10 all time list is for the 1500. Beyond having banned coaches, or latter admitting to doping, there are a bunch of women with super weird inconsistencies in their performances both in time and in geography.

Take Yunxia Qu for example - a good runner sure, but she never broke 3:57 outside of China. Yet in China 1997 she allegedly once ran a 3:55 and 3:57 in back to back days, despite her best result in 1996 being a 4:16. It's hard to believe someone is a 3:50 runner yet they were never able to replicate that elsewhere. Other 3:50/3:51 runners like Dibaba and Hassan have heaps of 3:55/3:56 performances all over the world.

Behind Qu is Jiang Bo - who also ran 3:50. Similarly, she only broke 4 twice in her whole career - 3:57, then a day later 3:50. The next year she couldn't even break 16min in the 5k, and was dropping 4:30 1500s outside of China as well.

Yinglai Lang is probably the most egregious to me. She has *one year* of listed results. That's it. One year where she was 18 years old. In April 1997 she runs a 2:06 800 and a 4:16 1500. That's pretty impresive for an 18 year old, but very mediocre otherwise. But then in the span of 5 days she drops this:

- Oct 17th 1997 - 3:57.15

- Oct 18th 1997 - 3:51.34

- Oct 21st 1997 - 1:58.57

- Oct 22nd 1997 - 1:57.62

For an 18 year old to pull that week off would be probably the second greatest achievement in track and field (behind Wang Junxia below). Yet 2 weeks later Lang leaves China and does two races in Thailand, dropping some much more normal times - 2:02.6 over 800, and a 4:18.

Then she vanishes. IAAF have no other record of her racing beyond that year.

One more for good measure Wang Junxia - check out her September 1993:

Sept 10th 1993 - 4:01 in the 1500m

Sept 11th 1993 - 3:51 in the 1500m **#5 all time mark

Sept 12th 1993 - 8:12 in the 3000m ** #3 all time mark

Sept 13th 1993 - 8:06 WR in the 3000m #1all time

For comparison, Hassan's PB in the 3000m, set last year was 8:18. Fresh.

In terms of IAAF point scores, that would be like a man breaking 3:30 4 days in a row. Not even El Guerrouj came close to that in his peak. Anyway, Yunxia is one of the 9 Chinese women who came out and said she was forced to dope by her coach. So yeah, self-admitted doper.

I could keep going all day.

Again, this was a draft article that I put a lot of research into but gave up on to write about the marathon because marathons get more clicks n' money. Ah well.

Point is, a lot of those Chinese times have so many asterisks next to them it makes the likes of Dibaba look saintly.

Chinese ladies of the 90s = GOAT material

great research. thanks for the summary.

high school xc coach wrote:

great research. thanks for the summary.

+1

I liked that.

another perspective wrote:

Yinglai Lang is probably the most egregious to me. She has *one year* of listed results. That's it. One year where she was 18 years old. In April 1997 she runs a 2:06 800 and a 4:16 1500. That's pretty impresive for an 18 year old, but very mediocre otherwise. But then in the span of 5 days she drops this:

- Oct 17th 1997 - 3:57.15

- Oct 18th 1997 - 3:51.34

- Oct 21st 1997 - 1:58.57

- Oct 22nd 1997 - 1:57.62

One more for good measure Wang Junxia - check out her September 1993:

Sept 10th 1993 - 4:01 in the 1500m

Sept 11th 1993 - 3:51 in the 1500m **#5 all time mark

Sept 12th 1993 - 8:12 in the 3000m ** #3 all time mark

Sept 13th 1993 - 8:06 WR in the 3000m #1all time

If these times are true then I want to know more about their drug program. It would put Dr Ferarri to shame. Most likely short track or bogus times.

The chinese ran some incredible splits internationally, e.g. in the 1993 worlds. But nothing came close to the ominous 1500m and 3000m races in China, and especially for the latter there has been long since the suspicion that not only drugs but more cheating such as running only 7 laps or a too short track were involved. In any case it is shameful that these records were recognized by IAAF.

Some interesting patterns in the Soviet/Eastern bloc athletes too (if it isn't enough to assume 1970s/80s Soviet athletes were aided by the well known state sponsored doping of the time).

Seasons Bests of Tatyana Kazankina seem to spike in Olympic years:

1974: 4:05.9

1976: 3:56.0

1977: 4:04.2

1979: 4:07.8

1980: 3:52.47 WR (at the time)

She also rejected being drug tested in '84 saying she was afraid the West would tamper with it.

Unsurprisingly I am a big fan of restarting the record books at the introduction of blood passports. There's just so much dirt in there and it creates real damage for current athletes in terms of unreachable bonuses, prize money, reputation etc.