Elite Athletics Thread

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larkim
larkim
Oct 2024
11:43am, 14 Oct 2024
25,804 posts
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larkim
SPR wrote:If we had reached a critical mass in the marathon, Paula Radcliffe wouldn't still be 6th all time...

Not strictly true. We could have still lucked into finding the greatest all time talent, even without the strength in depth. But there's a far higher chance of coming across the greatest ever if the pool of candidates is larger and @Velociraptor 's points about the development for women in East Africa are huge factors in this over the last 20 years.
SPR
SPR
Oct 2024
12:37pm, 14 Oct 2024
46,433 posts
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SPR
Basically I'm not convinced you can make an argument to justify Radcliffe that can't be applied to Chepngetich unless further evidence comes out.
paulcook
paulcook
Oct 2024
12:46pm, 14 Oct 2024
6,703 posts
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paulcook
Not sure I'm reading that right, but Paula Radcliffe didn't beat her 5k PB, for the first 5 5k splits during her marathon PR.

I was going to say neither did she make her own stellar leap from all her previous marathon times, but there's no comparison to make with Radcliffe.
larkim
larkim
Oct 2024
12:58pm, 14 Oct 2024
25,809 posts
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larkim
SPR wrote:Basically I'm not convinced you can make an argument to justify Radcliffe that can't be applied to Chepngetich unless further evidence comes out.

I 100% agree with that though. What I'm saying is that Radcliffe's record looked so stunning at the time because she was such an outlier, and the absence of real depth in women's marathoning was still building, which it seems to me is the main reason why her record stood for a long time.

Slightly contradicting that, I've sampled a few years (arbitrarily) from worldathletics.org to show the gap between the fastest time in the world that year and then the 100th fastest time. The gap definitely narrowed, but it's expaneded again with Asefa and Chepngetich.

2001 - 2:18 - 2:31 - 13 minutes
2003 - 2:15 - 2:31 - 16 minutes - PR world record
2005 - 2:17 - 2:32 - 15 minutes
2010 - 2:22 - 2:30 - 8 minutes
2015 - 2:19 - 2:28 - 9 minutes
2018 - 2:18 - 2:26 - 8 minutes
2023 - 2:11 - 2:24 - 13 minutes
2024 - 2:09 - 2:24 - 15 minutes
larkim
larkim
Oct 2024
3:36pm, 14 Oct 2024
25,817 posts
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larkim
Seen a fair bit of comment also that her agent is Federico Rosa, who has had athletes in his stable convicted of EPO use.

WA lists all of his contracts, which also include Letsile Tebogo and Darly Neita. Neither of whom I think the world currently harbours any more (than usual) suspicion about?

worldathletics.org

So I'm not being ambiguous, I'm suggesting that with the range of athletes that Rosa has, it's too simplistic to say "guilt by association".
SPR
SPR
Oct 2024
3:42pm, 14 Oct 2024
46,439 posts
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SPR
In terms of doping, the point of the bio passport is that massive jumps via doping shouldn't be possible as the changes to make those jumps should be obvious. Maybe there's some magic on the market but how does it have an effect that doesn't show up in the passport while making big changes to performance.

The shorter race distance thing is interesting as it surprises us as we haven't got the history to show she was capable but it seems clear that she's a pure marathoner in terms of what she targets. Also presumably, we think she can run faster than those times unless the inference is doping is meaning she can hold pace in a ridiculous manner.
larkim
larkim
Oct 2024
3:47pm, 14 Oct 2024
25,818 posts
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larkim
Yep, at least for Ruth she has been on the radar for a long time as an elite. She's not some 19yo running their first international race who wasn't already in the OOC pool for testing etc. I hope her bio passport history is robust and frequently documented.

She's on a hiding to nothing as usual; guilt by association with agent / country of origin, guilt down to raw pace, guilt down to the (laughable) "she's not run this fast before" argument (that one truly winds me up), guilt down to "it's way better than her performances over shorter distances" etc etc.

The system is broken insofar as it means both the sceptics and the naive individuals can't point to anything which sorts it out definitively.
paulcook
paulcook
Oct 2024
3:52pm, 14 Oct 2024
6,704 posts
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paulcook
SPR wrote:Maybe there's some magic on the market but how does it have an effect that doesn't show up in the passport while making big changes to performance.


Ross Tucker: "I do have a feeling there's something new out there. Not sure how much is paranoia vs pattern recognition. But I've seen nothing to confirm it".

SPR wrote:The shorter race distance thing is interesting as it surprises us as we haven't got the history to show she was capable but it seems clear that she's a pure marathoner in terms of what she targets.


Perhaps I'm just thinking out loud here. But I wonder what difference the mixed race and male pacing makes. I know the individual athlete needs to train, etc, to achieve what that individual achieves, but can male pacing in these events skew times and figures, and it's plausible that with male pacing on shorter track events, the women's times at 5k, 10k, etc, could be quicker?
Velociraptor
Velociraptor
Oct 2024
4:22pm, 14 Oct 2024
71,455 posts
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Velociraptor
I think having really competent and focused male pacers is likely to have made a substantial difference to Ruth Chepngetich's run yesterday and to Tigst Assefa's run in Berlin last year and I agree that it would be interesting to see what happened if the elite women had official male pacers over shorter distances.
Velociraptor
Velociraptor
Oct 2024
4:23pm, 14 Oct 2024
71,456 posts
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Velociraptor
That's "interesting" qualified by "I'm not saying I want it to become a routine part of the sport".

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Maintained by SPR
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