Bekele (and scientists) calls for asterisks on Cheptegei's records

Wavelights last the whole way, never mess up and keep the same pace the entire time.

We need more comprehensive implementations of all-time lists.

RIght now, we take all event runners throughout recent human history and sort their best performances by time. What we need are era groupings for cinder, indoor 200m tracks, indoor large sized tracks, mondo surfaces, post-grasstex tracks, pre super shoes, post non-leather spikes, pre-metric worldwide acceptance, performances enhancing drug 1990s, etc.

Should we have an asterisk for tartan tracks versus cinder tracks

You literally managed to say effectively nothing, provide no new insight and you just sat on the fence with no stance provided.

The reason is that they could pace them the whole way, and that's not the case for any other human pacer. If it was then the pacers would have the records. You probably know this tho.

Not everyone on this board is terrible at running like you bro 😭😭😭

This is hilarious.

It’s interesting he decided to have his name on this. Without his name in it I’d probably view it as an objective opinion on how we should handle these new records; but once he adds his name to the byline it feels a bit petty

Every new technological advancement in shoes,tracks etc for years to come will be subject to criticism and asterisks by records. A woman just ran 28:54 for 10000m. In 5 years when a woman runs 28:30 then 15 years from now 27:59. Just examples that records can and will be broken over and over with new technology paving the way. Do we just put asterisks by everything? Or just accept these performances as the given outcome with technology? This will always be debated until the end of time

Every new technological advancement in shoes,tracks etc for years to come will be subject to criticism and asterisks by records. A woman just ran 28:54 for 10000m. In 5 years when a woman runs 28:30 then 15 years from now 27:59. Just examples that records can and will be broken over and over with new technology paving the way. Do we just put asterisks by everything? Or just accept these performances as the given outcome with technology? This will always be debated until the end of time

I disapprove of wavelight pacing on record eligibility for the same reason I disapprove of alternating pacemakers, as seen in the INEOS 1:59 challenge. That, in addition to the laser pacemaker with the car, etc., provided an observable benefit to Kipchoge that made him measurably faster than without those benefits. I.e. they are an external benefit to the athlete that removes a partial element of challenge to his/her performance.

For that same reason, I do not believe wavelights should be allowed for record-eligible performances on the track. If human pacemakers are not allowed the entire way through, neither should wavelights. I do not care as much about super shoes, because they have implications for training purposes and that is much harder to control. But, wavelight is a clear-cut issue that should be seriously reconsidered.

To be precise: I mean I disapprove for record-eligible performances. While the INEOS run was interesting, fun and overall a positive for the sport, I am glad the 1:59 it is not recognized as our marathon WR. We can hold these two things separately.

Hilarious as old man Bekele definitely wouldn't still be running at all now, let alone going to the olympics, if it wasn't for super shoes

We’ve all been exhausted and had to do arithmetic with splits to hit a goal time while racing. It’s really difficult and we aren’t running 4:03 mile pace while doing it.

Bekele ran most of this world record alone pushing himself at 31.5 seconds per 200m.

He only saw the clock and heard anything his coach/agent yelled at him.

it’s MASSIVE to be able to turn off parts of your brain and know that the little lights on the rail are the time you’re trying to beat.

my friend was a 1:51 / 4:06 miler in college, and he feels his best ever running achievement was figuring out mid-race that he was behind pace to run a sub1:10 half marathon. He figured out the math, had to run a 5:05 last mile, and did it.

I support the asterisk.

Or, do we finally just cram the dying sport into the dust bin and call it out as the clown show it has become? I doubt many people would care if we just finally did away with it altogether. LRC: “cheat-shoes offer no significant advantage.” Also LRC: “Technology bruh!”

In my opinion, an asterisk is just a footnote, a kind of hint to read up on something and get more information. It is not an insult or a denigration of an achievement. Isn't it the case that we all mentally calculate that, for example, a performance from the time of the cinder tracks is to be assessed differently than one on one of the most modern tracks of the present? Don't you mentally admire someone who ran 800 in 1:46 on cinder many decades ago or under completely different circumstances, because you know that it was strong and always will be?

the world records are a joke.

the times back in the day had no or very little drug testing, which makes the marks void.

and when they went from dirt/cinders to synthetic, well that's a quantum level differnce.

then we have super shoes, and even better tracks.

and reindeer milk, viren doping

and the chinese, jamaica, canadians usa, eastern block iron curtain, and today carib, aftrca and asia drugged to the gills.

way back in the day, there were amphetamines, cocaine in 1930 baseball, 1910 opiates wiskey, you name it.

there never was an even playing field.

still some events were clean the middle distances before 1982 were not too bad for the men.

all world records need to be taken with a salt shaker of sale.

with that said, today, drug use is confined to the new drugs, peptides and microdosing.

there will be a lot more positives. as the labs can detect down to pico grams.

along the way, there will be rampant false positives due to contamination

meat, supplements, even naturally produced steroids, interpreted as synthetic

sports have always been dodgy.

still there are a lot of guys in the hall of fame that more or less made it mostly on skill.

The shoes have been proven to not give the runner more energy return than they put in. The wavelights are helpful, but the runner still has to actually run it, the wave lights don’t participate in that part of the equation. Do you, in good concious, really believe that the examples you laid forth are any comparison? Do you typically resort to the use of “Bruh” to try to strengthen an argument you are attempting that has no basis other than anger as fuel?