jewbacca wrote:
jewbacca wrote:The audacity of it all!
Actually, Avocado's, normally we're in agreement but not in this case. Assuming legal shoes and legal course, so long as they don't tie Kipchoge to a pace car, I would LOVE to see him break 2:00:00.
So long as he does it under his own power, it will be exciting. They can swap out as many pacers as they like, throw all the advertisement at their shoes that they want, and if he breaks the barrier it will be amazing.
To me it won't take away from someone accomplishing it under standard conditions.
We apparently disagree greatly on this. I don't see why you draw a distinction between, on the one hand, performances using impermissible shoes or courses and, on the other hand, performances using impermissble means for reducing air resistance. The distinction is certainly not based upon whether the runner is performing "under his own power."
To me, sub-2 performances using various drafting methods (such as human "pacemakers" and motorized wind shields), shoes with springs, tailwinds, giant fans following the runners, downhill courses, synthetic EPO, and many other known aids aren't any more "amazing" than slower performances by equally fit athletes who are running all-out under legitimate race conditions. The faster performances simply provide some indication of how much faster someone can run a particular distance when the rules are changed. Unfortunately, the history of this kind of thing is pretty clear: Most people don't distinguish between performances under different rules. In fact, I've often heard the same rationale that, as long as the athlete "does it under his own power," it should count as a record.
When Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier using pacemakers, John Landy recognized immediately that, even if Bannister had violated rules against pacemaking, the bell could not be unrung, and Landy's subsequent mile record forty-six days later -- in a time faster than Bannister's, and in a "proper race" without pacemakers -- would not be seen as the first sub-4 mile. Landy was right. In the popular mind, Bannister would always be the first sub-4 miler. Outside of Australia and a small collection of hardcore track fans, Landy became little more than a footnote (and the guy who lost to Bannister in the Commonwealth Games later that year).