2-4 pm ET: Official 2024 Morocco Diamond League Live Discussion Thread

You mean when Jakob was a teenager. In 2018 he was 17 as you probaly know.

So with all due respect, where are we landing on this Korir situation. This is a 1.42 flat guy that is obviously highly decorated and is only 28 years old. Last season he was able to barely break 1.47 (he finally managed to just get there in Budapest) and the reasoning was the left foot injury.

Is this still the left foot injury almost 9 months on or is it really time to start wondering about the timing of this really stunning downhill trend from him that coincided with "other things"?

He finished 8.3 seconds behind the winner but even worse finished 6.4 seconds behind the guy in front of him... in 8th place and we are chalking that up to a "dreadful start off the line"?

I literally just watched the race again - it's 49.76 at the bell and sure, Pattison is not right on the pacers hammer but it's not like he was running a 53 or something - they are 7m back that is right at 50.6/7. Korir was right behind Meziane after 300m and Meziane ran 1.44 flat. If anything, if we are still entertaining that he's not managed to get healthy in the last 9 months, then going out in the mid 51's should actually be a great opening lap - I would suggest he got the perfect start off the line. And yet here we are looking for reasons as to how a 1.42 flat guy ran a 60.x final lap in a Diamond League 800m race and looked like an average high school boy. Enough already.

I know you have your view on this, but I don't subscribe to it really more than any athlete. He had a calf injury last year to add to it. It does not seem like he was able to train much at all. He kept saying the right things, but skipping meets and then running poorly when he finally came into it. I view him like Brazier in that he seems to have maybe hit a point of no return as far as tolerating hard training. Unlike Brazier with his huge Nike contract/bonuses from 2018-2020, he probably has to collect the appearance fees and compete even if he's not fit to. He was at a very high level in 2017 (44.5/1:43.1). He's also someone that was considered a big talent in Kenya (I see a 1:46.9 in Kenya from 2016 — surely there was more), so you can consider many 400/800m runners whose bodies betray them in their late-20s, and add him to the list.

You say the timing of his fall, but here is someone who unraveled after September 2022. Kenya had been under scrutiny for far longer than that. Michael Saruni's impersonation debacle was in June 2022 at an event Korir ran in and was doubtless tested in (he ran 44.87 in the 400). Saruni had started to wildly tail off in the spring of 2022, while Korir had an excellent 2022 season once he got rolling.

So to me, this is most likely just a highly injured, uber-talented 44pt/1:42pt guy who started battling injuries in 2019 and managed to do just enough training to win in 2021-2022. I'm dubious whether will ever see him at the top again, but I'd say the same about a guy like Brazier or even lesser talents like a Brandon McBride. Once the injuries start in the late-20s they might never go away.

I wasn't talking about Korir, I was talking about Wanyonyi and why he didn't go faster than 1:43.8. His slow start resulted in working a bit too much to run a slow-ish first lap and then having the whole burden of driving the pace from there. He also left himself something to finish with. So it became not a race to time trial like he got at Kip Keino or in most of his races last year where they went out hard and he had someone to chase.

Korir is clearly really out of shape. A guy with 44 speed, can tap into his sprinting abilities and run 51-52, but then with no training/fitness you will see a disastrous second lap.

So long story short you think at age 28 he hasn't been able to come back from a left foot injury he was dealing with 3/4 of a year ago. Hey I respect your opinion on that - I personally find that hard to believe. I guess he needs a better medical/physiotherapy team.
As for the timing - it actually makes absolute sense.

When Saruni got popped, do you think his athletic ability plummeted overnight? He cheated to 1.43.25 - do you think the first day of his suspension he immediately wasn't even remotely in that sort of shape? The reason we don't know is that he was caught and wasn't allowed to compete. Put it this way, if I was cheating and had to stop because my best bud and training partner had been caught, I'm still going to be able to benefit from that for at least 3 months?! I know that you know how drugs work - and especially the ones in this sport. They aren't on-off "light switches". Many people actually believe, including myself, that lifetime bans should be in effect because there is no possible way to judge the residual benefits of doping for the remainder of an athletes career and you are suggesting that 3 months would be enough for someone to lose any effect of potential doping?

When might you start to see problems? - how about 12 months later. Guess what was 12 months after June 2022 - basically the start of the 2023 season.

If Korir had come out and resumed business and maybe run a 1.45 high opener then I could reassess and say okay, the foot was a thing and the 9 months clearly was enough to rectify it. But he didn't look hobbled or anything out there and he didn't look hobbled in Budapest either - yesterday he just looked like a 1.50 runner having a bad race. The Brazier comparison isn't even close - he was literally limping around the track at the trials in 2021 and a day later was in a walking boot after having his foot screwed back together.
You have such solid logic on many topics, I just can't understand the defense on this one. At all.

I don't know the extent of his injuries and he isn't the most transparent about them besides acknowledging there are many and they exist. It's probably multiple injuries, let's be honest. 28 is not some young age for a 400/800 runner, there are many who are way 400-800 runners out of the sport or fade into a 45/145+ level by then that we don't give much thought to. I don't think Korir has been able to train. Every year that he was remotely healthy he'd come out in the spring and run a fast 400 and that has stopped in recent years.

I think the Saruni thing is a bit strained from you here. First of all, Saruni clearly came into that Kenyan Trials believing he was a) going to test positive if it came to it and b) was unlikely to be tested. So he had this whole, somewhat-improvised hare-brained scheme that effectively ended his career. I think b) is a huge part because Saruni had fallen out of the AIU RTP due to poor results, and was unlikely to do anything at these Trials (and he didn't perform well). So that might be why was not expecting to be tested at all, and could expect to get away with doping. That blew up in his face.

So why I ask you was Korir able to pass his doping test? And yes drugs don't cease to work, but let's not act like Korir wouldn't have been tested in the buildup in 2022. He needed at least 3 OOC tests in the 9 months before PLUS he competed in 3 big races after the Olympics. He competed a fair bit in 2022 too, and his results were middling until the 400 at Kenyan Trials, but really just continually improved (slowly but surely) until a September peak with a 1:43.2 in Zurich. He never fell off the AIU RTP. After Saruni's case, I'm sure ADAK/AIU would be extra alert to him. To me, these are some true wonder drugs if they are working at their best almost 11 weeks after abruptly stopping using them. And let's add that he was tested at Trials, so what is it 11 weeks + 2 to avoid be glowing at the Trials. And the 2 races he did in the buildup that both had doping controls starting on June 2. So what are we looking at 15 weeks?

I think there are just a lot of issues with your logic. One key one being that a guy who navigated heightened anti-doping just fine through September of 2022 suddenly quit cold turkey. Also that how the guy looks has so much to do with doping. What about how much the guy is able to train?

We are missing the Aouita days but there are some lights:

Salma ELBADRA the girl of Inzeguane (tachelhit). Should she make a name for herself.

Oussama Redouani the young runner of Beni Mellal.

Maybe an ultimate wake-up of Anass Essayi this year.

TL, do you know how things work in Kenya? Are you really asking how a top Kenyan runner was able to pass a doping test while possibly doping? Dude - do you really think Asbel Kiprop only started cheating in April of 2019? Why do you think the nation was audited and put on high alert by WADA due to a complete failure of testing infrastructure and protocol. Let's not complicate this - if you are a top Kenyan runner with the right connections you can get away with a lot and don't ask me how I know this for a fact but I know this for a fact.

Yes WADA/AIU have the best intents and do their best but their ultimately rely on people on the ground to action their mandates and in certain places (Jamaica, Kenya, Russia just to name a few) that is really really difficult. I just don't get why you think being on the AIU RTP list ensures legitimacy? It doesn't.

Finally, you are fixated on the injury. I'm not disputing that (the injury). But I'm dubious about just how severe this could possibly have been. First thing we know is that it wasn't a Brazier like injury right? In 2023 the reasoning of "I lost multiple months to training and that's the cause of me being almost 4-5 seconds off my best" was somewhat valid. I mean he still had to be doing some training right? It would be highly surprising to me if someone was injured so badly they would go and run 3 races in Europe and compete in a worlds if they had done absolutely nothing in 6-8 weeks. Also when I watched him in Budapest he did not look like a compromised athlete at all. Back to Brazier - I sat there at Hayward during the trials and the moment he stepped onto the track for the final I could tell he was hurt. At some point the "not enough training" rhetoric has to stop. Jakob has been injured too - are you expecting a 3.55 from him in Eugene?

But okay, "not enough training leading into Budapest" - what about now? No training for the last 9 months? Then why are you even out there then? We are talking about a 1.42 runner that just ran 10 seconds slower in one of the premier meets on the calendar and he the field just ran away from him. He didn't look injured - he looked like a completely different athlete.

Again, I don't dispute there is corruption. That being said, by Korir's prime I think these pretty high-profile busts and whereabouts failures come into conflict with the sacred cows view of this situation. Let's also not pretend like Korir is even based out of Kenya 80% of the year. So do you think ADAK/AIU/USADA are all protecting him while he does most of his training in Texas? That's a multilayered group of people protecting a guy had to go to the mattresses and bet on himself to even get a proper contract after winning Olympic Gold. I don't see some wide-ranging conspiracy for him.

As far as the injury, yeah I think he basically did very little training. There was a lot of financial motivation for him to show up in Europe to run those races even if he was heavily restricted in training and unlikely to do well. I think you are misusing the "eye test" in this case like it's some end-all, be-all. If a guy can't run his hardest in practice or train much, he can still look passable in races. Why is he out there? Again, to make money. If they invite him and give him money to show up, does he really turn that down? Your view could be correct, but the guy just might be completely diminished after a series of injuries and willing to take money where he can get it even if he can barely train.

Well it's a fun debate - and I guess there is a good chance we simply will never know right?!

Yeah very good chance. I think both of us are probably rooting for him to turn it around however unlikely that might be (for any number of reasons).