Another Kipchoge "teammate" popped for dope!

Kipchoge would be largely anonymous outside of the running community if it wasn't for his domination and his attempt on the 2 hour world record.

I agree that it's not necessarily the case that the best in the world have to dope, but when you have an event (the marathon) which is dominated by Kenya and Ethiopia, and Kenyan marathoners are getting busted regularly, and we know the only difference with Epiopia is they have even worse testing, then it's hard to believe the most dominant of them is clean.

Do you believe, on the same basis, that Marita Koch was clean?

Ultimately, there is a reason we have drug testing. Does it catch everyone? No, but clearly if it was so easy to flagrantly cheat then there wouldn't be dozens of athletes getting busted by these tests. A decent proportion of these athletes are not even within 4 minutes of Kipchoge with PEDs. Note as well very few of these athletes are likely getting tested/scrutinized as much as Kipchoge. He is part of the AIU RTP, has an ABP profile, competes only in races that have strict testing, and Athletics Kenya is under extra scrutiny so they have more testing than most, if not all, countries.

I think your last paragraph's argument has some logic to it. But instead of being disheartened by a growing number of drug busts for Kenyans, I think that it is a good thing. I'd be cynical of any country that doesn't bust some athletes each year because that feels almost like Major League Baseball who definitely wants to have their cake (have us all assume Aaron Judge is the "clean HR record holder") and eat it too (avoid drug busts with 3 tests a year, with the second one in-season then facilitating as much doping as an athlete wants).

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

And taking it to the extreme (or what I guess is argued is the reality), but if everybody at the top is doping, and the same people are winning all the time, then what's the difference?

The people at the top are better than everyone else anyway, and always have been, so they don't even have to worry about the rest. They've been beating those people since before U20s, when presumably none of them were doping.

So they're only competing amongst themselves. It's just "dopers" beating other "dopers." So it's back to a level playing field, in a sense, is it not.

Unless some have better dope than others. In that, my EPO can make my kidneys produce better, more oxygen-rich red blood cells than the other guy.

(And I'm not sure if that's a thing. 😁)

Because that's all that we're talking about, at least in terms of distance runners or whatever. Everybody still has to put in the work, everybody still has to put in the 120 mile weeks. The doping isn't going to make up for that.

And the people who suddenly become world beaters, don't they always get caught? Because it's obvious that the fact that they suddenly became that good is not natural.

Anyway, yeah, I understand what you're saying.

“All these Kenyan positives shows that they are all cheats! And this lack of Ethiopia positives shows that they are all cheats!”

Oh yeah, it's case by case. I said that "of course some of the people who have always been good dope too." No question there.

Marita Koch is one of those cases. When I first saw the replay of her world record that didn't look real for one second. It was laughable. It was literally unreal. I wondered was it a real replay of the race or was it fake. It was almost video game-like.

So it's case by case.

Being totally honest, some of what Jakob Ingebrigtsen does doesn't look real to me either. But he hasn't been popped yet, so I guess it's real until he does get popped.

Of current athletes, Athing Mu looks real to me. From the first time I saw her, she looked real to me. Sydney McLaughlin is in the Jakob Ingebrigtsen category: until she gets popped, I guess it's real.

With Kipchoge and the marathon, I don't know why it seems like it's real to me.

I guess it's just the nature of the marathon itself, the distance of the race. It's all I've run since my early 20s, so for a couple of decades now, so I have some understanding of it...

So him dropping 3 minutes over nearly a decade, and then 30 seconds here and 30 seconds there. It's like, "Okay... that's not that crazy, is it?" The progression in not "Oh, hell no."

And if he is doping, weirdly it doesn't really change much for me. Because all of us who run marathons know you have to put in a ton of work whether you're doping to not, so it almost doesn't matter on that level.

If it's a 100 or whatever, yeah, they're a f*cking cheat. 😁

If it's a marathon though, no, you have to put in insane miles regardless. So I guess I look at it in that way. A case by case thing in terms of the event. And not to say that doping is okay. But when it comes to the marathon, and again knowing how much work has to be put into it, I really have a hard time being taken aback by anyone being popped.

I guess I probably look at them like, they just wasted a ton of their life. But it is their life.

Kipchoge's team, NN Running Team, is managed by Global Sports Communications, led by Jos Hermens.

Are we starting to think that he might be the Alberto Salazar of the elite marathon world?

Being humble doesn't mean you aren't doping. Very naïve. Reminds me of the family members/acquaintances that chime in on a thread after a doping bust. "I know this person and I'm telling you there's a literal 10000% chance they would never dope. They have never even taken an aspirin. They go to church 3 times a week. They save stray puppies on the regular. They spoon-feed impoverished parakeets in their spare time." - None of this means they don't dope.

So you don't think Kipchoge is doping even though he has rewritten the record books in the most dominant way possible, but Jakob running several seconds off the world record is? I think they both are as well as most everyone at the top, but I don't see Jakob running times that "don't seem real" when plenty of people have run those times, but Kipchoge's a believable. So bizarre.

Alberto Salazar was an extremely hands-on coach, whereas Jos Hermens mostly operates as an agent. I don't really think the comparison could be made. Patrick Sang is Kipchoge's coach and would be the Salazar in this equation.

You're probably going to see those times soon. Don't let a year where he ran numerous championship races and only went for fast times in the 1500/mile muddle the picture. It will be disappointing and unexpected if Jakob doesn't run well under 7:25 and likely a little under 12:40 pretty soon based on the gap between himself and the current runners who have approached those mark. The 1500 might not go crazy (though 3:27 feels possible), but that's due to speed/quality pacemaking as a limiting factor.

That's a good distinction. But people have suspected Hermens of doping his athletes for decades.

As for Kipchoge and the record books, I think we all know that that is a little bit having to do with supershoes. I do think he is the greatest ever and faster taking out that variable, but it's pretty clear there is room for the next generation to close in on him if Bekele ran the time he did in the time of his career he did. Jacob Kiplimo, Kibiwott Kandie, Joshua Cheptegei, Rhonex Kipruto et al. will be looked at to run 2:01:xx/2:02:xx when conditions are good for it. Clearly Kipchoge's consistency is what is really special, and I don't think it could be explained by doping.

Yeah I know, but if he were it's less of a Salazar/Jama Aden type scheme. Ultimately Hermens represents hundreds of athletes, and he's not in the trenches personally doping his athletes 24/7/365.

+1

I posted this before, pointing out that for a marathon world record, Kipchoge's 2:01:09 is not that special:

2022: 2:01:09 (30 s, 7.5 s/year) <- advanced super shoes
2018: 2:01:39 (78 s, 19.5 s/year) <- super shoes
2014: 2:02:57 (26 s, 26 s/year) <- bigger jump per year, no super shoes
2013: 2:03:23 (15 s, 7.5 s/year)
2011: 2:03:38 (21 s, 7 s/year)
2008: 2:03:59 (27 s, 27 s/year) <- bigger jump per year, no super shoes
2007: 2:04:26 (29 s, 7.5 s/year)
2003: 2:04:55 (43 s, 43 s/year) <- biggest jump per year, no super shoes
2002: 2:05:38
Also, Kipchoge is now 32 seconds ahead of the second fastest ever. Back in 2008, Haile was 56 seconds faster than the second fastest ever. So Kipchoge’s current lead is not exactly unprecedented.

I've heard the accusation/speculation that many agents and managers would dope what they consider to be the semi-disposable athletes, like Kenyans and Ethiopians that they can easily replace with new talent, not everyone on their teams.

That's one reason why the "just below the top" kinds of African athletes who are still in the A-league keep getting busted for doping, rather than the Kipchoge/Cheptegei types or irreplaceable homegrown talent like Julien Wanders.

Eh? You don't think peds help you recover from hard training sessions and avoid injuries, and recover from injuries?? So you are of the 'El G was so consistent he must have been clean' school too?

I don't believe consistency proves El G is clean, 1 million percent no. I'm sure PEDs could help in injury recovery and managing training load, but the marathon is a different in that nobody generally knocks it out of the park every time for years on end. Except for Kipchoge seemingly. He's had 1 bad race in what his last 17 marathons? No DNFs/DNS. What other marathoners resemble this?

Catching someone for EPO is like turning a torch on in a tunnel. You pretty much have to catch them in the act.

Obviously with microdosing the biological passport has simply put limits on the amounts athletes can take.

So what is happening is these athletes are getting caught for obscure drugs - with longer half lives + metabolites. It shows these Kenyan athletes are on everything.

When Kipchoge won the WC 5K in 2003 he beat a stellar field. The last two Olympic marathons he pretty much toyed with the other runners. He's going on a 20-year prime. I don't like making baseless accusations, but I can't help but be suspicious. I mean how can someone be that good for that long?

2003 WC Results
1) Eliud Kipchoge (KEN)
12:52.79
2) Hicham El Guerrouj (MAR)
12:52.83
3) Kenenisa Bekele (ETH)
12:53.12
4) John Kibowen (KEN)
12:54.07
5) Abraham Chebii (KEN)
12:57.74
6) Gebregziabher Gebremariam (ETH)
12:58.08
7) Richard Limo (KEN)
13:01.13
8) Zersenay Tadese (ERI)
13:05.571)