clearing the bs up wrote:
I find this hilarious considering that before 2010 everyone thought Boston was a slow course and a fast time similar to ones run in Berlin or London or Chicago would never happen. Mutai is the the fastest of anyone in history and Boston should be record eligible.
It is hilarious. People have no idea what they're talking about in terms of courses, weather, net elevation changes, etc.
This record should be eligible simply because it's a road race.
Why hasn't anyone brought up the fact that Mutai might not have actually run 42.195 km? He probably didn't. It might have been 42.199 or 42.187. Why hasn't anyone brought up that the fact that there was perceivable wind in Geb's WR in 2008? Was it more noticeable than in Boston? Geb didn't run exactly 42.195 km, he actually ran 42.1944094 km. It rained the day before Geb's marathon - the friction coefficient of the roads was slightly lower. Geb's coefficient of drag * frontal area is lower than Mutai's, so Mutai gets the record. The wind shifted in Berlin, giving Geb a tailwind for 87% of the race.
When people make races ineligible for records because of semantic bulls**t then our sport becomes bulls**t. It's a road race. Road races aren't held under laboratory conditions. They're not reproducible. They're not really even comparable to one another.
Either it should count as a record. Or there shouldn't be marathon world records. All of them should simply be "fastest times" run. Or, we should only have course records.