He sounds like a good pick. I saw the course description and elevation changes earlier this morning. Mein gott.......these boys are gonna have some serious climbing to do in that second third of the course.

Kip Keino Kahuna

I think Paula is going to race with the men, and win outright to shut some people up! :-)

I never shut up, it's a curse :)

My bet was our guy, Alberto Chaiça. He had a great race and finished 8th... ahead of Tergat :-)

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"Yeah, no one likes a smartass, but we all like stars" - Thom Yorke


smartasscoach.tri-oeiras.com

I had heard that Tergat would be racing the OG marathon clean and by the look of it he did. I wonder who would get the gold if they did a retrospective drug test on all of them.
Baldini ran a 28.30 10k split b/w 30-40k and the American most have run under 29m for the same section. Scary stuff!!

an other very inelegant way to imply an athlete is on drugs without having any proof whatsoever...

lame...

Just call me a hopeless cynic Francois but I just have trouble believing in the elite runners anymore. I have the same feeling when I watch the TDF.

Its got to be said, I had my doubts about Balidini but dont know the bloke from adam and the race was not particularly fast, he just ran smart.

I would like to believe that the best of the best distance runners, Hicham, Paula, HGS and Tergat are clean...........

Again, this is like calling someone a theif, fraud or cheater in their profession with no evidence. Would you like it if you came to work and your co-workers accused you of the above with no evidence ? Its unfair to the particular ones you accuse and to all the clean athletes to label anyone without proving the facts first. Just because some athletes have been cheating does not mean that everyone does. Just cause Worldcom ripped off thousands, does not mean every company does.

I have no issue with anyone being cynic or not believing...

I have issues with people who are cynic and not believers and who then post something like you just posted...it's one thing to have doubts (I have mine too about some athletes) but then to make the jump and say "XXX was racing clean for once" or something like that is a big jump...

Baldini has the credentials to do this: 2:07 London 2002, two bronzes in World Championship marathons, World 1/2 marathon champion in 1996, 27:43 10k PR, etcetera. His Olympic win is not a surprise and I doubt very much that he's drugging - been performing at a world-class level for many years.

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"It is a good feeling for old men who have begun to fear failure, any sort of failure, to set a schedule for exercise and stick to it. If an aging man can run a distance of three miles, for instance, he knows that whatever his other failures may be, he is not completely wasted away." Romain Gary, SI interview

My point was that I believe Tergat was NOT doped for the OG and he got blown away by a lot of runners with much slower PB's.( I wasn't saying he has previously been doping.)
Did he just have a crap day, maybe.
Baldini certainly has the credentials to be in the mix for medals.
But I guess it's a bit like politicians and used car salesman. It gets harder and harder to believe any of them.

I find it hard to believe that your first post wasn't meant to say that prior to the OG he was on drugs...

Having a crap day is no argument.

PR lost to someone with a PR close to 5 minutes worse than her own and she did not even finish the race so it does not mean the people that did were doping.

Tergat will run a fall marathon and win again.