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East African dominance over track events has largely ended. The 1500m world record is held by a West African, while the mile and 3000m world records are now held by white Europeans. The 5000m at the recent World Championships had no East African medalists, and the 10000m had just one. Same goes for the most recent Olympic 5000m.

Compare this with the Olympic and World Championship podiums for the 2000s and 2010s; I don't believe a non-East-African-born athlete won a single 5000/10000m medal for 20 years straight.

by lynx__8 hours ago|

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No. The 1500m (which is run frequently) and mile world records were held by the same person prior to this, and while the Mile record was considered slightly "worse", maybe one or two people since it was set(Bernard Lagat, Asbel Kiprop) could have beaten it if they focused more on running it, but not really a guarantee.

Jakob Ingebretsen was the other who likely could have beaten it, but he's also been hit by a fair number of Achilles issues, including undergoing surgery this past year.

Kerr's performance was very impressive, and, as he continually reiterates, the team he assembled is what led to it aside from his potential and dedication. He set a PR of 2.68 seconds (two years ago) and before that his closest time was 6.61 seconds away. Granted the mile isn't run frequently, but his 1500m times last year weren't very indicative of hitting the WR either - but also goes to show middle distance and up is often run to win as opposed to set your fastest time similar to shorter distances.

by Jefro11811 hours ago|

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I'm sure the record standing so long is partially down to the fact the mile isn't run at major championships, although the middle distances like 800m and 1500m are more of an open field and not dominated by East Africans like longer distances such as 5k and 10k (Josh Kerr is already an Olympic silver medallist, finishing behind a white American and ahead of an Ethiopian-American).

by wging10 hours ago|

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> I'm sure the record standing so long is partially down to the fact the mile isn't run at major championships

I'm not so sure about that. The 1500 is the equivalent race run at major championships (and most paced time trials). But that record (3:26.00 by Hicham El Guerrouj) has stood one year longer, and is generally considered a stronger record. This is possibly the closest anyone's ever come to an equivalent performance to the 1500 record, in either the mile or the 1500. The second-fastest 1500m time ever is 3:26.34 by Bernard Lagat in 2001. The World Athletics scoring tables value a 3:42.66 at about 3:26.3, eyeballing the midpoint of given values. (Or taking the WA point values on the top lists, Josh Kerr's new mile record is 1298, Lagat's second-best 1500m is 1297, and El Guerrouj's 3:26.00 is 1302.)

I don't know whether the WA points or other conversion methods actually have small enough error bars to distinguish between the Lagat and Kerr performances, but the 1500 record beats the mile record by a big enough margin that I don't think we need to worry about that.

https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/middlel...

by PaulDavisThe1st5 hours ago|

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Some years ago, I heard that a rough metric for regular athletics: humans slow down by about 5% for each doubling of the distance. If that is accurate even between 100m and the mile, then extrapolating the world 100m record (9.58 seconds) out to the mile would suggest a mile pace of 12.84/100m.

Kerr ran an average of 13.837/100m. If the 5% rule is truly accurate (which is unlikely), there's some scope for faster times. Personally I'd bet the 5% is just a handy rule of thumb that doesn't do much more than to indicate that these are incredible athletes operating at the absolute peak of human performance.

by jackmott4211 hours ago|

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Because most humans don't really try, not limited to east africans.