SA sport commentary

South African sport: Where winning doesn't matter, and we are the losers

A very South African-centric post today, apologies to our readership in the USA and the rest of the world. Feel free to read and weigh in with your opinions (just keep them tidy!), because it might be interesting to hear what you think of how sport in my country (SA) is run. To provide a little bit of background, South Africa had their worst Olympic performance since 1936 in Beijing, and also find themselves sliding rapidly down the ladder of world sport - many of our teams are now languishing outside the top 10 in Africa, which, for it's wealthiest nation, is a dismal under-performance.

In response to that decline, and other problems associated with SA sport, a big meeting was held to chart the way forward for SA sport. However, instead of developing solutions (and listening to them, because those solutions exists and have been proposed), the only thing that emerged was a political movement for getting rid of the Springbok logo of our national rugby team. If you think that's crazy, you're right. You may be reading that and thinking "what's the big deal?. It's just an emblem." Well, it gets complicated, thanks to our checkered past and the racism that surrounded the logo in years gone by. But that's not what this post is about, and my opinion on the emblem is largely irrelevant. What I would like to discuss is just why SA sport finds itself in the situation it does - the arguments about the Springbok logo point to the solution. This article first appeared on Health24.

Politics and sport

Last week South African sport was once again dragged into political controversy when the National Sports Indaba in Durban produced only one major outcome – a request for the removal of the Springbok emblem as a result of its “racist” connotations.

The Sports Indaba was supposed to contribute to clearing up some of the problems in South African sport; instead, this outcome has reignited a debate that creates a new set of problems. The real problems remain unsolved, relegated to the periphery by political posturing and non-performance-based agendas that are focused on anything but winning.

The sports indaba was called by the Minister of Sport with the intention of charting the way forward for SA sport. This was partly in response to our poor performance in Beijing, and other problems that have been affecting South African sport of late. Soccer is primary among them, but there are also issues around sponsorship across the minor sports; and the development of sport among women and disability groups was also on the agenda.

As is always the case when politics meets sport in South Africa, perhaps the biggest focus was reserved for transformation policies. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, and the appropriate strategy to address transformation is an important piece of the overall sporting puzzle. However, the Indaba was intended, I believed, to be a meeting to discuss how we might improve on-field performances through mechanisms like coaching, sports science, and yes, transformation.

It’s black and white

Pardon the expression, but winning in sport really is a black and white issue. You are either doing what you can to win, or you will lose. Sport makes little allowance for distractions from the process that aims to ensure success. Progress is measured in milliseconds, and margins for victory are so small, so hard to find, that experts and athletes will spend years searching for them. If you fail to devote 100% of your energy to joining the quest for those milliseconds, then you lose. You are either a prospective winner or a guaranteed loser.

It is against this backdrop that we have to consider South Africa’s sporting report-card in recent years.

• Consider that South Africa was once ranked inside the top 20 of world soccer, and now languishes in 85th position.
• Consider that our netball team was a world championship silver medalist in 1995 and is no longer even the best team in Africa.
• Sports where South Africa has a rich history and legacy of champions, like boxing and athletics, are now failing to produce new competitors, let alone champions.
• And then of course, there was Beijing 2008 – South Africa’s worst performance since 1936, with a solitary silver medal the product of many years of sporting neglect.

So an overall “health check” of SA sport will reveal a very dark, ominous picture – little is positive, most sports are declining and a diagnosis of “critical” or “terminal” would apply to most.

Yet a possible solution exists, driven by people who possess both the desire and the ability to improve our on-field performances. I was privileged to attend a conference in Sports Medicine in Cape Town last week, at which many of the doctors and physiotherapists associated with the SA Olympic and Paralympic teams were present. It’s immediately obvious that expertise is not the problem in South Africa – consider, for example, that when Great Britain decided to invest heavily in sports medicine for their Olympic athletes, they identified two South African doctors as world leaders, and then drafted them in to help with their efforts. South Africa possesses experts in abundance, and they are the solution for South African sport.

Unfortunately, South African sporting authorities fail to recognise this, allowing other nations to recruit our talent and intellect, and then use it against our athletes. Our own sporting codes and government instead rely on the volunteer efforts of those people who can do a job, but are not empowered to do so.

I had, for a long time, not understood why this situation has been allowed to develop, why expertise is not prioritised. But the outcomes of the Sports Indaba reveal the possible reasons – politics overrides excellence. Those in authority barely acknowledged expertise-based plans, focusing instead on fighting battles against the past, and the emblem of only one of our sports teams. Discussions around the real challenges are destined to grind to a halt under the weight of the political incentives.

The root problem

The single biggest problem we face is that the people who run SA sport are not incentivised to win. By virtue of the fact that sport separates people out into those who aim to win and those who will lose, the implication is that South African sport is tainted by losers, who do not care about winning. It's as simple as that. Those in authority are more interested in their political agendas than they are in winning. So ‘transformation’ hijacks every single discussion, every attempt to chart a path forward for SA sport. The actual solutions to on-field performance then become about as significant as a drop of water when it falls into an ocean.

When so much energy is invested into political agendas, and incentives that do not contribute to winning, we lose. This is the reason our athletes are not likely to escape from the doldrums – no one is offering the hand of high-performance support.

The role of transformation

Transformation is critical to high performance success. Why? Because sports performance is like farming: you find yourself some arable land, you plant the seeds, you water them, provide fertiliser and then hopefully, with the right conditions, you produce a good crop that year. In South Africa, we are using only 20% of our arable land. That is why transformation is vital. If we fail to access all the talent that has until now been marginalised by political, economic and social ideologies, we will never achieve our sporting potential – why pick a squad of world class athletes from only 15% of the population?

The problem, however, is the time-scale, and that's where people have missed the point. Firstly, if you force athletes into top-level sport with selection criteria based on colour and not on merit, you produce two very destructive outcomes in two very different groups of people:

The first is a sense of entitlement. You are sending a signal to certain groups of people that they are going to be supported, regardless of the effort they put in. So you don’t get the necessary work ethic, drive and competitive passion; it’s part of the reason South Africa produces so many excellent junior athletes and sports people, but so few go on to achieve senior success. Entitlement is destructive to success, because it dilutes dedication and commitment to training.

The second outcome is disillusionment in the non-selected population. South Africa cannot afford to marginalise existing talent in an attempt to find new talent, and this is what quota systems achieve. Can you imagine a coach or manager standing before a young school team and telling them that the secret to success is to be disciplined, to work hard, to train with commitment and success will be the result? Quota systems make a mockery of that advice, because the overt message is that work ethic and discipline are only part of the process.

A culture of sport

And then finally, what I believe people have missed is that sport is a culture. Australia has a great cricket team because in the 1920s, it built a culture through great players such as Bradman. Jamaica has great sprinters, because there is a culture of sprinting on the island. Kenya is a great producer of long-distance athletes thanks to the efforts of those in the 1960s who laid a platform that extends to today.

In South Africa, we have a culture of rugby – as a function of the past, mostly amongst whites. That can (and should) be changed, is changing, but not overnight. It will take at least three generations to change the culture. The first is the generation of people who have been discriminated against. It’s painfully regrettable that they have had little opportunity to achieve success in rugby.

The second generation is their children, who should be exposed to a more balanced world view, and begin to adopt the attitude of performance-based success (as opposed to quotas). I have very little doubt that if you went to a strong sporting high school today and asked the typical 16-year old what he felt about quotas, he would tell you that he would much rather achieve success based on the work he puts in. That is a sign of things changing for the better. And finally, their children's children will enter a sporting environment where the parents and grandparents are equally exposed to the culture that it takes to create sporting champions at a young age.

I must emphasise that the same principle applies to those running the sport – I have no doubt that there are still issues of marginalisation and discrimination in certain sports, and these should be policed and removed. Over time, however, the stereotypes that exist from the top and from the bottom will evolve until we reach a point where success is a function of work and talent, which is how it should be.

So transformation then, should be seen as a long-term process, because achieving sporting success is a long-term venture. It begins from the top, however, and I reiterate that South African sport has failed to win because it is led by people who are not winners. They do not prioritise excellence, they have little interest in intellect and expertise, and they are leading South African sport into an increasingly hopeless situation.

Decision-time

So we therefore need to make a decision – do we wish to be a nation of world-beaters, excellent sportsmen and women, who strive to find the milliseconds it takes to win? Or do we wish to allow these other, non-winning related agendas to override that pursuit. If we choose the former, we must recognise that our preoccupation with transformation is strangling our efforts to achieve a winning sporting nation.

To return to the medical health-check analogy, South African sport has a cancer, and like any cancer, it can be treated through the removal of the responsible cells. For success, that is crucial.

Ross

Chicago 2008: Race Report and splits

Chicago 2008: Evans Cheruiyot and Lidiya Grigoryeva win in fine style

The 2008 Chicago Marathon champions are Evans Cheruiyot and Lidiya Grigoryeva. In two very different races, the Kenyan and Russian triumphed in times of 2:06:25 and 2:27:17, respectively.

For Cheruiyot, it is the first major marathon win of a career that promises to deliver great performances. For Grigoryeva, it's the latest in a series of big wins that includes the Boston Marathon in 2007, Los Angeles and the Paris Marathon.

Below is our report from both races, and splits from the men's race.

Men's race report

The early pace was fast and consistent - sub 3 minute kilometers pretty much from the gun, all the way to halfway, and remarkably, a relatively strong field had been strung out to three by the half-way mark. The temperatures were relatively high - not quite Beijing-like, but then the depth of the field was not the same either. What the commentators failed to mention was that the humidity was quite low in Chicago, which is the big difference from Beijing.

The pace-makers were not up to the job - they were gone within 17 km, and it was Emmanuel Mutai of Kenya, one of the pre-race favourites and a 2:06:15 runner in London earlier this year, driving the pace. The shots from the bike along the route showed very clearly just how aggressive the front running was - it was as though the top Kenyans have all adopted the Sammy Wanjiru-Martin Lel tactics from Beijing - drive as hard as possible at the front, and see who survives!

Evans Cheruiyot was always going to be the biggest danger - the fastest half marathon runner in the field, and we are very firm believers that the short distance speed is THE big predictor of marathon performance. He came third at the world half marathon championships in 2007, running 59:05, and has subsequently run 59-minutes twice, which is a sign of things to come.

The halfway mark was reached in 62:27, which is incredible given that it was being driven by only Mutai, and not the pacemakers. About 25 km into the race, Cheruiyot moved into the lead, running side by side with David Mandago, who was the big surprise package in the race. Mutai was first to go off the back, a gap of 10m created at the 27km mark. That left Cheruiyot and Mandago to slug it out over the final 15km.

The pace was slowing ever so slightly, projecting a finish of 2:05:20 by the 30km mark. The mile pace from 32km to 38km was consistently around 4:50 (or 3:00/km). At 35km, Mandago surged on what must Chicago's steepest hill - a bridge over a highway, and Cheruiyot was momentarily gapped, but held on about 2 strides back. Mandago then surged again, and the gap was 4 strides, Cheruiyot on the ropes but still on his feet.

The knock-out blow did not come, and Cheruiyot was to recover and return to Mandago's shoulder with about 5km to go. Then with 3km to go, Cheruiyot delivered the knock-out blow, opening up a lead of 50m in quick time. Mandago's effort had expired, and it was the faster half-marathon runner who was finally clear and on his way to a relatively unchallenged win over the final 2km. At almost exactly the same time, the women's race saw its decisive move (see report below), which meant that last year's dramatic sprint finishes would not be repeated this year.

Cheruiyot went on to finish in 2:06:25, a huge PB and an "arrival" on the major marathon circuit and surely the start of a great marathon career, given his half marathon credentials. He vindicates the confidence shown in him by the Letsrun.com guys, who picked him to win this race. Second went to Mandago, a great run for him just over one minute back, and third was taken by Timothy Cherigat in 2:11:39.

Below are the splits from the men's race, showing just how aggressive the early pace was, particularly the section from 15km to 20km. However, it also shows the attrition in the second half, where the pace just got slower and slower towards the end.


Women's race

The women's race took on a pretty similar feel to the Beijing Olympic Marathon. The early pace was very slow, projecting a 2:34 time, and the group was understandably large. No one was really forcing the pace, though the Olympic champ Constantina Tomescu Dita was showing at the front quite consistently. She was just there, however, not really doing anything to the pace. The first 10km was super slow, it picked up a little in the next 10 and the halfway mark was reached in 1:16:04.

Just after halfway, the race was suddenly shaken up, just as it was in Beijing, though on this occasion it was not Dita, but two Russians, Lydiya Grigoriyeva and Alevtina Biktimirova, and an Ethiopian, Bezunesh Bekele, the Letsrun.com pick as race winner, hanging on about 3 strides back, who made the move forward.

Then, somewhat surprisingly, Bekele dropped off, which meant that Grigoryeva and Biktimirova, two almost unmentioned runners in the previews, had the streets of Chicago to themselves. Biktimirova was second in Boston earlier this year, beaten in that fantastic sprint with Dire Tune of Ethiopia.

Grigoryeva and Biktimirova are apparently the best of enemies, and live and train in the same town but don't speak to one another. So the race had something of a "personality" to it, and Biktimirova was doing the work out in front, though gesturing to Grigoryeva to give her some assistance. It was very surprising that they were able to create such a large gap so quickly. The rest of a relatively strong field was almost instantly blown away, and I was amazed at how the race was transformed into a two-woman show so rapidly.
Grigoryeva eventually took control, using her pedigreed speed to move into the lead and then open up a large gap at about the 32 km mark. The remainder of the race was something of a procession, the biggest surprise being the size of the time gaps and the relative "ease" of the victory.

For Biktimirova, the final results will have a feel of deja vu about them. In Boston earlier this year, she came second, and the men's race was won by a Cheruiyot - on that occasion, it was Robert Cheruiyot, one of the stars of the marathon running world. Today, the men's race was won by a future star of the marathon world in Evans Cheruiyot.

The weather - last word

It was another relatively warm day in Chicago. Not as bad as last year, but it's not Berlin, that's for sure. The temperatures on the start line were being reported as 60F, or about 16 Celsius, and peaked in the 80s (25 Celsius) by the time the elite men finished. If you're reading that and thinking "big deal", then we're right there with you - it's not that bad. But because of last year's dramatic events in Chicago, and because the public in the USA have been led to believe that marathon running should be easy, everyone was on high alert.

The commentators were very poor regarding the heat - they kept going on about the "very similar conditions" between Beijing and Chicago, when in fact the stats will reveal quite a different picture - Jonathan will provide those in due course. However, the point is that Chicago was SLIGHTLY warm, but most marathons here in SA would give anything for such good race conditions. Same for Kenya, where the conditions in Chicago might be described as perfect for running. There is something wrong with the perceptions of running and the heat in the USA, the "experts" really have no idea about it.

Drink early, drink often, was a mantra repeated many times by the commentators, as though that helps more than just drinking to thirst...you'd have thought these guys were running in the Sahara desert with humidities of the Amazon jungle. Beijing was worse, and Sammy Wanjiru should have made us all sit up and rethink our understanding of how the heat impacts racing strategy after his 2:06:32 win, but alas, more of the same from the "experts"! It didn't affect the elites too badly, however, though the times were perhaps a minute or slower than might have been expected with perfect race conditions.

However, for more detail, there's no one better in the world than Jonathan to comment, since he was right there, in the medical tent, doing a research study specifically to examine the changes in conditions on the course. So our post-race analysis will focus more on that - join us for posts and insights from the tent later in this week!

Ross

Chicago Marathon Preview

The 2008 Chicago Maration: Race Preview

Well, the second big marathon post-Beijing happens in Chicago on Sunday, and it promises to be a great race. Very different from the Berlin Marathon, where Haile Gebrselassie made a concerted effort (and ultimately a successful one) at his world record.

No talk of a world record in Chicago, but a far more competitive race is without doubt on the cards. For the best preview of the names to watch, check out the analysis done by Letsrun.com. They looked at the top 5 men and women over the course of the last week, and you can read their final prediction article here for the men and here for the women. If you're watching the race, it's well worth the read.

From our side, the race has personal significance, because as you'll recall from Jonathan's post last weekend that he'll be involved in the medical tent doing research on the race.

That research, in turn, was driven by the events of last year's Chicago Marathon, which was one of the most dramatic, controversial and spoken about races in many years. From a racing point of view, it produced two of the most dramatic finishes you will ever see in a marathon in BOTH events. On the men's side, Patrick Ivuti and Jaouid Gharib raced shoulder to shoulder through the finish line, almost cleaned out the men holding the tape, and eventually Ivuti was declared the winner.

On the women's side, Andriana Pirtea of Romania, running her first ever marathon, came into the final 400m with a large lead over Birhane Adere, and had even begun waving to the crowd and celebrating her win. Adere didn't read the script, however, and she pressed one last time, caught the Romanian (whose reaction when she realised that the Ethiopian closed her down was one of the highlights of the marathon year) and won her second title.

But the real drama, for most people, was still to come. The race was cancelled earlier due to the excessively high temperatures, and the number of runners who were collapsing, bailing and struggling in unseasonally hot conditions. More tragically, we had a death, that of Chad Schieber, a 35-year old policeman from Michigan, who collapsed at the 18 mile mark of the Chicago Marathon, and was later pronounced dead. This tragic event, together with approximately 300 other medical cases, prompted the race organizers to take the unprecedented step of shutting the course down after about 4 hours of running.

The reaction to the decision was varied, emotional and ultimately, we believe, inappropriately harsh. Race organizers were heavily criticised for failing to provide water, for not cancelling the race sooner and a variety of other decisions deemed to be harmful. We tried to cover that story and the fallout in as much detail as possible, explaining that dehydration, which was blamed for the death, was in fact NOT the issue - you can read the posts on Chad Schieber here and here.

This year's race is not expecting a repeat of the same - it is supposedly going to be a decent day for racing. Not perfect (like Berlin), but definitely more manageable than last year, temperature-wise.

However, Jonathan will be able to bring you all that information, straight from the front lines in the course of the next week.

Before that, we will bring you the race analysis, including our usual fare of pacing, split times and race commentary. So join us on Sunday evening/monday morning for our race analysis, and then in the week after the race in order to unpack Chicago 2008.

Ross

1:59:59: The Sub-2 hour Marathon?

1:59:59...will we ever see a sub-2 hour marathon?

It's been just over a week now since Haile Gebrselassie ran himself into history (again) when he broke his own world record by running 2:03:59 in Berlin. More important, he also broke the 2:04 barrier, which gave even more impetus to the usual speculation that accompanies a world record. At the time, I wrote that we'd look at the future of the marathon once the dust had settled. I guess it's well and truly settled now, apologies for the delay, but here's our take on the question that has been a topic of some discussion in the last week or so - will man ever run a sub-2 hour marathon?

Barrier-breaking speculation

It's quite normal for (sometimes wild) speculation to accompany any world record - it happened last year as well, with Gebrselassie predicting a 2:02 in the near future. He tempered that enthusiasm this time around, saying that he felt like a 2:03:30 was possible. Dave Bedford, the race director of the London Marathon, was not quite so circumspect, and his words last weekend were: "Without doubt I will see a two-hour marathon in my lifetime. It might be towards the end of my life. It might be another 20 years. But, yes, it will definitely happen."

Dave Bedford, for the record, is 58 years old, and perhaps the best response to this I've seen is from the guys over at LetsRun, who wrote that he'll be wrong unless he plans to live to 138 years old!

That's the sentiment of most - they are saying that it's a long, long way off. For example, Glenn Latimer, who oversees distance running in the USA was quoted as saying that the sub-2 hour marathon is a "far-off dream", and that "If you look at what his splits were, averaging around 14 minutes 45 seconds for each five kilometres, they're amazing. You're talking something else altogether to go down significantly below this". So he reckons it's a little soon to be excited by a sub-2 hour performance just yet.

I thought I'd take a little more of an analytical look at the chances, borrowing a little from the history the event, and also the commercial aspects that might, in some respects, prevent many great athletes from breaking the record, thus slowing improvement. Then I'll scan "the lay of the land" to see just who might come through in our lifetimes (assuming that Dave Bedford does in fact reach about 90 years old) and do what Bannister did for the 4-minute mile. One must of course be mindful that people, including scientists, have often painted themselves into a corner with this kind of rationalization in speculation. But here's our take on the sub-2 hour dream!

Understanding where the current "golden era" comes from - looking back

The starting point in trying to predict the future is understanding the past. And there is no doubt that marathon running is in something of a golden era. Remember, in 1998, the world record stood at 2:06:50, by Belayneh Dinsamo of Ethiopia. That's only ten years ago, but the record was already 10 years old.

However, we then had a flurry of world records, first Ronaldo da Costa and then Khalid Khannouchi taking the record below 2:06, to 2:05:38, through their collective efforts in the late part of the 1990's.

All the while, the world was waiting in eager anticipation for the next generation to turn to the marathon, because great things were expected from them. That is, Paul Tergat, Haile Gebrselassie and Salah Hissou had been rewriting the record books on the track, over 10,000m, and when they eventually moved up to the marathon, the general perception among the running community was that we would be in for some major overhauls!

And so it proved. Hissou disappeared (anyone know what happened to him?), but Tergat and then Gebrselassie certainly delivered on the expectation, even if it did take them a few attempts before they got it right. Therefore, what we are seeing in the marathon today is very much a function of what we saw on the track over 5,000m and 10,000m in the 1990's.

Take a look, for example, at the following table. It shows the world record over 10,000m.


The 10,000m world record was lowered by an incredible 30 seconds over a four-year period thanks to the efforts of Gebrselassie, Tergat and Hissou. Who can forget their duels in two Olympic Games, and in particular, it was Tergat who drove one of the most spectacular periods ever seen on the track in his battles with Gebrselassie.

The point is that this kind of performance over 10,000m predicted what would eventually happen in the marathon, because we know that the best predictor of 10km time is peak treadmill running speed (measured in a lab-based test), and the best predictor of marathon performance is 10km performance (much better than VO2max or lactate thresholds or heart rate measures, for example).

A similar thing was happening in the 5,000m event - Gebrselassie first broke the record in 1994, and over the next four years (up to 1998), it fell by an astonishing 18 seconds! It then took another 6 years to fall by 2 seconds, quite clearly showing that unless a new generation of incredible runners arrives, we're heading into a very flat part of the progression curve...

So given the explosion in 10,000m and 5,000m times of the mid-90's, the sudden drop of the marathon world record was on the cards.

Looking ahead - is it sustainable?

So what, you ask, is the point of all this? Well, there are some important points arising out of this observation.

First of all, the 10,000m record has stablised somewhat since 1998, and the peak of the Gebrselassie-Tergat era. Yes, Kenenisa Bekele has entered the fray and lowered it by a further 5 seconds, and so we are rightly excited at what he'll do when he turns to the marathon. However, other than him, the depth and quality of performances over 10,000m have not continued to improve. After knocking 30 seconds off the time in four years, we've only seen 5 seconds in the next 10. The 5,000m record, meanwhile, has dropped only 2 seconds in six years, and only thanks to one individual.

Therefore, applying the same process as above, the marathon record cannot be expected to continue falling at the same rate, with the possible exception of Bekele, and maybe one or two new runners, as yet undiscovered, in the next few years.

Secondly, and more important than this, you have to ask yourself the following question: If a 26:30 10,000m runner steps up to the marathon and is able to run 2:05:00, then what kind of shorter distance speed would it take for a runner to do a sub 2-hour marathon?

Hopefully, you'll recognize that breaking a 2-hour marathon does not simply happen in isolation - it is "linked" to other distances, in as much as performance over those shorter distances predicts what happens in a marathon. You cannot, for example, hope to run a 2:05 marathon unless you have a 10,000m capacity quite well below 27 minutes. It's impossible to extrapolate with precision, of course, but if you want to run a 2-hour marathon, then you have to be running something faster than 25:30 for 10,000m in my opinion!

So the next time you ask whether a sub-2 hour marathon is possible, think of the implications - a 25:30 10,000m time? And considering that in ten years, arguably the greatest distance runner ever on the track and country (Bekele) has dropped it by 5 seconds in ten years, then how long will we wait for a runner with that kind of speed?

More obvious, perhaps is the implication of a 2-hour marathon on half marathon times. Currently, the half marathon best stands at 58:33, by Sammy Wanjiru. In order to see a sub-2 hour marathon, that would need to drop to 56 minutes, at least. How likely is that? 20 years? I doubt it...

The next generation: Who can advnce the marathon? The pool is shallow...

So rather than get carried away with the explosion of marathon records in the last few years, one has to look at the pattern of transition from the track to the road and then ask whether it can be expected to continue. I feel that the answer is "No", because other than Kenenisa Bekele, there are currently few 10,000m runners who possess the speed and ability to move the event forward like Tergat and Gebrselassie have. Sileshi Sihine, eternal silver medallist behind Bekele, is a runner who should also be capable of a 2:05 time, but not the kind of progress that is required to go under 2:03, let alone 2 hours.

Another runner who may prove very successful in the marathon is Zersenay Tadese. 10,000m is probably too short for him, and he seems to be a runner more suited to the longer distances. He's already succeeded on the roads, breaking 59 minutes in the half marathon, and winning the Great North run in a course record in 2005. That kind of pattern suggests that he is capable of a brilliant marathon, and I dare say he's the one man of the current track generation who will challenge Bekele when they all run the marathon. I would hazard a guess that Tadese is capable of a 2:04, maybe even slightly quicker, while Bekele is a 2:03:30, or thereabouts. Quite who is going to run 3 minutes faster than this is anyone's guess, and that's why I feel this talk of a 2-hour marathon is very premature!

The current number 1: Sammy Wanjiru. How commercial barriers may prove crucial in preventing record progress

Then of course, there is Sammy Wanjiru. At just 22, he is omitted from the earlier discussion of track runners, because he made the jump to the marathon without following the 'classic' path of focusing on track first. That's not to say he's not a great track runner - has a 10,000m PB of 26:41, run as a junior, and so I dare say he falls into the same caliber of speed-runner as Geb, Tergat and Bekele one day.

In my opinion, Wanjiru is the best marathon runner in the world today. In fact, I'd put his 2:06:32 Olympic win ahead of Gebrselassie's World Record on a list of all-time performances, firmly at number 1.

And if Wanjiru is able to run the right race, on the right day, with the right pacemakers, I think he's capable of the world record right now. For that matter, so is Martin Lel, also of Kenya. Remember, Lel outkicked Wanjiru to win London in 2:05:16, at the end of what became a tactical race over the last 7km, and he finished with a 60-second 400m sprint! So don't count Lel out just yet.

But Wanjiru seems to hold the aces, and I do think he's probably capable of a 2:03:40-ish time.

Having said that, the big dilemma for all marathon-record hopefuls is "Where do they run it?". The record is now so strong and difficult to break that it requires the very best conditions - perfect course, perfect pacemakers, and of course, perfect money. That happened in Berlin, and Gebrselassie seems to have found his other "perfect" course in Dubai, where he'll get a cool million dollars if he breaks the record again (he's running in Dubai on January 16).

But the requirement for money, pacemakers and perfect weather and course make it very difficult to break the record. Can you see Gebrselassie allowing his yearly "time-trial" in Berlin to become a race for the record with Wanjiru? I certainly can't. For three years, Geb has been Berlin, it's basically a huge marketing campaign for sponsors with Gebrselassie's time-trial the focal point of the race. Introducing challengers, particular with other sponsors, hardly seems smart. The cost would be prohibitive anyway.

And so rather than facing a physiological barrier, I think that one of the main barriers facing marathon running now is commercial - are there races out there with sufficient prize money to draw the top names, to pay the best pacemakers? And then of course, it can't be any race - it must be pancake-flat with no wind and perfect weather. That's a very difficult ask, and it means that maybe only a handful of races exist. If Wanjiru wants to win London (or any of the other big races, like World Champs), then he cuts his chances by half. So where then, will the record come? Forget physiology, the biggest barrier is logistics!

All things considered - don't hold your breath for a 2-hour time any time soon. I think it will be surprising if we see a 2:03:30 clocking in the next ten years, and maybe then it will be Bekele or Tadese. But it will take maybe five or six generations before we even get to 2:02, let alone 2 hours. But then this site will hopefully still be around (we'll find someone to take it over when we move on, our great great great grandchildren maybe!), and so if it happens, we'll eat our words!

Ross