The Olympic gold medalist from 2016 in the women’s marathon (from Kenya) was busted for doping two weeks ago. So when you say “when you see Jordan Hasay competing with women from countries like Kenya and Ethiopia, who are renowned for their past efforts, there is a bit of suspicion. “, that’s actually not the case in the running community. More would bet that Edna Kiplagat (yesterday’s winner) is doping than Hasay. Kenya and Ethiopia are being exposed for having horrible testing procedures and more and more are being busted. This “culture” and “genetic advantage” that we always believed the East Africans have is partially true, but they’re certainly not above the drugs.

Hasay has always been a fan favorite. She was an insta-phenom as a freshman in HS and people dubbed her the next Mary Decker (google her if you don’t know who that is). She semi-failed to meet those huge expectations and has struggled the past few years on the track, so seeing her succeed in this way on the roads makes a lot of people happy since, as we said, she’s easy to root for. Personally, I don’t believe she’s on anything illegal, though as the LR person said, NOP is always pushing the boundary. I’m a fan of Hasay and was happy to see her do well, though I don’t find her all that attractive.

Rupp is different. Rupp was a phenom too, but he was training under Salazar (one of the best coaches in the world) from his HS days. He’s always viewed as the “special treatment” guy and he’s not very personable (there are multiple examples of this). Americans don’t really like Rupp but, more or less, he’s the best we got, so we have to root for him. Most would think that if Hasay isn’t doping, Rupp isn’t either, but with Salazar, many suspect that he treats Rupp different from the rest of the group (remember: special treatment).

Without getting too far into it, Mo Farah may be the most egregious case of them all (besides Bolt obviously, but he has no ties to NOP). As a betting man, I’d put money down that he’s on something that’s either A) already illegal or B) hasn’t been fully discovered yet but when it is, it will be illegal.

Also, Paula Radcliffe’s 2:15:25 is a disgrace of a world record, Bolt-esque. No one has even come close, not even the doped up East Africans.