Friday, March 21 (easy)

80 on the north field, waiting until 5:30 so the heat would be somewhat diminished. I had a fortuitous run-in with Chris Raub part way through. Eventually we brought up the anomalous performances of Paula Radcliffe and the Chinese runners from 1993.

First, let me lay out the phenomena in question.
All-time best marathon performances for women:

1  2:15:25  Paula Radcliffe   GBR     17.12.73    1      London                   13.04.2003
2  2:17:18  Paula Radcliffe     GBR     17.12.73    1      Chicago                  13.10.2002
3  2:17:42    Paula Radcliffe                GBR     17.12.73    1      London                   17.04.2005
4  2:18:47    Catherine N'dereba             KEN     21.07.72    1      Chicago                  07.10.2001
5  2:18:56    Paula Radcliffe                GBR     17.12.73    1      London                   14.04.2002
6  2:19:12    Mizuki Noguchi                 JPN     03.07.78    1      Berlin                   25.09.2005
7  2:19:26    Catherine N'dereba             KEN     21.07.72    2      Chicago                  10.2002
8  2:19:36    Deena Kastor                   USA     14.02.73    1      London                   23.04.2006
9  2:19:39    Sun Yingjie                    CHN     03.10.77    1      Beijing                  19.10.2003
10 2:19:41    Yoko Shibui                    JPN     14.03.79    1      Berlin                   26.09.2004
11 2:19:46    Naoko Takahashi                JPN     06.05.72    1      Berlin                   0.09.2001
12 2:19:51    Zhou Chunxiu                   CHN     15.11.78    1      Seoul                    12.03.2006
13 2:19:55    Catherine N'dereba             KEN     21.07.72    2      London                   13.04.2003
14 2:20:38    Zhou Chunxiu                   CHN     15.11.78    1      London                   21.04.2007
15 2:20:42    Berhane Adere                  ETH     21.07.73    1      Chicago                  22.10.2006
16 2:20:43    Tegla Loroupe                  KEN     09.05.73    1      Berlin                   26.09.1999
16 2:20:43a   Margaret Okayo                 KEN     30.05.76    1      Boston                   15.04.2002
18 2:20:47    Tegla Loroupe                  KEN     09.05.73    1      Rotterdam                19.04.1998
18 2:20:47    Galina Bogomalova              RUS     15.10.77    2      Chicago                  22.10.2006
20 2:20:57    Paula Radcliffe                GBR     17.12.73    1      Helsinki                 14.08.2005

All-time best 3000m performances for women:
1   8:06.11    Wang Junxia                    CHN     09.01.73    1      Beijing                  13.09.1993
2   8:12.18    Qu Yunxia                      CHN     25.12.72    2      Beijing                  13.09.1993
3   8:12.19    Wang Junxia                    CHN     09.01.73    1h2    Beijing                  12.09.1993
4   8:12.27    Qu Yunxia                      CHN     25.12.72    2h2    Beijing                  12.09.1993
5   8:16.50    Zhang Linli                    CHN     06.03.73    3      Beijing                  13.09.1993
6   8:19.78    Ma Liyan                       CHN     03.11.68    3h2    Beijing                  12.09.1993
7   8:21.26    Ma Liyan                       CHN     03.11.68    4      Beijing                  13.09.1993
8   8:21.42    Gabriela Szabo                 ROU     14.11.75    1      Monaco                   19.07.2002
9   8:21.64    Sonia O'Sullivan               IRL     28.11.69    1      London                   15.07.1994
10  8:21.84    Zhang Lirong                   CHN     03.03.73    5      Beijing                  13.09.1993
11  8:22.06    Zhang Linli                    CHN     06.03.73    1h1    Beijing                  12.09.1993
12  8:22.20    Paula Radcliffe                GBR     17.12.73    2      Monaco                   19.07.2002
13  8:22.44    Zhang Lirong                   CHN     03.03.73    2h1    Beijing                  12.09.1993
14  8:22.62    Tatyana Kazankina              RUS     17.12.51    1      Leningrad                26.08.1984
15  8:23.23    Edith Masai                    KEN     04.04.67    3      Monaco                   19.07.2002
16  8:23.26    Olga Yegorova                  RUS     28.03.72    1      Zürich                   17.08.2001
17  8:23.75    Olga Yegorova                  RUS     28.03.72    1      Saint-Denis              06.07.2001
18  8:23.96    Olga Yegorova                  RUS     28.03.72    1      Roma                     29.06.2001
19  8:24.19    Gabriela Szabo                 ROU     14.11.75    2      Zürich                   17.08.2001
20  8:24.31    Gabriela Szabo                 ROU     14.11.75    1      Paris                    29.07.1998

Why is it that the fastest non-Chinese-in-1993 woman is a full 3.2% slower than the world record? Why is Paula 2.5% faster than the next-fastest female marathoner?

Clearly, these are different situations, because in Paula's case the superb performances were repeated over the course of a couple of years. She also has an enormous, El-Guerrouj level support system working for her. Note that Paula is the third-fastest non-Chinese-in-1993 woman at 3000, and has the #1 fastest non-Chinese-in-1993 10,000m time ever. It makes some sense that she's a better marathoner than Catherine Ndereba, Deena, or the top Japanese women, because Paula is simply much faster than they are across the board. If you took a guy who has run 10,000m in 30:02, trained him for the marathon, and he ran 2:18 or 2:17 a few times (including a race where he stopped to crap on the side of the road), and then once ran 2:15, it would be a surprisingly good result, but not a shockingly good one. So Paula's numbers make sense in some way.

The Chinese numbers do not make sense. Not only are they all from the same nation in the same year, they are all from the same coach (Ma Junren). Just go here and scroll down to the year's best performances. There is one Chinese woman in the 400, two in the 800, then the entire list at 1500 and 3000, and the top four of 10000 and marathon. (They didn't bother with the 5000 because the World Champs had 3000m instead at that point). Checking 1992, you see this dominance arose from nowhere. If you look at 1994, you'll see that next year they mostly disappeared, except the two world-record breakers, who both ran significantly slower, but still well enough to make the lists.

The typical response is to say, "they were on drugs," make a joke about turtle blood (and caterpillar fungus, apparently) and then forget it. But I don't think that's an adequate explanation. Of course they were on drugs. One of them, Zhang Lirong, was later caught. Also, China itself caught six of Ma Junren's athletes during blood tests before the Sydney Olympics and held them back from competition. But still - why were they so good? Why did they run such fast times only in Beijing? Why were they so young (mostly 20 or 21)?

It's not like the Chinese women were the first ones ever to use drugs, or that no one has done it since. And still no one, not even runners doped to the gills, can touch 29:31 or 8:09 (no female one, anyway). The Ethiopian and Ethiopian ex-pats have already taken over the 5000 best times list. Soon they will break 30:00 (Meseret Defar ran 14:16 last year). But it will be a long time before a woman runs 3:50 again. No one is even in the vicinity of 8:09, either.

So why did they run so fast? Why a group of Chinese peasant women? What was do different about their approach to drug-enhanced running as compared to everyone else who's ever done it?

From Google Books:

The famous coach, Ma, and his 'army' can be used as one of the examples. In the 1990s, Chinese women runners emerged as the dominant performers in middle and long-distance races in international competitions. The person credited with this success was their coach, Ma Junren. The team's success has been attributed to his use of traditional Chinese herbal medicine and his rigorous training methods. however, Zhao Yu, a writer, revealed in his book, The Investigation of Ma's Army, the dark side of the story. Ma Junren acted not as a modern athletics coach, but as an ancient gladiator trainer. Girls under his training were 14-16 years old. They had to run 220km a week [135 miles] - almost a marathon a day. he beat htem whenever he wanted to. Wang Junxia, the holder of world records from 1,500m [inaccurate, she was close though] to 10,000m and recipient of the presitigious Jesse Owens Trophy in 1994, was beaten by Ma every week, sometimes even in front of TV crews and her parents for her 'inappropriate behavior'. The same things happened to the other female athletes. Zhao Yu claimed that all girls were subjected to verbal and physical abuse regularly.
Ma also controlled all aspects of their lives. He controlled their wages and did not allow the girls to have money in their pockets. He controlled their reward money and used millions of it to build his training centre. He controlled their medals, rewarded cars and houses and used them to trade for his benefit. He also controlled their personal lives. Girls were forbidden to have boyfriends or to have long hair, face cream, let alone make-up, nice clothes, and even bras. On one occasion when Ma noticed Liu Dong, the 5,000m world champion, wearing a bra he lined the whole team on the training ground, threw her bra on the ground, and called her 'a prostitute who wants to attract men'. The humiliation force Liu Dong to leave the team and retire, while at the peak of her career.
In Ma's training centre there was no music because Ma smashed all records, CDs and tapes by hammer; no books and magazines because Ma burned them all; no educational classes because Ma hated them; no privacy - even private letters were examined by Ma before they reached the receivers. Ma was the feudal warlord. Female athletes had to obey him completely and serve him like slaves. Their duties included washing his feet everyday. Although Ma's cruelty and inhumanity was partially revealed and criticized by the media, Ma was not punished but promoted from a coach to a vice director of Liaoning Provincial Sports Commission and a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference for his contribution to the Chinese gold medals.

My internetting gives the original book by the Chinese reporter with three different titles, so my guess is it's never been translated in full (because you can bet it wasn't translated three times).

And what does Wang Junxia have to say? "I didn't feel happy at all in those days."
Gee, no kidding. She left Ma the next year, and won the gold medal at 5,000 in Atlanta. She never touched those same times, though. In fact her 5000 PR, from the Olympic year, was 14:51 - a slower pace than her 10,000 record.

So now we have an extraordinary situation - a whole bunch of woman from one area in China and with one coach suddenly become the best in the world - and an extraordinary circumstance to explain it. But was it only the insane training and drugs that made Ma Junren's runners so fast? Was the absurd, "gladiator training" lifestyle also a necessary ingredient? It's hard to say. In fact, it's hard even to define from a logical standpoint what that question means. So to rephrase: could those performances be replicated by a similar program, in which athletes are given performance-enhancing drugs and huge training volumes, but otherwise live a normal athletic life?

Maybe they can. But they haven't yet. It'd be nice for someone camp to come along and prove it, though, so there's no question that torture is not a necessary part of incredible performance. Actually, it'd be especially nice if they could do it without the drugs.