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Berlin Marathon
Peter Collins
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and a good run by Paula. But it's got me thinking... she's had her world record downgraded because it was run with men, presumably because they believe she was being dragged round faster by them. And yet it's ok in almost every race these days to have loads of pacemakers to try and drag people round to record times. I don't really get it. Any thoughts?
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In my opinion there is nothing wrong with Paula's record. The pacing in Berlin was such that a phalanx of runners were positioned in order to provide wind resistance for the first 13 or so miles. If the IAAF are going to downgrade records they should instead be looking at the suspect ones on there. Take the women's 400m record for example...
It's a tough one, because the problem with allowing women to have men as pacemakers is that there's plenty of men that could pace a woman all the way to the finish.
But then watching today's race with five pacemakers surrounding Makau and Geb in arrow formation to deliberately remove the wind resistance for nearly three quarters of the race, I'm not sure we're looking at too much difference.
The only way to be fair would be to downgrade all records with pacemakers, but that would be impossible to police.
Paula still ran 2:15 and it was never a world record anyway only a world best performance like all road distances are - and lets not forget she would also be the world record holder with her London time in 2005 when she ran 2.17 and stopped for a poo.
Also a fine debut performance by Scott overall today as well!!