European Athletics Council to wipe away all records Pre 2005

Sounds like something ISIS would do.

Pre 1991 records should be removed for certain.

Ridiculous that the likes of Marita Koch, Kratochvilova, Flo Jo and Jackie J Kersee have records that still stand and have never been challenged.  Women's Shot Put and Discus are the most ridiculous.

best ever was the east german women with 5 o'clock shadow

Kratochvilova  would have won Towing a Tractor

The women's 100m WR was 10.76, flojo clocked 10.49, still stands. The nearest anyone has got since apart from herself, was Jeter in 2009 - 10.64. Even the best even non legal mark was 10.54, which she also holds.

so mo farah getting top up injections would be a legal record but a clean athlete like
jon edwards is wiped?

crazy

Stopped watching athletics after Ben Johnson.

Completely idiotic  and despicable idea,however set forward this proposal should be sacked.

anyone up for fastest druggies in the world

Does nobodies brain function properly now ? I am getting sick of it !

Utterly ridiculous idea, no wonder Paula Radcliffe was so scathing of it.
Punish everyone just to get at the cheats. Inadequate procedures the fault of the organisers not the athletes.

Jonathan Edwards's record was amazing but I don't think it's unbreakable, was close to being broke a couple of years ago, and he past the tests that were available at the time, what athlete now would take pride in holding a world record that would be held by defualt as no previous holder had been legitimately disqualified? would be meaningless.

Be interesting to see what the IAAF do decide in August. The proposal includes dropping old European records, so what about other area records like the Americas, Oceania, Africa ? Will they also drop national records or have national records better than Area/World records. A lot of famous names will be airbrushed out as well as the infamous ones.

Anyway, I'm sure the IAAF will see this as a great way to promote a whole raft of new World Record attempts at the Diamond League circus events.

With all the improvements in sport science, training, health, nutrition in the last 10 years or so, logically, all the world records should be broken in recent years.

If there are not, this must be either because there must have been a 'super athlete'....e.g. Michael Johnson or Usain Bolt who are almost unique physically....or
the old records were as a result of drugs.

Anyone athlete from the past is now tinted by the drug culture whether they used them or not.

If I had any confidence that, going forward that testing was now 100% or that it was even possible to have a complete and permanent list of acceptable drugs or to allow all drugs, I would say scrap every world record from today.

Why should all the old records be broken? it is possible that their are limits to these records, and moreover it is possible that people are regressing physically, and mentally.
if you believe in the possibility of evolution, then there is the possibility of the opposite happening.

there is a limit to how tall humans can become, because the human bone structure cannot sustain people much taller than 6.5, their bones cannot support people over this height without problems and therefore humans may have reached optimum height, and strength.
In such a situation records cannot continue to be broken despite increases in training etc.
You cannot really train a horse to run faster.

You can train it to run fast for longer though.

Then again there may have been many historical factors that meant that certain periods of time in the past would lead to supremely talented athletes.
With the British Empire you had the mixing of people of different races for the first time for many centuries.
This can lead to greater physical health.
#It is notable that Seb Coe, perhaps Britains greatest athlete, was partly of Indian heritage.
So its a small example, but different historical periods can lead to a surge, in that particular time and place, in the things that produce a great athlete.
because things had been stable, throughout the world in this context, it was the sudden change that would mean sudden improvements, albeit possibly a generation or even two later.

It is not really time in that sense that produces greater times, there is no divine right to say that times will get quicker, it is circumstances.

yes sfbw, but it is not possible to train someone to run faster, not really.

training can help, to a point, but the fundamental wiring must be in place. These things were in place for Seb Coe.
Because of history and that time and place.
His records were so outstanding because of the differences in his historical time and place..compared to the preceeding generations, and the great changes of the British Empire

surprisingly the changes we see today are less , in their way than those changes.

I won't be watching any further Athletics if this cowardly action takes place.
To use a large net and catch all the bad guys and the good guys is not the answer.
There are records out there we all know are from cheating , but leave them there as a constant reminder of how the drug testers must never relax and think they are winning.

For every dodgy womens sprint record we will also pretend the greatest ever long jump competition between Mike Powell and Carl Lewis never happened.
How will the BBC graphics display a description of Jonathan Edwards , Colin Jackson and Paula Radcliffe when they do for media work for them ?
'Former world record holder, never world record holder , not trustworthy world record holder' ?????

Some men and women will get a letter in the post , oh by the way that event you ran in 2009 was the world record .....congrats.

Hopefully this will be tested in court and ridiculed.
How many world records does Lord Coe have left now ?

El Guerrouj , Johnson , Powell , Jackson , Edwards , Bekele , Radcliffe historic world greats lose world records  ......and there is no stigma attached to it ???????/

^ very well said,  and cowardly and dishonest a fitting way to describe it.

The worst part of it is that it is a double punishment for athletes like Mike Powell, or Ratcliffe. Not only have they had to compete for their entire careers against drug-cheats, they will now have their greatest achievements expunged because they were contemporaneous with those self-same drug cheats.

The sorry fact of the matter for the IAAF is that to a non-fan, Marita Koch can only ever be a name in a book. But to the lover of athletics, she must always serve as a reminder of the laxity and expediency of their processes. And again sadly, those lovers of Athletics who were around when Kock was running sub-48s 400m, and Flo-Jo was improving ten yards over 100 yards in the space of two seasons are now its greatest critics. We are in a position where nobody, however natural the appearance of their brilliance, is above suspicion, and awarding World Records to random people by dint of their birth year can never change that.

It's just a game.  Doping is always ahead of anti-doping, always has been, always will be.  Athletes have always just played the game and always will.  As ludicrous as the WRs of FloJo, Koch, Radcliffe etc are, they were set playing the game as it stood at the time.  Nowadays, it is all about the need to be *seen to be* anti-doping, while at the same time lauding the ever more ridiculous performances. Sponsors want to see WRs and now they'll see a whole lot more of them

It's a madcap idea. Surely lawyers could have a field day as future earnings of record holders would be severely damaged.

If Radcliffe is no loner the WR holder, what about the woman who came second that day, or 4th or 20th? Did their efforts also not count?

Mike Powell has already threatened legal action

I was playing cricket at Botany Bay the day they had that epic duel. Their ground has a tree at fly slip, at both ends.

Just wipe the World Records where they were positive tests in the athletes career...this seems logical does it not? And (if feasible) records where there was evidence of state sponsored doping.

Anyway, Powell was only lucky that Ivan Pedroso couldn't land a legal jump or he would have blown 8.95 right out of the water.

flo jo - definite injector - some of her competitors are complaining today.
died of heart attack? one side effect of steroids.