Speculation about monastic halves: For their sake

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Konstanze Klosterhalfen has done everything right from their point of view. She can train under optimal conditions for her, she measures herself in daily training with the world class, she has greatly increased her running times and broke records, now she has won the medals in a spectacular hunting race over the 5000 meters at the World Championships. You can only congratulate.

Can and should you. And do not forget to ask the necessary questions.

Monk Halves trains in the now famous Nike Oregon Project, and is famous for being notorious in this case. The NOP has been accompanied for years by the suspicion, the founder and boss Alberto Salazar has been blocked this week at the behest of the US anti-doping authority Usada for four years. Since it is no longer about murmurs in the runner scene, since it is no longer about rumors, it is about a more than 140-page investigation report.

True, anti-doping investigators refer to incidents in their ruling until 2014. For years after, agency chief Travis Tygart has explicitly stated that there is absolutely no evidence of doping. Unless, one is so suspicious and takes already the extraordinary increases of the athletes, who train in the NOP, as indication.

Mo Farah, the British running star and showcase athlete on the Oregon Project, has had to resist doping suspicions for years. The fact that the Dutchwoman Sifan Hassan from the Nike Oregon Project in Doha only won the 10,000 meters for herself and runs a few days later with a European record over the 1500 meters everything in the ground, can be proof of her extraordinary talent. Can.

Services increased exorbitantly

Klosterhalfen also has their best times exorbitantly increased this year. Two years ago she was swallowed up at the World Cup in London after a tempo run at the end of the field, now she can sprint for the victory with the world's best Africans. That, too, may be due to her great talent. But it raises questions. And if Klosterhalfen, for example, an athlete from Russia, would be missing in any live comment an indication of a suspicion. And if the athlete pointed out that she was not training under salazar in person, most would wave. Protection claim.

On the other hand, many German media are more misguided in their approach. Sure, you have to be somehow critical, but, hey, it's a German medal. Let's just enjoy it. A splits that can also tug, if not tear, the bandage in the crotch.

The German Athletics Federation is in a bind. Klosterhalfen is at least since this evening a figurehead of German athletics. At the same time, she is running for a training group that has long since been called controversial not only with the classical adjective, in which demonstrably, according to the findings of the Usada doping experiments were made.

A training group that determines for itself which runner competes on a course at a World Cup. Sifan Hassan runs the 1500 meters, so the 5000 meters are reserved for monastery hops. A training group, with a powerful sports company in the background. So powerful that it's no coincidence that the next World Athletics Championships will be held in Eugene. In Oregon. Where the Nike Group was founded.

The DLV has announced that they will sit down after the World Cup with monks and their coaches and consultants, which includes the CEO of RB Leipzig, Oliver Mintzlaff, and discuss how it goes. Who at DLV has the courage to ask Konstanze Klosterhalfen to think about their involvement in Oregon?

For her sake. And her great talent.