With sports performance a lot of the barriers are psychological. Even though this wasn't a real sanctioned race, Mr. Kipchoge showed it's possible for the human body so now I expect he or someone else will do it in a race within a few years.
The recent Salazar scandal proves otherwise, i.e. that a lot of today’s athletics-related performances are reached based on same old drug cheating. Too bad, athletics as a competitive sport used to be an event that genuinely filled up big stadiums (like in 1993 in Stuttgart or in 1999 in Sevilla), nowadays we’re left wondering which results will be wiped out in 5 years’ time, while the recent 100-meter World Champs final only attracted 8,000 people in Doha.
While Kipchoge is sponsored by Nike, he was never part of Salazar's Nike Oregon Project and has never failed a doping test.
Doha is a rather terrible site for an athletics meet. Plus Qatar is under a travel ban from Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries. So the low attendance attendence doesn't necessarily mean much.
Giving thyroid medication to otherwise healthy athletes for sporting reasons only is still morally doping, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Armstrong scandal dragged on for years until actual doping was legally “found”, so to speak. All this does is to scare away both the public and potential new and not-cheating athletes while endangering the health of the cheating athletes who actually go down this route.
