Some hilarious PBs to do it as well. Like, I have absolutely no qualms about the likes of Noah Lyles or Valarie Allman or Ryan Crouser, who are outlying talents but who do it week in week out all over the planet whatever level they're competing at (especially Crouser who is legitimately probably my favourite American athlete, he's just a really fun guy on the circuit willing to have a bit of fun at his own expense and super hard working, turning up to as many events as he can get his gigantic mitts on), or even the likes of Gabby Thomas or Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (Chemical Bob links notwithstanding) who largely compete domestically but are people who have shown themselves to be elite from the moment they set foot on track at any decent level. And I know that with the strength of the domestic circuit that you have to practically be medal potential just to make it into the squad in a lot of events, as the fact the likes of Shamier Little, Raevyn Rogers and Athing Mu DNQed the nationals shows. A lot of those athletes may be competing domestically simply because with the depth of the competition at home, the benefits of travelling around the world for the Diamond League or the Continental Gold Tour just isn't worth it as against training and competing at home.
But that only really applies in events where the US has serious depth of medal-winning talent, like the 100, 200 and 400. The fact that we're getting these medal winning performances out of huge PBs, often in events that the US doesn't normally score such success in, and from athletes that seldom if ever appear outside the USA (I know, SML doesn't either) and so will pretty much only ever have been tested by the most hypocritical "do as I say, not as I do" ADA on the planet is always going to raise a lot of eyebrows, especially as most of us not in the USA do not get to see the American domestic events screened to be able to follow or become invested in these athletes enough to know how 'normal' or 'not normal' these performances may be.
The US does have a strong domestic circuit that can sustain athletes at a higher calibre than most domestic circuits, this much is true, but I can only imagine what Travis Tygart would have to say if it was a different country whose athletes were appearing internationally once every few years suddenly scoring PBs by huge margins to take medals, who were only being tested by their own NADA and whose races were inaccessible or unviewable to the regular audience.
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