High Wire wrote:
wq40r89asdjh;kla wrote:[quote]long sox wrote:
Well, I don't know about Jones, but I believe Carlos Lopes used epo and got the gold medal instead of John Treacy.
No artificial EPO in the '80's, but steroids and blood bagging were alive and well throughout the '70's and '80's.
Firstly, there was testing for steroids in the 70's and 80's, with several high profile athletes getting caught. Ok, it wasn't random out of season testing until 89 by the IAAF, but some countries like Britain were conducting random out of competition testing from 81. Steve Jones would have been tested many times. As far as Lopez is concerned, I don't know what drug testing programme was in affect in Portugal at the time.
Secondly, how many long distance guys have ever tested positive for steroids anyway? I can't imagine that they can result in much improvement, unlike for springs and power events?
What benefits, if any, would long distance guys in the 70s & 80's perceive steroids use would bring them?
Thirdly, I think the use of blood doping is generally over exaggerated for that time. With hindsight it would seem that a few of the national Italian coaches dabbled with it, and one or two finns have admitted to it. It's a highly dangerous procedure by all accounts I have read and I just don't think it was as widespread as some make out. Perhaps some of the communist regimes, with likely state sponsored doping, may have been at it too, but personally I think the likes of Lopez, Jones, Rono, Yifter, Virgin, Shorter, etc were all clean.