In response to Wesley Korir's QOTD...

Goucher Needles wrote:

My top three steps for reducing cheating (doping):

1. Lifetime bans and 5 years in prison for first offenses (to include "accidental" doping). No statute of limitations on retesting of stored blood samples.

2. Lie detector tests for screening athletes and coaches

3. Permitting athlete class-action lawsuits against other athletes, coaches, doctors and national governing bodies for defrauding them of lost earning potential. Athletes, their coaches, and oversight bodies need to understand that being caught brings forth cataclysmic consequences for everybody involved. I'd even support legal action by fans against cheating athletes. Paula Radcliffe should have to pay my runner-daughter for the damages she's done to her sense of fairness.

Cc. Wesley Korir

I'm going to talk more about Wesley's comments to me in the WTW. But I think he'd agree with many of your plans.

For starters, another Kenyan elite told meWesley is trying to make it a criminal offense to dope. I asked Wesley about it and he said yes indeed. If they did that in America, it would be amazing as then people would have subpoena powers and people would have to talk under oath.

On a somehwat related note, I asked Wesley about how does one get rid of corruption once it exists. Sure Kenya is corrups but so other other poor countries like India, Mexico, etc. I've visited all three and it's tough to stop things pepole in power are on the take.

Wesley's comment was along the lines "you have to send people to jail - even your friends." There has be be FEAR. So he's very much into stiff penalties. I asked him if there was a lot of crime in Kenya and he sad that crime is a problem like it is in all places but when it gets really bad that police are given shoot to kill orders and the burglaries drop.

So that's an extreme example but if the punishment is big enough, people notice.

What is fair? Does anyone really know?

Is it fair to 'go back to the past to the sport we love'?

The only thing helpful in the QOTD by Korir "the doping issue today ... is a one person problem."

Asking regulatory organizations, national bodies, international bodies to institute stronger controls, to maintain a more active presences is not going to help the sport of athletics to prosper.

Athletics, any sport, is about being better. How do we become better? When we are able to answer that question as individuals then everything gets easier.

Bernd Heinrich penned these statements in his running memoir "Racing the Antelope":

Indeed, almost any freak performance is now suspect almost as a matter of course. In my opinion, that mind-set alone will kill the onward march of record performances, and the college athletics that spawn them, dead in their tracks, even before we exhaust our biological potential. Why? Because runners compete for glory. There is no glory in drugs. If drugs are automatically suspected, then few except the professionals will put in the necessary heroic efforts now required; they will not put in all the work if they might, therefore, be accused of cheating.

Do we want a professional sport or a doping-free sport?

Three paragraphs later:

Fortunately, one of the great things about running, at least distance running, is that on the whole it is honest. Recall that when running 10,000 meters or a marathon, you are operating a whole machine of an almost incalculable number of parts that are integrated, with no part taking precedence over any of the others. You can't just increase one function and expect improved performance. Nature does not put in extra parts, nor does she give extra capacities to given parts. You have to improve all the systems at once to affect the whole. Can any drug do that? Possibly, but improving one part by a simple fix simply transfers the limiting factor to the next link in a long chain. The one factor that does affect the whole body, all at once and in a coherent, coordinated fashion, is in the mind, where courage comes from. I put more stock in placebos, faith and specific training for a desired event.

Goucher Needles wrote:

1. Lifetime bans and 5 years in prison for first offenses (to include "accidental" doping). No statute of limitations on retesting of stored blood samples.

That is a horrible suggestion. Sara Moreira got a (shorter than usual) 6 month suspension because methylhexaneamine was found in her body. She had ingested it in a supplement that did not indicate the presence of methylhexaneamine in its composition.

A life ban seems ridiculous but prison? For this?

Goucher Needles wrote:

In the Chicago Marathon pre-race presser, Wesley Korir thoughtfully asserts that our over-focus on race times and records is at the core of our doping problem.

While I respect him for his desire to help return the sport to a more authentic time, he's really missing the fundamental issues. I think this is because he's immersed in the world of competitive, professional running. Yes, running fast and winning are motivators for doping. Why?

The reasons people dope are:

1. Money

2. Glory, prestige, recognition, fame, ego-fulfillment.

That's not really a response to what Korir is saying so much as it is an asinine observation on the same topic.

Hard to tell what your point is, but basically it looks like you're saying that elite distance runners need to dope in order to win. Winning is how they make money and potentially make themselves famous and therefore they're all doping. No shit.

Obviously you can't take the competitive nature of sport out of sport. That would make it something else. But the focus on WR's and time in t&f and (especially) road racing is another issue entirely. This issue gets confused a lot on these boards because there are actually knowledgable runners and fans who are concerned with the nuance of the pack talking about this stuff here. But most people don't care about that. They want to see a world record. They want to see someone just blow a field out of the water. If that's not going to happen, they are not going to watch. That's how an athlete really cashes in. Not just by winning. By winning so big or so consistently that it becomes a story.

I read Korir's statement to say basically that if "the media" and the sponsors shift the focus away from wr's and times and more towards competing and winning regardless of them, then that could take away SOME of the incentive to dope. Will there always be athletes looking to gain an unfair advantage? Yes. Would the ridiculous gestapo tactics suggested by the OP help. Yes but it does't matter because that will never happen.

In conclusion, your runner daughter should have to pay Paula Radcliffe for the damages she's done to her sense of fairness.

I agree that money is the driving force behind doping but most major races offer significant bounuses for course records, world records, sub some fast time or other so I think taking away rabbits and focusing on competition could reduce PED use to some extent.

We already have too many people in prison in the US. We don't need to find other reasons to send people there. Give them whopping fines if they're caught using PEDs.

The first part of your post is mostly accurate and true.

The second part of your post is mostly assinine.