casual obsever wrote:
Deanouk wrote:
We only presume athletes in the 80's were using steroids more because more were being caught due to there actually being testing!
No. You got it backwards: there was more testing because more and more people were using it. Remember Ben's confession? 7 years of hard core steroid doping (just look at the old pics) in the 80s before getting caught; so much for the effectiveness of testing in the 80s.
Johnson was a sprinter and anyone with a pair of eyes could see he was doping in the years leading up to his bust. There will always be some who avoid detection, no matter how good and robust the testing is, but the facts are that eventually Johnson was caught. What was the OOC testing like in Canada in the years up to 1988? Did they have in competition random testing from the early 80's and random OOC testing from 1985, as they did in the UK?
We know Lewis and various US sprinters also tested positive in 84 and 88, but it was covered up by the USATF; which is a separate issue. Again, the truth is now out, and that should put a question mark over Lewis's accomplishments. We know about Koch, Wockel, Decker Slaney, Kazankina, Plucknett, Vainio, etc. All at the top of their events, all caught doping in the 80's. So much for testing not working! And where is this list of all the men's middle distance runners that tested positive in the 80's? Or was there some sort of special dispensation for those athletes not to be tested the same as sprinters and throwers?
It is a fact that many more elite athletes were caught using peds through testing in the 80's than any previous decade. The only deduction for that is that testing was better; which I give you is not difficult when it was non-existent in the 60's.
You cannot claim that it was just that more athletes were taking drugs, and you cannot prove this either. Without the same level of testing in the 70's and 60's as the 80's then you offer an opinion that cannot be supported by any data. And of course testing has improved since then and will continue to do so. It's called evolution.
casual obsever wrote:
Deanouk wrote:
1980's - steroids banned throughout decade:- testing at every major champs, for every world record performance, and at most circuit meets from 1983. Out of competition random testing introduced in several European nations (e.g. UK in 1985).
1985 - blood doping banned. 1989 - HGH banned, OOC random testing of elites carried out by IAAF.
Yeah, something like that... when did Coe run his absurd 1:41 again? When did his female counterpart run 1:53?
As I said before, all world records had to be ratified with a negative drug test. So Coe would have had at least 5 in 1981, and have been tested in the European and World Cups that year. Kratochvilova is a 'female' running for a communist East European country, so her time is a moot point; I have already made a clear distinction between female athletes and the use of steroids in Eastern Europe for this group, compared to male middle distance runners from western Europe/ USA. Also, wasn't her 800 WR set behind the Iron Curtain!
Why is Coe's 1:41.7 absurd? Would you consider Cruz's 1:41.7 equally absurd? How about Kipketer's 1:41.1; an athlete with almost identical pbs as Coe for 400m flat (46.85) and 400m relay (45.4) and no over distance endurance to mention? 1500m pb anyone?
Why would it be absurd that someone who could run a 45sec 400 relay and a 3:29 1500m (at a time when UK athletes were tested randomly out of competition and out of season, and blood doping was banned)not put up one of the fastest 800m times in history?
It does not seem absurd to me for someone who could run 1:43.3 at almost 33, and come a close 2nd in the World Cup 1500m that year (1989- when he would have been randomly tested by both the BAAB and the IAAF), was capable of 1:41.7 some 8 years earlier in his prime.
You offer no evidence to justify your claim, which is nothing more than speculative biased.