LoneStarXC wrote:
Here are more questions I have:
Does it feel weird for you to walk normally? Or do you just race walk everywhere?
When I was watching figure skating, I heard about that thing with Kostner’s ex-boyfriend being a race walker who was taking EPO, I think. Does doping actually help race walkers?
I walk quite slow leisurely. Unless I have a destination, then I like to get there.
Yah Alex Schwarzer is a giant tool. Guy doped before London and got caught and banned for 3.5years (he was probably doped before winning Gold in '08 too, lets be honest) he admitted he doped, cried like a baby, said he'd never come back to the sport, said it was a 1 time thing... turned out that was a lie and he had been working with Ferrari for years... 2016 rolls around, he comes back starts training his ban ends in April, he gets entered for World Team Champs in Rome for May (IAAF made up a "late entry fee" to allow him to compete...) he easily wins the race (I lost my voice yelling things that the mods won't let me post on this forum for 3.5 hours), I get kicked out of the medal ceremony for further abusing him... 1 month later he tests positive again, loses that gold medal, justifies all of my actions and then goes on a innocence campaign trying to compete in Rio (he even showed up and claimed he was going to walk a 50km on the same day outside the village to prove that he would have won, but he never did it).
He even created a fake twitter account to masquerade as a supporter, Theodor Quandt.... who if you wiki him was a Ace WW1 fighter pilot who was shot down the first days of WW2 (similar to Alex being Olympic champ in '08 and not getting the chance to defend in 2012...). Anyway, surprisingly I could continue to go on about this (crazy right?) but I won't.
Why wouldn't doping help race walkers? Look at how well Russia did. Think of race walking as running with rules, everything else is the same. We work at the same relative intensity otherwise, so if we can dope and increase out VO2max we increase the pace we can walk at below our LT.
This is where we all must give our sympathies to Jared Tallent. He's clean, 100%. But he's been robbed time after time.
2008- Bronze in the 20km behind a guy who failed a test months earlier but magically was still allowed to compete...
Silver in the 50km behind Alex the Drug Cheat
2009- Went out in the lead pack with like 5 drug cheats and they all DNF'd or DQ'd and Jared had killed himself trying to keep up that he blew up and finished 6th, but had they not been in the race, he'd have won hands down.
2011- Bronze, now silver after 1 Russian got caught, still behind another Russian
2012- Bronze at our World Team Champs- later became Gold
Silver at the Olympics- later became Gold
2013- Bronze, has a Russian in front of him that still stands...
2014- Bronze behind 2 Russians (might be Gold by now, I lose track!)
2015- Silver (a legit silver behind Matej Toth)
2016- Silver World Team Champs, later became Gold
Silver Olympics (behind Matej, but led until like 48km!)
He's been robbed of more medals that anyone else I suspect.