Mary Cain is the biggest bust. So much promise when she was young and then nothing. It's like the high school math genius who peeps and then is relegated to simple addition.
Olympic gold and silver. Sub 13 back when that was huge.
One more thought RE Baumann: aside from being past his peak, his bust wasn't really shocking, because he was already a star in the dirty 1980s (like Ben Johnson, or Katrin Krabbe from the other side), see his Olympic silver from 1988. No informed fan would have been shocked by a bust of Carl Lewis either.
Not the biggest but Rita Jeptoo deserves a shoutout. She won Boston and Chicago in both 2013 and 2014 before being popped in ‘14 and having her 2014 wins rescinded.
What about Regina? Give her some love. She got busted the same year she set a WR that still stands.
"Jacobs took second place in the 1500 m race at the 6th World Championships in Athletics in Athens (4:04.63) in 1997, and again won the silver medal in the 1500 m at the World Championships in Sevilla in 1999 (4:00.35). In her years of running she won 25 national titles. On February 1, 2003, at age 39 Jacobs set a world record in the indoor 1500 m with a time of 3:59.98, becoming the first woman to break 4 minutes in the event. Jacobs remains the only American woman to run under 4 minutes in the indoor 1500 meters and stands as the USATF American Indoor record holder in 2015."
In 2003, she retired after she tested positive for BALCO's 'designer' steroid THG and was suspended from competing in track & field for four years by the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
A WR at the time, it's still and American Record.
She was pushing 40 so if you want to argue past her prime but yeah she has to be one of the biggest. Slaney might have been but there are enough doubt (do they still even use those ratios?). And Shelby rounds out the Americans for the medals.
With the lack of us male distance busts (yeah there are a couple) and poor performance (us guys were running 13:10 before epo and after) makes you wonder if those 90s/early2000 guys were cleanish…
She was pushing 40 so if you want to argue past her prime but yeah she has to be one of the biggest. Slaney might have been but there are enough doubt (do they still even use those ratios?). And Shelby rounds out the Americans for the medals.
With the lack of us male distance busts (yeah there are a couple) and poor performance (us guys were running 13:10 before epo and after) makes you wonder if those 90s/early2000 guys were cleanish…
Or the opposite? Leaving out the supershoe area and then Kenyan imports:
US-born sub-13 runners before 2019: Kennedy 12:58 1996
Ritzenheim 12:56 2009
Tegenkamp 12:58 2009
Solinksy 12:55 2010 Rupp 12:58 2012
3 seconds of improvement between 1996 and 2018... not a lot, considering how much we have learned and how much technology has improved in those 20+ years.
Plus: Ritz and Rupp used Salazar's tricks, and Tegenkamp and Solinsky Schumacher's. And there was no improvement from 2010 to 2018. That makes Kennedy's 12:58 even more outstanding.
She was pushing 40 so if you want to argue past her prime but yeah she has to be one of the biggest. Slaney might have been but there are enough doubt (do they still even use those ratios?). And Shelby rounds out the Americans for the medals.
With the lack of us male distance busts (yeah there are a couple) and poor performance (us guys were running 13:10 before epo and after) makes you wonder if those 90s/early2000 guys were cleanish…
Well, the red flag was exactly that. She was 39 and set a WR.
She was pushing 40 so if you want to argue past her prime but yeah she has to be one of the biggest. Slaney might have been but there are enough doubt (do they still even use those ratios?). And Shelby rounds out the Americans for the medals.
With the lack of us male distance busts (yeah there are a couple) and poor performance (us guys were running 13:10 before epo and after) makes you wonder if those 90s/early2000 guys were cleanish…
Or the opposite? Leaving out the supershoe area and then Kenyan imports:
US-born sub-13 runners before 2019: Kennedy 12:58 1996
Ritzenheim 12:56 2009
Tegenkamp 12:58 2009
Solinksy 12:55 2010 Rupp 12:58 2012
3 seconds of improvement between 1996 and 2018... not a lot, considering how much we have learned and how much technology has improved in those 20+ years.
Plus: Ritz and Rupp used Salazar's tricks, and Tegenkamp and Solinsky Schumacher's. And there was no improvement from 2010 to 2018. That makes Kennedy's 12:58 even more outstanding.
As I said 90s/00s. Let’s not pretend alsal and Schumacher are not grey zone coaches at best. back in the 90s/early aughts you had kennedy and a half dozen 13:10-13:20 guys. You know like the 80s. If most of them were doping you would have expected the same 15-20s drop like the Kenyans and ethopians had. If they were all mainlining EPO to run their 13:15s, that would sort of be sad…
He was an incredible distance runner, Olympic Gold medal when mostly Africans were winning that event and 4 years earlier an Olympic silver medal. I saw that 92 race and he was just amazing. However asked this stupid question is the biggest questioner bust of all time LMAO :)
The WHOLE effing Eastern Block sporting elite system was busted when communism collapsed in 1989-1991. Nothing else comes close in terms of huge doping busts. It was so big that global sports couldn't even handle ironing out all the THOUSANDS of individual cases. World Records from the 80s (some that still stands to this day) should all have been scraped, but global politics became about absolution for the individuals since they often didn't have a say in the matter ("Big Brother wants you to take this injection and shut up").
Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win a LetsRun t-shirt.Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win one of 10 LetsRun t-shirts.