One obvious thing the video got wrong (which anyone with a very basic familiarity with the topic would catch), was when he said that all the top athletes in east Germany trained with SC Dynamo. Wow, totally not true!
SC Dynamo was a training group (SC stands for sport club) that served the athletes from one single province (or district, or state, however we want to translate bezirk). Athletes from other districts pretty much trained in their own districts.
The state-sponsored athlete development in east germany was in no way centralized — it was set up where each district had its own athlete development centers and coaches, and this was to foster competition. It wasn‘t centralized as you might picture, where the swimmers all trained with the national squad under the national coach in one location, and the sprinters all trained with the national squad under the national coach in another location. It‘s not how they did it. Anyways!:
In running, sprinter Marlies Gohr competed for SC Motor Jena. 400m runner Marita Koch competed for SC Empor Rostock. Sprinter Katrin Krabbe competed for SC Neubrandenburg. Waldemar Cierpinski competed for SC Chemie Halle. Those are the four most famous East German runners i can think of — none of the four trained with SC Dynamo.
All of the most famous east german athletes can be looked up to see what Sportclub they competed for — Katarina Witt the figure skater (SC Karl Marx Stadt), or Dagmar Kerstin the gymnast (DID compete for SC Dynamo), Kristin Otto the swimmer (competed for a SC with a long name in Leipzig), Kornelia Ender (SC Chemie Halle).
Anyways, I‘m sure I‘m one of very few people who care about a silly misstatement by some British guy on YouTube video, but i had to get it outta my system.
I also found his bit on unterstützende mittel missed the point (the euphemistic „supportive means“ was used internally to denote anything they gave athletes to support their performance, from vitamin B12 to anabolic steroids) but again, the audience for their video may not care.
Not true, the same thing happened at the 1988 Winter Olympics... also held in Canada. :(
Way to go Brian Boitano! Great job keeping Canada off the top step!
Boitano was fantastic. I rooted for him. But Brian Orser was better than many who have won that title.
I can't think of who came closest for Canada in 1976. Maybe the men's high jump. I remember it rained that day and Canadians rejoiced when Greg Joy finished ahead of French Canadian loving Dwight Stones.
More recently the Own the Podium push has been very successful. Summer McIntosh can win up to 5 gold medals in Paris and it would be shocking if she ends up with fewer than 2.
The only difference is that it was state sponsor and actually had scientists and doctors monitor it for the best results. Remember steroids in the United States weren't illegal without a prescription till after the Ben Johnson scandal. While doping overshadows the soviet's Olympic program. They did do a lot in progressing sports science and training. This is from many factors including keeping meticulous training records of athletes and having their youth training in many different sports before actually specializing them in one sport till they were about 18. Also the Soviet system of allowing athletes basically just focus on their sport instead of having to balance it with a job helped a lot too.
This is why Coe and Ovett's victories in Moscow should not be underestimated. They were facing juiced up monsters behind the iron curtain, just like in Prague in 78. Straub was probably in sub 3:30 shape that day. Maybe Kirov in 1:43 flat shape too.
Yes,and they were most likely doping themselves,in order to beat those doped up monsters.
This is why Coe and Ovett's victories in Moscow should not be underestimated. They were facing juiced up monsters behind the iron curtain, just like in Prague in 78. Straub was probably in sub 3:30 shape that day. Maybe Kirov in 1:43 flat shape too.
Yes,and they were most likely doping themselves,in order to beat those doped up monsters.
No. East Germany had a population of 15 million trying to dominate 100 different sports through doping. If they had concentrated all their efforts into middle-distance running as Morocco did in the late 90's for sure they would have produced some sub 1:40/3:25 monster whose records would still be standing. Britain had 50 million where everybody wanted to be the 1500m Olympic champion.
But the fact remains that the 1980 Olympic 1500 final was probably the only one outside of the EPO era and supershoes where all three medalists were in sub 3:30 shape.